There is a hell of a lot going on in the small physical space that I am occupying in this restaurant right now.
My ears are bombarded with the sounds of music, footsteps, doors opening and closing, loudspeakers, buzzes, beeps, chatter, plates clattering, the wind blowing in my face.
My eyes are bombarded with a cacophony of change. People everywhere. Walking past, rushing past, running past, gliding past. There are people eating, chatting, there are children running, people carrying shopping bags, waiters carrying plates and trays. There is blue light, yellow light, natural light. There are windows, doors, tables, chairs.
If you stop for a moment and consider just how many details there are around you within a 1 meter radius right now, you might start to see just how complex the world is.
There is everything going on in your body, all sorts of changes, reactions, thoughts, feelings and so on, most of which you are not aware of, and some of which you are barely aware of. Then consider the clothes you are wearing (if you are wearing any clothes!) and all of the different fibres, the many, many millions of fibres, and how they rub against your skin and all the different parts of your body. Now consider the sensation of air, and temperature. How there are different breezes around different parts of your body, the smells you are aware of right now, and the sounds you are aware of right now.
And that’s just everything within a 1 meter radius. The world is incredibly complex, and if we stopped to take in detail about EVERYTHING we would simply…In fact, we just can’t, our brains literally do not have the ability to process EVERYTHING in our world.
A reflection of our inability to process EVERYTHING in our world is the fact that we have a very limited capacity for attention. At any one moment, our attention only allows a limited number of things to pass into our awareness.
There is one famous example of this, that I have replicated time and time again in the classroom. There is a video of two groups of people passing basketballs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo). One group is wearing white and the other is wearing black. The audience watching this video are instructed to count how many times the players wearing white pass the ball.
But half way through the video, a man in a gorilla suit enters the shot, stands in the middle, beats their chest several times and then walks off screen.
After the video I ask how many times they counted the people wearing white passing the ball. We quickly compare answers and see who was right. But then I ask them who saw the gorilla?
Every time I have done this, most of the people in the room are surprised when I ask who saw the gorilla. Some of them don’t even believe there is a gorilla. But when I replay the video back to them, they are shocked to see that something so obvious was completely filtered out by their attention.
There are two lessons that people take away from watching this video.
Firstly, attention is limited. We can pretty much only focus on one to several things at a time.
But secondly, attention is goal driven. When we give them a goal (count how many times the players wearing white pass the basketball) then they will focus their attention on anything related to achieving that outcome. Anything irrelevant to that goal is filtered out.
At the beginning of this section I described all the sounds and sights surrounding me as I sit in this restaurant. But my attention was only able to take that in because I directed it to, so that I could achieve the goal of describing just how many sounds and sights could be found in such a small space. If I had not directed it with a goal, then I would not have paid attention.
Filter, Filter, Filter
I’ve worked in the training industry for over a decade now. One of the most popular training courses that I and practically any other trainer have delivered is presentation skills training. And one of the most common pieces of feedback I deliver in this training is “Less is more”.
We want to filter out anything that doesn’t matter because this helps us avoid the risk of overwhelming people. When we overwhelm people, they lose focus. They literally lose the plot. They lose track of the goal that we’re all trying to achieve, and consequently lose interest. Saying too much is the same as saying nothing.
We want to make sure we only show what matters. And to do that we need to clarify our goal, and then filter out anything not related to that goal.
If we are to use the principles of storytelling in our communication, then at the very least our goal is to help people remember things. Otherwise, why communicate?
As a result of remembering, ideally we want them do something.
For example, there is a story I share in my communication skills trainings because I want people to start any work related email by explaining the purpose for their email. Here is the story:
“About 10 years ago, my wife was running a business selling fabrics to fashion companies. Her office was our home, and it was a mess, there were boxes of materials all over the place.
One day, on a weekend in the middle of summer, I was working from home. I was using the desk in our working space. I had my laptop, phone, papers, cables, pens etc all spread out over the table. Also it was summer, and as only me and my wife were at home, I decided not to wear a t-shirt as it was so hot, so rested my t-shirt on the back of my chair.
After a while, my wife stood up and told me she was going out and would return in 15 minutes, and hoped I could tidy the desk before she came back.
So as she walked out of the apartment, I passively organised the papers, cables and pens on my desk, whilst I grumbled to myself about how my wife always nagged me! I put the papers together, the cables in the drawer and the pens in my bag. But left my t-shirt on the chair because it was damn hot!
15 minutes later, the door opened and my wife walked in, followed by a customer! The customer looked a bit shocked as they saw a half naked man sitting in my wife’s office!”
I stop the story there, because everything that matters is in that and now it is time to debrief the story. I remind them what my wife told me when she walked out; “She is going out and would return in 15 minutes, and hoped I could tidy the desk before she came back”. Then I ask them what my wife didn’t say?
