How to Include Storytelling in Your Organization
A practical look at inclusive leadership
If you desire to pave a path toward healthy culture, inclusive leadership, and supported employees, it’s time to get practical with a game plan for how you can best incorporate storytelling within your organization as it pertains to race. For a refresher on why this is important, check out our blog from last month, The Power of Storytelling in Inclusive Leadership. Once we have embraced the “why,” we can purposely move forward with practical steps toward opening up these important narratives from our employees.
According to an article called, Initiating Classroom Dialogue about Race: A Narrative Framework, there are four main components that make up our unique narratives when it comes to race: beliefs, values, schemas, and emotions. Before we can effectively dive into topics and especially storytelling practices surrounding race, it’s important to keep these four key definitions straight. They will each contribute to individual narratives.
Beliefs: The beliefs we hold are largely influenced by our upbringing, where we live, our political affiliations, religious ties, etc. These are the things we think to be true of the world as well as ourselves.
Values: Values move beyond beliefs to inform and guide our actions and behaviors. These are traits often instilled during our childhood.
Schemas: Our schemas can be described as filters for information in ways that make sense based on our personal experiences. For example, one might associate his or her skin color with a specific ethnicity.
Emotions: Emotions are the feelings we experience.
When it comes to incorporating storytelling and allowing the sharing of narratives to be a part of your work culture, it takes effort to cultivate the space. Think through these steps as you work toward this rhythm.
Cultivate the space for the conversation
Have you made time for this conversation within your organization? Your schedule as a leader will show your priorities. When you make time for narratives to be shared among your team, you give value to the conversation.
Members of your team may feel the need to be invited into this topic. It’s not always easy. By cultivating a prepared and intentional time to share, you’re setting your team up for success!
An article by Selena Rezvan and Stacey A. Gordon called, How Sharing Our Stories Builds Inclusion gives great clarity to how you can best cultivate a space for these kinds of conversations. We recommend the following:
Establish a foundation of trust
Use empathy and warmth to receive diverse stories
Don’t ask for proof
Stay Affirming
Check in
Prepare for a healthy dialogue from the heart
Additionally, take the time to prepare for the discussion. A key way to think about these kinds of conversations is moving from the head to the heart. Lean into empathy as you take time to listen to those around you.
For a practical set of questions to inspire dialogue, consider the following prompts from Initiating Classroom Dialogue about Race: A Narrative Framework:
How would you define your racial identity?
What stories are integral to your racial narrative?
What are your principal beliefs about race?
What are your top three personal values and how do they affect your thoughts about race?
Discuss some of the emotions that arise when considering race. How do you process or cope with these emotions?
Anticipate discomfort
The LeaderShift Project reminds us in an article called, Actionable Steps for Creating Space for Race-Based Discussions in the Workplace that each of us must recognize we have blind spots when it comes to other people’s narratives. It’s important to anticipate discomfort when it comes to conversations about race because we shouldn’t let the discomfort discourage us from moving forward in healthy dialogue.
Here are five practical tips we’ll leave you with. These come from an article on Forbes titled, Why Inclusion Means Getting Comfortable With Discomfort:
Reframe what you might consider a “fearful” conversation to be “uncomfortable” instead. Uncomfortable, as opposed to frightening, is a more manageable frame of mind.
Embrace the unknown conversations! What may feel uncomfortable at first will soon provide growth and new awareness. You’ll notice resilience begin to build within.
Give grace to those around you. We all fall short and have the capability to unintentionally offend others.
Speak up when you have a perspective to share. You can be instrumental in illuminating blind spots when you’re willing to do the work of sharing how certain situations impact you.
Build a rhythm with these conversations. The more you put these conversations into practice, the more you’ll improve.
We hope these will guide you in the practical steps toward cultivating storytelling and embracing the narratives of your diverse and beautiful team.
