Keeping people motivated at work can be challenging. While it’s important to give your co-workers or team members advice, you don’t want to come across as preachy or condescending.
You need to reach people and inspire them in a way that makes them comfortable. One easy and effective option is to inspire people with stories.
Stories are engaging and they can convey a powerful message in a respectful and thought-provoking manner. They can help beat work stress, they are easy to remember, and spark discussions.
Here are different ways stories can inspire people at work and in other spheres of life.
Build Empathy
Stories can create empathy by getting people invested in a character and their journey. You can use stories to describe common problems that arise at work and how to deal with them. Real-life examples of work-related events can create scenarios that people can relate to.
By building empathy, you can help them think about their actions and the impact they have on colleagues, customers, and other stakeholders.
Spread Company Culture
In everyday life, stories help share common cultural values and beliefs. This is true at work too. Use stories related to important events, customer problems, supplier relationships and more to show how your company works in difficult situations.
Sharing stories can be a way to share a company’s culture and provides a guideline for future behavior.
Support Team Building
You can use stories to create a shared experience between people in your business. You can create a subtle form of team building by discussing stories and the lessons they learned from these stories.
You can use case studies or real-life business problems as stories for discussions. Ask co-workers to discuss them and give ideas. It’s a powerful way to create connections and a stronger team.
As Warnings
Stories don’t just serve as positive motivators. They can also serve as warnings and advice for what not to do. Although sharing stories of mistakes and failures might seem painful, their lessons can be more effective than positive ones.
Stories about failures or mistakes also shine a bright spotlight on things that can go wrong, making it unlikely that anyone else will repeat those mistakes.
Use Stories as Appreciation
When rewarding and appreciating your employees or coworkers, you can make it more heartfelt by adding a story. In such cases, a story is a factual example of a person’s character and work ethic. You show that you’re noticing hard work and giving it appropriate recognition.
You can also use a story during an award ceremony to create a more meaningful and memorable experience.
Celebrate Great Customer Success Stories
For a business, there are few things as uplifting as getting great customer feedback. Sharing your best customer success stories can inspire people to do better at work. Look for examples of happy customers and their experiences with your business.
Did your customers write an email about how their lives have changed?
Did one your support team go the extra mile and land a lifetime customer?
Sharing customer success stories is a sure way to uplift spirits and to give meaning to work. You can also share this by creating a blog post and sharing it with your audience. It’s a way to create social proof that builds trust in your business.
Stories are Powerful Motivators
Stories have an appeal to all people and don’t lose their magic even when you’re an adult. They have a role to play at work and used effectively can transform teams into motivated people who love their jobs.
You can also use stories to improve sales and your site’s membership growth by sharing customer success stories. Community outreach by your business is also an effective way to build your own brand story.
Share stories to make changes to your workplace and inspire people.