She didn’t say why she wanted me to tidy the desk. If she had told me she was bringing back a customer then I would have guessed to put my t-shirt on! I probably would have guessed to hide in another room as well. And so I finish by reminding them that we always want to start our emails by explaining why we are writing them, because if we explain the why early, then there is a greater chance we’ll get the response we want. And to reinforce that, I just show one simple sentence that they can use to do that; “I am writing this email to…”.
When I follow up with people after this training, I find this story is one that sticks in their mind, and many of them have got into the habit of starting their emails with writing that sentence.
I shared a story they can remember and debriefed it so that they can start doing specific actions. It’s about 5 minutes of storytelling and discussion time, that results in a solidified habit. That’s a pretty good return for the investment of time.
But for most people, and honestly myself included, it is far too easy to share more than that. And when we do share more, this starts to create problems.
Overcooking and Undercooking
It’s like cooking. You have to leave food in the oven for just the right amount of time. Too short, and it doesn’t cook. But too long, and it burns. You have to take it out after just the right amount of time.
In fact, just in the last month I have made, and corrected, this exact mistake. In a training, I overcooked my content the first time, and then got it just right the second time.
I was training a group of consultants on how to identify their stakeholders’ needs, and was sharing a technique for asking questions called the funnelling technique. It’s where we start by asking broad open questions, and then follow up on their answers by gradually asking more specific and focused questions as the conversation progresses. The goal is to finish by clarifying what the stakeholder’s exact needs are.
I should have shared with them pretty much that entire paragraph, and then started a live demonstration where I could show them the techniques in practice and get them to reflect on how they were being applied.
But instead, the first time I shared it, I shared way too much detail. I went through each type of question, explaining all the little tips and tricks to making them work, with lots of examples for each one. After about 15 minutes of talking I then got them to practice, and they couldn’t do it!
So the second time, I shared as much detail as was in the summary a few paragraphs above. We then moved straight into a live demonstration where I got them to ask me questions using this technique. Every time they asked a question, I responded and then gave feedback about what was good or bad about that question. When I wanted to correct mistakes, I pointed out that there was a mistake and invited them to suggest the corrections.
Then when they came to practice, all of a sudden they could do it. In this case, I finally got the amount and timing of the detail just right.
It is all too easy to overcook our use of storytelling.
But it’s also too easy to undercook our use of storytelling.
For example, here is a story I sometimes share about appealing to people’s needs:
“As I stepped off the stairs to the platform at Zhangjiang High Tech Park in Shanghai, ready to get my subway home, I noticed two men fighting. One was wearing a red coat and the other a grey coat.
I decided to ignore them because I just wanted to get home. But as I was waiting for the subway to approach I noticed the fight went to the floor. It looked pretty dangerous as one of them could smash their heads against the floor, so I and several others around me went over to break them up.
Some of us grabbed the man in the grey coat and pulled him back, whilst another group grabbed the man in the red coat. As we pulled Mr. Grey Coat back he kept shouting “He hit me first! What am I supposed to do???” in Chinese.
I told him to calm down, which as you can probably guess, didn’t work!
He kept trying to resist us so he could go and sort out Mr. Red Coat, and eventually he broke free from our grasp.
As he ran over, I quickly caught up and got in front of him and told him to calm down again, which again, didn’t work!
Now I decided to think from this man’s perspective to see if I could find any way of making him calm. I realised that he got hit first, and he got hit infront of a big crowd of people. When he went down to the floor, he was pushed by the red man. Maybe he felt embarrassed by all of this. And being China, where face was important, I thought maybe I could say something to give him face.
“He hit me first! What am I supposed to do???” he yelled again, and I immediately responded “So don’t be like him. You’re better than him.”
Amazingly, this calmed him down. He stopped shouting, turned to face me and said “Thank you” in English, then walked away”.
When I tell this story, I have found it is extremely important to emphasise the analysis I did in the middle where I thought from this man’s perspective. With that section, people can see the logic that led to my response, and they can apply that same logic to their own situations.
But when I first told this story, I skipped the analysis part, and it really didn’t land. People laughed, but didn’t get it. It had no impact because it lacked that essential ingredient.
We can undercook our storytelling too.
Show What Matters
The key to effectively using these storytelling principles is to ensure we show what matters.
Sometimes we show too many things that don’t matter and our stories get overcooked. Other times we don’t show enough, and our stories are undercooked.
I find this comes from practice and refinement. It’s pretty normal for your first attempt at something to not work perfectly. That’s fine. Practice it, get some feedback and refine it.
But there is one thing you can do to increase the chances of showing what matters, and that is to set goals, and then gradually refine based on these goals. So use the following questions to help:
- What do I want them to remember?
- Ideally, what do I want them to do?
- What is essential for remembering that?
- What is superfluous?
- What is missing?
