Craft Impactful Stories That Engage 100% Of Your Workforce

Ignite the Flames of Employee Engagement

Are you struggling to tell stories that truly engage and inspire your team? Uncover the secret to crafting impactful stories that resonate with every individual in your workforce. By understanding the Five Driving Needs of belonging, security, freedom, significance, and meaning, you’ll learn how to ignite the hearts and minds of your team members, driving transformative employee engagement.

The Engagement Paradox

This white paper offers a new path forward – one that blends the energy employees want with the customer experience and business results leaders need.

Understanding the Five Driving Needs To Power Effective Storytelling

Picture yourself as a leader telling a story that you think will engage the group, but it leaves them flat. You ask yourself internally, what’s going on here? There have been times when you told great stories that galvanize people to action. So what’s the difference? One thing that can be really helpful for telling stories is understanding what it is that fuels people.

Collaboration, negotiation, and sustaining employee engagement take lots of energy. We all derive energy from very different fuel sources. There are Five Driving Needs that when you understand them, you can learn how to tell a story that unlocks all five fuels for people.

1. Belonging is the sense of inclusion and acceptance, the feeling that I’m a part of this.
2. Security is where we feel that there’s structure, a sense of predictability and a sense of clarity. 
3. Freedom is the feeling that we can challenge what’s not making sense, be innovative, and be cutting edge. 
4. Significance is the sense that I matter. It’s when you feel like you’re making progress doing something nobody else is doing. 
5. Meaning is a sense of purpose that we’re doing something that the world really needs.

Transforming Engagement through Powerful Storytelling

Leaders tell two types of stories: The Burning Platform and the Good to Great story.

The Burning Platform Story

In this story, leaders instill a sense of fear, saying that if we don’t do these actions, we’re all gonna lose our paycheck and everything’s gonna go down in flames. Well, what do you suppose that does to a group of people? It ignites 20% of the audience, those whose fuel is security, but it leaves 80% cold.

The Good to Great Story

Leaders also tell the Good to Great story, expressing admiration for the collective achievements and innovations of the group. Leaders give high fives and kudos, saying, “look at us now!” What does that do? It ignites 20% of the audience and leaves 80% cold.

Is there a way as a leader to tell your story in a way that taps into the Five Driving Needs? You don’t have to be disingenuous. You don’t have to manufacture a story that is not true.