How a great story backfired despite evoking strong emotions in the audience …
Transcript
Stories are powerful.
Speaker:Which is why they are often misused.
Speaker:The more emotional a story is, the greater the potential for misuse becomes.
Speaker:A couple of years back, at a conference, I listened to a speech
Speaker:about water problems in mega cities.
Speaker:The speaker started with a story about a poor family who suffered some severe
Speaker:diseases due to contaminated water.
Speaker:It was a touching experience.
Speaker:She really made us feel the pain.
Speaker:But that earned her harsh criticism during the coffee break because it turned
Speaker:out that she had been misleading us.
Speaker:The problem was that the story wasn't representative of the situation.
Speaker:Not at all.
Speaker:It was a story that was meant to evoke emotions, which it did, but it was a
Speaker:dishonest story in the sense that the speaker had picked a very specific,
Speaker:very special situation that painted an unusually dark picture, one that wasn't
Speaker:representative of the situation at all.
Speaker:It was purely there to evoke emotions while not making the proper point.
Speaker:That's a crucial difference.
Speaker:The best stories are such that they are representative of the whole
Speaker:picture, despite highlighting only a specific part of the picture.
Speaker:Skilled communicators pick stories that paint a vivid picture.
Speaker:Great communicators pick representative stories that paint a vivid picture,
Speaker:a story that is powerful because it evokes emotions and captures the
Speaker:essence of the complete picture.