Strengthening Teams through Storytelling with Francisco Mahfuz

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This is a podcast episode titled, Strengthening Teams through Storytelling with Francisco Mahfuz. The summary for this episode is: <p>Join host Dane Groeneveld in an insightful conversation on The Future of Teamwork podcast with keynote speaker and story coach Francisco Mahfuz. Discover the power of storytelling in business and team environments as Francisco shares his personal journey and how it shaped his life and career. They’ll also explore the importance of holding story circles to enrich employee experience data points and the profound impact of storytelling in helping employees embody company values and making it a habit. Lastly, you can learn how analogies can make your messages more memorable and impactful when communicating with others. Revolutionize your approach to teamwork and tap into the transformative power of storytelling in this engaging podcast episode.</p><p><br></p><p>Episode Highlights:</p><ul><li>[00:11&nbsp;-&nbsp;03:01] Meet Francisco Mahfuz, keynote speaker and story coach</li><li>[03:04&nbsp;-&nbsp;05:20] Francisco's return to storytelling</li><li>[05:24&nbsp;-&nbsp;08:49] A focus on public speaking, communication around change management and culture</li><li>[08:52&nbsp;-&nbsp;11:46] A focus on storytelling to improve corporate culture and events</li><li>[11:48&nbsp;-&nbsp;15:14] Approaching storytelling by reviewing values and people's own reflective stories</li><li>[15:15&nbsp;-&nbsp;18:38] Different truths, feedback, and finding a story that isn't a battle</li><li>[18:40&nbsp;-&nbsp;24:28] Psychological safety and a "story circle" process</li><li>[24:31&nbsp;-&nbsp;27:23] Story capture can help cut toxicity, and how personal anecdotes can supersede even training</li><li>[27:25&nbsp;-&nbsp;32:23] Liar's Poker and other Michael Lewis books, people figuring out big messes</li><li>[32:24&nbsp;-&nbsp;38:42] Making complexity simple through storytelling, knowing your audience and communication purpose</li><li>[38:42&nbsp;-&nbsp;41:25] Facts are like ice cubes</li><li>[41:26&nbsp;-&nbsp;44:23] What it looks like at the organizations Francisco works with</li><li>[44:24&nbsp;-&nbsp;48:06] Communication isn't hierarchical, storytelling and creating a course of action</li><li>[48:20&nbsp;-&nbsp;49:08] How to reach Francisco</li></ul>
Meet Francisco Mahfuz, keynote speaker and story coach
02:50 MIN
Francisco's return to storytelling
02:16 MIN
A focus on public speaking, communication around change management and culture
03:24 MIN
A focus on storytelling to improve corporate culture and events
02:54 MIN
Approaching storytelling by reviewing values and people's own reflective stories
03:25 MIN
Different truths, feedback, and finding a story that isn't a battle
03:23 MIN
Psychological safety and a "story circle" process
05:48 MIN
Story capture can help cut toxicity, and how personal anecdotes can supersede even training
02:52 MIN
Liar's Poker and other Michael Lewis books, people figuring out big messes
04:57 MIN
Making complexity simple through storytelling, knowing your audience and communication purpose
06:18 MIN
Facts are like ice cubes
02:42 MIN
What it looks like at the organizations Francisco works with
02:56 MIN
Communication isn't hierarchical, storytelling and creating a course of action
03:41 MIN
How to reach Francisco
00:48 MIN

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Team Work podcast. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of HUDDL3 Group, and today I'm joined from not- so- sunny Barcelona, I think it's a little bit foggy in Barcelona today, Francisco Mahfuz. Welcome, Francisco.

Francisco Mahfuz: Welcome. Thanks for having me, Dane. It's a pleasure to be here. It's not sunny out, it's not as if I could be out frolicking on the beach. So talking about storytelling comes a very close second in my list of things that I enjoy doing.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, that's awesome. And Francisco, for the benefit of our listeners, you are a keynote speaker, a story coach, which is a cool title. We're looking forward to diving into that a little bit more today. But perhaps you could share your story, your personal story as to how you moved into this field and the way that you are spending your time helping others through story.

