Chad_11_Q

With the final chapter, I might finally get it. By the fact Simmons defines "traditional wisdom" as the opposite of storytelling, it becomes clear who she's writing for, and who she's trying to win over, in each of her gigs.

Sure, I knew all along she was writing for the corporate audience, but Chapter 11 is where she most lucidly defines them. To her (and to me), they are people who value visible results. That is, facts, figures, ink on paper, charts and this kind of thing. Approach a corporate guy with a story in your hand and risk coming back with a bloody stump.

By the end of Chapter 11 I get a better understanding that Simmons' work is an uphill battle. The people who come to her sessions don't necessarily want to be there. Some of them might actively resist her appeals, in fact. So it's necessary for her get her point across the way she has done in this book: with repetition; with simple, clear ideas; and with endless stories, all of which could be considered one more visible result for the corporate listener.

We grad students might come from different stock. It could be safe to say we value open-mindedness, and progressive thinking. What Simmons has to say could have been written for the grad student audience in 50 pages.

Yet, hasn't this book presented us with a unique challenge? And haven't we, in our own ways, presented Simmons with a different type of uphill battle? One in which she doesn't have to pound her ideas into our heads, but in which she must be careful not to lose us in the first hundred words?

Chad_10_Q

This weekend I read an exploration of Irish storytelling done around the year 1975. The author focused on two types of tellers: local, landed people who have learned their national history; and travelers, or what we would call gypsies (Think Brad Pitt's character in the movie "Snatch.")

In Chapter 10 Simmons tells us the "line between a storyteller and a miscreant is a thin one."

By focusing on "respectable" types and homeless types, the author of my book must have either ignored the line or thought little of it. He treated everyone equally.

In my trip to Ireland the tellers I met consisted of several professionals, a few amateurs and one drunk. Since my return I've been trying to figure out why, only after talking to the latter individual, I felt like I got the most authentic experience.

I'd welcome any thoughts.

Chad_10_I

I have to give Simmons credit for invoking Hitler in Chapter 10. So far we have been mostly softballed with stories about faceless characters, like the proverbial stonecutter at the beginning of this chapter.

By seriously studying a historical figure, Simmons shows us she too is serious, and not afraid to consider a topic that makes people bristle.

If I am to believe what I read here, Hitler was a masterful storyteller. He would have to have been, to incite a country to such violence.

If nothing else, he is a figure from our age who can remind us how story has, in ancient times, moved empires. Think of Caesar, Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, for example.

Chad_9_Q

Simmons writes: "Guru-itis is very seductive. The danger of developing a cult of followers is that your success risks excluding the 'thinking' public."

American cults seem to attract followers that the "thinking" public regard as schmucks. Despite the violence of the Manson Family and the weirdness of Heaven's Gate, most people probably consider the typical cult follower and think, "Gee, you must be a schmuck on some level."

A cult leader demands a one-way channel of communication. He dictates, and the followers listen. Simmons suggests this is not true influence. Real influence, she writes, is a collaborative process.

Has anyone ever met a person who, if not the leader of a wacky-ass cult, demanded a one-way channel of communication?

This post is also late.

Chad_I_9

Once or twice in every chapter, Simmons offers a statement that is so irrevocably true I can't help but read it several times.

In Chapter 9, one of these statements was: "Your curiosity about whomever you wish to influence is the cornerstone of your ability to hold another's interest."

She's so right on. And for this reason I sometimes feel bothered while reading. If Simmons is so capable of making lucid statements, I think to myself, why doesn't she do it more often? Why must she pad each insight with pages of filler?

Then I wonder if she's not just pulling one over on all of us. This woman has the wherewithal not only to pilot herself through a successful career as a consultant; she's also published a book on the subject.

Maybe she believes that every story has the same construction outlined above: There is a kernel of truth surrounded by fluff, and it's up to the listener or reader to sort the treasure from the trash.

My literature professors used to tell me not to try getting inside the author's head. But in this case I have to wonder.

This post is late.

Team 1 Update

Thursday, Oct. 4:

Wandered over to the Christian Ministries Food Pantry in downtown Muncie. Met with the manager and interviewed her, gathering print and audio attributes.

