Back to School – It’s story time

In the coming weeks college students across America will return to campus. I will, too.

This spring I will start my 25th semester as a faculty member at New York University’s School of Professional Studies. I’ve been proud to be a part of the school’s Integrated Marketing and Communications master’s program since 2013.  

I’m excited to be back on the campus I graduated from some time ago, but my enthusiasm is driven more by the opportunity to teach a class about storytelling. That’s not what the class is called in the school’s course catalog – the real name is (a very boring sounding) Writing Seminar 1 and 2 – but it’s how I approach the class. And with good reason.

Storytelling is in high demand and short supply these days. In fact, recently The Wall Street Journal published a story saying that storytelling was one of the “hottest” jobs in America. That’s a good thing but also a reason for concern. Why? Because so many of today’s leaders (whether in business or politics) are bad at it. That may come as an unwelcome surprise to hiring managers since so many job candidates have now added the phrase to their list of skills on resumes and LinkedIn profiles. 

Chris Anderson of TED has often said that we are hard wired to learn through the power of story, and we always have been. We’re born with the skill to tell and desire to hear stories. It’s in our DNA. But most of that ingrained skill got stifled by all those years spent in the classroom – reading dense texts and dutifully listening to professors drone on in MBA programs, because, unlike classmates getting degrees in English Literature, you wanted to have a job after graduation. 

While several universities now offer classes in storytelling too often they are one-off electives (a path to pad a GPA). It’s also true that many schools now offer online storytelling seminars to busy executives to help improve their leadership skills. Lucrative but hardly a game-changing outcome for a world that is crying out for effective communicators. Few become good storytellers because they took a three-hour online class.

There are many books you can read on storytelling. Some cover general concepts like how to make your messages “sticky” or techniques for message pull through… structuring your content so that it has a traditional beginning, middle, and end. My favorite is Peter Gruber’s “Tell to Win”, one of the first books on storytelling aimed at the c-suite.  They all offer some useful advice, but storytelling is a skill that you need to work on every day, and few ever get it right.

When I first started teaching my class at NYU, I decided to call it The Art of Rhetoric and Persuasion. That sounded impressive, especially for a master’s program. But over the years that name has begun to feel just a little bit verbose. And I think we’d all agree that verbosity often hinders clear communication and storytelling. 

Storytelling is more to the point. But it can’t exist in a vacuum. It’s an art form, but it’s also a business discipline that requires a proven framework – one that goes beyond matchbook wisdom like “stickiness.” So, on our first night of class I will turn the attention of my students to ancient Greece to hear from Aristotle. We will then set sail for Rome to see what can be learned from Cicero, and inevitably we will reflect on the teachings of Marcus Quintilian.   

This is still a class about storytelling and not an ancient history symposium. And, if my dean is reading this, it is still a writing seminar. But all persuasive communications – and that’s at the heart of effective storytelling – must start with Aristotle and his Rhetorical Triangle of Ethos, Logos and Pathos. 

If you want your story (your message) to be heard, shared and acted upon it must be delivered by a credible source – someone with Ethos. The story must be backed up with facts (even in an era of disinformation) – ideas derived from Logos. And your story must resonate with your target audience on an emotive level – it must be driven by Pathos.

Most corporate stories are missing one or more of these elements. But Aristotle alone is not enough. That’s why I introduce my class to Cicero’s ideas of effective communications. While he largely embraced Aristotle’s approach to persuasive rhetoric, Cicero emphasized adaptability and the importance of suiting one's style to the audience and occasion.

And then we get to Quintilian – perhaps the most important thinker for today’s disintermediated society. Quintilian embraced the approach of Aristotle and Cicero, but he placed greater emphasis on moral character—famously defining the orator as "a good man skilled in speaking.”

If you aim to be an effective storyteller or to help craft the narratives that fuel impactful stories, then understanding these three thinkers is essential. They established the foundations of rhetoric and persuasion that has persisted for nearly two millennia.

Now that I think about it, maybe calling my class the Art of Rhetoric and Persuasion wasn’t such a bad idea. But I do want my students to get jobs when they graduate, so if storytelling is what’s “hot” maybe I’ll stick with that. Perhaps they’ll be able to do it better than others. We’ll see. Either way class will soon be back in session. Let the storytelling begin.