Storytelling is a powerful tool for engaging and influencing your audience, especially in a crisis situation. However, if you don't use it wisely, you can also damage your reputation, credibility, and trust. Here are some tips on how to avoid common pitfalls and mistakes when using storytelling in a crisis situation.
Before you craft your story, you need to have a clear and specific purpose. What do you want to achieve with your story? How do you want your audience to feel, think, or act? How does your story align with your values, mission, and goals? Having a clear purpose will help you choose the right story, tone, and message for your situation.
Every good powerful story starts with knowing your audience well and having the right authentic intent. Put the crisis situation into the proper context, identify the what your audience needs in this moment, and craft an honest, accessible and vulnerable story.
Not every story is suitable for a crisis situation. You need to consider the context, the audience, and the impact of your story. Avoid stories that are irrelevant, insensitive, or self-serving. Instead, choose stories that are relevant, empathetic, and authentic. Stories that show how you understand the problem, how you care about the solution, and how you are taking action.
Storytelling is an emotional art, but it also needs to be supported by facts and logic. Don't rely on stories alone to convey your message. Provide evidence, data, and examples to back up your claims and arguments. Don't exaggerate, distort, or omit important information. Be transparent, honest, and accountable for your actions and decisions.
Storytelling is not a one-size-fits-all approach. You need to adapt your story to suit the needs, expectations, and preferences of your audience. Know who you are talking to, what they care about, and what they want to hear from you. Use language, tone, and style that resonate with them. Avoid jargon, acronyms, and technical terms that might confuse or alienate them.
In my experience, I would add that it's important to keep in mind that the audience is not monolithic, but a diverse group of people with different values, perspectives, and goals. Create some pre-message personas and make sure that you are speaking to the entire audience, not just a segment of it. And challenge yourself to identify personas that you might have thought about before. That, to me, was the resounding lesson of the recent Bud Light brouhaha.
It’s important to remember in great Storytelling the narrator is never the hero. Just as great podcast hosts know, the host is not the hero. In times of crisis, your ultimate outcome is to motivate and inspire people to adopt new outlooks, new stances, or new considerations and behaviors…for the good of the whole. And when you as a leader have the ?? mic, it can be tempting to make it about you. Resist that tendency. Personalized positive leadership encourages those at the podium to connect with their audience, but never to the degree where they stop seeing the fellow humans in the room, making it all about how they feel, think, and believe. Leadership and great storytelling is inherently about others. Empathy and compassion always.
Storytelling is not only about what you say, but also how you say it. You need to deliver your story with confidence, clarity, and conviction. Use your voice, body language, and facial expressions to convey your emotions and intentions. Use pauses, repetitions, and transitions to emphasize your key points and create suspense. Use humor, metaphors, and anecdotes to make your story memorable and engaging.
Storytelling is not a one-way communication. You need to listen and learn from your audience's feedback and reactions. Pay attention to their questions, comments, and concerns. Acknowledge their emotions, opinions, and perspectives. Respond to their feedback with empathy, respect, and gratitude. Learn from your mistakes and improve your storytelling skills.
Crises are themselves stories—they have beginnings, middles and ends; they have points of severe tension; they have the promise of resolution. Crises have characters, the real humans who are suffering, or causing suffering, rescuing others, whatever that means in this particular situation, or narrating the tale. Identifying where you are in the trajectory of a crises, who are the key characters (or stakeholders), and how you can play your role to support a productive resolution, can also be a way to use storytelling in a crisis.