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What stories are you not telling? July 6, 2006

Stories have been a staple in society for as long as humans can remember. We were raised at stories at bed time, Dan Brown’s “The Di Vinci Code” has sold over 60 million copies and Hollywood makes billions of dollars a year by telling us stories. At about the age of 2 we start telling our own stories.

The stories we tell send a very strong message to the listeners. The unfortunate thing is that most people don’t always get the full potential from their stories, and some work against their best interests.

A financial report tells a story.
A corporate brochure tells a story.
A business card tells a story.

The story each of these tell will be different and get different results. For example a hand written business card tells a different story about the owner compared to an expensive, high gloss, graphic designer card. What is the story that yours tells?

A common story

Stories allow us to understand the world around us. Some stories empower us, others hamper us. Sometimes these stories are so much a part of the environment, we don’t even notice them. One of the most common is the story about how Business is war. You’ll not always hear that story explained directly, usually just through comments like: “we need to roll out the big guns”, “motivate the troops”, “understand the enemy”, “prepare a defence”.

I will never forget a conversation I had about this topic some time ago. I was talking with a business executive that was stressed, angry and having difficulty coping. His description of his work environment, and the story he was telling, was entirely in terms of war. He was, in his own words, fighting a losing battle.

So after some time establishing how difficult working in a war zone is, I directed him to consider, for just a moment, if he would think about his work as a basket of fruit. There are the rotten apples that need to be removed, seeds to be spat out, pits that will break your teeth if you bite into them, yet the work itself is sweet, healthy and revitalises.

He looked at me with a blank stare, confused and trying to understand how to do what I asked. After a few moments he claimed it was impossible, “I can’t do it. It’s just not real.”

“Neither is being in a war zone.” I replied.

Stories are Persuasion

One day, there was a blind man sitting on the steps of a building
with a hat by his feet and a sign that read:

“I am blind, please help.”

A creative publicist was walking by and stopped to observe.
He saw that the blind man had only a few coins in his hat.
He dropped in more coins and, without asking for permission,
took the sign and rewrote it.

He returned the sign to the blind man and left.
That afternoon the publicist returned to the blind man and noticed
that his hat was full of bills and coins.

The blind man recognized his footsteps and asked
if it was he who had rewritten his sign
and wanted to know what he had written on it.

The publicist responded: “Nothing that was not true. I just wrote the
message a little differently.” He smiled and went on his way.

The new sign read: “Today is Spring and I cannot see it.”
- Taken from Kim Klaver’s blog

Stories are able to capture the listeners imagination and stimulate emotion. Stories have a profound ability to make you think in different ways. They have the ability to persuade when other methods fail. They can cut past beliefs, preconceptions, and conflicting ideas. Stories package information in a way that help the listener to understand that information. And for these reasons, and many more, stories persuade.

You are a story teller. What are your stories?

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