Best Story Wins
Storytelling for Business Success
-
- Pre-Order
-
- Expected Jun 4, 2024
-
- $25.99
-
- Pre-Order
-
- $25.99
Publisher Description
An inspiring, practical, and timely new guide on how to harness the power of storytelling in our communications at work.
Whether you're standing up in front of a crowd at a conference or chatting with a colleague in an elevator, storytelling is the most effective way to get your point across. It works in ninety-second Superbowl television spots, it works in ten-second social media formats, and it works in that email you have to fire off in five seconds flat.
Why? The short answer is that people don't make decisions based on logic. They make decisions based on emotions. To persuade, influence, and inspire, you need to make an emotional connection. And storytelling is the best way of doing that.
Journalist-turned-business coach Mark Edwards has developed his own methodology for telling compelling stories at work. Best Story Wins shows how storytelling will make better communicators of us all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Whether presenting at a conference or "firing off a quick email," spinning narratives is key to business success, according to this intermittently useful guide. Life coach Edwards (The Tao of Bowie) argues that attempts to persuade colleagues and associates using reason often fail because they prompt counterarguments and, if perceived as coercive, can motivate listeners to reassert their autonomy by rejecting the idea. By comparison, storytelling constitutes a more subtle way to get one's point across. A six-step process for crafting effective narratives encourages readers to establish a connection with one's audience, identify a desirable goal, detail obstacles to achieving that goal, explain why one's proposal is the best solution, and describe how the solution will transform lives. Though Edwards aims to make the advice broadly applicable, the examples focus on presenting to business associates and will be most helpful for those pitching potential investors, rather than, for example, marketing to consumers. Edwards sometimes resorts to dubious reasoning, as when he suggests without evidence that the power of stories derives from invoking nostalgia for childhood story time. Still, there are some solid tips recommending that readers structure stories as a "hero's journey," with the audience positioned as the hero, and useful warnings that ginning up narrative mystery may work in movies but is merely "annoying" in corporate settings. This will help readers nail their next work presentation.
