Blog Archive
May 2007
The Guardian reviews The Bard & Co….
I’d like to pass comment on an excellent book – The Bard & Co, published by Cyan.
The leadership meetings we design for our clients usually involve several storytelling sessions, which is an excellent way of helping leaders personalise key corporate messages and priorities, make sense and take ownership of them. Some of the stories are very moving, told with passion and emotion. They are stories about people, how employees have helped or made a difference to other human beings’ lives through the course of their day-to-day work.
We are all natural born storytellers, so what does telling stories in business settings really feel like?
Business is often very formal, very structured, which is why presentations and events are often built around rigid agendas, charts, and of course the ubiquitous PowerPoint. These tools accentuate that rigidity. It all makes great sense to the presenter, as it is his or her thinking translated into a structure. However, what may work for the presenter very often fails for the audience. They don’t REALLY listen, and are very rarely engaged on an emotional level even if they might be on a rational one.