Throughout this blog, I’m telling stories. I try to make these stories entertaining, interesting, and have some point.

Storytelling is also an effective way to communicate within your organization. Sometimes, however, even story-tellers like myself forget to make important points through an effective narrative.

Excited to have some positive financial information about our company, I recently went through a powerpoint presentation of revenue and profit charts, actual to forecast sales charts, sales pipeline charts, and other such dry charts during  a staff meeting.  As blank faces stared back at me, I knew I had blown a great opportunity to engage and excite them with an effective story.

Storytelling is vital for internal communication, especially for helping staff identify with corporate goals and values. Not everyone can communicate numbers and behaviors, according to the Financial Times article, “Storytellers Who Make Up The Skills Gap” .

My grandmother and mother used storytelling to give  a sense of my past, as well as to motivate me for the future. Their stories were always so compelling. Remember your best professors in college? I bet they were great storytellers who made subjects come alive. The worse professors, for me anyways, were the ones who read from the text book and just gave us dry facts.

Do you want to really communicate? Be creative and tell a story that brings your information alive.

The corporate world and the creative world do not have to be mutually exclusive. So, tell a story when talking about the financial performance of your company. Narrate a story about your successes, triumphs, and continuing challenges. Your audience, be it your staff or potential investors (or even family and friends), will react better than the blank stares I encountered with my powerpoint presentation.