The Science and the Story - why we need to use parables

I was chatting to Sheila Scott over dinner last night as we prepared for her workshop in Leeds today and we were reflecting on the five of seven workshops that she has delivered so far and also the Tuesday night client webinars that she has now been attending for a couple of months.

We were talking about the way in which consultants and trainers communicate with their audiences and reflected on the fact that both of us will very often answer a question from a client with what I would describe as "the science and the story".

What I mean by that is that whether the question is on financial analysis, marketing, the patient experience, leadership or management, we will begin our answer by referring back to what might be described as an academic source of information but, having done that, we will very often back this up with an anonymous story about a real client or a real situation in which the science was applied with successful results.

As we spoke, it occurred to me that my first and favourite business book is The E myth Revisited by Michael Gerber which, those of you who are familiar with this work will recall, is nothing more than a parable about the story of one real life, small Business Owner.

Similarly, I regularly recommend that my clients familiarise themselves with the works of Patrick Lencioni, including The Ideal Team player as, yet again, the science is backed up with a parable, in each case stories of what goes on at the boardroom level in various fictitious businesses.

I have previously mentioned in this blog that I've been looking at the transcripts of actual conversations between clinicians and patients, helping a strategic alliance partner to explore the possibility of using OpenAI to coach clinicians on their communication skills.

Frankly, reading through the transcripts has not been a labour of love, quite the opposite, and I have been disappointed to discover that in many examples the clinician is ready to share the science but doesn't often share the story, in other words, talk to the patient about how they've been able to help others who have presented similar symptoms or problems.

Let's face it, most religious scripture takes the form of parable as even ancient writers realised that the audience were going to be more interested in storytelling than lists of commandments.

The transcript reading exercise has been a reminder to me that it's all too easy to make an assumption that somebody with a scientific qualification knows how to communicate.

Clearly, we have to keep on going back to basics when we are training, whether it is support team or clinicians, and remind our people regularly of that famous phrase "people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care, and once they know how much you care they don't care how much you know."

They get to know how much you care through empathetic listening and storytelling to prove that you have been able to help others like them.

The science and the story.

Facts and parables.

Make sure that your people are storytelling today.