Storytelling to Help Your Career

Storytelling to Help Your Career

CNN (Atlanta, GA), June 29, 2011

Summary:

“It occurred to me that everybody in business shares one universal problem: To succeed, you have to persuade others to support your vision, dream or cause,” Peter Guber, author of Tell To Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story, writes in his book.

“Whether you want to motivate your executives, organize your shareholders, shape your media, engage your customers, win over investors or land a job, you have to deliver a clarion call that will get your listeners’ attention, emotionalize your goal as theirs, and move them to act in your favor. You have to reach their hearts as well as their minds — and this is just what story telling does.”

The key is knowing how and when to tell a story effectively, whether it’s in an interview, at a networking event or if you’re making conversation with the CEO.

“In any situation that calls for you to persuade, convince or manage someone or a group of people to do something, the ability to tell a purposeful story will be your secret sauce,” he says.

“Purposeful” is the key word, Guber says. “Purposeful stories have a goal, a call to action that tellers want their listeners to do. The power in telling a purposeful story makes the purpose — the object of the story — emotional rather than intellectual, and aspirational rather than inspirational,” he says.