The Scrum Master's Secret Weapon: The Art of Storytelling

He's award-winning speaker and having won accolades in India, US, UK. He loves to mentor and coach young professionals and students in their endeavors, making their journey better and beautiful. And by the way, he's also an author of Amazon bestseller— bestselling book, which is Small Town Bigger Dreams. And now he's currently working as an IT project manager. For India's leading IT service provider, and he has holding 16 years of work experience. And by the way, he's also a certified, uh, PSM 1 certified. And now his mission is to empower millions of people by helping them discover their true voice and confidence. So have you guys ever wondered that how the storytelling can impact your Scrum Master journey? Have you guys ever wondered? So that is what exactly we are going to see in this session. So let's get ready to explore that, and let's welcome our guest speaker, one and only one, Haritosh Srivastav. Hey Haritosh, welcome to the course.

Hey Sabna, thank you so much for having me. Hello everyone, good evening, good afternoon. So storytelling and Scrum Master. Now I would, I can do this session in two ways and you guys will decide by putting in the chat. The one way is which I call is called unidirectional information flow. That means that I will just speak and speak and speak and speak and speak. And you will be sitting like this. Ah, and the other way is that I will ask you to interact. I will ask you to put something in chat. I will ask you to even raise your hand and sometimes share your story, sometimes share. So write in the comment if you want me to be the unidirectional information flow, then write 1 in the chat, or write 2 in the chat if you want to have more interaction. Okay, I see some interaction. 2, 2, 2. Amazing.

Okay, okay.

I was wondering if there are any, any ones out there. Thank you so much. Thank you for allowing me. So let's start. Why storytelling? How many of you have heard this buzzword storytelling? You need to know storytelling, business storytelling, personal storytelling. Why storytelling? Okay, feel free to unmute or raise your hand. I don't know how you're doing your community, but yeah, I see Sunil's hand, so please go ahead, Sunil. And then Richard.

Yeah, no, I mean, I, I mean, I mean, I know this story thing because, uh, I mean, I'm from the IT background, so we, we got this in our organization also. So it's, I mean, uh, I understand this is something, uh, we share our personal experience, whether it is a professional, whatever, right? And if we are experienced something, how we can vocalize, how we can talk, and how we can express ourselves, what we have done it, and that is the actual one. If we can express that, that is where, you know, the storytelling comes here.

Very well done, very well done. Everybody type well done Sunil. Let's have interaction going on. Next, I saw Richard raising the hand, so go ahead, Richard. Sorry, Richard, I'm not able to hear you. Maybe some problem with the audio. Can you hear me now? Yes, now I can hear you.

Yeah, it does help you to get your perspective out to your listeners and express yourself, explaining your, um, telling your story and getting your perspective out in a nutshell.

Yeah, amazing, amazing. So everybody, and that's completely true, you said your perspective, you said your narrative. Amazing. So everybody now type amazing Richard. We'll hear one more person, which is Ruchi. So go ahead, Ruchi.

Hi, so, uh, my perspective is like, if, if you are sharing your story, so you don't know like who is suffering what. Maybe the struggles you have already faced, someone else is stuck there. So you never know, your story can be a life changer for anyone. If you keep your things beholding with yourself The world can never be changed. This is an easiest way to, you know, make the change happen.

Awesome, awesome. So everybody, what, what should we type now? Uh, rocking Ruchi. I am so pleased, Sapna. I'm so impressed with your community. They don't need me. They already know about storytelling.

They are awesome people, actually.

