Less Chatter, More Matter: The Communications Podcast

#126 How to use storytelling more effectively in your comms (ft. Soundari Mukherjea)

• Season 1 • Episode 126

Share episode

When was the last time a slide deck inspired you to act? If your answer is “never,” then you know exactly why the conversation you're about to listen to, matters.

In this episode of the Less Chatter, More Matter podcast we chat with Soundari Mukherjea, a self-described Chief Everything Officer at Soundbytes11, who helps leaders and teams communicate with more purpose and impact through the power of storytelling.

Soundari shares her own journey of building a portfolio career across consulting, mentoring, and teaching, alongside why she believes storytelling is one of the most underused but powerful tools we have as communicators. Together, we explore how stories engage our brains in ways that bullet points and data alone never can, and how leaders can turn everyday moments into anecdotes that stick, persuade and build trust.

We dive into why storytelling doesn't need to be a Hollywood script, it can simply be about noticing the simple, relatable moments that help people connect with your message. Soundari brings practical ways you can use stories to break down silos, explain strategy and motivate change.

We also talk about the role of AI in storytelling, as you can expect, including how tools can help spark ideas and find fresh metaphors, plus why your authentic voice is what actually builds credibility and trust. 

If you’re feeling stuck or hesitant about bringing storytelling into your work, this episode will give you real-life examples, practical tips and a nudge to start small and practise often.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Say hi!
Follow me on LinkedIn
Find out what I'm up to Instagram
Check out my website
Ask a question

Once upon a time in a land not so far away. In fact, today and probably in your workplace, people were telling stories, big stories, small stories, short stories, long stories, stories about kids, stories about the weekend, stories about something that happened at an old workplace. Stories about... Well, anything really, stories that made you laugh, made you get angry, made you shocked, worried, happy, or proud? When you stop to think about it, how many stories do you tell and hear every day? And now that you've stopped and thought about it, perhaps it might surprise you how naturally storytelling occurs in your daily interactions with people and despite it being such a natural part of how we live and work. And despite storytelling being a tool that has been neurologically proven to grab people's attention and make things easier to understand and remember, we do not use it as much as we should. Instead, we use dot points, facts and figures, emails and charts, and then wonder why people don't care. So how can we use storytelling more effectively in our communication? Well, that's what today's guest discussed with me for this episode of Less Chatter, More Matter. Soundari Mukherjea is a distinguished business storytelling coach, a TEDx coach, a TEDx speaker, leadership consultant, and a dynamic facilitator renowned for her unique ability to weave the power of storytelling into the fabric of business communication. With a diverse international portfolio and a rich background spanning over 30 years in finance, operations, banking, and entrepreneurship. She excels in deepening client engagement and fostering strong relationships across sectors, including banking, consulting, and legal firms. She likes to call herself the Chief Everything slash Experience Officer at Soundbytes11, her own organisation and believes life is all about connections and serendipity. Her big, hairy, audacious goal is to help leaders and teams drive business outcomes, build a personal brand, and be more human at work through storytelling. And her expertise in behavioural skills programs has made her a very sought after figure in professional circles. When she's not working with clients or chatting with her children, family, or friends, or reading books, you'll find her on the tennis court or working a pottery wheel. She's a woman of many talents, and as you'll hear in today's episode, she's so talented at just weaving stories into every discussion she has. She tells so many stories in this short conversation, but through it, she makes some really good points around, well, what does storytelling actually mean in a corporate sense? How can we use it and help? Can we help others to overcome their fear of it as well? So without further ado, here's Soundari. Soundari, Welcome to Less Chatter, More Matter. Thank you so much, Mel. Delighted to be having this conversation with you. And I'm delighted to have you on the show. So we've, uh, caught up a few times over the years and, uh, I really love what you bring to the communications profession, which we'll get into in just a moment. But before we do, can you tell us a little bit about you? So what do you do and how did you come to develop your expertise in that space? Yeah. Yeah. I think I'd like to call myself, uh, chief Everything Officer. It should be Chief Experience Officer, but maybe Chief Everything Officer at Soundbytes11.. Uh, wear