The Power of Stories
December 2nd, 2008 by Nico LuchsingerI’d like to tell you a story.
When I was 17, I was elected president of the Student Council at my high school in Switzerland. This was hardly an achievement – I was the only candidate. And I soon found out why: There weren’t a lot of things I could change and have an impact on as president of the student council.
So I started working for an organization that linked members of student councils from all over the country. There, I met two other guys from different high schools, and we started organizing workshops for student council members in various cities. The contents of the workshops were, to be completely honest, crap – but still, the participants loved them. Why? Because they brought together like-minded people – people that had ideas and the energy to turn them into reality.
Since we left high school, we dreamed of recreating this atmosphere, this energy. We talked about it a lot, but it took us 8 years until we finally knew how to do it. That’s when we created Sandbox.
- I told this story to the participants of a Sandbox event on storytelling two weeks ago in a cozy little Turkish restaurant in downtown New York. And I told it to make a point: Stories create trust. Many of the attendees didn’t know me and hadn’t heard a lot about Sandbox before joining. By telling them where the motivation behind the project comes from, I allowed them to decide for themselves whether they share our vision.
We spent most of the remaining evening discussing the power of storytelling. Shashank Nigam, an entrepreneur and blogger, brought up the example of Dole: The company created a website where you can read stories about the farms your bananas come from by entering a 3-digit code printed on the banana label. By doing so, Dole turned an anonymous commodity into a product with a story – hoping to gain the trust of its customers.
Stories are powerful, and potentially dangerous, told us Sabrina Buckwalter, a journalist and consultant. She lost her working permit in India when she ran a story in an Indian newspaper about a crime that was linked to some local politicians.
We believe that storytelling is an important communication tool, and becomes even more important as the amount of information that people are confronted with every day rises.
What is your story?
@Claudio: You make a good point. Of course, scientific arguments can also create trust, depending on the situation. But ultimately, I think that people trust other people - and telling stories (or, more specifically, your own story) makes your actions and motivations understandable - and thus creates trust.
@Dan: You also make a good point ;-) We have been using this website mostly to push informations to our network and not to host discussions - something that will hopefully change once our online social network is in place.
Your achievings in commenting haven't been that extraordinary so far. Are your trusted global network members too shy for a few simple comments?
An interesting story, Nico, but I don't really get the point what makes stories more powerful than any other situation of communication or a scientific argument. You write that your story lets people decide whether they want to join the Sandbox Network or not. But that's just the factor of giving a basis for further decisions. Where can you fixate the correlation between stories and trust or even power? What makes stories mure trustable than other verbal activities?
@Nico: I see your point that there must be a point in telling stories that creates trust. I am just curious about what makes stories more trustful. Is it a question about rhetorics or do the stories need some sort of charismatic leadership?
One could easily invent some stories but they still - as you argue - they are trusted.
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