I can, I can sense that. Amazing. So all of you are true. And if we talk about general storytelling, it's all about sharing what is inside us. And sometimes you can talk about is— and when it comes to storytelling, there's so many different dimensions. There is, of course, there's a business storytelling, more contextual in our case. There's a personal storytelling, there's a fictional storytelling, there's so many genres. But at the end of the day, it's the perspective from one person to going to another person, and I love that. But we are here, we talk, we want to talk about business. So I thought, how can I talk about business when I'm here? Please, let's do some, some fun. And I wanted to share with you an amazing experiment. I, I am pretty sure I asked Sapna. Sapna did not know about this experiment, so I thought maybe you guys also may not be aware. And this experiment is all about It's great, it's good feeling to know about storytelling, but how do you quantify that, right? We are all here Scrum Master, a lot of time business asks, can you quantify that? So how do you quantify storytelling? So it was an amazing study done by two people called Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker, and like us, they were very, very excited, like, okay, great storytelling, but how do I quantify that? So what they did was They were based out of New York and they went to thrift store, they went to like pretty cheap stores and got 100 items, and those items cost $128.74. And then they did this experiment called Insignificant Objects Project, which means that they said— they reached out to a lot of story writers, script writers from Hollywood and say, we want to check what is the quantitative impact stories can have, how much adding story can add value to something as insignificant as something from a store. So why don't you write me a story and we'll put it there and we'll see that. So the scriptwriters agreed to that and they wrote 100 fictional stories And these Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker went back to eBay and posted the story along with the object's name and put it on auction. Now here is the question for you, and that's where we'll have fun. Now I want to know, can you guess what was the percentage increase in the value after stories were added to any object? So 100 items bought for $128.74. Now can you guess how much was it sold after the stories were added? Let's look in the chat and let's see who is the closest one. Okay, I don't see anything. Okay, 50%, 70%. Okay, keep up, keep up. Still 2 less. 950%. I love your 950%, Richard. Okay, $100, $85, 95%, 90%, under $2 million. Oh man, that's, that's a little too much.

I wish.

Okay, 200%, 240, 40. Okay, okay, I'm pretty sure you must be dying to know what happened to this one, right? So once These objects were put on eBay with the stories. $220. Okay, so okay, enough guessing now. Let me give you the results. I think Richard was a little too high, but let me say that these 128.74 items worth were sold for $3,612.51, which means On an average, one item's price increased by 2700%, means the value increased by 27 times. Write in the chat MB, mind blown, if you are also blown away with this amazing stats. Wow, first time I heard that, my mind was also blown away. Because a lot of time we feel good, right? Those amazing things, it's good to have. But when you understand that, and there is also a reason that, no, there are— our brain is literally hardwired to listen to story. It's an altogether different aspect. And I thought I will probably not go, but this one was amazing, 2700%. And interesting one is this pink horse which The scriptwriter actually went too far, too emotional onto that. He wrote a fictitious story about a father losing her— his daughter, and then daughter is in the heaven. Every day he holds the pink horse so that someday the daughter will come back. Now just by adding that one emotional story, that pink horse which was bought for $1 was sold for $104,000.

$1.50.

Isn't that incredible? Now the question comes, how can you learn about storytelling? And more importantly, how can storytelling help you? So this is where I want to ask you, because you know, we are Scrum Master, we are facilitators, we want to facilitate more than tell. So I want to ask you, how do you think Storytelling can help you in your Scrum Master journey. Anyone wants to raise the hand, unmute? Okay, suddenly the room became silent. Okay, do you want me to handpick? Okay, Richard, go ahead.

Yeah, yeah.

If you master the art of storytelling, it would help you become not just a good Scrum Master but, but a great one. It will help you go beyond just accomplishing your task as a Scrum Master. It would help you engage positively with your team, and then it helps you to get beyond the task and get really emotional with them and um, exceed the expectation as just a team member and really push the whole task ahead and do beyond the task of the office and build— I, I don't know how to put it— you do a little extra beyond just meeting the daily task of the office. I think that's the word I'd love to put it.

