Stop Drumming. Start Storytelling.
Stories have a meaningful effect. They succeed in what psychologists call "contextualization". Stories connect facts with a red thread and weave a meaningful context around individual pieces of information. Like a jigsaw puzzle, stories combine information, facts, and data to form an overall picture. They make it easier for the listener to grasp fragments of information, understand them, and recognize their overall meaning. As a lecturer, you should always keep in mind that listeners are looking for this connection—and context. If a speaker does not provide a red thread, recipients become irritated. As a result, the audience becomes unfocused, turns away, or tries to construct something themselves. If the audience decides to make a meaningful connection themselves, you “lose” them. Hungry Triangles and Jealous Circles The fact that people are always looking for connections and explanations was demonstrated as early as the 1940s by the two psychologists Fritz Heider and Marian...
