Being able to tell a story is becoming an increasingly popular topic in the finance business partnering space. As finance people, we are objective in nature, meritocratic, and fact-based individuals. Stories are for the creative people and have no place in a world of accountability and performance. “Stories” sound like things people make up when they don’t have the facts or are underperforming. Why tell stories when we have the facts? This is the way most of us approach this topic.

But that isn’t storytelling. Story telling is the ability to take pieces of information and join them together in a cohesive and compelling manner that either influences or entertains the audience. Now entertaining people may be great for the silver screen, but in the business world influencing the audience will suffice.

But how do we do this? What can we look to, to help us be able to tell better stories about the information we have at our disposal and provide some insight?

Greek philosophy may not be the space a lot of people would turn to for a story telling framework but the works of Aristotle in his work “Modes of Persuasion” is a great structure and framework to guide a finance person into storytelling. It helps distinguish the pieces we are good at and the pieces that we need to consciously work on.

"Modes of Persuasion" looks at three dimensions of storytelling which will determine the success of what you are talking about. They are Ethos, Pathos and Logos.

Ethos

This talks to the credibility of the person telling the story. It is the ability of the person telling the story to convince the audience that they have the authority or are qualified to speak on the topic. Without this people may not be engaged with what you have to say. This is fairly simple and straight forward for a finance person talking numbers in an organisation. However, in business partnering you may often be speaking about areas not of your area of expertise. In order to combat this you can be introduced by the other functions (supporting your credibility), master the other functions “language” by understanding the terms they use or by using some reference that gives gravitas to the fact you know what you are talking about. Sometimes referencing past roles or jobs can assist but be careful with the audience and how often you do this. It can become tiring hearing stories about what you did or what happened when you worked at x. 

Ethos is often a given in presenting information and telling stories for finance staff. You have been asked to do it because you are the expert.

Pathos

This is the ability to use emotion to tell your story and is most effective when that emotion aligns to the audience. Telling a humourous story nobody laughs at because you are dealing with a sensitive issue, is a sure fire way to ruin your Pathos. Every good story teller has this in spades. They are able to identify the relevant emotion required for the story, and bring that out in a way that the audience also feels that emotion. Sales and marketing do this very well. A great example is the “deal on today only” emotion which forces you into a fear of missing out and forcing you to buy. Attempting to bring positive emotion to something when all of the facts and figures indicate a problem. Solutions attached to problems will fix this as will the excitement displayed in what the solution could be. Another way of bringing out the emotion is to use analogies, metaphor or simile. By taking a situation and comparing it to something the audience can relate to are ways in which you can do this. Being specific and personal about a situation will also help to bring emotion, if something happened to you and you are able to convey those feeling by being deeply descriptive and specific you will be able to deliver on your Pathos.

Finance people have the most difficulty with this dimension as we are a fact based function and objective by nature. We find it difficult to work in the subjective and potentially manipulate facts with emotion.

Logos

This is the ability to bring facts to support your story. This helps with the Ethos of a story as facts will help to support your credibility that you know what you are talking about. This is a strength of finance due to our objectivity and use of financial data to support a story. Every presentation we do will be supported by some form of table, graph, fact or data. The key is to ensure that fact or data is not misrepresented as can sometimes happen when Pathos takes over. 

Finance staff should find Logos the easiest dimension to work with. As opposed to sales who may use only a small part of the whole facts to support their story.

With those three dimensions in mind, it is also worth remembering the place you choose to tell your story. This can have an impact on the cut through of what you are discussing. When I say place, it could be time of the day, location of office, audiences preparation to receive the information, etc. Attempting to tell a bad news story about a business issue at 3pm on a Friday afternoon, dressed in corporate casual with a beer, when the executive team have been in a meeting for two hours previously celebrating something successful is probably not going to deliver on the correct Pathos despite all of your best efforts.

As difficult and challenging as story telling can be for a finance person if you are able to understand the above three dimensions and elements you should be able to draw on enough information to be compelling. Facts and figures (Logos) shouldn’t be a problem. You are often asked for your opinion when telling a story so that shouldn’t be an issue (Ethos). However, Pathos (Emotional connection to the audience) will always require work to bring the numbers and the finances, what some other functions may consider boring, to life. 

Find more information about storytelling on Andrew's website: https://www.andrewjepson.com/