Francisco Mahfuz: Sure. So this sort of horrible dream that a lot of people have where you're standing in front of a very large group of people and everybody's waiting for you to speak, and you kind of terrified. So that happened to me when I was 12 years old, I'm in school, and the teacher looks at me and says, " Francisco, can you please come up here and tell a story to the whole class?" And then I look around, and half of my classmates look horrified and the other half look like they're just waiting to see me crash and burn, because I wasn't really a popular kid in school. Through great financial sacrifice, my mom sent me to one of these fancy private schools, but because we didn't have that much money, it was pretty hard to ever feel like I fit in with the kids. I couldn't dress like the other kids, I couldn't go to the fancy school trips to ski resorts or whatever. Whenever somebody invited me to their house, I felt embarrassed to invite them back to mine. So as I'm walking up to the front of the class, I think one of these things that I think only kids can think, which was, " What if the story changes everything? What if they really like it?" And that's kind of what happened. I got up there, and I told the story and they cheered and they laughed and they asked for more. And at that moment, on that stage, but in front of that class, I felt like the most popular kid in that school.

Dane Groeneveld: Cool.

Francisco Mahfuz: Another thing was my very first experience with the power of storytelling. Now, I'd love to say that I never forgotten about the power of storytelling, and ever since that day, I've been using it to my great advantage. But I think most people that had to come back later, I experienced it, but put it aside for the sake of other supposedly more grown up and serious things, which turns out not to have been the best move.

Dane Groeneveld: No. No, that's fascinating. I was listening to the Prof G podcast this week, his No Malice, No Mercy newsletter on Saturday, and he referenced that if there was one thing that he wished we taught in schools and he thinks that young people need of any life skill, it's storytelling, which is interesting. So you make a point there that you found storytelling at 12, but then you got distracted by everything else that we're told is important in life as we mature into adults. What was it that brought you back around?

Francisco Mahfuz: It was a combination of things. I got into speaking as a hobby many, many years ago, and I enjoyed it. It was a very cool way to express myself creatively, and I started competing, and I won some stuff. And my friends would always ask, " Don't you want to take this seriously?" But I had a real job, I was married, I was beginning to have a family. Side hustles weren't really something that people talked about back then. So my answer was just, " Nah, I don't want to rock the boat." And that was the case for years. And then one morning, I woke up with my wife telling me the scariest thing I had ever heard, which was, " Francisco, I'm pregnant again," because being a grownup and having had one kid already didn't teach me how that process actually works. My wife was kind of shocked but happy, and I just panicked. I don't know. I just saw my whole life ahead of me. I have this serious job, I am married with two kids. I just saw the white picket fence, and it just threw me. I was like, " No, I want to do more. I want something else. I don't want just to be stuck," is how I felt. And as luck would have it, about a week after that, a friend of mine said, " Listen, I know you said you don't want to, but some friends of ours are putting together this professional speaker association in Spain."

Dane Groeneveld: Nice.

Francisco Mahfuz: And I'm like, " No, no, no. I mean just tell me whatever I need to do. I'm definitely in." And that's how I... In 2020, which was the best time ever to launch yourself as a keynote speaker, I announced to the world that this is a thing I was now doing.

Dane Groeneveld: That's cool. So it's pretty recent. You've been busy with that shift in 2020, and then the books and all of the work that you're doing on stage. In those early events, once your friends brought you into the professional speaker association, what were the topics? What were the audiences that you were coming to address?

Francisco Mahfuz: Yeah. So I found out very early on that my initial idea, which is the one that a lot of people have when they decide to move from speaking as a hobby to doing something professionally with it, is you're going to work with presentation skills. That's a typical move a lot of people make, and I wrote a book kind of thinking about that. So I started writing the book in the middle of 2019. I was done with it by December, and the book is focused more on public speaking. So it talks about storytelling, but there's a broader focus on public speaking. And very early on, I started talking to other people that were industry, and the question I was asked that really settled it for me was, " Do you want to be a trainer that speaks or a speaker that trains?" And I said, " I want to be a speaker that trains." And they say, " Okay, if you want to be a speaker that trains, then public speaking or presentation skills is very unlikely to be the best topic for that, because that's more a workshop training topic than it is a keynote topic." And the advice I got was, " Okay, look at the areas that make up presentation skills, and decide which one speaks your heart more closely. Which one can you talk about for the next 20 years?" Which is not necessarily the case, you can always pivot, but I looked at it, and to me, it was clearly storytelling. There was nothing that came anywhere near close to it, so I decided to focus on storytelling. And then the audiences and the subjects ended up being more a case of in the beginning, who is inviting me to speak more. I'm 100% sure I want to work with this audience. Because one of the first... I started getting invites from people that were in the HR space, which was a space I had some sympathy for, because I like the sort of storytelling internally, leaders, and you do it in meetings, you're talking to your own people, not more of perhaps a sales or marketing oriented type of storytelling. And once I started, I got the invites, and I developed the material specifically for the event that I had been invited to speak at.

