It is well known that all of us make most of our decisions based on our emotions rather than pure logic or intellect or rationality. So, if we are to influence people and their decisions, we need to learn about moving them emotionally enough to get them to make a decision in our favour.
The best way for us to do so is by telling good stories, stories that they can related to and move with. I saw this video by Ameen Haque, who is the CEO of Storywallahs, which he delivered at the Google complex and was moved enough to share this here on my blog. I have listened to him and his team tell stories at various public events in Bangalore with my 12 year old son and I can’t recommend them enough.
What Ameen does in this video is to break down the art of story telling and break it down into easy to understand and implement chunks of activities. If you are in the business of influencing anyone, I strongly urge you to take the 55 mins and watch this talk. It is not enough to watch the talk but try to do what he asks of you in the talk. Telling stories is a skill that we can develop with practice and as he says, we need to build a repertoire of stories that we can bring out whenever we need them to exert influence.
Some other resources that I have specifically found useful to learn storytelling for business are as below.
People & Blog:
Online Courses:
- Leadership Communication for Maximum Impact: Storytelling on Coursera
- Storytelling for Change on AcumenPlus
- Storytelling for Leaders: How to Craft Stories That Matter on Skillshare
- Storytelling for Business on Udemy
- Storytelling for Influence: on IDEO University
- Business Storytelling with C.C. Chapman on Lynda
- The Story strategy by Bernadette Jiwa
Books:
- Meaningful by Bernadette Jiwa
- Save the Cat by Blake Snyder
Podcasts:
I do hope that you will at least check out a few of these resources and find some time to learn the art of story telling.
