As marketing director of Attensi, Anthony Wong helps people learn faster and better by making learning more fun and fruitful.
getty
When we think about the TV, film and theater we love most, what do they all have in common? Great stories with three-dimensional characters. The greatest stories—the ones we remember—see their characters go on journeys that really make us feel something.
Journeys. Feeling something. And remembering. These are three things that when applied to learning and development (L&D) in an organization can have a serious impact on your teams and learning culture. When you can give narrative and context to your learning, you’ll probably find that knowledge retention is better than ever before.
“People forget facts,” wrote Joseph Campbell. “They remember stories.” How can we as learning and development professionals leverage the power of great storytelling to create real change and growth within our organizations?
Find your heroes and villains.
Every industry has them, whether they’re a difficult customer or an auditor. I don’t mean they have to swoop in like Voldemort in a black cloak, but think about how you can up the stakes in your narrative using your heroes and villains.
You’ll probably place your participant as the hero in your story. They successfully solve a difficult customer query. They follow the correct process to appease the auditor. It’ll look different in every organization.
Speak to your teams about who they perceive to be the heroes and villains during their day-to-day. You can then work them into the modules and give learning real context and relevance to your teams. If you can identify these heroes and villains, you can speak to the part of the brain that not only relates to other human beings but that is competitive and wants to “defeat the evil.”
Allow your characters to make interesting decisions.
In real life, we’d love to go through life without too many difficulties, but that would make our life stories pretty boring. Daniel Craig’s character Benoit Blanc in Knives Out would be out of a job if there were no mysteries for him to solve. Wednesday Addams has to navigate a world that doesn’t always accept her. We as the viewers are right in there with them as they make the decisions that move along the narrative. We’re gripped wondering what their next moves will be.
This is where something like simulation training can come into its own. (Disclosure: My company offers this kind of training.) Players can work their way through scenarios that they recognize and make decisions that have consequences. It’s interactive, and the stakes can be high. This can often trigger an emotional response, which can be very powerful in aiding in knowledge retention.
Leave plenty of room for failure.
Watching as our favorite characters make decisions that alter their journey ultimately adds interest to a story. Especially when they get it wrong. We have to ask ourselves, would we be watching with tears in our eyes at the end of The Shawshank Redemption if Andy and Red had simply walked out of the prison with no struggles? No. They make a series of decisions throughout the film that change the course of their journeys. And that’s why we feel the sense of happiness and success at the end. Because we’ve shared the feeling of struggle.
This, I feel, is something for us learning and development storytellers to remember. Serving up all the answers and solutions to our learners on a plate takes away any challenge and decision-making. It takes away the journey.
We need to make sure our learners take ownership of their journey, and that means giving them the space to make mistakes. As we know, some of the biggest growth comes out of the biggest failures.
Here’s how to get started.
If you’re new to storytelling as part of your L&D, let’s get you going. Here’s a simple framework to help you spark some ideas.
What do you need your learners to achieve by the end?
It’s one thing to want to put an epic story to paper, but you need to be clear on your objective.
For example, if you’re designing retail training, you might want your players to be able to confidently demonstrate that they understand your new point of sale (POS).
What’s the desired outcome from your learning after training is complete?
What’s the impact you want this training to have after it’s completed? If we use the retail training example, it may be that you want a more connected team that shows real confidence and a desire to keep learning.
Listen to your teams.
We all want to feel as though we’re taking part in something that’s relevant and is going to help us grow. Don’t waste your time designing training modules that aren’t going to be useful to your people as they go about their jobs. Make this a collaborative process to ensure everyone is getting exactly what they need from their learning!
Whether you’re writing the next video streaming smash hit or your latest learning and development program, there’s a storyteller in all of us. Time to put pen to paper!
Forbes Communications Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
