People are moved by emotion….. we are beasts of emotion more than logic. We are creatures of story, and the process of changing one mind or the whole world must begin with “Once upon a time.”..our attitudes, fears, hopes, and values are strongly influenced by story..
Is “telling to win” just the latest fashion in a business world that is continually swept with new fads and new gurus pitching the newest can’t-miss secret to success?
Or does it represent a real and deep insight into communications strategy?
it’s a real insight.
“The audience accepts the story because, for a human, a good story always seems like a gift.”
The new gospel of business storytelling challenges the very common view of human nature. Common view is that wisdom, intelligences are things that set us apart.
Jonathan Gottschall, author of Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human , thinks humans are beasts of emotion more than logic, and the process of changing one mind or the whole world must begin with “once upon a time”. He takes rather a dim view of dispassionate presentation of costs and benefits:
- Is delivering a message through PowerPoint slides, spreadsheets packed with figures a dispassionate presentation of costs and benefits? Yes it is.
- But, don’t you think that availing of technological tools and telling the story through them makes a better business sense?
Peter Guber, in his book Tell to Win, advances a powerful argument that humans simply are not moved to action by “data dumps”. People are moved by emotion. Story telling involves lots of emotion, and it works. It also makes good business sense.
But when we are absorbed in a story we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally and this seems to leave us defenseless. Story is a tool that can be used for good or ill. Like fire, it can be used to warm a city or to burn it down.
Abstracted from: Why Storytelling Is The Ultimate Weapon. Read the complete story, here.
