Silence of Love and the Power of Storytelling

There are plenty of various different reasons as to why, for the last few years, I have been really excited about the emergence of social software tools within the corporate environment and beyond, but there is one in particular that keeps getting my attention, time and time again, as it has been helping bridge a number of various different disciplines letting them feed, each and everyone of them, from the same source to perhaps become eventually one and the same. Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Social Computing, Learning and so forth are coming along nicely, at long last, looking for a common identity that would reflect a purpose within a work context and it looks like Storytelling is helping big time become the unifier business component a good bunch of us have been looking forward to from all along to boost the way we share our knowledge and collaborate also within the workplace environment: that is, through (beautiful) stories.

At this point in time I think it is undeniable the Power of Storytelling in helping knowledge workers not only transfer their knowledge effectively across with others, but also learn plenty more along the way. There have been lots of great write-ups and insightful articles along these terms on the many reasons why storytelling helps make messages stick, but the truth is that telling stories is not something new and related just to social computing. Quite the opposite: “Since the first humans gathered around a fire, we have been telling stories“. In fact, “telling stories is fundamental to how we make sense of this often confusing world, how construct our identities, and how we tell each other who we are“, as Sarah Jansen wrote beautifully over at the Zahmoo blog a couple of months back.

I, too, have been blogging, just recently, about storytelling and creative work, about what makes a good story and how to share it across or about the power of storytelling and narrative in helping businesses realise their true full potential of the amazing talent their knowledge workers have and how to make the best out of it by helping (re)surface conversations, stories, experiences, know-how that, for a long while, have been hidden away in people’s heads. And now, slowly, but steadily, and thanks to the wonderful work of social tools, we are witnessing how storytelling is no longer a dirty word, but pretty much a highly recommended activity to engage in, whether internally or externally.

So I thought that for today’s blog post I would ahead and highlight how powerful some stories can well be to not just share your knowledge across, as well as embrace a rather fascinating learning activity coming along nicely, but also about how they involve something that is pretty much unique to us, human beings, which is emotions. Rather touching emotions in most cases. Like this week’s Inspiring Video of the Week.

Now, I am not going to say much more about this precious little gem that lasts for a bit over 3 minutes, other than ask you to stop whatever you may be doing at this very moment, sit back, relax, and hit the Play button. And prepare yourself to be wowed and touched in plenty of special places! Perhaps places you never thought you would have them, any longer, anywhere near you. Yet, after watching it, I am sure you will get to enjoy and treasure them just as much as you used to up to not so long ago.

This is perhaps one of my all time favourite Inspiring Videos of the Week, and I am certain that, after you watch it, you will know why. Compelling, touching, mind-blowing are some of the words that surely fall short in describing how wonderfully delightful it is and what powerful messages it conveys throughout! Get ready, here it comes!:

So, what do you think? Do you still feel that storytelling, whether work related, or not, doesn’t have any business purposes within today’s corporate world? Silence of Love surely is going to help us all get rid of that assumption and start figuring out ways of how we are going to incorporate telling stories and narrative into our long term strategy of becoming a powerful Social Enterprise. Something tells me we would all be much better off…