Tell me why it matters: The power of cooperative storytelling

Teri Viswanath: Given the fact that supposedly we don’t have enough attention span, we’re goldfish, we’re getting just hit by so much information, can storytelling still be vital and stay alive in the environment which we’re evolving into?

Andrew Sykes: ’You’re quite happy to binge-watch a show for three hours and be ruthlessly focused in a world where we’re all pretending we’ve got clinical or just environmental ADHD. If we can be that sucked into a well-told story, then it makes us ask about ourselves, are we good enough to suck in an audience member so they’ll be focused despite living in a world of distractions, so they’ll get the message I mean to mean?

 Viswanath: Hello, and welcome to Power Plays. Today, we’re going to talk about something that every cooperative may not always fully understand, which is the art and the importance of storytelling. I’m Teri Viswanath. I’m the energy economist for CoBank and the co-host of Power Plays. I’m joined by my colleague and friend, Esther Simon. Hey, Esther.

Esther Simon: Hi, Teri. Electric cooperatives have no shortage of facts to share, things like miles of line, reliability statistics, investments in infrastructure, capital projects, community programs, and the economic impact they make. The numbers are important, but the story behind the numbers is what helps people understand why the work they do really matters. That’s why we’re so excited today to be joined by Andrew Sykes, professional speaker, professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and CEO and founder of Habits at Work.

Viswanath: Esther, it’s funny because I know I joked with you. I said, “Hey, you’re a numbers person. You’re a former CFO. This program is really important to you.” You said, “Listen, I really want to do this program in August.” Andrew, I want to echo, thank you for joining us. Maybe let’s just start off. Let’s talk about storytelling, the importance of storytelling in our business settings. What do you mean by this?

Sykes: Storytelling is the skill or the craft, which I think is the blend of one part science and one part art, of helping people to change their minds so they can take new actions. Therefore, in business, stories are the vehicles that carry meaning, that turn facts and figures and statistics from mere numbers that have no personality to numbers that mean something that matter to people and that make sense of the world for people.

We as human beings make up stories all the time about what’s happening in my community, why my rates went up or why they didn’t. People will make up stories, or they’ll listen to the stories you share. If you’re in leadership or, in fact, in any position where you care to help other people, the greatest gift you can give them is stories that allow them to see for themselves what’s possible. None of us like being told what to do, but we’re all happy to listen to a great story, see for ourselves what we can do, leave feeling much cleverer, and just be grateful that the person who taught us did it in a graceful story.

Viswanath: ’I think about the origin of storytelling. I imagine this big cave. We’re in a cave, we’re around a fire, and we’re doing cave drawings to tell the story and bring our community together. There seems to be this origin, this connectivity between us in storytelling. Why is it when we hear a story, it tends to resonate, or it tends to bring us together? Tell me about that.

Sykes: There’s a lot going on physiologically. As it turns out, when we detect that someone’s telling us a story rather than merely lecturing us with facts and figures, a couple of things go off in our brain. First, dopamine is released, the molecule of motivation that makes us pay attention, which is why we remember stories; we love them because we’re drawn in, and we almost get into the state of flow. It’s like when you go and see a great movie, and you’re sucked into that early James Bond scene right from the beginning. Great storytellers capture our attention. That means we’ll leave the experience remembering the facts and figures better than if they had just told us what we needed to know.

And secondly, stories release oxytocin, the hormone of trust, collaboration, and empathy. Especially when we hear stories with characters, people, real people with real lives and details, we see ourselves in those people, and we feel what they feel. No one changes their mind before they first change how they feel. Stories evoke emotions that precede new actions. They also are the instruments with which we can teach rather than preach, with which we can lead rather than having to concede. They do so many pieces of work for us. They address the fundamental problem, which is: No one is going to do what you want them to do if you tell them what to do. Allow them to see for themselves what to do. Stories.

Simon: I think this resonates with me for electric cooperatives because of where they come from. One of the questions I’m curious about is there a structure to stories that you tell? What are some of the elements that make a story memorable?

Sykes: Yes, because a lot of people think that a case study is a story. Well, no, a story is a story because, as you so eloquently capture, it has structure, and it’s different structure from normal prose. A few ways to understand that structure is firstly, what do bad storytellers do? Either they don’t tell stories at all; that’s the easy one, or they ramble on and never get to the point. You’re wondering, “Where are you going with this?” Great storytelling is using a structure that keeps you succinct and to the point, especially early on. Get to the part of the story that makes a story a story, which is when two people, or more, or one person with themselves, finds themselves in a state of conflict or challenge until that question arises for other people, “Ooh, I wonder what’s going to happen now. Let me get some popcorn and watch this.”

