Broadway Meets Wall Street
Theater training for better business presentations
Use stories to connect with your listeners
Belle Linda Halpern, cofounder of the Ariel Group, was
working with an oil executive who faced a serious communications challenge.
His company had recently joined forces with a company from Australia,
and the executive was preparing a speech in which he would attempt to
persuade his reluctant work team to accept the Australian newcomers as
partners. Cognizant of the value of a telling narrative in reaching and
moving an audience in both the theatre and business settings, Halpern
helped the executive find a story.
The man remembered an occasion from his youth when he had been an outsider.
His family had moved to a new community. He loved baseball, but the
local boys never picked him for their side when dividing up into teams
for a game. So he sat on the bench, day after day, until someone finally
chose him for his team. The boys soon learned of the error of their
ways: The new kid hit two home runs in that first game and gained immediate
acceptance.
"Those kids would never have known how good he was if they hadn't picked
him," Halpern says. "the oil executive wanted his work team to think
of the Australians as that kid on the bench, waiting for a chance to
contribute. Almost everyone has had that feeling of being left on the
bench. A story like that can get people emotionally involved."
Excerpted from the
Harvard Management Communication Letter, December 1999.
For a copy of the complete article, click
here.
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