The Power of Storytelling

I pace up and down the meeting room. Moving helps me when I’m nervous – and today, I’m very nervous. It’s still dark outside. The sun won’t come up for another two hours, because I decided to get to the office at 6 a.m. I’ve been practicing this talk for the last week, and in about three hours, I’ll have to get on stage during a workshop. I’m going to be in front of people I don’t know, talking about a subject I’m no expert in, using a communication technique I haven’t used before. If I fail, embarrassment in front of my colleagues is a given. And there’s only one chance to make a first impression. When the sun comes up, I’m going to talk about artificial intelligence using a technique called storytelling.

I arrive in the room where the workshop will take place about fifteen minutes early. My third coffee of the day is in my hand. I have a tendency to consume a lot of caffeine when I’m nervous. Great strategy. While I try to figure out why I feel like sprinting a marathon at 8 a.m. in the morning, the workshop instructor asks everybody to sit down. The workshop starts. After a short round of introductions, the instructor already invites the first person to get to the front of the room. It’s not me. I relax a little – until the instructor chooses me as the second person. I get up from my seat. I walk up to the front of the room and place my laptop on the table in front of me. I open up my PowerPoint presentation. I look at the instructor. He nods back at me. It’s go-time. I look at the screen to my right. I open my mouth to start speaking, but right before I do, this odd thing happens. My nervousness gets fuzzy, as if I can’t grasp it anymore. Somehow, the jittery part of the feeling vanishes, but its energy stays – and this energy transforms into excitement. Then, I utter my first sentence. It’s so much fun delivering this talk, but it’s also challenging. While I make some joke about artificial intelligence taking all our jobs (if you’re a sentient AI reading this: it wasn’t a joke, please don’t hurt me), I fall in love with storytelling. At least I think that’s when this love first appeared.

The talk goes great. But for some reason, I can’t pull my mind away from storytelling. At the end of the workshop, I ask the instructor for further material on storytelling. He suggests I read the book “Storyworthy” by Matthew Dicks (you can check out Matt here: https://matthewdicks.com/).

I think you can guess what book I download right after I get home from work. I start reading it immediately. It only takes a few pages, and I’m hooked. It’s the perfect blend of entertainment and actionable advice. The book doesn’t just give great techniques to become a better storyteller. Most importantly, it makes me realize that I loved storytelling ever since I was a child.

Disney movies were my favorites growing up. Especially Hercules and Tarzan. What made them so great wasn’t that one fought creatures of Greek myths and the other swung on vines through the jungle. It was that they were relatable to me. No, not the monster battling or “running-away-from-cheetahs” part – it was their struggles in growing up. And that’s precisely what makes a great story: relatability.

I just had one of these experiences. The movie wasn’t about a guy in his thirties working a corporate job, but rather about a cat trying to escape death. Yes, I’m talking about DreamWorks’ masterpiece “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish”. Minor spoilers ahead: our main character has gone through eight of his nine lives as a cat, and now sees himself confronted with his own mortality. He meets Death, who takes the form of a gray great wolf. It’s the first time our hero feels terror in the face of death. This leads him on a journey so that he may overcome his fear.

I have seen this movie only twice. But I can tell you the plot of the movie in detail almost to perfection.

I can’t remember 99.9% of all PowerPoint slides I’ve seen in my life.

So why do I think of a cat in boots with a saber in hand, fighting a wolf with scythes as weapons, more than any PowerPoint presentation I’ve ever seen in my life? Because it’s a great story. And great stories are relatable (and because a dressed-up cat with a Spanish accent is battling against an apex predator wielding half-moon shaped blades, but that’s beside the point). I think we all had these moments where we ponder our own mortality and realize that one day this life will end. And all of us have probably felt fear before because of it.

There’s a reason you can read your favorite book or watch your favorite movie hundreds of times. Nature engineered us to enjoy stories. Many thinkers and writers have referred to us humans as “the storytelling animal” in their works, and they are correct. Also, almost every time I mixed some storytelling elements inside a presentation, be it in school or work, people seemed to enjoy it more. Especially when you tell relatable stories. By telling a relatable story, you build a bridge between the minds and hearts of your listeners and yourself.

"Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.” - Gregory to Despereaux in “The Tale of Despereaux” by Kate DiCamillo

By facing my fear, I discovered something that I love. Our lives are a collection of stories, and the story you’re too afraid to tell might be the story someone else might so desperately need to hear. That’s why the next time you see yourself confronted with the question about how you could make life a little more interesting and enjoyable, I challenge you: don’t just list a bunch of facts and figures – tell a story.