A profound lesson from improvisational theater about how we listen to stories.
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Transcript
A fun game from improvisational theater is to tell a story in turns
Speaker:everyone's allowed a single sentence.
Speaker:Then the other person continues again, only one sentence.
Speaker:You'll be amazed at how quickly a story can break down.
Speaker:Let's look at an example.
Speaker:You and your partner play this game.
Speaker:You might think of a story about a man proposing marriage to his girlfriend.
Speaker:But before you even begin, your partner has said the first
sentence:“Alex is seeking revenge.” Okay, you think, let's adapt.
sentence:You figure out the reason and continue last summer: “Casey
sentence:had stolen his girlfriend.”
sentence:Your partner is unimpressed.
She continues:“But that's not the reason why he’s seeking revenge.”
She continues:Boom!
She continues:Your story’s just broken down.
She continues:A second time because your partner wouldn't go along with it.
She continues:She was stuck with her story.
She continues:Which is quite a common behavior.
She continues:Look around and you'll see instances of people being stuck
She continues:in the stories that they've built inside their minds everywhere.
She continues:Worse, people are rather quick at constructing these stories.
She continues:Many won't even listen until the end of what you're saying before
She continues:starting to construct their own story.
She continues:And once they've built it, it's hard to let it go.
She continues:As a communicator, there's no use in complaining about that.
She continues:Which leaves us basically two ways to deal with this.
She continues:First, we can insist on our story, keep correcting their story.
She continues:No, that's not what I mean.
She continues:No, that's not how I mean it.
She continues:No, that's not what I was trying to say.
She continues:Or we could start from our audience's perspective, try to understand
She continues:which stories they construct, where these stories are coming from.
She continues:What do we know about their struggles?
She continues:About their lives?
She continues:About their beliefs?
She continues:And attach to that so that the stories we tell are more like the stories they tell.
She continues:So that it's easier for them to look at our story through their lens.