Dane Groeneveld: Got it.

Francisco Mahfuz: And I liked it, the speech went well, people gave me great feedback, and that then I thought, " Okay, I really like this space, I really like this type of storytelling." Then I decided, " Okay, so I'm just going to focus more on this than on other things." And that's how I started focusing more on those types of events, and it ended up being that it was either culture or change management within an organization. So how do you use storytelling to improve the culture in an organization or to make change more effective? So it's still communication, but those are the two angles that I end up talking more about compared to all of the other things you can use storytelling.

Dane Groeneveld: That's really neat, and it's fascinating, that example that you shared on seeking feedback from others, those early advisors who said find the gem within presentation skills. And then who's inviting me? Oh, these HR people are interested for this reason. While it's not part of your team, it's a good interplay with other people in the ecosystem to land where you're at. So if you then roll forwards, the feedback in the market, the feedback from your advisors is driving you into culture and change management. What percentage of your keynote speeches or your story coaching is working with an organization and their leaders and people versus larger groups, formats, associations, key events, that type of thing?

Francisco Mahfuz: So my training is almost exclusively corporate. It's very uncommon that I'm going to be hired to teach a group of people that's not going to be corporate, so that's 100%. The keynotes, I think there's a split where maybe, I think it might be something like 50% corporate, 50% either, I'm not going to say associations, but conferences. For example, the conferences I spoke that we were talking about before we got started. I was in Bulgaria, and I was speaking. It was a presentations skills conference, and I was on the storytelling track. I did one in December last year that was an Agile management conference, so not a corporate event, as such, although the audience was mostly corporate. I did one in Thailand that was a CIO event, so they were organized by someone with a whole bunch of corporate people in there. I end up doing more training for one organization. The speaking is more commonly for an event that will have lots of corporations, other than I was saying. For example, tomorrow I'm doing, tomorrow being the day after we record, we lost the day after people are listening to this, but I'm going to King, who are the people who created the Candy Crush game, and I'm doing a workshop for 150 of their people about how to use storytelling to communicate better in the workplace. So the workshops are typically that type of thing. Maybe not necessarily 150 people, but that type of thing, where the keynotes tend to be more it's a CIO thing, it's a management thing, it's a culture event, that type of split.

Dane Groeneveld: No, that's really neat. So what is it then about the way you approach story that helps these companies, these leaders start to move their teams towards culture, reinforcing the culture that they have, building on the culture that they have, or moving people towards change, because that's a challenge for everyone right now?

Francisco Mahfuz: It's kind of funny, because the very glib answer would be it's nothing, because what you're really doing is you're teaching them to communicate better. What they use it for is their own thing. So that is not wrong if I say ... If that was my answer, I wouldn't be wrong, but it's also not the complete answer, because you can teach someone to use stories in their presentations, in their meetings, in every aspect of their business, but make it harder for them by not giving them a whole bunch of very specific examples and opportunities within that space. So if someone who's a great storyteller, can they just go into and do culture work and use their storytelling there? Sure, but if you are not a good storyteller, and you are in the culture space, it would be a missed opportunity to not base the whole lot of what I'm teaching them on that space. So that's what I do. Most of the examples I'm using are examples that fit the work that they normally do, and I try to make it very obvious to them, these are the types of things that you're normally doing, and this is how storytelling fits into that. So one typical example would be when it comes to values, because company values are one of the... It's very easy to attack the way most companies do values, but it's not obvious to most people what's the better alternative? So one of the things that I talk about in the keynote and I work with people directly when we do training is how do you use storytelling for that? And the answer is, essentially, you need to get people to share stories that review the values they have in their lives. If you are at that stage in the company where you're trying to agree on what the shared values are, and if you've already agreed on what the shared values are, you need to have people find their own stories that connect them with those values. And then you need a habit or a process to find the stories within the organization that reinforce those values or the stories that show that the values are not put into place. Because those things are... That is storytelling, but you can be the greatest storyteller in the world and never make the connection that what you're supposed to be doing is asking people for stories of these things as proof to you or them that are taking place or not. So there is an element of application that is completely separate from do you know how to tell a good story? When would you use that story? It's more about finding stories as evidence of something than necessarily telling a good story, which is what most people tend to think of when they think of storytelling.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I must admit, I was totally focused on how you tell stories, and what I've just heard you say is more about story capture and embracing storytelling within the company, which to your point, I think that's brilliant. I'd never thought of it that way. It helps you if you're trying to agree and set a new path or values, and it helps you to find out what might be going wrong. Even aside from values, if some of those stories, if you're creating a safety for people to share those stories upwards, you're going to start to spot things that could be improved, so it's powerful.

