Incorporating storytelling into practice: How HRD practitioners foster strategic storytelling
✍ Scribed by Jo A. Tyler
- Book ID
- 102255956
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2007
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 187 KB
- Volume
- 18
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1044-8004
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
HRD practitioners are adding storytelling to their box of tactical and strategic tools. This qualitative research study investigates how HRD practitioners in forprofit settings apply storytelling as a means of advancing organizational goals. The primary focus of practitioners is on instrumental application of stories through face-to-face performance, and the decisions they make regarding the "mechanics" of the process: getting storytelling started, finding and selecting stories, and identifying or creating venues in which the stories can be conveyed. Two distinguishing features of strategic storytelling emerged in the study: the connection of stories to business goals, and provision of time following storytelling for listener reflection and dialogue. Implications of the findings for the field and future research are also discussed.
Every organization is awash in stories. They are a naturally occurring and often untapped resource. As the vice president of organization and management development for a Fortune 500 manufacturing firm, I noticed that stories had become a big part of my job. I was telling them, listening to them, and spending considerable time and energy connecting stories (and the people who told them) to each other. It had a good effect but I did not know why, so I went looking for answers.
There was evidence in the literature that stories are a powerful organic force inside organizations of all sorts (Boje