Humanity’s strange, ardent love affair with story has always fascinated me. To explore our enthrallment and explain the science behind it, I wrote a book – The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. The book appealed to a predictable audience of English literature types as well as avid readers of popular science. But it also attracted an unanticipated audience of business professionals. As a professor of literature, I hadn’t known that a wide spectrum of professions was embracing storytelling as a uniquely powerful form of messaging, that they had discovered that far from being a soft, touchy-feely skill, storytelling was a powerful form of witchery. A great storyteller waves her pen over paper like a wand. She casts a spell that allows her to enter minds and change what they feel, which allows her to change what they think, which allows her to influence how they act. Companies were flocking to story because they wanted a piece of this power.
Theranos and the Dark Side of Storytelling
A powerful, emotion-drenched story is at the heart of every con job.
October 18, 2016
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How to convince the unconvincable.
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Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor®. HBR Learning’s online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Persuading Others. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies.
How to convince the unconvincable.