Tell Me a Story
Sometimes I feel like my brain is about to explode with information overload. I try to cram as much info in as possible to the point where I just sit comatose staring at the moving pictures on my TV. I remember in college, studying intently during the semester, cramming for exams, getting my grade and then… forgetting everything the very next day. I could promise you that if you gave me the exact same final a week after I took it, I would probably score lower than I did the first time.
Think back to the last meeting, conference or learning situation… what do you remember? Why?
Now there are some that are information sponges… sucking down information and holding it for just the right moment. But the majority of human beings don’t retain information that long without constant repetition. What we do tend to retain are stories and how those stories make us feel.
The boring speaker
Picture this… you are sitting in a conference room with hundreds of other people. The person up in front has just gone through his hundreth slide, that is crammed with text that he is spouting off verbatum. There is tons of information, very vital to your line of work, but you have an attention span of about 20 minutes that quit about 30 minutes ago and now you are just watching the clock, thinking about lunch and figuring that you will just download the presentation when you get back to the office. Which of course you never do anyway.
Man have I been there.
The captivator
After lunch you come back to your seat ready to slip into your after lunch coma. The next speaker is introduced and your eyes start to glaze over. He starts by telling a rather animated story about an interaction he had with a client. You laugh out loud at the hilarious antics. Then he goes into his deepsea fishing expedition and highlights the analogy and commonality your business has with deepsea fishing. Man, it all makes sense! You leave inspired, invigorated and ready to take action.
Next time you need to get some information across, try to work your point into a story or two and see how much better the information is received.
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This is a great article! I am a professional storyteller and I am amazed at the power of story to make a deep and lasting impression on people’s hearts and minds. I recently wrote an article about the effect storytelling has on people, citing some rather interesting psychological studies that had been conducted. Here is an excerpt:
“In his article “Storytelling as a pedagogical tool in higher education” (“Education” April 1998)* Craig Eilert Abrahamson cited the work of noted hypnotherapists Milton H. Erickson and Ernest Rossi and their studies of storytelling’s effects on listeners. They proposed five stages of thought processes or “conversational hypnosis” characterized by storytelling that lead to a simple hypnotic-like state. These five stages are: fixation of attention, depotentiating habitual frameworks and belief systems, unconscious search, unconscious process, and hypnotic response (Erickson & E. Rossi, 1976).”
You can read the entire article entitled “Chiseled in Stone:Using Stories for Lessons that Last with Children” at http://mcgeeproductions.com/wordpress/?page_id=311 .
I hope that you will give it a look.