a few hats. Uh, and I think one of my friends who heard from a mentor long time back was told, follow your compass, not your clock. And that sort of guided me in creating a portfolio carrier for myself. Uh, so I'm a consultant and I'll talk a little bit more about that later. Uh, I'm a visiting faculty. I mentor coach. I work on a few NGO boards, and I think a lot of this temp from my move to Bahrain in the Middle East in 2001, uh, when I had an opportunity to become a freelancer for a friend and a mentor who was based out of Saudi Arabia. And as a new mum, I can't tell you how liberating it was to have that flexibility while going out and doing the purposeful work that we want to do. So that sort of guided that. But on specifically on storytelling, I think my big, hairy, audacious goal is to help, uh, leaders and teams drive business outcomes, build a personal brand, and be more human at work through storytelling. Oh, I love that. Be more human at work. And it's, uh, you've hit the nail on the head for me because I feel like so often we talk like corporate robots when we're talking to humans, and uh, it really, you know, it doesn't do us any favors. But, so let's get into this. So why is storytelling such a powerful and important tool for storytell- For communicators? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what is that One thing we all want as communicators? And you do this a lot with your work and also of course with the books that you've written, uh, we wanna drive outcomes because our messaging was relatable, it was memorable, and it's impactful. So broadly, that's what we want to do. We wanna be in that space. And I can give the brain theory around it to say that, you know, when somebody hears a story, multiple parts of the brain are engaged. You have the one case area which controls language comprehension. You have the amygdala, which is the, uh, emotional response, and then you have the mirror neurons, which play a big role in creating empathy for each other. And when you have multiple parts of the brain, which are engaged or hippocampus, which became very popular with Inside Out, uh, which those short term memories becomes more likely to convert these experiences. Of hearing a story and creating a long-term memory out of it. Now, I'm not a doctor or a psychologist, so for me, storytelling has been more observational and experiential. I'm always fascinated with the question of how do we grab attention of our decision makers and how do we inspire them to act, say, based on data? Because as a finance, MBA, I've always felt that I had two people sitting on my shoulders, uh, one going after the numbers and one being human. And I would say, which is the devil or the angel, we'll leave that be. And I think over the last few years, that's where the work, uh, that I do in organisations in crafting strategies, communicating with impact came and I realised when I worked with leaders, and it's not something I think organically, it was not a eureka moment, uh, but something that I realising that the most effective leaders share examples to make a point. And that's how they build trust. They just don't present data. I was just speaking to a friend of mine who's been a CEO of large banks across geographies in, uh, Southeast Asia. And I was telling him that I'm traveling this week to, uh, run data storytelling sessions. And I said how important it is these days, especially with AI mulling on all the data that we need to have clean and good data. And he said, you know, that's so right. And he could have just left it at that saying, yeah, yeah. It's important to have clean and good data. He just went on to say that when I was working with this bank, we were like looking at how we can do market segmentation based on our client base. And we said, let's find out more branch wise, what are the segments, what are the target, uh, areas our clients are working. And he said that in one particular branch, we found that 37% of our customers were astronauts. And I said, what? How is that even possible? And he said, yeah, who knew there was that many astronauts? So everybody had the same question because, and he said, we went back and we checked what was happening. And what used to happen is that the clients would come to the branch, they would open the account and the relationship managers because they wanted to be helpful. And no client wanted to fill a form. They would say, we'll fill the form for you. So they would take the ID documents, they'd have their names and all of that. And then when they had to fill the form, they were suddenly left with hundreds of forms to fill. So they would just click on the dropdown menu and pick anything and right on the top after the accountant maybe was the astronaut. So it really was not useful. So we do need clean data. And for me that was a great idea to communicate in a way that data couldn't have managed. And I think you've hit the nail on the head there. I sometimes I think people fear or, you know, I don't wanna take on storytelling in a corporate sense because they think it might need to be this big elaborate story that you've crafted behind the scenes. But actually it's those everyday anecdotes... That you already have in your