See a photo of Sean, his bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Q&A with Sean Buvala, Question 8:

Q: You coach storytellers, including corporate storytellers, and on your site devoted to that effort, you note that “Corporate storytelling is hard work.” What’s the hardest part about it?

A: The hardest thing is doing the work to master the skills. Corporate folks must take this storytelling skill seriously. To really be an effective corporate storyteller, you need to be devoted to being the best storyteller you can be.

However, many people think of storytelling as an adjunct or soft skill in their repertoire of communication skills. We certainly saw the potentially career-ending and dangerous misuse of storytelling in the televised speech by [Louisiana] Governor Bobby Jindal [after President Obama’s State of the Union address]. I imagined that he probably searched the Internet and found this interesting idea about storytelling and figured that anybody can do it. Well, he found out quickly that storytelling is a powerful tool that requires training in order to be used well at such a high-level. I think that if I had to use a jackhammer for something, that I would want to be taught how to use it rather than relying on my previous experience of watching one be used as a punch line in an episode of “Sesame Street.”

Storytelling is a “hard skill” and must be mastered in business. You cannot “sort of” use storytelling any more than your accountant can “sort of” know about money and taxes. I have been teaching for years that storytelling is an Intentional process by using my “Interpret, Express, Integrate” method. There has to be a balance of theory and technique for corporate storytelling. Unfortunately, we have many of the business storytelling gurus wandering the countryside able to teach theory very well but not so good on technique. There is a danger in corporate America in that we take ourselves too seriously, hoping our statistics, buzzwords, and projected pie charts are a replacement for actual skills. You cannot fake authenticity and still be a good storyteller. In my experience, the most receptive audience these days to learning corporate storytelling are the entrepreneurs and small business owners. These leaders understand that they must master their Story; most often the only thing that separates them from their competition. They know that their image and theory will not help them pay the rent. Our story and knowing how to tell it is about the only thing that really sets us apart from one another. When a company loses touch with its story and how it is presented, we get the disasters we have seen recently in the auto and finance industries.