A structure that I like to use starts with the heart of the story. Where’s the conflict or the challenge or the problem? It goes back maybe a sentence to set the context. If I said, “Esther stepped off the moon landing,” we’d know this is a story about Esther landing on the moon. I can very quickly get to, “but all of a sudden it went dark.” Now we’re wondering why, what happened? What’s going to happen next? Does she have oxygen?!

Then the balance of the story is explaining what the character or characters did, what they learned, how they did it, and what results they produced. I call that the campaign of the story.

Then because we tell business stories to actually help people, when you finish a story, it may be obvious to you, the teller, what someone else should do. Sometimes people need to be shaken a little awake and invited into action. I like to end stories with an invitation to commit to some action. Put them in sequence, set the context, inspire, or breathe life into the challenge. Reveal what the campaign is, the steps taken by the characters to produce an outcome and then invite your listener to take action.

Viswanath: This is fascinating because you just provided this really interesting structure of what makes a great story. Then we have electric co-ops, and the relationship with a member tends to be very number-driven. I would imagine there’s a mind-shift change that needs to occur as we talk about that interaction, that discussion, that communication, which might be storytelling-based.

Sykes: Yes. To your point, I think it’s a distraction to say it’s always very much money and numbers driven. I would say that’s the symptom that comes from a lack of trust. When I don’t trust you, then I want to know, “Show me the numbers, give me the evidence, prove it to me.” We usually call for numbers, facts, and figures, and evidence when we’re feeling like, “I’m not sure I trust you enough.” When I trust you and you say, “We have to put up our rates by 15%, and these are the reasons why,” you’re like, “Okay, makes sense to me.” We believe people that we trust, and as it turns out, storytelling is itself a trust-building skill.

You get both the credibility that comes from being a fantastic storyteller. You may ask, why do we trust people that tell great stories? For the same reason we don’t trust people who try and tell us what to do and order us around. We love people who are the kinds of people in whose presence we feel like we’re learning, even though we don’t notice we’re learning from their stories.

Simon: One of the conversations that I’ve had with electric cooperatives over the years is we show up, we’re humble, we work hard, but we don’t tout what we do. We do meaningful work, but we’re not good at telling our own story. One of the exercises that you take us through is origin stories, and electric co-ops have incredible origin stories. ’How can organizations honor that history and tell stories in a way that feel relevant to their members today?

Sykes: An origin story might bring you credibility as an organization because it reveals why you do what you do and your higher purpose. In the end, we trust people whose motives we understand if we’re convinced their motives are to serve us.

Origin stories do that job. Then if you’re trying to explain to me why are we doing a certain thing at the co-op, why a rate increase, why FIBO is not going to get to you for several months, whatever the conversation is, we need the kinds of stories that teach or explain. Those ones are best done if the characters in the story feel like the people that you’re talking to. The beautiful opportunity with a co-op is it’s members-serving-members. The CEO of the co-op, the communications head, anyone in there, they’ve got their own life stories that they can use to communicate the modern ideas and needs of a co-op.

It doesn’t have to be a fancy craft. In fact, our personal stories are often the most powerful. The trick is can you find a story from your life that does a job for you in business?

Viswanath: In the everyday workings of a co-op, providing these services, Andrew, how do we take a moment and identify that aspect of work that is worth storytelling, that’s worth lifting up?

Sykes: Esther mentioned earlier, often, co-ops are very humble and so don’t want to keep telling their story. A reframe on that is if you don’t tell your own story, expect other people to do it for you, and it won’t necessarily serve you, but worse, it won’t necessarily serve them. So if you’re sure that in the co-op you’re doing wonderful work that is really helping your community — and this is an easy yes for co-ops — then I think it behooves you to tell stories that bring the good work you do to life for people in a way that matters to them.

I see storytelling as the gift of allowing other people to see and appreciate the value in you, your relationship, and what you do for them. They’re part of that story. The stories aren’t just what we do and all about us. I believe that every co-op has literally tens of thousands of stories, if not hundreds if you’re a tiny co-op, of members and linemen and other people who have done extraordinary things that exemplify our mission. It’s capturing those stories, sharing them, celebrating them, getting good at telling them that will make the difference.

One of my favorite stories is the Trojan horse, that old Greek legend. I use it to describe storytelling because you may remember in that myth, the Greeks laid siege to the city of Troy, and then after 10 years, they couldn’t break the siege. Eventually, they built this wooden horse, present it at the gates to the castle of Troy as a gift, make a show of leaving. The Trojans are suspicious, but after a couple of days, they open the gates, they let the horse in, and of course, the soldiers that are hidden inside escape under the cover of darkness, open the gates, the Greeks have returned, and the siege is over.

So what? When we try and change people’s minds, members or colleagues or customers, with facts and figures, it feels like an attack on what they believe, what they believe to be true, and so people get defensive. It’s not that we’re not open-minded; it’s that we feel attacked when people lecture at us, especially when they throw facts and figures at us. ’’’You need some way to get facts and figures into people’s brains, and the Trojan horse is a perfect metaphor for that.

