Storytelling is an age old form of communication: a way to tell others of our experiences, dreams, ideas and feelings, through text or speech. With National Storytelling Week drawing to a close for its eighteenth year, we asked Altior team member, Natalie Bushell, to tell us what storytelling means to her.
‘I read with my children every night before bed and love how through books you can easily teach new skills, knowledge or behaviours. The first book I ever read to them was the ‘Sunny’ book, this describes all the emotions someone can feel or encounter in a day. It’s still a favourite at 3.5 years old and probably more relevant now due to their daily experiences.
Even at 26 (ahem!) books will always be my first point of call if needing to research or learn something new. I love getting lost in a book especially after a long, busy day and equally love that my Children enjoy books as much as I do.
For Christmas the girls received a wooden spoon craft set. From this we made the Spoon animal family and created a story together around listening and being kind. Whilst being fun for the children to not just read the story but to create it, it’s also helped me as a parent with reinforcing behavioural and empathetic messages in a different way.
When being told a story our brain not only actively processes the language but the whole experience. For example when listening to someone describing food our sensory cortex gets excited and something involving motion, such as completing a half marathon, gets our motor cortex running too (but just maybe not as far!).
Our trainers at Altior understand the benefits of learning through stories and try to build this into our Training and Assessment programmes through case-studies or by retelling an experience from their past, some of which are very entertaining.
According to Princeton researcher Hasson, storytelling is a significant method of persuasion. So if trying to get someone on board with your concept or theory, telling them a story where the outcome is positive is a great way to plant ideas in other people’s heads. A must-have skill for our qualifying Advocates to have in their arsenal.’