Francisco Mahfuz: And there's another way that shouldn't be terribly surprising to most people if they ever thought about stories is when it comes to things like sharing feedback, for example, particularly feedback of subjects that could be difficult, either difficult to share or difficult for other people to listen to. So you're being critical, you're talking about things like diversity, inclusion, those types of topics. And if people just say, " I'm very unhappy with the way this particular thing is happening in the company because blah, blah blah," it'll sound like, well, it's an opinion, and it can easily sound like a judgment value that other people will take their own positions for or against. Because in a way, you're trying to say this is how this company operates or this is how this team operates. And if your truth is different than my truth, then we have a conflict there. Because in a sense, we are not... Let me put it better. If we're talking about in absolute terms, it's not your truth or my truth, it's the truth. So if you say this is a team that, this is a company that, what you're trying to say is the truth about this particular matter is this. And then you might have had a completely different experience than me, and I'm like, " Well, I disagree. Actually, this company's great at this." So now we are arguing.

Dane Groeneveld: You've created the battle.

Francisco Mahfuz: We've created a battle. Whereas if you just say, " I'm unhappy about the way that this team works with feedback, and this is why I feel that way. Three weeks ago, blah, blah, blah, blah." Now, my experience can be completely different than yours, but unless you think I'm lying or I'm being very selective with that feedback, it's very hard to argue against me. You could say, " Oh, that's surprising to me, because my experience has actually been very positive. Something similar happened to me two weeks ago, and this is how that went down." So now we have different points of view and different experiences, but I think we're much more likely to respect them and understand that they are taking place than try to agree on, " Well, are we a team that does this, or are we a team that does that?" Well, both things can be true at the same time. So those are just different uses of storytelling that have almost nothing to do with how well you tell a story.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I love that. I think it's really intriguing. We talk a lot with guests on the show about psychological safety, we talk a lot about the whole challenge in today's life of things being uncertain, ambiguous, unclear. And it feels like that process that you're describing of creating story capture in the business, it creates that safety. It allows you, as a team, assess what versions of truths might be out there, rather than a leadership going very top down. Are there any any particular practices or processes that you come in and create to draw that out from teams?

Francisco Mahfuz: Yes. The process is often called a story circle. That's the name that practitioners use. I've seen them be called different things, but that's what it is. And usually, what you're doing there is you're getting people together. They're from the same team, from the same department. The important thing is that they are at the same level. You don't want to have a boss in there, because that can create all sorts of conflicts between how open people feel about something. And you probably wouldn't want to call it a story circle, you'd call it a feedback circle or an experience circle, because people have a resistance to the word story. They might think a story is not a serious thing, it's not true. They might think it's just... They just don't have stories. So call it what you may, but the important thing is that you're asking people about their opinion, but in the form of an experience. " How have you found working with this team for the last six months?" or, " How have you found working with this team in this particular project? Okay. Now, however good or bad your feedback is going to be, can you just share something that happened that made you feel that way? So can you give me an example of a time when that good thing or that bad thing has happened?" And then people are more likely than not going to share a story. " Okay, so I'm happy because whatever, and three weeks ago that happened. So what was going on is..." So that's what you're trying to get is to collect those stories, because it allows everybody to share their experience in a way that is less confrontational, it's less likely to have people questioning what you're saying. Also, when you put those stories together, they become a lot harder to dismiss or minimize. And if you compare that to stats, just think about it. Let's say you are an organization with, I don't know, 200 people, and you go and ask people for feedback, and 195 people are generally satisfied with what's going on, and you've got three or four or five people kind of upset. Now, I think most leadership would look at that and go, " Well, it's not perfect. We would like to be perfect, but 5 out of 200 is not a bad result." Right? Now compare that to having four or five stories that are very negative, and actually being told the story or listening to a recording of the story or reading the story, it's difficult to say, " Well, this terrible thing is okay, because it's one out of five in the universe of 200 people that are overall pretty happy." It's just becomes so much harder to dismiss and say, " Well, it's okay. We don't need to change anything. These experiences can keep happening as long as it's only 5 people out of 200." Okay? There's just way more power to those data points than if all they are is data points in a larger sample. And the broader the sample, the less likely is it that you're going to give value to one or two or five experiences. If you want to think about people that do this very well, even though perhaps in an evil way, is politicians, because all you need to do is find one person who has had a really negative experience from a particular policy, and then you're going to say, " Well, listen. You are saying that, whatever, increasing this particular tax is better for the country, but I spoke to Joanne just yesterday on my way clear to whatever, and this is her experience." And then you share her experience, and then the other person is really going to struggle to say, " Yes, but we've done the surveys, and 97% of people are happy with this new policy." " Okay, so what you're saying is that Joanne and the other seven people that I've spoke to just in the last few days, they don't matter." It's really hard to get out from that kind of trap.

