Sarah Bauder is the senior editor at Lab Manager. She possesses a diverse background spanning editorial, digital marketing and film and television production. She brings over 15 years of experience
Jonathan Klane, M.S.Ed., CIH, CSP, CHMM, CIT's EHS and risk career spans more than three decades in various roles as a consultant, trainer, professor, embedded safety director for two colleges.
Ask most lab managers how they get a researcher to take a hazard seriously, and the answer will be some version of "provide the facts."—explain the mechanism, cite the exposure limit, show the data. It feels rigorous, and it is exactly why so much safety messaging slides off without a trace. Facts are how experts reassure themselves they have done their job, but rarely how anyone else is actually persuaded. The uncomfortable truth the profession keeps sidestepping is that information is not influence, and the gap between the two is where most safety programs quietly fail.
Few people have mapped that gap more directly than Jonathan Klane, who has directed safety for hundreds of research labs, advises as a storytelling and safety consultant with the global consultancy ERM, and studies how narrative shapes risk perception through a PhD program at Arizona State University devoted to the human and social dimensions of science and technology—a field, as he put it, that is "much more about the humans than it is about the technologies." Speaking at the 2026 Lab Manager Leadership Summit, he pointed to a conclusion that should unsettle anyone who equates thoroughness with influence: the single most underused persuasion tool in the lab is the story, and the managers who dismiss it as fluff are leaving their most powerful lever untouched. It is an argument he has made elsewhere too, insisting that narrative beats data when the goal is changing behavior.
Jonathan Klane, MSEd, CIH, CSP, CHMM, CIT, storytelling consultant.
Every act of communication is attempting to accomplish something. People do not speak idly. "We're always trying to accomplish something with our communication," Klane noted, and even small talk is "accomplishing the social contract" of building rapport. The problem is that lab managers routinely lose sight of what a given safety message is actually for. Is it meant to inform, to persuade, to change a behavior? Those are distinct goals requiring entirely different tools. Yet, most safety communication defaults to informing and then wonders why compliance doesn't follow.
This is where the purpose-told story—a term coined by screenwriting legend Robert McKee—earns its place. This is not anecdote as decoration; it is a narrative deployed deliberately to achieve a specific end, governed by a single question: "What am I trying to do?"
Persuasion research generally clusters around two primary goals:
Getting someone to buy something.
Getting someone to behave in a healthier, safer way.
A well-chosen story is one of the most reliable ways for the second.
Crucially, this approach must be stripped of any manipulative connotation. "Persuasion is not about manipulation," Klane explained. "Persuasion is about voluntarily agreeing to someone, something. Coercion, manipulation, that's very different." A lab manager telling a story to help a researcher genuinely visualize why a protocol matters isn't tricking anyone. They are doing the legitimate work of influence—the trust-based persuasion that drives real change in the lab.
Metaphor beats analogy, every time
If a story is the vehicle, metaphor is the fuel. While it sounds like a literary flourish, a metaphor works because it bypasses the reflexive skepticism that greets direct safety claims.
Consider the hazard of silica dust. Tell a researcher that inhaling fine silica particles causes lung damage—the very hazard OSHA's respirable crystalline silica standard exists to control, you invite a technical debate about thresholds, exposure limits, and personal protective equipment (PPE). Yet, say "breathing rocks is bad," the dynamic changes instantly. It is a metaphor, not a comparison. "You don't hold me accountable to it being literal," as Klane explained, "but because I've phrased it as if it were, it has a lot of power to it."
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The contrast with analogy is the crucial, practical takeaway:
An analogy: it's like breathing rocks—hands the listener a comparison to poke holes in.
A metaphor: breathing rocks is bad—asserts the component directly and lets the visual do the work, bypassing the argument entirely.
The advice that follows is blunt: if you want your communication to have more power, use metaphors, because they carry inherent power—and avoid analogies. For a profession trained to qualify every statement, it is a genuinely countercultural instruction, and one that costs nothing to adopt.
The discipline of the micro-story
The hardest part of storytelling for technical leaders runs directly against their training. When a message isn't landing, the scientific reflex is to add: more details, more caveats, more empirical evidence. This is a documented cognitive trap—the additive bias, confirmed in a 2021 Nature study showing people systematically overlook subtractive changes. As Klane observed, "even when we tell people there's a bias towards adding, then you give them an exercise and a problem to solve, and what do they do? They add." What almost no one reaches for is subtraction.
Klane recalled a lab manager who mandated that every safety story run under 30 seconds. The rule seemed arbitrary until its origin was revealed: the manager had once started pitching a story to a client, only for the client to interrupt and ask, "How long is this story going to be?" The pitch died on the spot. A story that overstays its welcome doesn't just fail to persuade; it actively alienates the listener.
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The solution is the micro-story—a narrative pared down to its raw essentials.
