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Stories are powerful.
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Which is why they are often misused.
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The more emotional a story is, the greater the potential for misuse becomes.
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A couple of years back, at a conference, I listened to a speech
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about water problems in mega cities.
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The speaker started with a story about a poor family who suffered some severe
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diseases due to contaminated water.
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It was a touching experience.
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She really made us feel the pain.
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But that earned her harsh criticism during the coffee break because it turned
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out that she had been misleading us.
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The problem was that the story wasn't representative of the situation.
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Not at all.
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It was a story that was meant to evoke emotions, which it did, but it was a
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dishonest story in the sense that the speaker had picked a very specific,
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very special situation that painted an unusually dark picture, one that wasn't
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representative of the situation at all.
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It was purely there to evoke emotions while not making the proper point.
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That's a crucial difference.
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The best stories are such that they are representative of the whole
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picture, despite highlighting only a specific part of the picture.
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Skilled communicators pick stories that paint a vivid picture.
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Great communicators pick representative stories that paint a vivid picture,
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a story that is powerful because it evokes emotions and captures the
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essence of the complete picture.
