Why Are There Snowblowers in Miami? by Steven D. Goldstein

Author:Steven D. Goldstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626343245
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Connecting Through Storytelling

It’s no secret that one of the most effective ways to communicate an idea to people is through stories. People have been doing this since the beginning of time. Storytelling is one of the easiest methods of connecting to another human being. You can get your point across in a way that they can relate to and remember. The most successful people are often excellent storytellers.

In his book Tell to Win, Peter Guber—chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment and producer of movies such as Batman, The Witches of Eastwick, and Flashdance—talks about the incredible power of storytelling. He took a group of ten friends on a five-day serious rafting trip on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. These friends were all-stars in their respective fields, and were all supremely confident individuals. For the first couple of days, they were all horsing around, and Guber knew they were not taking the very real danger in front of them seriously enough. So far they had all been pretty much ignoring the instructions of the expedition guides, and he felt if they didn’t start taking things seriously, there was a real danger someone could die.

As they came ashore the third day, they could hear what sounded like a train roaring by. But of course it was not a train but the “class 10 rapid”12 that was just around the bend. Guber took the group up the canyon to look at the thirty-seven-foot drop—the waterfall they were going to go over the next day. That made everyone nervous enough to be receptive to one of Peter Guber’s stories. It was a Joseph Campbelltype tale that took place in ancient Egypt, and was about a hunting party traveling on the Nile. The story was about a king, a crocodile spirit, and learning to respect the perils of crossing the river. Every one of the previously joking members of the rafting group paid rapt attention during the telling of the tale. After hearing the story, they got it: It was time to stop messing around. They needed to concentrate on navigating the river. And they all listened to his rules about rafting much more than if he hadn’t told the story.

This technique is an essential one if you want to be an effective leader. If I just give you the instructions without the story, even very simple instructions, they often go in one ear and out the other. But wrapped in the import of a vivid narrative, it becomes an impactful message. You’ve got to draw people in when you want to get your point across. Our mothers and fathers told us stories when we were kids (I can still remember many of those stories). Most of us still respond to stories more than any other kind of communication.

When I was at Citibank, I attended a four-day training seminar. These were backbreaking meetings, one after another; and toward the end of the seminar our brains were ready to explode. On the next to the last day, they said to us, “We’re going to have a project for you to work on after dinner.

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