back pocket that I think most people don't realise you've already got the stories there. It's just a matter of knowing when to use them. And on that, what are some of the most effective ways to use storytelling? Yeah. Yeah. Um, how can you use a personal story as a way to guide, but even if it's not the personal stories, and definitely personal stories are easy to remember. Even if somebody says that data is my oil, and I see this happen when I work with a lot of product managers, tech folks, you know, you ask them to share personal stories and they recoil. Literally, it's a physical recoil. And, uh, I remember I was running the session for a group of entrepreneurs and product managers. And they were saying, you know, simplifying the complex, that's what we all want to have as a skill. And he had to explain what mission learning was and he was at home and his grandmum was asking him, Hey, tell me what you do. And going and having to, he's saying, I had to go and explain what is mission learning to my grandmum. Not that she cannot understand technology, but I wanted to communicate in a way that it's simple. And he said, you know, it's like how a mission takes something and learns and reiterates and keeps building on that learning. And it's like almost like grandmum, it's like how you would... Make a try a new recipe, you would make it for us. And we would eat and we'd all taste it and say, oh, a little bit more salt, oh, a little less of the masala or something like that. And then you would refine it and you are learning from that process. And I thought that was a great way to take a complex topic and make it really simple by using, uh, analogy or a metaphor. So I think everywhere where we need it may not be a personal story, it could be stories of your clients. Uh, the delight that they derived from your product. It could be a story of how things went wrong and how you helped turn things around. It could be how your product was invented, or it could be just something that you wanted to share a lesson or a point and.. Maybe I can give you one. You know, a lot of the times when we work with, especially with startups and entrepreneurs, we are trying to tell them that, you know, you have to look wider for talent. Instead of looking at a simple route, uh, don't look just close by, look wider, look for cross connections. Literally, you know, having that M kind of a thing of interconnecting ideas and all of that. And you can keep telling about it, but it doesn't register. So I remember, um, I think this was, um, I'm, okay, I'm now blanking out who said this, uh, in a podcast, but they talked about Gray, uh, General Electric in 2013. They said that, you know, we are GE we are trying to work on complex problems. And one of the things that they were trying to work on was how to get the weight out of a fastener that fastens an airplane engine to the wing of a plane. Now in a plane, if you take out the weight of anything, you save fuel. And so over the life of a plane, if you actually reduce the weight by like 70 to 80%, you've saved enormous amount of money. But GE said, of course we can solve this problem. Maybe by just work, uh, getting our engineers to work. But why do we need to just look inward like this? We live in a world where we can take the brains of anybody and figure this out. So they posted this as an engineering problem in an engineering site called GrabCAD, and they created a contest and they announced $7,000 for the winner and who in the world can take the most weight out of the fastener? That was the problem statement. And they said, we will give you access to GE facilities. You can create things there and all of that. The 10 finalists who came, none of them were American, none of them were aeronautical engineers. The final winner who took out 80% of the weight of the fastener was a 21-year-old from Indonesia, a player, a guy called Arni, and he managed to create that. And then they took that and created a 3D model and tested it out. So when we look very narrow and limited, we may not find what we want. And that could be a great example to share for organisations which are looking for projects. Uh, cross collaborate, look across generation, look across, uh, locations, and how can we create that? So I just found that's a, yeah, yeah. Brilliant story. Such a great story. And I think, yeah, you've talked about, okay, using story for explaining the complex, making it simple, uh, inspiring people to look outside of the box. Um, strategy is a big one too, right? So every time an organisation launches a new strategy, like every three years. I, that for me feels like a really big opportunity to use story because a lot of the time it's like, here's our financial goals and here's our people goals and here's our product goals, and it's so boring. Uh, and then you just expect people to get excited about it and. It doesn't work that way. Have you seen something similar? Yeah, yeah. And especially I think when you have a really a 30,000 feet view on what the strategy is. Say an organisation would say, we wanna be the most digitally transformed company in the world. You know, what does that even mean to me? I'm working the factory, doing my own thing, so how is it going to affect