Amazing, Richard. Amazing. I'll probably put a story which happened pretty much today. So my project, you might, you might have noticed, I mentioned I'm still working in an IT company. One of my project is going through fire. There's a lot of customer escalation meetings and all going on. And there's this project manager who's also playing the Scrum Master role in the offshore. And I could feel that for the last few days she has been working really, really hard. And all it took for me was to say that, Meera, I can sense that you're working really hard. Please take care of yourself. You're doing— if nobody has told you yet, you're doing a great job. Now, just telling these 2-3 lines didn't take anything from my pocket, it didn't take a lot of time, but her whole day, I believe, was shifted. Now we as a Scrum Master, we have a bigger role. All of you agree to that, right? It's not only about task management and, and just going through user stories and Kanban board. You are also a facilitator, you're also a coach. And I, I sneak peek into what Sapna was saying every morning when you say YouTube, I am awesome, I'm doing. I'm gonna ask you to add a challenge to that and say pick every day one team member of you and say, you are doing awesome. Is that doable? Is that feasible? Awesome. So I handpicked what could be some of the scenarios for Scrum Master. As you would feel, this is not a generic storytelling session. It is very much customized for you. And I thought about, and I would need your opinion as to, do you think it's a valid scenario or not? So I picked one scenario, which is when you're going for interview. Now tell me, if you are going for interview, would storytelling help you or not? Type in the chat yes or no. Awesome! Yes, yes, yes. Okay, really help. Amazing, amazing. So can Can we do an experiment? By now you know that I really do not like the number 1 that I was telling. So let's have one person, one very brave soul who would like to share their journey. And of course, Richard, I'm not going to pick on you. You have already spoken. I would like to hear some more people come and share their story. How has coming to Agile, coming to Scrum Master role impacted you in your life, maybe personal, maybe professional. So it is sort of an interview, but if you think about it, it is also a storytelling question. So who is that braveheart who want to come here and openly share? Yeah, okay, should I pick? Okay, Ruchi, I think, is thinking about— you can do it, Ruchi.

Thank you, Haritosh Srivastav. So, okay, so, uh, I would like to tell you here, being a Scrum Master, I really loved the concept behind it. It's about the mindset which we really need to change. And the more I read about it, I practiced about it, I felt like it is not helping me only in my professional way but it is also helping me in my, you know, personal life. My day-to-day things are getting on track. I am able to more help my— like, be with my family and my child. And obviously, I'm able to give, you know, much more to my professional life as well. So this is how this has impacted me. So I just want to take an example here. So earlier the work was like the same only, but it was not managed. I didn't have the mindset. I, I was not able to, uh, you know, uh, pick on my priorities. So with this Scrum Master thing, I was able to pick up the priority things. I'm able to understand which is more on the priority and which can wait. So By opting this, I'm, I'm, uh, I am now a happy family, uh, woman as well. So this is how this impacted you.

Wow, amazing, amazing! How many of you could see the emotion on Ruchi's face and, and how she was speaking from her? Type me in the chat if you felt that. I definitely felt that, that Ruchi is really enjoying this journey. That's awesome, awesome! So now here is one thing I would like to give you, if nothing else, that you might like to use this formula that can really help you in storytelling journey. And, and that is called then, now, and how. Very simple. So then, what was happening then before? Let's take this Ruchi's story itself, right? What was happening before that? Maybe Ruchi was not organized. Maybe Ruchi was struggling in his personal life and her personal life. Maybe Ruchi was not able to do the most important thing, and now what happened? Ruchi is able to spend time with her family. Ruchi is able to make an impact. Ruchi is able to do things she could barely do before. And what is the how? Is when she adopted this agile mindset, when she became a Scrum Master. Now, whenever you're telling a story, you can use this very simple formula yet very effective formula. Simple doesn't always mean ineffective, right? So very simple but very effective formula. And a lot of salespeople actually use that. You would have— we would have seen that ad, right? The one side there will be a fat person and then there will be a thin person and they'll say, try this powder or try this belt, right? They use the same formula. So whenever you are telling story, whether it's personal story, whether you're telling in an interview use this formula. What is the formula? Type in the chat. Let's see how many people still remember. What is the formula? 3-word formula: then, now, how. Awesome, awesome, amazing, guys.