With the Team Events: Storytelling with Giles.

In our latest With the Team event, we were lucky enough to be joined by Giles Abbott – the UK’s only professional blind storyteller.

Teamsters, clients, and friends gathered virtually to explore the magic, art, and power of great storytelling and were left not only inspired but reassured that even with ever galloping technology, we can plug back into what’s always been true of human communication.

Storytelling is an ancient practice, but its relevance today is stronger than ever.

In this blog, we’ll share what us Teamsters took away from Giles’ talk, how we can apply it to our work and communication, and why you shouldn’t miss the next With the Team event.

As executive creative director, Dave Recchia, put it:

“Giles provided a masterclass in the power of storytelling. Considering he couldn’t see us, nor hear us, nor feel our presence, he solely relied on his voice, insights, experience, choice of words, structure, pace, volume, emphasis and pauses to keep me engaged in every word for 45 minutes.”

But first, why is storytelling so powerful:

1. Effective storytelling can lead to a 30% increase in conversion rates. This demonstrates how compelling narratives can drive consumer engagement and action
2. Storytelling can increase the perceived value of a product by up to 2,706%. This shows how narratives can make products feel more meaningful and valuable to consumers
3. 68% of consumers report that brand stories influence their purchasing decisions. This underscores the significant role storytelling plays in shaping consumer behaviour
4. Brands with compelling stories see a 20% increase in customer loyalty. This highlights the long-term benefits of storytelling in building lasting customer relationships
5. Facts embedded in stories are 22 times more likely to be remembered than standalone facts. This emphasizes the power of storytelling in making brand messages more memorable and impactful

After spending years matching the skills and demands of storytelling with the needs of businesses, Giles Abbott discovered that although different stories wear different clothes, they all share the same underlying structure and patterns.

And his insights can be applied to brands, communicators, leaders and many more.

Neuroscience of storytelling

So in his talk Giles took us back, to our preliterate days. He showed us how stories are intrinsically captivating and memorable to humans.

And although the world around us has changed, neurologically, our brains have not.

When we see or hear a story, our mirror neurons actually fire in the same patterns as the speaker’s brain, known as neural coupling.

In other’ words, stories synchronize the brain of the listener, with the brain of the teller.

But, Giles went on to say, that in order for this to happen, a triangle of connection is crucial: a connection between the teller, the tale and the Audience.

But how, do you nurture this connection?

Knowing your audience.

Giles made a crucial point about fully understanding who your audience is, and knowing when to adapt your approach to fit their needs.

For example, for a blind audience, making it poly sensory. Adding flavour, texture and altering the descriptive language used is key.

This will make the experience more memorable for them, creating a fully evolved sensory connection between teller and audience.

Senior Designer, Laura Ring, was particularly struck by this point: “Thinking through their shoes, and not making assumptions.” This aligns perfectly with our mantra at The Team: “abandoning assumptions.” As Laura further reflected on Giles’ exploration of social assumptions, “It was super interesting when he talked about how our brains make social assumptions. For example, when Giles invited us to picture ‘a woman on a horse, we all had different ideas around what it looked like, but there is shared meaning through what we’ve learned socially.”

The ‘beauty’ each of us envisioned varied widely based on our personal experiences, yet there remained a shared understanding through our collective social learning.

This demonstrates how individual interpretation coexists with common meaning.

Knowing what not to say.

Many Teamsters also found the importance of knowing what to leave out of a story, fascinating.

As Design Director Ryan Miller observed, “It was the art of knowing what to leave out and when, allowing the audience to fill in the gaps with their own minds.”

This clearly resonated with how Giles was pacing his own storytelling, and how it kept an audience of individual minds open, engaged and listening as a collective whole.

Nurturing Client and Customer Relationships

While storytelling for customers isn’t new, Giles made us think about it from various perspectives and how we can apply these insights to our work.

And so, Client director, Ciara rollings rightfully commented, “Could this idea of storytelling help bring people together in this ever divided world of ours? If you’re able to synchronise with customers through storytelling, then you can really bridge the gap. Not just from a sales perspective (which is quite well documented) but at a functional, everyday perspective.”

Ciara proposes practical examples, such as customer service representatives working with irate customers: How can we use storytelling to aid those reps serving customers even further? Can we use stories to support employees? The Hero’s Quest? Rags to Riches? The Voyage and Return?

We can use stories to help them position themselves within their customer’s story.

Because that’s what stories do.

As our director Cliff Ettridge put it: “Stories deliver value. An individual or business can start to think about the characters in their own story; consider the objectives; identify the barriers they will face on their quest; and then make decisions accordingly.”

By setting the context and purpose, stories can help people make sense of the things they can achieve in their own lives.

So, when we follow the structure and patterns from years of storytelling – those key stages of development that follow a logical and familiar structure – we can bond with our audience in ways no other form of communication can.

Final thoughts

If you’d like to know more about the key plots of storytelling, Giles’ book will be available here, and will be out in May.

And if you did join us, you will be receiving one free of charge.

So, until the next with the team event, keep sharing stories. And we’ll see you next month.