Getting Others to Tell Your Story: A Lesson from Jungle Book

Very few books have ever brought me to tears. In Runyard Kipling’s ‘The Second JungleBook’ the wolf pack central to the book fights a long and hard battle against a group of invading wild dogs. At the end of it, the former pack leader, Akela, dies after helping the pack achieve victory. It is a poignant moment, drawn out as, aided by a teenage Mowgli, fully cognisant that his time is near, he staggers to his feet and sings his final farewell. As a young teenager reading it for the first time and having grown very attached to the character during the book I was deeply and emotionally moved (unlike the sanitised and totally non-literary death of Akela in the current Disney film which merely passed as an annoying incident). Then I dried my eyes, closed the book, put it back on the shelf and carried on with my life. No change in behaviour necessary.

The last couple of weeks we have been talking about telling your story; the story of your business, your product, what drives you. It is great to have a strong and emotional story, but your story is only of value to your business if it motivates people to action. The aim of telling a tale is to promote behavioural change in the listener. This could be to get the consumer to buy your product or it could be to get buy- in from your staff to behave in a particular manner towards your clients (which in turn makes them buy your product). Beyond just the act of increasing your profit margin, you really want them to tell your story to others.

In the same way that I can retell you the tale of The Jungle Book, you want your clients and staff to pass your story on as they recount their experience of interacting with your business and product. I remember the first time some friends of mine stayed at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago. These were seasoned travellers, well used to hotels and travel. They came back raving. There were stories of everyone knowing your name, experiments with leaving clothes on the floor, the comfort of the beds; you just could not shut them up. They told the hotel’s story. The hotel’s website is full of stunning pictures, but it does not do the justice of a personal recommendation from a friend backed up by emotional stories of an incredible experience.

So how do you get others to tell your story? It starts with you. Firstly create a suitably emotional tale that moves people to action. Then back it up with your own action. No one likes a hypocrite so your story better be true. Give people a reason to behave in the way you want. Reward and affirm staff who emulate the behaviour you desire. Check that the client interaction experience matches the values you have put into your business. Look for other stories that reinforce your story. So if you are a restaurant owner and you see a waiter doing something that makes a client’s experience incredible (for example offering a free dessert to the guy who is trying to impress his lady but you can see is a little cash strapped) take that story on board and tell it alongside yours.

Give your staff the opportunity and freedom to make the choices that enable them to tell your story. A lot of businesses hamstring their staff with rigidity and rules. Take the waiter in the restaurant for example. Enabling a waiter to give away something, not bank breaking, but allowing them once in a while to make a decision to enhance a client’s experience without consulting management is liberating. It liberates the waiter to think and react to ‘on the floor’ moments, it liberates the manager to trust the waiter. Of course there is accountability, of course there are limits, but it is not rigid and restrictive.

Too many end-of-line client interactors are merely robots doing a job without the power to enable decisions. So the clothing store clerk has no idea about fashion, no idea about colour interaction, no idea how to read a client coming into the store and direct them to the appropriate section. Nor do they want to because advising a client goes beyond their job description and if they did they would probably get rapped over the knuckles because, after all, their job is to merely take the money, not to create a shopping experience. If you want to see a local store that is getting it right visit an Electrosales branch. Every salesman on the floor knows how to help me, and if he can’t he knows who to call. It makes going there a pleasure. It makes me want to tell their story.

Tell, empower, act, and tell it again. This process takes time but it gets results. Until next time, in the words of Akela, “Good Hunting!”