A story is the Trojan horse that carries the facts and figures, those little soldiers that actually do the work, and, like a story, or like the Trojan horse, present a story at the gates to the castle of someone’s mind. They may be suspicious at first, but then they’ll see it as a gift, let it in, and then your facts and figures can be released to do the mind-changing work that stories do. It’s not stories or facts and figures, it’s facts and figures inside of well-told stories.

Simon: One thing that I want to touch on is an authentic story. What comes to mind for me when I think about professional organizations overall is emotions in stories and the use of emotions. How does an organization, or do you have any examples maybe of an organization that’s used emotion really well? Put those into a story in a way that doesn’t make it feel overly polished, or manufactured, or something scripted, or promotional?

Sykes: In preparing to tell a story, we may write it down and try and memorize some of it. It’s going to look like an actor on stage who’s half memorized their lines doing a first dress rehearsal. You’re going to say, “that’s a bad actor,” and you’d be right. Phenomenal storytellers don’t feel inauthentic because they’ve practiced the story and the skill until it becomes part of them, rather than an act delivered by them. The good news is, I guarantee everyone listening is already a good storyteller on the weekend with some friends, maybe after a glass of wine or two. Then we come to work, and suddenly all of that natural ability disappears because we over-prepare, or we get nervous, or we try and memorize it instead of just trusting ourselves that we know the story; we were there, we experienced it.

The beautiful thing about stories is I could tell you a story now, five minutes later, you would be able to retell that story. If I do the job well, you’ll remember it, you’ll have the structure, and you can retell it. It’s one of the gifts of being a storyteller is looking everywhere you can and borrowing other people’s stories and making them your own. Suddenly you have a repertoire of hundreds when most people think, I don’t have any stories, like I don’t know any good jokes. Well, capture them, collect them, annotate them, store them, practice them, and you will be phenomenal at the skill.

Viswanath: It’s interesting, Andrew, because I don’t hear you say don’t prepare, don’t get ready to be a good storyteller, but maybe the manner in which we’re preparing makes you fail before you even show up on stage.

Sykes: Exactly right. I think it’s one of those times where demonstration is better than theory. I often have the problem of teaching to students and being frustrated that they don’t write things down. As a professor at a business school, I could say, “Write it down, I’m telling you that’s what you should do,” and students being adults, will forget or just do the opposite because we don’t like being told what to do. I might think, “Well, is there a story I could tell here that would make people feel the loss if they don’t write down their notes?”

I usually come at stories by asking, “What experience have I got in my life that carries the message, if you don’t write it down, you’re going to regret it?” After thinking for a while, I might come to a story, and all I have to know is what happened and what the message was in the end. As an example, I may say, “When I was 25, my mom died, and my mom was a phenomenal cook, baker in particular. She used to make this amazing chocolate cake that was present at every vacation, every birthday. I loved it, so did my seven brothers and sisters, and so it wasn’t an occasion in my family if my mom’s chocolate cake wasn’t there. My sisters and I catered my mom’s funeral, and halfway through the celebration of her life, we noticed that my mom’s chocolate cake wasn’t there because none of us had written down the recipe. Take notes in this class.”

You can use a story from your own life that’s meaningful to you with the same point; write it down, or you’re going to regret not having captured it.

Viswanath: I would probably say if I was a student in your class now that I know your mother is connected to that story, I feel very compelled to take notes.

Sykes: Exactly, because everyone remembers their mom compelling them to act in one way or another.

Simon: I want to shift gears a little. Cooperatives are navigating so many changes: rising costs, new technology, changing power supply needs, demands, major infrastructure investments. How can a story help people understand a change that might be a little complicated, expensive, or maybe unpopular?

Sykes: Stories carry meaning, and they make sense in the world. If you are dealing with an enormous amount of rolling change, the key question you have to ask yourself is, how do I help my members metabolize change time after time without them eventually saying, “Enough, I don’t trust you, it’s always bad news out of your mouth?” The answer to that is by making sure every time you communicate a change, good news or bad news, it’s wrapped in a story that answers why this matters to you, our members, what we’ve done, how we’ve done it, why we’re trying to serve you, an illustration of that case, and then what we need from you in return.

Sometimes we need to graciously accept that it’s been a difficult time and this change is coming, or there’s been a change in legislation, so we have to do X. The key to realize is communicating to someone without expecting them to do something in return is yelling into the ether. Storytelling has an intention, which is to communicate in order to get a change in action. It’s not one way. A story is an invitation to act, even if the act you’re asking for is acceptance or understanding.