me? What is it going to change? And I think there are great, uh. Examples of using really impactful stories, which have been, again, I really believe in taking something from another geography, another location and mulling over it and seeing how you can apply it to your own self. Um mm-hmm. When we actually introduce any change, and you work a lot on change, uh, Mel, when we work a lot on change, the minute we do a push, there is a push back. And that's because we sometimes really point fingers or say this is what is missing. And you know, we try to make it very local and personal. Yes, it's sometimes really useful to bring an example from outside and ask the team to reflect on it and find their own solutions. And that works really better. Mm-hmm. Uh, there was this, um, a lady called Betsy Holden, who used to be the VP head of foods for craft foods in the us and she was pregnant with a second child, uh, when she was looking for a bigger role. Her boss, who happened to be a white male, was like shifting jobs. And she thought, you know, I can put my hat in for his role. And he had worked with her. He knew her very well. So she goes and talks to him and let's call him Bill. And she says, bill, uh, I'm gonna put my hat in for that role. I hope you'll support me. Bill becomes quiet and for a moment thinks about it and says, but Betsy, we've never had anybody with two kids handling that role. Now again, Betsy can react in hundred different ways. She turns around and asks Bill, bill, how many kids do you have? And he had two kids. And sometimes when we work with organisations and we say, you know, we all hear the word unconscious bias. We will do a hundred assessments and build awareness. But when it comes to action. It's that self-reflection and looking at some of these things which can really shift the needle. So it was, that was a penny drop moment for Bill to rethink what, where his biases lay and to look at promotions very differently. And when we share this with organisations, when you're working on with them on creating their policies, um, I think it's, it's great to let people find their own, uh, realisation moment instead of having to tell. Yeah. And uh, look, I love chatting to you'cause you are full of stories and I love, that's a brilliant story as well. Um, now we've, we've touched on this a little bit, but for some people, as we've said, you know, storytelling is uncomfortable because we're just so used to emails. You know, we're so used to chat, we're so used to get up and speak at a team meeting and everybody goes about their way. How can people get started with storytelling? And I think more importantly, how can we encourage leaders To use storytelling more. Mm-hmm. I mean, I think stories are not a, when data against data or bullet points, I think first realising that, and I think Brene Brown said this beautifully, uh, that stories are data with a soul. And I see data also as an aggregation of individual stories. Uh, and you said this really well in terms of saying that it's not the big things. But it's actually the really small incidents, the daily examples, because life is in those small moments. I remember Bill Murray, the American Comedy, uh, he said that we are not born with the ability to tell a story all the time. It's something that we work on and build on. You have to hear stories, and then you have to live stories. So you get to have a, you, we all have a bunch of experiences and then we turn up and say, here's something what happened to me yesterday. And if people connect and realise you are telling your story well, so I think it's not looking at a lot of different things. It's starting with the small, nimble things, which are, you know, keep them running the Trojan mice as they're called and see where they lead. And the other thing is also like how, I know standup comedians do this a lot. They create these small sets, then they go to a club and they practice it and they watch for audience reaction. And then making your notes and refining it. And I think, again, as communicators, we need to evangelise storytelling as well as help others. I love that. Yes, it's, we do have a dual role. Don't, well we almost have a triple role. Like we have to be able to tell good stories. We have to, as you say, evangelise or, you know, help people understand why they're important and then educate others as well. And, uh, that's a really. It's powerful, but it's also, it's a big responsibility for on top of everything else that, you know, we do that is really important in organisations too. And I think this is really important about practice and the theory and the practice part, right? Mastery requires being good at both theory and practice. So you can pick up the theory from a whole lot of places. Uh, for instance, I share videos every Thursday on how can you use storytelling in a context? You have your podcast, lot of good, uh, things that we can hear from leaders, articles, and all that. But then it comes to the practice. You have to say it. And if you are stuck at that point where you are struggling to convert both. I would say, I mean, hint, hint, but get a coach. So not just for yourself, but also for your team so you can all grow your storytelling muscle and