Dane Groeneveld: It is hard.

Francisco Mahfuz: And I'm not saying that the politician using one person to justify a whole thing is right, but it's true that we're going to value that one individual experience much more when they have a name, when we can relate to the experience compared to the 3% of people that are unhappy in a much larger sample of people you're talking to.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. What I'm hearing there, which is really interesting, Francisco, is that not only does the power of the story and the capture of those stories in the business lead you to where you want to go, it actually helps you cut out some of the toxicity or the sabotage in teams, which isn't intentional. But like you say, if people just fill out an online survey, and there's five unhappy people, and we just leave it there, what you don't think of is that those five unhappy people just told 10 colleagues how unhappy they are. So now 50 out of your 200 population have some version of a negative story that may influence a decision or an interaction they have with a customer or a team member.

Francisco Mahfuz: There's a piece of research that I sometimes share in my workshops, which is, I believe this was 2006, and there was one researcher who went around and spoke to over a thousand business executives an many different audiences. And what she always asked them was this, " Imagine that one of your new employees has just gone through 20 hours of professionally designed training, and then as soon as they get to the office, some other colleague that they've never met before comes up to them and says,'Listen, let me tell you how things really work around here.' Now, what do you think that your employee's is going to believe, the 20- hour training or the 10- minute story?" And unfailingly, all of those executives said the story, they're going to believe the story. So the point you raised, which I haven't even mentioned yet, is the story is going to be more believable and spread in a way that is way more powerful than almost anything the company can do if the company is communicating in a more traditional way. So yes, you can make a team environment more respectful of differences in opinion and experience by sharing stories and not trying to come up with a definition of truth that is not going to work for everybody, because it's just they have had different experiences. But yes, there is also this aspect of, what was it, the Jeff Bezos quote, " Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room." Well, your culture are the stories that your people share when you're not in the room. And if you don't know what those stories are and if those stories are not reinforcing the values of the company and how we want people to feel about working with you, for you, then you're in trouble. Because sooner or later, that's going to be what most people think about when they think about working there.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that's very interesting. I was actually just at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder event in Omaha, so I got to see Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger on stage for the first time ever, and those guys can really talk some stories, but also super bright people. But it was interesting. Buffett a shared a video clip of when he came in to turn around Solomon, the investment bank. And one of the things he testified to when he was up in front of Congress, I think, was, " Right now, because of our poor behavior, poor compliance historically, everyone in the business knows that whatever they're doing, they need to think about what happens if it turns up on the front page of a newspaper." So again, using story to make people think before they act, which was really interesting because it makes people take accountability for their actions there too. So I think that ties into your Bezos quote and this concept of the things that people do, the way that other people experience them, and that story, it carries a long way.

Francisco Mahfuz: And actually, that Solomon period was the material for a really, really good book, which I have behind me, but it's completely faded from the sun, the books, the yellow cover, and it's called Liar's Poker from Michael Lewis, who became super famous after writing Moneyball and The Big Short and The Blind Side, and a whole bunch of other amazing books. So he worked at Solomon during that period. I tend to find Michael Lewis one of the most powerful examples of the power of storytelling, because he can tell stories about just about anything and make it interesting. The Solomon one, arguably, that's a pretty interesting story to tell anyway, because it's a whole bunch of powerful finance people misbehaving. But he has a book about, what is it, Flash Boys, which is about high- speed traders. And there's the long portions of the book is him explaining how they want to lay out a fiber optics cable across the United States to get fractions of a second in the trade time. And it's like, " How is this interesting?" And it is interesting, because it's describing real life events from real life people that you can relate to sometimes. And that level of granular detail just makes it a much more compelling picture than the idea of speed traders. I don't care at all about speed traders, but when you put the human element to it, then all of a sudden it just starts being interesting in a way that a lot of things in theory are not.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes. No, I think that's very relevant. I'm going to have to put a few of those books on my reading list too. Liar's Poker sounds like a great title.

