Tell a story
One character goes through the whole lesson — the principles show in what happens to them.
Based on: storytelling and the case study method. People remember stories far better than lists of rules. When learners follow a character, they understand not only what to do but why it matters.
When to use it
- Values and culture: what the company stands for, how we treat customers.
- Ethics and compliance: conflicts of interest, gifts, speaking up.
- Explaining why a rule exists.
How the lesson flows
| # | Card | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Card — Meet the character | Who they are, where they work, what situation they're in. |
| 2 | Card — The challenge | Something goes wrong or gets difficult. |
| 3 | Card — The turning point | The character makes a choice; one principle in action. |
| 4 | Card — The outcome | What happened because of that choice. |
| 5 | Quiz — What should they have done? | Learners judge the character's decision. |
| 6 | Card — The point of the story | The principle in one or two sentences. |
| 7 | Form — How is it in your team? | Learners connect the story to their own work. |
Example
Speaking up: Jana, a new warehouse worker, notices a broken safety rail but doesn't want to look like a troublemaker. A week later a colleague nearly falls. The quiz asks what she should have done and when. The point: reporting is part of the job, and the company protects people who report.
Tips
- Give the character a name, a job and a feeling — learners should recognise themselves.
- Each scene shows one principle. Don't explain it in the scene; let the outcome show it.
- A real story from your company (anonymised) beats an invented one.
- Add a photo or illustration of the character to the first card.
Where it comes from
Stories are the oldest teaching method there is. Fables, parables and myths passed on values and experience long before writing. Modern education turned them into the case method. In the 1870s Christopher Columbus Langdell introduced the study of real court cases at Harvard Law School. In the 1920s Harvard Business School began teaching through cases from real companies, and it still does.
Psychologists explain why stories work. Jerome Bruner described narrative thinking as a way of understanding the world alongside logical argument (Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, 1986). Roger Schank showed in Tell Me a Story (1990) that we store much of our knowledge in memory as stories and retrieve it when we meet a similar situation.
Did you know?
- In the book Made to Stick (2007), Chip and Dan Heath describe an exercise from Chip's course at Stanford. After a series of short speeches, 63% of students remembered a story, but only 5% remembered a statistic.
- The often-quoted claim that facts are "22 times more memorable" in a story is usually attributed to Jerome Bruner, but nobody has found the source. It's a nice myth that suits the Bust myths approach.
- A story works best with a character the learner can identify with: someone in a similar job with a similar problem. The hero doesn't have to be perfect. A mistake and what follows from it teach the most.