be each other's buddies in the process. That's a really good point actually. And you know, none of us are born. Excellent communicators. Like everything we learn, we learned how to walk, we learned how to talk, we learned how to write and, and those things like this is something you have to practice. And I think the enemy of progress is perfection, right? So if you think you, you've reached perfect, well you've stopped learning. Uh, so progress is where. The, the magic happens and find those supportive places where you can practice this and find those coaches if you need, if you feel like you need that one-on-one support. Um, and there's plenty of online groups and all those sorts of places. We can get advice for free. You can learn for free like your LinkedIn videos every Thursday. That's all free. You put that value out there. So I love that. Thank you so much. Um, okay, last question. AI. It's everywhere. There's a lot of communicators out there who went, ah, it's worried it's gonna take my job. Uh, I have my own views on that, but in what ways do you think we could use AI to enhance storytelling or even just help people get started with storytelling? Yeah, no, it's a great point and I really wonder about this, uh, because I think we are all straddling that balance between being AI cautious and AI curious. Um, you know, at, at a very base level, it can be a great co-pilot, uh, to help you craft your messaging, but the voice has to be yours because your voice is what builds trust. So there are two, maybe there are many more, but there are two things, like one on how organisations can use AI and people can use AI, and how can you communicate about ai. And I think as communicators again, and you know, when we have a new thing like AI, you need to go straight for those concrete examples. Uh, but you can also share use cases. So you are talking about how an organisation is using ai, and I think organisations can really lead that, uh, to build that stakeholder conf uh, confidence. Like there's an organisation called Open Lab, uh, which is a sustainable fashion initiative. And it has introduced an AI powered sorting tool to help speed up garment recycling process. And it has done this in collaboration with cross industry partners like uh, h and m, and there is a Hong Kong Research Institute of textiles and apple. Now, previously, this process, the sorting process was labor intensive. It posed a lot of health risk, and it was difficult to maintain hygiene standards. But using this AI process, you're able to actually categorize the fabric, uh, by process, sorting it automatically before it can be turned into new ya. So it reduces time, it reduces the manual effort and you get a better output. But humans are leading this and sharing examples like this can sharpen the use cases and help organisations really learn from each other. And you build trust with the stakeholders instead of saying, it's gonna take off my job, and there are no extremes, you know, uh, it gives us an idea of how we can use this as our, uh, tool. Uh, to drive outcomes. I love that story. And I, if I may add, like I've used AI to help just get ideas started as well with, with storytelling. So for example, you know, let's say I'm working on a, a new strategy for a client. You know, they're rolling that out to their organisation. You know, going into something like Google Gemini and saying this, let's say for example, this company's an insurance company and they've got a new five year plan. Um. What is a good analogy for a company in this industry that has a new five year plan? You know, not putting in all the, the sensitive details, of course. Uh, and just seeing what it comes back with. You know, sometimes it's like, you know, it is like building a ship or it's like, you know, climbing a mountain and, and whatever it might be. But for people who are really stuck, it's... Just a great place to get those creative juices flowing, I think rather than doing it all for you, but at least get, you start thinking about analogies and metaphors and also it's a great search engine in a way. Uh, absolutely. Uh, I think we have limited resources and we have limited time. If Maslow were to redo his hierarchy, time would be right on top, right? Uh, uh, so definitely, uh, for that. And I think we tend to add on things, uh, to what we have to do. This really helps us think at scale. And then filter and look at what we need to use for what's best fix. For sure. Yeah. Love that. Well, I have three questions that I ask every guest on the podcast. Are you ready for those? Yes. All right. Let's go. What is one of the best communication lessons you've ever learned, and how did it change the way you approach communication? Mm mm I think, um, this was Marshall Gans, um, in 2007. He talks about stories being very specific. Um, work a very particular time, place setting mood, the Soundari, the texture, everything. So the more you communicate the specificity, the more power your story will have to engage others. And it's actually the specificity of that experience that brings an insight. And I saw this at play. I knew this again theoretically. Um, during COVID, I was working with an NGO in the interiors of du. But I was talking to