Francisco Mahfuz: It's Liar's Poker. Yeah, it's incredibly fun. And The Big Short, as well. They've actually got a really good movie out of it, which was also surprising. But you look at the topic of these books, and The Big Short, at least, was about the 2008 financial crisis, but he genuinely spends a lot of time explaining subprime mortgages, and you're just like, " This is the driest subject in the world," and actually a pretty fantastic book. So I think that also puts to bed this idea that a lot of people have that for a story to be interesting or exciting, the subject itself needs to be exciting, when it's almost always the opposite. The more ordinary the subject, the more likely the story's going to be interesting, because we all have a million ordinary things to relate to. If I tell a story about going to Ikea and making a big mess of trying to put a whole bunch of stuff together, just about everyone can relate to that story. If I tell you a story about going up on a stage in front of 500 people, most people can't relate to that at all. And it's like, " This is just not my life. There's nothing to do with that in my life." So it takes me a lot more storytelling skill to make a keynote in front of 500 people relatable than it takes me a visit to Ikea relatable. And that's what I think a lot of people don't get, that the most common ordinary stuff is the best material for stories, because it connects you immediately to everyone. They've all been there, they've all done this. Maybe something's slightly different, but at least they all know where you're coming from.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. And we had a guest that reminds me, we had a guest, Simon Finn, from Beyond the Break, and he does a lot of safety- based training through story in the drilling environment for oil and gas companies, which is highly technical. It's a really important topic, but it's difficult. So to use story the way he does, he uses video a lot with his groups. It becomes more catchy, it becomes more relatable. I love the use of the word relatable there. Riffing on relatable analogy, I recently heard a speaker talk about the danger of using analogies in business, and I feel like, and I've done this myself as a leader, I feel like sometimes people will go to an analogy, because they're trying to be relatable and they're trying to get away from a potentially sensitive topic, direct feedback or a problem that people are emotionally triggered by. And you said earlier in the story circles, experience circles, it's fact, not fiction. So what is your view, what is your experience on how managers and teams use analogies and whether that's a dangerous approach to storytelling?

Francisco Mahfuz: So I think I would need to understand a little bit more why... So why did this person think it was dangerous? What was the issue, the main issue they thought could be caused by using an analogy?

Dane Groeneveld: I think the two things that I heard was that one, you're assuming immediately that someone's not going to understand the complexity or the technicality of the real issue at hand, so you're trying to simplify it for them, which is somewhat patronizing. And two, by going to an analogy, you are essentially not asking for their experience of a story or a situation, to use some of your language. You're kind of forcing a model down upon them, which is not real, it's fictional. So it's hard for them to then relate to and understand why you're using it and how it relates to the actual problem at hand or what problem we're even discussing. So I think that's where he was going with that issue.

Francisco Mahfuz: So I think that there's probably a whole bunch of nuance that I'm not necessarily catching when I give this answer, but I think it just depends on what you're using it for. So just the other day, I was talking about ways to make complex subjects easier to understand. So that was the talk I gave, this topic I gave in Bulgaria to, well, 500 people or whatever, and I gave them three different approaches to do that. The first approach, and perhaps the most obvious one, is to tell a story about it. So you're trying to explain superconductors. Find a story, find a moment where that technology has affected a real human being, maybe you, maybe someone in the team, maybe one of your customers, and share a story about it, because then it should be pretty obvious what the thing is. You're making it memorable, you're making it easier for them to connect to something that's real. So that's an approach that is not an analogy at all. The second approach is to tell a story like it. So that to me is something you do when you are trying to facilitate comprehension. And here it just depends on one, is it a complex or technical subject that your audience doesn't necessarily understand, because if you think they understand or they should understand, then yeah, you've been patronizing, trying to dumb it down for them when arguably they understand it. But if you're trying to explain it to an audience that is a lay audience or something like that, or you're just trying to communicate in a way that is more memorable, then a story like it can be perfect. So in that talk, I gave the example of, so I first gave an example of someone trying to do a whole bunch of stuff in a business to find out that it was actually a poor use of their resources. They were spending a lot of time doing something that was just pointless. So there was a story about it. I gave a very business- specific story. My second story was the IKEA one, was me trying to put together... And then the takeaway from both stories was the same is that's when I learned that just because I can do something doesn't mean I should. Now, I think I could definitely tell the Ikea story in a business context and say, " I think that what I did with Ikea, we are doing a lot in our finance department right now," and I don't think that's dumbing it down. I think they're just making it more memorable. Now, would I use that to try and explain a technical subject to an audience that arguably should understand the technical subject? Probably not. But the other way that analogies can work really well is they're just a shortcut, right? My favorite way of doing that is you tell the story, and then you're not going to repeat the story to the same audience, but you just get one line out of the story that everybody relates to. So you can say, " This is the IKEA curse, and because you've heard me talk about my Ikea story, you know what I'm talking about." So it just becomes that two, three- word sentence that packs a whole bunch of meaning to people. But even if you're just using something as a comparison, I think you can use an analogy to accelerate comprehension without that necessarily being in any way condescending or patronizing. And also, can you get everyone's lived- in experience, and then have a shorthand way to refer to it that is not a simpler analogy? Maybe, but maybe not. So I think there's lots of ways of using it that is not patronizing, that is not as regarding people's experiences. But again, with most things in life and communication, it depends.

