Wally Bock, citing an article in Forbes, talks about the value of storytelling to get your point across. And it’s true. I frequently use stories to help clients understand a concept more easily or wrap their heads around something that’s very new to them.

Yes, storytelling is an extremely powerful tool, but I see two problems inherent in these discussions.

The first is that the political, religious and business leaders used to illustrate storytelling’s influence are always positive examples and, obviously, plenty of those on the dark side have used it too.

Secondly, there is rarely any information on how listeners can shield themselves from the enthralling effect of the story in order to evaluate the actual ideas being presented.

I remember a friend telling me that he was mesmerized after hearing Bobby Kennedy, who he opposed, use stories to describe a situation and what he would do to change it. The effect wore off, but he found it a frightening experience.

Combine these two and you have a recipe for disaster—Hitler was an expert storyteller from the dark side, which is why he still has adherents.

Business leaders tell stories, called visions, constantly.

But as adults, involved in adult pursuits, we have a responsibility not to suspend our common and critical senses and swallow the story whole.

Here is how you stay balanced.

Enjoy the story, but remind yourself that it is a story and that once the telling is done then the content needs to be dissected and evaluated by the left side of your brain as opposed to embraced in toto by the right.

Your comments—priceless

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 5:30 am and is filed under About Leadership, Communication, Leadership Skills. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Tags: communicating, lessons, responsibility, Wally Bock
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