students, teachers, and parents about creativity and innovation, how to keep it going. I was really thrilled to have that opportunity to have that reach there, sitting here in Hong Kong, being able to do that work, which was closer to my hometown. And I mentioned about something about my father and a particular village that he originally came from and how we moved from there and what are some of the things that he did. And at the end of the conversation, one of the teachers in that group said. I am from that village ... I know exactly what you're talking about. And I was blown away, literally. And so for me, that specificity has built so many serendipitous connections. And I think we don't do that enough. We tend to talk on the layer on the surface. I think it's really important to be specific. Uh, and that's a really good point. You know, apart from specificity also helps us visualise things more clearly and therefore connect with, you know, instead of just saying, well, I walk down the street and saying I walked down the dusty road. You know, we can see that more in our, in our mind and connect with the story, but also there's some behavioural science research around. The value of using specific numbers and specific words in terms of building trust and credibility as well. So that's a really good lesson to learn. Thank you for sharing. Next question, what's one thing you wish people would do more of or do less of when communicating? Uh, maybe I'll start with a less of I, people will talk less about stories and actually share stories. And more of is definitely the practice. Uh, we know the power of stories to help us think differently, feel differently, act differently, but it's so understated. Um, like you mentioned actually, and I was thinking about it when we are, when we were kids, school kids and we learned a new word. We would get so excited when we would use it immediately in a sentence and wait for audience reaction and all of that. And I think we can use stories in a business context in exactly the same way. We all listen to a lot of stories. We have a lot of experiences. We need to try it out. Of course, in a business context, we need to keep it really crisp. And that's where, again, the practice really comes from. If I was sitting in a bar with you, I could tell the same G example as like a five, 10 minute long add all the details. But when we are talking to CEOs and when you're talking to teams and stakeholders, we need to get the gist of the message in. Yes. And that requires practice. Yeah. I love that. Uh. I, I could talk to you all day about this stuff, but I won't because then we'd be talking about storytelling, like you just said, instead of doing it. Last one. Who do you turn to for communication advice? Oh, I like to think that I have this personal board of advisors. They've been like all in told into those positions, so they're all there. So at a very basic level, of course, it's books like things like, you know, I love Morgan Housel's uh, blog. Uh, which he writes called Collaborative Fund. Um, so many examples and stories, and he's talking about finance. So that I, I really like that, uh, subject, but it also talks about it with historical examples and stories and I just, you know, I'm blown away by that. So I. Books like that, For instance, sometimes even an economist where they will say that, you know, the uh, we are following a strategy, investment strategy, which is like the baseline play of beyond board or something like that. So, I mean, a lot of places, friends from IABC for sure, and I'm saying IABC as a name, but I think it's friends. Uh, that I've met through IABC, uh, with whom I do have a lot of discussions. This conversation was so clarifying in my mind. As I was saying, we have a huge, uh, TEDx au women community that I'm part of, that I'm part of the curation team. So I'm a TEDx coach and recently did a TEDx speech as well, which I'm like really thrilled to tick off in a way. Um, so there's so many in that community that, uh, you know, I can just. They're literally in a way available on tap. Respecting their time. Of course. Uh, yes. But I think some of these really work for me. Oh, look, I totally agree. It's learning from by osmosis in a way, isn't it? Like, you know, you listen to podcasts, you reap blogs, you see what people are sharing on LinkedIn, and then just having those people, you know, you can reach out to and just go, look, can I just test something with you or have I got the right. Idea here, or am I making stuff up? Like, you know, those little, those little sense checks as well I think are so important just to have that community. Especially when, like me, you largely work by yourself and you need that community around you. Well, Soundari, thank you so much for being on the show today. If people would like to learn more about you and get in touch, how can they do that? Yeah, no, thank you for this. Conversation. I mean, it was one of those crisp, happy, uh, conversations. Um. I, I think, uh, best way to reach out is on LinkedIn. Uh, pretty active on LinkedIn,. perfect. Well, again, thank you so much. Lovely to have you on the show. Thank you so much, Mel. I look forward to continuing our conversation offline as well. Me too.