Dane Groeneveld: It depends, and I think what you've stated really well there, it's who's the audience and what's the context? Because you're right, if you're talking to lay people, it might be a great shortcut. If you are using an analogy to share something that's future state, it might be a great way to rally people around the one- liner. But if you're using an analogy to deal with a problem, attention, a lesson learned moment, maybe you should just be seeking with more questions, more of the story that everyone around the table experienced and not stuffing something overly simplified down someone's throat.

Francisco Mahfuz: Yeah. And it's also the case of how memorable things are, because someone's lived- in experience can be very memorable or not. It depends on how they tell the story. And you're not going to necessarily expect that everybody's going to be great at telling that story and making it memorable somehow, whereas sometimes you just find an analogy that it's not hard to explain, but it was still sticking into people's minds way more than the normal explanation. So a very easy example here is I do this whole thing on stage where I tell people that there's a problem with the way our brains deal with facts. So I get a volunteer, they come up on stage, and then I say, " Okay, the problem with facts is facts are like ice cubes." And then I get an ice cube, I put it on the hands of the person that's the volunteer, and I say, " Now, they're cool, they're shiny, they have a very clear shape to them, but they're slippery, and they can be uncomfortable to hold onto, particularly if it's more than one." And then I started giving them more and more ice cubes, I pour a bucket of ice cubes on their hands, they go everywhere. It's because they're going all over. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: I've seen that video. I love that video.

Francisco Mahfuz: And then I say, " With the best people in the world, even if she wants to hold on to them, she just can't. Sooner or later, they're going to melt and they'll slip right out of her hands, and that's exactly what happened to most facts in our brains." Now, am I explaining anything that is complicated? No. Could I have just said we can't retain facts in our memory for very long? I could have said that. Are you going to remember that? Probably not.

Dane Groeneveld: No, but that ice cube video, as soon as you started referencing it, I'm right there.

Francisco Mahfuz: And it's one of the things that most people come up to me and go, " Oh, I love that ice thing, the ice cube thing. Can I steal it?" Because it's just such a clear visual representation of this thing you're trying to say. And you can do that with a story, but for a lot of people, it might be easier to just find an analogy than finding a story or telling the story well.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. No, I like that. I think that's a really interesting approach, and it teaches me not to give up on analogies just yet. So these teams that you've worked with, that you bring into story coaching, the story circles, what does it look like? What does good look like once they start to exercise that muscle of leveraging story across their team and their customers?

Francisco Mahfuz: So the first thing you tend to notice is people start getting that you don't want to speak in generalities, in generalizations and abstractions. You want to pick specific examples. So instead of saying we are letting our customers down with our customer service, you're immediately going to look for an example, because that's how a story really is, at least in a business context. It's a real life example that you use to make a point. So you're not just going to talk in abstractions, you're going to look for an example, and you're going to figure out very quickly that the example is the best way to lead with. So it's a meeting representation. You're going to share how you've experienced a problem, how you've found out about a problem, and from that, you're going to build with more data, build with different opinions, different findings, because that example makes it 100% clear in everybody's mind what you're talking about. There's no, " I'm not sure I get what you were trying to say there, or why does this matter?" Because everybody will get that straight away if you picked a suitable example. So that's the first thing is for everything you're going to say, you're going to look for an example, which very often is going to be a story. And then once you start communicating that way, you become a lot clearer, it becomes a lot easier to remember your message, and it becomes easier to care about the message, because those examples invariably are going to have a human being in them, you, someone in the team, a customer, someone whose life is being made better or worse by the work you're doing. And that touches on a whole bunch of things that are important for a team, because even if you're a great communicator, but you're not giving people a reason to care about the work that they do, then you're potentially missing out on all the benefits of purpose, a reinforcing purpose in an organization. Whereas if you are giving examples of real people, it's that constant reminder of this thing we're doing is not just because it makes money for the company or makes money for us. This actually has an impact on the world, even if it's the world of the people who work with you, which is still an important world.

