A powerful blast radius
More thoughts on storytelling and lessons learned from The Moth's "How to Tell a Story"
I’ve finished reading The Moth’s guide on how to tell a story. They’ve hosted more than 6,000 storytelling events with more than 50,000 stories told. They know a thing or two about storytelling.
In addition to what I mentioned in my last post, there were two more ideas from the book that jumped out at me.
There is a chapter on the difference between writing your story versus telling your story. As well as a section about storytelling in business - not so much about using stories to sell things, but more about how stories can build community and culture.
Both sections call attention to the problem of the person sharing a story to feel like they have to deliver it perfectly. As if when the story isn’t performed with Shakespearean accuracy, it has failed.
That is false. In some cases, creating a performance could also create a distance.
Too much writing can spoil your story
This sounds counterintuitive, but I’ve seen it happen in a corporate setting. I’ve seen it when I sit down to interview someone who’s asked ahead of time for the questions and has arrived to the conversation with a script.
Said script has often been reviewed by too many people and has as much jargon shoe-horned in to remove any sense of humanity.
The funny thing about this is I’m typically talking to the person because they are the subject matter expert in their field and if you were out to a cup of coffee with them and asked a question their eyes would light up and away they go.
Nobody’s eyes light up reading a script that was approved by the legal team. It’s the little bit of human imperfection that keeps a listener’s attention.
Adam Gopnick, New Yorker Staff Writer and Moth Storyteller: I sensed in myself that I had become, in some ways (and doubtless still am in every way), an unduly fancy writer. That is, that the sort of curlicues and ornamentations of erudition had begun to drown out my ability to simply tell a tale about what had happened. But I think writing is a business of perfection. You want every sentence to glow and shine, and have its own little balance and structure and charm. A story’s not like that. A story can tolerate a lot of rough stuff in the course of its being relayed, as long as what’s being related is significant. You can’t write that way. Readers are not forgiving of imperfection. But don’t you think listeners are totally unforgiving of insincerity?
Permission to get vulnerable
The Moth book also shares an example of “surprising vulnerability” in its section on Building an Internal Culture within a company.
Alexandra had failed her team as a new leader in her company, but she had a leader willing to work with her to figure out what happened and how to fix the problem. Her leader was a good example, but Alexandra’s decision to share her story broadly furthered that leadership example, reaching out to even more future leaders.
Alexandra said, “It was hard to share this story, making eye contact with leaders across my business who I respect and who I have worked closely with, and just hoping knowing this about me isn’t going to change things. But then toward the end, when I could see people’s reactions and feel the release of all the pressure, it was actually empowering to own the story.”
Alexandra had gone on to share that story with various teams she’s led and found it to be invaluable in connecting with her team and supporting their own career growth.
She says, “When I think about my impact on company culture, I think about the multiplier effect of story. What I do affects the eleven people that report to me, but then it reaches out to their circles—the blast radius of this change is powerful.”
I remember a few years back trying to gather some employee stories of overcoming challenges or working through failure. People don’t like to talk about that. We all hate for our bosses to see us as less than.
There was one employee who had been working her way up through leader roles and she expressed an interest in sharing her story - she was leading a project and in overlooking a few issues ending up costing the company a considerable amount of time and money.
In this instance, she wanted to write her story and share what she learned (she’d since that time gone on to bigger projects). I didn’t want to stand in the way. I said go for it, and then I didn’t edit much at all. A few small grammar things. Otherwise it was untouched.
Her story was everything that employee communications “best practices” would say is wrong - it was too long, it wasn’t a video and it was unpolished.
Her story was also one of the most read and commented on articles of the year. It also “gave permission” to others who now felt like they could share their stories as well.
I’m not saying it created a human vulnerability revolution, but it did touch some folks on a deeper level - a blast radius that is hard to quantify yet definitely felt.
Oh man! That bit about 'scripted stories' ! From what I know - that's the most damaging disrespect you can do to any story! And perhaps why we zone out so hard during meetings - these dangers of streamlining, having to give cohesion to our ways - the dissolution of letting ourselves be surprised!
Even to be the story of the moment as it presents itself.