The importance of storytelling

#communication #storytelling

© 2023 Zoryna O’Donnell

This article was first published by The Maverick Paradox Magazine on 25/01/2024

For millennia, we humans have been using stories to communicate, to make sense of events and to preserve and share knowledge. I don’t think there ever been a civilisation on planet Earth that bypassed storytelling as a bedrock of its culture and legacy. In fact, storytelling was probably one of the major contributing factors in our survival and flourishing as a species.

Wendy A. Suzuki and her colleagues argued that stories are one of the most effective ways to communicate because they help listeners to understand complex concepts and ideas in meaningful ways, often through personal connections. These researchers identified several brain networks involved in the telling and hearing of stories and pointed out that when the listener gets engaged, the brain waves of the listener tend to synchronise with that of the storyteller resulting in the listener feeling the same emotions. This helps to establish rapport, trust and social connectedness.

It is not surprising that many leaders use storytelling to great effect to influence their followers. Ludmila Mladkova noted in her article about storytelling and leadership that storytelling addresses the emotions of people, not their rational mind, and so it has the potential to overcome barriers that people build to protect themselves against the external world and new ideas. This explain why storytelling is particularly useful in helping senior executives lead large-scale change initiatives.

So, what is storytelling and how can YOU master it? …

Please read the entire article here. [ https://themaverickparadox.com/the-importance-of-storytelling/  ]

Image credit: rain-bennett via Unsplash.