Telling Stories
It is well known in politics that stories are essential ways to communicate with others, and are critical tools for influencing, persuading, and convincing people of your point of view. Even though stories or anecdotes are less generalizable, potentially less truthful, and less valid than properly collected data and statistics, they are invariably the most persuasive element when convincing others of your point of view. Want an immediate example? When Barack Obama gave his victory speech, he made sure to include a story about Ann Nixon Cooper, the 106 year old woman who had experienced so much, and could appreciate the changes that have taken place in our society. He spent very little time talking about Ms. Cooper. But he used a very short story about her to connect with the American people. He used her to embody all of our accomplishments, our travails, and our hopes. He did this because he knew that this short personal story would captivate his audience, and move them to understand the momentous event in ways that abstract words could not.
Stories as a Way to Understanding
Psychology tells us why this is so important. Children as young as 3 years old rely on narratives to understand the world. They tell themselves stories, and they use stories, to help make the world comprehensible. According to Jerome Bruner, children use stories to understand cause and effect, and simplify an enormously complex world, to make sense of their lives. And the essential aspect of those stories is they have to make sense – they have to have internal consistency. If a story makes sense, then children learn from it and can use those stories for further reflection and to gain greater understanding. Interestingly, the story doesn’t have to be 100% truthful. When stories don’t make sense, children will fill in the blanks to give the story internal consistency. In contrast, if they can’t remember something in a narrative format, they don’t process it. Perhaps the most painful example are the stories children tell themselves about abuse. Abuse narratives almost always include the child having done something to deserve the abuse. While that is virtually never true, the attribution of blame makes an incomprehensible situation rational. And hence it can be processed, at least for a time.
Helping Your People Understand
Adults also rely on stories to make sense of their world. Adults create narratives, or scripts, to help them understand their own lives, and to allow them to understand an enormously complex world. In Greece and Rome, people told stories of gods to explain the unexplainable, from random death to lightning to floods. Even now, psychology tells us we create scripts, stories of how parts of the world works, If they can create a simple story that explains why things happen, those things become comprehensible.
What Should You Do?
So what does this tell you to do? Incorporate stories into your discussions. Use stories in multiple settings – large presentations, but also one-on-ones and team meetings. This doesn’t mean, by the way, that you should tell stories about YOU. Those stories can be frought with problems. It is better to tell stories that involve other people, including your uncle, a friend, your sister, a neighbor – people that aren’t known but can represent someone your listener can identify with. Do those stories have to be factually true? Well, I wouldn’t lie outright, but poetic license is usually acceptable. In other words, keep it as close to fact as you can but still communicate your core message. And as you will note from Obama’s speech the other night, it doesn’t have to be very long. It just has to be enough to hook the audience, to connect with them on an emotional level, to engage their personal narratives to make the story comprehensible.
Bill Berman, Ph.D., ABPP