Took a load of photos. Edited and color corrected em. Edited the audio for a slideshow to be included on our site.

Chad_8_I

I expressed boredom with the stories last week, but a line in one of this week's stories caught me. It's the one about the march on Selma, Alabama.

" ... It must have been warm because on the way home that night we had the windows rolled down ... "

Wrapped up in this thought is proof that some people recall broad ideas only because of the details associated with them. Ask a person to describe the best summer he's ever had. He will probably not explain in terms of ideas. Instead he will relate it with the color of the fireworks on that 4th of July; or the size of the waves one afternoon at the beach.

"Glengarry Glenross" is a cool movie about real estate sharks. Al Pacino's character says at one point: "What do you remember most about the best ... of your life?"

Hmmm, it's actually unfit for the blog, but I would encourage you to see the movie and decide whether you believe him. It's the scene where he's talking to the poor sucker in the bar.

Chad_8_Q

From Ch. 8, p. 187: "To listen is to bear witness and validate someone's fear, sadness, or anger at injustice in a way that allows the individual to move past these paralyzing emotions and regain their power and will to act anew."

An idea Simmons introduces later is that listening necessarily involves silence, too, to a certain degree. The listener shouldn't feel like he has to advise or fix his companion. To be there with open ears is enough.

Often I have ignored opportunities to listen in this way. It can be hard to listen to old people reminiscing about times I can't relate to. It can also be hard to listen to trusted friends on the phone, when I'm free to mess around the house while paying only partial attention to the phone conversation.

I'm curious: What are some listening opportunities you all feel like you regularly pass up?

Chad_7_I

A judge once told me: "In my years on the bench, I have seen some, but not a lot, of bad people. I've seen some, but not a lot, of evil people. I've seen a lot of people who have made bad choices."

(Author's note: I was not on the wrong side of the defendant's table when I got this comment.)

Simmons suggests "The Truly Evil" are so often the invention of people trying to rationalize their own choices by villifying others. It's a handy trick, although a damaging one. Creating a villain not only chalks up the position of the opponent to nature; it also protects the person on the other side of the argument. After all, there's no dealing with true evil, outside of divine intervention.

Simmons also suggests the best way to deal with this type of argument is to "recreate 'them' as 'us.' "

Useful, but I'd take it a step further. Erase the concept of evil altogether, when making judgment calls.

Shakespeare paraphrase: "Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

Chad_7_Q

Ever since our discussion on the importance of nonverbal I have been reading this book while imagining what gestures and expressions would best suit each new concept. The transcriptions of stories are especially fertile for this sort of treatment.

This afternoon I read about the carpenter who joined two neighbors' properties with a bridge. I thought about hearing this story live and decided it would be more influential in the frame of a live teller-live audience situation. As of now it's just transcription, meaning, it's words translated to the page. The words might not have been meant to be translated to the page, after all ...

Tim and I were just talking about Marshall McLuhan's idea that the medium is the message. In Simmons' case, I believe it is. Does anyone else feel like the stories, though interesting, are beginning to stale in this regard?

Chad_6_Q

A scuffle over where to have dinner isn't really about what restaurant is best. It's about two loud personalities trying to assert power over one another. It's about ego.

When storytelling, Simmons writes, "Let your listener's ego sleep."

It's an astute observation, and interesting to note her choice of words -- "sleep" instead of "fade." She recognizes there's no such thing as a snuffed ego, and so it's best to let that particular beast rest. Her advice on how to let the ego sleep, all on page 150, is solid as well.

Good Catholic trick: For the time you're communicating with the women and men in your life, exorcise all traces of self-interest.

Anybody care to try it for an afternoon and see what happens? Whether life begins to feel different? Better? Worse?

Chad_6_I

Some more between-the-lines analysis follows this thought: "When you interrupt someone's personal epic to ask for his or her cooperation, it behooves you to consider the context."

Now this is not mind-reading. It's as simple as considering someone's situation and treating it with respect. I have told students that a story is not something you fire at an audience like a gun. Instead it's a magnet that you power in order to draw people to the place where the story exists.

So you must prime an audience of World War II veterans differently than you would, say, a class of TCOM majors. You can tell the same story to either group, but not in the same way.

