According to Alan Deutschman’s article “Change or Die” in Fast Company Magazine, these are the latest findings in psychology and neuroscience. Stories can change a person’s “frame of view” much more powerfully than dry concepts.

Instead of fear-based facts told in conceptual form, offer people a compelling, positive vision for the future told in narrative form to open minds and motivate new behaviour.

For example, instead of only telling people that your organization will go under if the numbers don’t go up, try painting a picture in people’s mind of an ideal circumstance for your organization to move towards.

Being a great storyteller will make you indispensible on the job

In his groundbreaking book, A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink suggests that understanding how stories work will help you become more indispensible on the job. He talks about how our culture has now shifted from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. The Information Age valued the Left Hemisphere of the brain, the side that deals mostly with logic, language, math, structure, and rational thought. He notes that now in order to survive and thrive in today’s work culture you need to use the Right Hemisphere of the brain much more often, or a kind of thinking that involves creativity, playfulness, story, design and synthesis.

Why Right Brain dominant people will rule the future

Pink also says that the three forces at work in this shift from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age are Abundance, Asia, and Automation.

Abundance refers to the fact that people in North America now have an abundance of choice. There isn’t just one mp3 player, there are hundreds. There isn’t just one type of shampoo, there are thousands. The wide variety of choices now mean that many jobs will require someone to act as a highly creative matchmaker between the wide variety of choices and the needs of the individual end user of a product or service.

Asia refers to the fact that many of the logical, linear left brain jobs have now been outsourced to Asia.

Automation means that many tasks once done by humans are now done by technology. That means that what’s left for people here are jobs that can’t be outsourced or automated, which tend to be jobs involving the Right Hemisphere: design, synthesis, reframing, or jobs with a need for high emotional intelligence.