Dane Groeneveld: No, I love that, and I can actually see how that clarity leads to that empathy, and to your point, people are now behind the purpose, that they're in it together, which is huge. That's what we want for all teams. We don't want them to be siloed and working in departments and hierarchies that are all looking out for their own interests. You said, just as a closing point, as you think towards the future of teams, I believe that in the future, teams are going to have more agency. And you said something interesting earlier. It's about getting people at a peer level together so it's safe. Is that just a now thing, or do you think in the future that we're going to see more disaggregation of the org structure, so that teams can be more fluid in the way that they share story to get things done?

Francisco Mahfuz: My comment was very specifically about story circles, but I don't think that it's necessarily the most important thing that people are only working with their peers from a hierarchical level. What I think is important is that communication is not hierarchical. So you can be someone's boss and communicate in a way that is caring, that is persuasive without ever having to bring into play that you are the boss. Now, that's not always. This can be a little Kumbaya, but what I'm not saying is that you should never, ever have to play the boss cards because that's not necessarily the case. But even if all you're going to do is tell people in your team or in your organization that something negative has happened or a change that's going to be implemented across the company, so maybe something they're not going to be happy with, if you communicate it well, people will understand exactly what the context is, where you're coming from, what's the motivation. And they might not agree with it, but it becomes a lot harder for them to just flat out disagree with it. I get where you're coming from, I get what was happening, I understand the reasoning now, and I can see how you'd make that decision, which I think is very different than the way a lot of people react to company announcements about things that affect them. It's just like, " Well, these people don't care about us. They're just greedy, they're whatever." So better communication I think sands a lot of those rough edges in a team, and if you're generally communicating about the things that need to be done, even if it's something you're telling people to do, they would go, " Okay, fine. It wouldn't be what I would've chosen if you let me choose, but I can get where you're coming from, and I can get why that's important and why you think this is something we need to do, so okay." So the best leaders, and also the best parents or friends or partners, they'll never talk from a point of, " I am the boss, and this is why you need to do what I'm telling you," in a perfect world at least. So I think storytelling gets us a lot closer to that than other forms of communication or other techniques that sort of box people into a course of action, but are kind of just manipulative.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I like that a lot. I think it's a catalyst for getting away, done right, it's a catalyst for getting away from traditional hierarchies or power imbalances. So I think that's a really good point to end on. I can't believe we've already spent nearly 50 minutes together. It's been so much fun, Francisco. I thought I was already a good ambassador and champion of story, but you've opened my eyes to a lot more that can be done with story and organizations, so I thank you for that. If any of our listeners want to reach out and talk to you about story coaching or keynote speaking or find more about your work, how do they best find you?

Francisco Mahfuz: So the two best places are LinkedIn, I'm very active in there. I post an enormous amount of nonsense interspersed with maybe a tiny bit of wisdom about storytelling, and my website, and that's more for people that are potentially interested in keynote speaking or the workshops I do is storypowers. com.

Dane Groeneveld: Storypowers. com, wonderful. Well, thank you again for taking the time to share all of your wonderful work today, and I really appreciate the difference you're making out there in the world, Francisco.

Francisco Mahfuz: Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure, man.

Dane Groeneveld: Thanks.

DESCRIPTION

Join host Dane Groeneveld in an insightful conversation on The Future of Teamwork podcast with keynote speaker and story coach Francisco Mahfuz. Discover the power of storytelling in business and team environments as Francisco shares his personal journey and how it shaped his life and career. They’ll also explore the importance of holding story circles to enrich employee experience data points and the profound impact of storytelling in helping employees embody company values and making it a habit. Lastly, you can learn how analogies can make your messages more memorable and impactful when communicating with others. Revolutionize your approach to teamwork and tap into the transformative power of storytelling in this engaging podcast episode.

Today's Host

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Dane Groeneveld

|HUDDL3 Group CEO

Today's Guests

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Francisco Mahfuz

|Keynote Speaker and Story Coach