Good reporter's trick: Never begin by asking what you really want to ask. First ask how's it going, where are you from and hey, that's a nice picture on your wall.

Chad_5_Q

Simmons states in Chapter 5: “Think of a story as a mnemonic device for complex concepts.”

Some pre-literate cultures used stories for that purpose, I understand.

In these cultures, mnemonic stories were chanted, rhythmic and exact. One such story was used by shipbuilders not only to help them remember each step of the process, but also to be spoken in time with their hammer-strikes, like a chain gang.

Consider the last list of 12 you memorized. Did it come from a sheet of paper? From a classroom lecture? I’ll bet if you really thought about it you could come up with only one. It ends like this: “ … three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.”

Taking for granted that couching knowledge in a story helps us remember, think about whether the addition of song and rhythm further aids the remembering process. What do you make of it?

Chad_5_I

Main idea: "In our technological economy, human attention is the emerging scarce resource."

As she does, Simmons uses a broad argument to entice her readers' minds into other lines of thought. Embedded in the above argument is that no matter how much we minimize the "virtual" in virtual reality, it will always play second to actual human contact, that precise sensory combination unmatchable by engineered reality.

It's the reason I have visited Second Life exactly once, thought "Cool," and never returned.

Simmons goes on to state: "In today's world almost anyone you want to influence is operating under a deficit of human attention."

Forgive me for getting a little close to the fire here, but I have in recent years found it rather difficult to engage anyone in hard, held eye contact, and to get it back in kind. As an experiment this week we should try to add hard eye contact to a conversation, even a brief one in hall, say, and report the results in class.

Chad_4_Q

In Chapter 4 we get an exhaustive outline of how nonverbal language affects persuasive storytelling.

On Tuesday in class I laughed a lot, said "aww" a time or two and felt pangs of regret or embarrassment during our storytelling session. But it's Jeff's story that sticks in my memory even now, four days later.

I remember the nasty angle at which his leg turned during the accident, and the lapses in and out of consciousness as doctors worked to fix him. Jeff used his eyes, fingertips and legs -- even his tongue -- to show us exactly where he was at all times.

I remember broad details of other people's stories, but none so clear as Jeff's, which we heard a significant portion of without sound.

It's easy to knock this book. Much of it comes across repetitive and preachy. But doesn't Simmons seem to be making all the right claims? Does anyone else remember Jeff's story as clearly as I do?

In your heart of hearts, do you believe words are some of the least significant ingredients of a good story?

Chad_3_I

I figure the following is the beating heart of Chapter 3: "Facts are neutral until human beings add their own meaning to those facts. People make their decisions on what the facts mean to them, not on the facts themselves."

Yes, OK, in the context of business communication. I commented on Liz' post regarding this point if you want to read more.

Here I want to suggest the relation of fact to story in some Irish tales complements Simmons' model. Pictured above is Dublin storyteller Richard Marsh, the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great grandnephew of St. Patrick. Old myths involve St. Patrick with Ossian, the last warrior of a band of royal guards that may or may not have existed. Now Ossian was a pagan, like all Irish before Patrick's time.

And if Ossian did exist, it would have been many hundreds of years before Patrick. Yet Irish story bends time to put both men in the same place. What's accomplished here is that modern Ireland has a way to reconcile its pagan past with its deeply Catholic present. To reiterate, the story of Patrick and Ossian explains the fact Ireland has pagan and Christian histories that are equally significant.

Of course I can't speak for all of Ireland, but this story resonates with me in a way a history book never could. A more analytical take on the situation might leave me frustrated with apparent contradictions in Irish history. But the story does a great job of situating the facts for me.

Chad__CHAPTER__1&2

Hidden between the lines in Chapter 1 is the suggestion that the oral tradition is richer in authenticity than the written word.

This idea folds into an assertion in Chapter 2 that: "Stories are 'more true' than facts because stories are multidimensional."

These points work in tandem to argue the human brain is more open to influence when engaged in a multidimensional activity.

In the case of a person listening to a live story performance, many sensory inputs interact with the brain. The storyteller mixes orality with nonverbal language and the content of the story itself to encounter his audience on three levels.

Is influence a simple matter of approaching the audience with multidimensional information, or is there another factor at work?