Storytelling is one of the most effective way to connect with people and make a memorable message. It was Jesus’ favorite way to teach. Consider how many parables you can think of off the top of your head… that’s effective storytelling! We focus on using storytelling in our Workmatters Institute classes to share how you can integrate your faith and work, and learn how you can more effectively share your own story! Learn more about WMI here.

Enjoy this insight on how storytelling can help share your message from Sean Womack,  a coach, consultant, and business advisor.

I have said, “people love stories more than lectures.” We are storytelling animals. Your brain has two systems to it: it has a fast system and a slow system. There’s a great book written about this by a Nobel Prize winner named Daniel Kahneman. It’s called Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow. And what he talks about in that book is the two systems of the brain. The fast system of the brain is the storytelling system of your brain. And here’s what a story is: a story is always looking back, right? It’s looking back at events that happened. Oh, this happened. And then this happened. And this happened. And this happened. And what you tie those events together with is called a narrative and that’s what makes a story. And our brains do that without us trying and it’s fast. When you lecture, you’re just giving didactic information for somebody to remember. And it turns out, we’re not good at remembering things. We’re really good at recognizing things. And we’re really good at, sort of, taking in stories. And especially, we won’t remember every bit of the story, but we’ll remember the big beats of the story. So if you can encapsulate a thing you want somebody to know inside of a few beats of a story, we are much better at remembering or recognizing it later whenever we hear it again. And so what we do as an organization is we’re all about storytelling. And so at Smack we look at the stories that companies get to tell about themselves, brands and companies are really interesting places. They create and sell most of the things we buy to keep ourselves alive to keep us healthy and keep us clean. And yet they’re forced to just talk in this little bitty box over here on the internet, or a 30-second commercial or other ways. And we said what if a company could communicate in other ways? What if we found their interesting stories to tell? What if we found interesting ways that their products fit in your lives and we wrote stories about those, we made films about them? We took photographs and made beautiful images about those? That’s what we’re about: is trying to help brands connect with consumers in a more direct way, but also in a fuller way.