Viswanath: We think about communication being siloed into one particular department, and that’s their job. But what you’re talking about is really maybe building storytelling into the organization. Andrew, you started off by saying, “Hey, the reason why storytelling works, the reason why we like storytelling, is it builds closeness and trust.” It changes the fundamental culture of an organization; the importance of doing this. How can we help our organization understand that this needs to be part of what we do, the way in which we engage, because it does these things that are really important, building closeness, building trust.

Sykes: Yes, and you’re right. There’s so many organizations, not just co-ops, that have a communication person or team, as if everyone else, your job is to do the work, and then we will be your mouthpiece. I read this morning that my old encyclopedias that I had as a kid, the online equivalent of that now is a gigabyte of information, and what’s available on the internet is a trillion times that information. Therefore, we all have, at the end of our fingertips, through a Google search or an AI prompt, a trillion times more data and knowledge than our parents had. We can prompt AI to synthesize it so it makes sense.

If you believe that knowledge is your power source, you are in a world of hurt, because for none of us is it still true what we know makes the difference. It’s can we turn what we know into a skill that helps our organization, our members, and each other. One of the essential skills that I think will be the thing that makes us survive and thrive in an AI world is the ability to connect different ideas, to communicate different ideas, and mostly to inspire people into action. Stories do all three of those things for us.

I’m not sure I can think of a job where an essential part of your job isn’t convincing someone to do something differently. Whether you’re in finance or accounting or communications or leadership or al lineman, you have to be able to get people to change their minds. Therefore, storytelling is not just a skill. It might be the very skill that defines a high-trust, highly effective culture. How do you do that? A much bigger question. From leadership modeling to making it part of your systems and training, there’s lots to talk about there. I think the goal we’re going for is every single person is good at influencing and changing other people’s minds in a way to serve them.

Simon: Okay. I want to finish our conversation with a couple of really practical questions. If you don’t mind, I’d like to do a quick lightning round.

Sykes: Okay.

Simon: All right. What’s one storytelling mistake that organizations make most often?

Sykes: I’m going to cheat. The biggest mistake they make is they don’t tell stories. When they’re telling stories the biggest mistake they make is they confuse case studies with stories. Stories have heart and emotion, and they’re told. Case studies are summaries of what happened. No one’s feeling anything when they read your case studies. They’re feeling when they listen to your stories.

Viswanath: That makes it tough, right? Because the one that I wanted to ask is, do we start with the facts or the emotions?

Sykes: Yes. The quick answer is neither; it’s both. Stories combine facts and emotion into one beautiful Trojan horse of a vehicle that carries the facts, evokes the emotions, that leads to the actions you want. It’s a nice thing. Stories are an emotional transportation vehicle.

Simon: Do you have one question that reliably gets someone to tell a good story?

Sykes: Yes. What’s the challenge? What’s the conflict? If you get to the heart of that, you’ve got a story. Context is one step back. The campaign is what happened afterwards and why it matters. If you get to the heart of the story, what’s the one thing that’s happening here, the challenge, the conflict, the problem, the reason why we want to answer what happens next?

Simon: I think I know the answer to this, but can a 30-second story be powerful, or do stories need to be longer?

Sykes: Often, the shorter, the better. Hemingway proved in six words you can tell an emotional story. He said, “Baby shoes, for sale, never worn.” We’re not all Hemingway, but you’ve got about 30 seconds to two minutes, and you can land even a quite complex story.

Viswanath: Is there a common story that every cooperative worker or person who is employed by our cooperatives should know how to tell?

Sykes: Yes. There are two that every person has to be able to tell. The origin of your co-op and my personal origin story. Why I do what I do. Because people don’t care what you’ve done, how good you are, until they decide that they can believe you, and they’ll believe you if they’ve got two answers to questions they have. Who are you? The question of character. What do you want? The question of motive. Your own story reveals that.

Simon: That’s wonderful. I think one of my biggest takeaways from this conversation is just that, that storytelling isn’t about replacing facts, figures, or statistics, but it’s about helping people understand what they mean, to who, and why do they matter. That’s great.

Sykes: I would say further, it’s irresponsible to give people facts and figures without a story. I’ve got some facts and figures, and I know what they mean and why they matter, but that’s my story. Now I just tell you the facts and figures, and I’ll leave you to make up your own story. That’s like throwing darts at a dartboard, blindfolded after being spun around, and hoping you’ll hit a bull’s-eye. It’s responsible to give people the facts and the figures and the story that helps them make sense of it, so they get the meaning you meant, not the words that you said.

Viswanath: To be able to convey those facts and figures, that’s really helpful. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us. Great insights, really important takeaways, and this has been a really helpful conversation.

Sykes: Well, thank you for giving me the privilege of talking about something I love the most. You can tell, I think, storytelling with wonderful people. It’s been my privilege.

Simon: Thank you very much.