Owing the First 5 Minutes

Chapter 5 - Being a Master Storyteller

In ancient Athens it was recognized by philosophers that expert communication had to have two parts working in tandem, logic and rhetoric.

Logic involves getting the facts and making sure that the speaker knows
that what they are saying makes sense and follows sounds reasoning rhetoric is all about how things are said how emotion is used, and how convincing one is in the way that they tell the facts so as to have maximum influence on others. Story telling focuses on the rhetoric part, and it’s skill that recognizes that “there’s more to influence than just intelligence”

While it’s incredibly useful and important to be smart and right, facts on their own rarely move people to action. Influence comes from being able to tell on engaging and moving story that captivates on audience and wins them over with its power. Consider why movies have so much effect at bringing world problems to people’s attention-compare the emotional power of a film like Blood Diamond to the effect of a passive news item that simply reels off numbers and satisfies about the calamities caused by the diamond trade in Sierra Leone.

We needs stories to move with us into action and people who own the room need to be able to move others into action which means we have to become Master Storytellers. You have to put the power of injecting emotion and drawing out the detail.