The power of story to share context and create connection

In college we had an old-fashioned mailroom. Letters were sorted into rows of wooden slots, the front side of which were glass doors with dial combination locks. Letters were distributed by department, then name. The structure allowed for quick sorting and tidy workspaces. Everything had a place.

Stories provide a similar structure. Information is just information without context. A story creates a framework that helps us understand and remember information by situating it within a narrative. A story answers, among other things:

• Geography that either helps or hurts our journey
• Culture of the protagonist and the people around them
• Power structures that influence decisions
• Mindsets that reflect whether something is an opportunity or a challenge

One way that I’ve been inviting people to consider the story of their content is to share seven common narrative arcs: Comedy, Tragedy, Voyage and Return, Rags to Riches, Rebirth, Quest, and Overcoming the Monster. What is your topic? How does that type of story help you decide how you share information? 

Here’s some examples:

• The person creating learning tools on climate change considered “Quest” and “Overcoming the Monster.” (Let’s hope it isn’t a tragedy!) How might his audience, potential donors, respond to each of these options? How do we need them to respond? 
• Take nonprofit finance, an “Overcoming the Monster” story for too many people. What if we reframed it as a “Rags to Riches” story, connecting finance knowledge with successful fundraising? Or maybe it is a “Quest” anchored in curiosity and discovery.

Storytelling feels extraneous to many I speak with, like art in a STEM-focused world. This is where we have so much to learn from “high-context” cultures, to use anthropologist Edward Hall’s term. “High-context” and “low-context” exist on a continuum that explores how people relate to each other, how they communicate with each other, how they treat space and time, and how they learn. White U.S. culture is generally considered low-context. Many cultures of People of Color are high-context, generally speaking.

Modified from this source.

When we use story to convey information, we are not just making it more memorable and efficient on our brains as it sorts information into a structure that makes sense. We are also being intentional about de-centering White ways of teaching and learning for everyone’s benefit.

All of which makes me very excited to learn about storytelling in learning from Fawn Sanchez, our 2nd Fall Learning Series speaker. Fawn is Shoshone-Bannock from Fort Hall, Idaho, and is Carizzo-Comcrudo, an Indigenous tribe in Mexico. Fawn is a Learning and Development professional, having spent 11 years at Amazon managing learning strategy across several technical programs and global organizations. Fawn currently manages learning programs on Native American cultural awareness at Tribal Tech, LLC. A diversity thought leader, Fawn previously led the Indigenous Peoples ERG at Amazon for seven years. Fawn is an AISES Sequoyah Fellow, and a member of the Indigi-Genius AI Board of Directors, providing culturally relevant AI/ML educational programming to Native youth and educators. Fawn is also a third generation Army Veteran and served eight years active duty in the United States Army.

Think about a topic that you hope to teach someone. What kind of story is it? How can you use the narrative arc of a story – protagonist, plot, conflict, and solution—to invite that person in?