Storytelling is both: telling stories and listening to stories. Anecdote’s advises to start with story listening. If we know what we are looking for we also know how to tell a story.
When I was reading Clairification’s post 6 Best Ways to Make Storytelling Part of Your Nonprofit Culture I also had the book The Power of Habit; Why we do what we do and how to change by Charles Duhigg on my reading list.
While Clairification proposes habits like “Weekly story share time” or “starting meetings with a story” I learned from Duhigg that encouragement and triggers like weekly storytelling time are necessary to build a habit but that we need more than that to make it stick. We need craving, reward and belief.
In other words, only if we crave to share our stories and if we believe in the power of storytelling we will fit storytelling into our organisational culture. If we belief and crave, storytelling time is valuable time. We look forward to share our stories and make our experiences and challenges visible. We are rewarded by exchanges with colleagues. We receive feedback. We deepen our understanding and find meaning and inspiration from these conversations.
The good thing is that if we do it repeatedly, it is easier (Gretchen Rubin, Harnessing the power of frequency, in Manage Your Day-to-Day). If we belief in the power of stories we will be “caring listeners“. Sharing our stories and listening to stories of others must feel good.
Learning Moments 
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