Signal the payoff up front: Announce the point and state exactly how brief the story will be. This lowers the listener's defensive guard.
Omit unnecessary words: Apply the classic editing rule to "murder your darlings." If a detail serves the teller's ego rather than the safety objective, cut it.
In safety communication, the shortest version that still carries the emotional weight almost always wins.
Know the audience’s prior context
A story tuned for one audience will fall flat with another, which makes audience analysis non-negotiable. Standard communication advice says to "know your audience," but truly effective leadership demands meeting them at their prior context. But the more demanding version pushes past the cliché to a standard Klane had taught for years—that great communication must "meet their needs and prior context." Tuning the message to the people in the room is itself a keystone of an effective safety culture.
Prior context means everything that has happened to a person before they walk into the conversation. Klane illustrates this with a project where he was called to defuse a tense workplace exposure incident. He was met by three furious workers who had been mistreated during a previous, botched cleanup. One worker confronted him directly: "Why should we trust you? You're being paid by them."
No amount of technical expertise, safety data, or credentials could resolve that hostility. Klane had to address their prior context—a history of being ignored and endangered. He did so by making three counterintuitive commitments:
He agreed they shouldn't trust him: He conceded their anger rather than arguing against it.
He promised transparency: He pledged to share every single finding with the workers before it went to the management paying his invoice.
He granted veto power: He promised to propose no mitigation plan unless all three workers unanimously approved it.
By addressing their prior context first, the outrage dissolved, paving the way for collaboration. The exact same safety message, delivered to two different audiences with different histories, is not the same message. Understanding why a policy exists, and how it intersects with the staff’s lived experience, is the boundary between begrudging compliance and genuine lab safety culture.
Curiosity is a persuasion skill
There is an underlying psychological trap in scientific leadership: "we are the biggest fans of our own ideas, our research." While enthusiasm is vital for research, it becomes a liability when trying to persuade an audience that does not share your priorities—or, as Klane notes of tougher stakeholders, those who "don't understand the research and aren't interested."
The antidote is curiosity.
Curiosity is not just a passive personality trait; it is an active communication technique. Klane, who successfully oversaw safety across hundreds of engineering labs without being an engineer himself, credits his success to being "absolutely fascinated by their research."
A lab manager genuinely curious about why a researcher resists a control, or what a technician actually values, is far better positioned to craft the story that moves them. Curiosity is a communication technique—and one closely tied to the shift from having every answer to asking better questions.
Key takeaways
For leaders looking to operationalize these narrative principles, focus on these five core actions:
Lead with a story, not a spec sheet: People are moved by narrative far more than by data. Wrap the safety objectives in a purposeful, brief story.
Use metaphor, not analogy: A metaphor ("breathing rocks is bad") asserts an image directly to bypass skepticism and avoid pedantic debates.
Keep it under thirty seconds: The additive bias tempts lab managers to pile on detail. Edit the narrative down to its absolute core and signal the brevity of the story upfront.
Meet their needs and prior context: Tailor the message to what the audience values and to everything they experienced before the conversation began.
Stay curious: Becoming a genuine fan of someone else's idea or concern is what lets you find the story that actually reaches them.
Ultimately, persuasion is not a "soft skill" bolted onto technical work; it is the fundamental mechanism by which technical work is safely executed.
While saying "facts don't persuade" is a slight exaggeration, facts delivered without a human frame are functionally invisible. As Klane summarizes: "Communication is a challenge. Risk perceptions are everything. Decision making is unpredictable." The lab managers who treat a well-told micro-story as a precision safety tool are the ones who actually change behavior at the bench.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Why are stories more persuasive than facts in lab safety?
Facts let experts feel they have done their job, but they rarely change behavior on their own because listeners process narrative more readily than data. A purpose-told story wraps the safety point in a human frame that the audience can actually absorb and act on.
What is the difference between a metaphor and an analogy in safety communication?
An analogy makes an explicit comparison ("it's like breathing rocks"), which invites the listener to argue over how well the comparison holds. A metaphor asserts the image directly ("breathing rocks is bad"), carrying more persuasive power because it sidesteps that reflexive skepticism.
How long should a safety story be?
As short as possible while still carrying its emotional weight—ideally under thirty seconds. The additive bias pushes managers to add detail, but omitting unnecessary words almost always makes a story more persuasive, not less.
What does "know your audience" really mean for a lab manager?
It means tailoring a message to the audience's actual needs rather than the communicator's, and accounting for their prior context—everything they experienced before the conversation. The same safety message delivered to two different audiences is not really the same message at all.
Sarah Bauder is the senior editor at Lab Manager. She possesses a diverse background spanning editorial, digital marketing and film and television production. She brings over 15 years of experience in editorial writing, B2C and B2B content creation. A student of history, she graduated from York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She can be reached at sbauder@labmanger.com.
