For many ages, people have gathered together and when people are to together they tell stories. Story telling communicates a variety of signals. Stories can tell other negative thing to scare them away, or positive things to encourage others to try new things. Stories can be told to make someone look good... or better. Stores can be told to make someone else look good or bad. Whatever the case may be, if it is a good story... people listen.

"The wise leader seizes the power of the story and uses it as a tool to regularly communicate the core values" (Clampitt, 2017, P89). When a Manager wants to convey a powerful message to their team, maybe they want to illustrate a critical organizational value. Employees will understand and always listen to a good story. 

On the contrary, stories can be used a deterrent. When I was in the military, hearing about other people's punishments motivated all of us to behave accordingly. We did not want to end up like the guy who got punished harshly. 

I think that the best stories are positive stories, these are the stories that inspire people to be better and work harder. When I worked for Boeing, they wanted to show us that our families were important to us, so they would pay for a family member to meet for a brief all inclusive vacation during deployments... if you were recommended by your supervisor for doing a good job. 

As high performers came back from these trips, where they met their spouse in Dubai or France, they would tell everyone the stories from their trip. What did this do? MAKE EVERYONE WORK HARDER. What else did this do? Make people willing to go on more deployments so they could get an opportunity to take a trip like this again.

For me, I had the great opportunity to have my parents flown to Dubai on two separate occasions. It was a great way for me to provide a thank you to my parents for all their support throughout my life. But for them, it was a way to tell friends and family how great the Boeing Insitu family was. During these trips a member of executive management would take us all to dinner and tell the stories to our families about the work we were doing and how meaningful it was. 

When it comes to your company... strive to be part of a good story.

Clampitt, P. G. (2017). Communicating for Managerial Effectiveness: Challenges, Strategies, Solutions. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications