The Science of Storytelling in Growing Your Personal Brand

How storytelling can help your personal brand stand out in a noisy marketplace

Storytelling is a science. One with value for your personal brand. Embracing it creates an immediate opportunity to distinguish your brand in the marketplace.

My Papa was a true storyteller. I recalled this when I gave the eulogy at his funeral. His storytelling took many forms. As an active church member, the service readings were among his favourite opportunities. His booming reading voice would bellow through the church. Storytelling was also his gravitational pull at the family dining table or other gatherings.

When he left this world, Papa’s storytelling was what we recalled most profoundly. Perhaps you may have experienced the same through the loss of a loved one. Or maybe stories are simply what you remember most about someone you know? This isn’t a coincidence. Storytelling has the power to create a lasting impression of our personal brand.

Here are my top takeouts on how the science of storytelling can add value to your personal brand:

1. Storytelling enhances personal brand recall

Jennifer Aaker of Stanford University details the power of stories. She proposes stories are 22 times more likely to be remembered than facts alone.

Renowned Psychologist, the late Jerome Bruner, made similar claims. The New York University School of Law researcher also noted its recall power. He claimed that facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they are part of a story.

The neuroscience of storytelling explains this further. When you hear a fact, this engages two parts of your brain. Your language processing and your language comprehension centres. Whereas, when you hear a story, this increases by fivefold. More parts of your brain are actively engaged in the process. So, you’re more likely to remember the information.

In a noisy marketplace, storytelling makes your personal brand and messages resonate better.

2. Storytelling creates trust

The power of storytelling sparks an important chemical process.

Storytelling helps release oxytocin. This is the chemical that builds empathy and trust. It causes us to care about the people involved in the story.

Storytelling helps humanise your authentic personal brand. Your story might be humorous, moving or anything in between. But it displays some level of openness and vulnerability. It elicits emotions and invites others to build a connection with you.

3. Storytelling connects you with different types of learners

New Zealand educator, the late Neil Flemming, developed the VARK learning model.

The 1987 model promotes that there are four key types of learners:

• Visuals

• Auditories

• Readers/Writers

• Kinesthetics

The model is founded on the Neuro Linguistics Programming VAK model. But adds the fourth Reading and Writing (R) dimension.

Based on the models, those with the visual style learn best through images. Auditory learners thrive through listening. Readers and writers prefer written words. And kinesthetics learn by doing. They rely on the feelings and experiences of their body.

As noted by Harvard Business Review, storytelling has something for all modality types. Storytelling evokes mental pictures for visual learners. Auditory learners can focus on the voice. Kinesthetics can connect with the emotions and feelings of a story.  Writers and readers can appreciate the written word.

Your personal brand is likely to interact with all learner types. Storytelling helps you communicate with people through their preferred style. It allows your personal brand to meet people wherever they are.

4. Humans are hardwired for storytelling

Perhaps you’re feeling nervous about introducing more storytelling to your personal brand. Maybe you prefer to stick to the facts and keep it strictly ‘business’. But, the value of storytelling is not a new trending fad.

The exact age of storytelling differs across sources. But, most agree it’s been around for tens of thousands of years. Some even believe storytelling has existed in some form for up to 150,000 years. So, we have been evolutionarily hardwired to make sense of experiences through storytelling.

Neuroscience research shows that on average humans spend 30 per cent of waking hours daydreaming. Except when listening to, reading or watching a story.

So, whether it’s a business story or a relevant personal story, the human instinct is to listen. Storytelling will help your people make sense of a situation. It uses their innate abilities to process the meaning of the story as relevant to them.

5. Storytelling connects you to your people

Richard Bandler and John Grinder developed the Neuro Linguistics Programming communication model. It helps you understand how you process external information. And to use it to communicate or respond to others.

‘External events’ including pictures, sounds and feelings are processed through your filters. Your brain’s filters include your values, beliefs, memories and past decisions. The process will either delete, distort or generalise. And form an internal representation of the external event. This internal representation, along with your physiology creates a ‘state’, i.e your internal emotional condition.

Stories have the powerful ability to connect your personal brand to your people. To engage with their shared past experiences, beliefs and values. And shared values unite us.

This is just part of the science behind storytelling. It has the power to create a lasting impression.

Are you harnessing its power for your personal brand?

PS. Next week, I’ll share more on the art of storytelling.