Why Did You Read This Book? To Become a Superhero!
In his memoir Tough Shit, filmmaker Kevin Smith writes that anytime a person is speaking to a group of people, in any context, the speaker has a duty and an obligation to be entertaining.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s the purpose of this book. Or at least one of them.
Whether you are speaking to friends on barstools or students in a classroom or customers in a conference room or grandchildren at Thanksgiving or an audience of thousands in a theater, you must be entertaining.
I have attended thousands of meetings, training sessions, conferences over my lifetime where the person delivering the content made no effort to engage the audience in an entertaining and memorable way.
I will never understand this. Not only do you have an obligation to be entertaining, you have an opportunity to be entertaining. You have the chance to set yourself apart from the ever-present drone of the masses. You have the opportunity to make people smile. Laugh. Engage. Learn. Feel better about the time spent.
This is what I call the Spider-Man Principle of Meetings and Presentations (though Voltaire admittedly said it first): “With great power comes great responsibility.”
I like to think about storytelling in terms of superheroes, because I believe that a person who can speak in an entertaining and engaging way to a group of people possesses a superpower that is sorely lacking in the world today. As people’s gazes continue to fall to their screens and communication is truncated into bite-size text messages, the human beings who can still hold the attention of an audience and teach and speak in an entertaining way possess enormous power.
In 2015, I spent some time in Brazil consulting with an engineering firm. The CEO of the company told me that he would rather hire poorly trained engineers who can speak to potential clients, meet with government agencies, and pitch projects to large groups of people than highly skilled engineers who lack these communication skills.
Why? “I can teach a bad engineer to be a good engineer. But I have no idea how to turn a person who can’t write or speak well into someone who can. I’m not sure if it’s even possible.”
It’s possible; unfortunately, it takes longer than the afternoon I was spending with this man. But think about that: bad engineers who can speak well will be hired over good engineers who cannot. That is a superpower.
Or think about it this way: If you are conducting a one-hour meeting at your company, you have effectively stolen one hour from every person in the room. If there are twenty people in the room, your presentation is now the equivalent of a twenty-hour investment.
It is therefore your responsibility to ensure that you do not waste the hour by reading from PowerPoint slides, providing information that could have been delivered via email, lecturing, pontificating, pandering, or otherwise boring your audience. You must entertain, engage, and inform. Every single time.
But I also believe that there is a second, equally important reason to be entertaining:
When you are entertaining, people learn better. You convey information more effectively. You will become a better teacher, presenter, coach, salesperson, trainer, CEO, professor, parent, and dinner companion.
Yes, dinner companion. If you are on a first date, your goal should be to share information about yourself in an entertaining fashion.
This is who I am.
This is what I believe.
This is what I want.
This is what I dream.
How about you?
A first date is an interview of sorts. If you can make the person laugh, share a little vulnerability, and tell a good story in the process, your chances for second and third dates increase exponentially.
My wife married a neckless stump with legs for arms. It wasn’t because of the way I looked.
And yes, it will make you a better parent too. When I can teach my son and daughter a lesson using an entertaining story from my past, not only is that lesson more effective and enduring, it’s often requested again and again. Rather than nagging my children about something that I feel is critical to their development, I find them demanding that I teach them the lesson over and over again. That is a superpower.
When a student-teacher presents me with a lesson that he or she would like to teach to my class, my first question is always this: “What’s the hook? What is the reason for my students to listen and pay attention to you?”
Far too often, inexperienced (and ineffective) teachers believe that if they design a lesson using all of methods and strategies that they have learned in college, their students will sit quietly, attend fully, and absorb the content.
For about half to two-thirds of an average class of students, this will probably be the case. But for the rest, effective lesson design is never enough. These are the students who slip through the cracks in many classrooms. They are the kids who have ability and potential but lack the necessary skills to learn. They are the children who are not predisposed to quiet, thoughtful attentiveness. They are the kids who can barely sit still. The ones with one foot still on the baseball diamond and one finger still on the video-game controller. They are the students who do not believe in themselves or their capacity for a bright future. They are kids who come to school hungry and tired and still reeling from the chaos and violence of an evening at home.
These are the students who need a reason to listen.
I believe that it is the teacher’s responsibility to provide a reason to learn. A meaningful, entertaining, engaging, thrilling, fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants reason to keep their eyes and ears and minds open.
This is why every lesson requires a hook. A hook is not a statement like “This material will be on Friday’s test” or “This is something you’ll use for the rest of your life.” A hook is an attempt to be entertaining, engaging, thought-provoking, surprising, challenging, daring, and even shocking. This can be done in dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of ways.
A teacher can be funny. Surprising. Animated. Confused. Even purposefully depressed. A teacher can offer students uncommon levels of choice or challenge them with a meaningful, winner-take-all competition. A lesson can include something students have never seen before or (even better) something they have seen a thousand times before, but now in an entirely new context. The lesson can include cooperative learning in groups that the children will actually enjoy. Students can be made the center of the lesson. Students can be invited to teach the lesson. Lessons can be broken up into smaller, rapidly changing segments to hold student interest.
This is just a smidgen of the strategies that teachers can use, and most if not all of them can also be used by a person running a meeting, conducting a workshop, or otherwise stealing an hour from people in order to convey content.
Most importantly, a teacher can use storytelling. Not only is storytelling an entertaining way to engage and entertain students, but it opens your heart to your students. It demonstrates your humanity, your authenticity, and your vulnerability. It’s a way to establish trust and faith with your students. It connects you to them.
When your students love you, they will learn, even if they despise the subject.
This is how I approach teaching every day. I believe with all my heart that I am stealing seven hours of childhood from each of my students on a daily basis. I am paid to be a thief. I rob my students of hour upon hour of the most precious and fleeting time of their lives. Therefore I have a duty to make this time as meaningful, productive, memorable, and yes, entertaining as possible.
I do this through storytelling.
I do the same thing when delivering a TED Talk. Speaking at a conference. Sharing a story at Passover dinner. Telling my kids a story while driving the car. Sharing a memory on the golf course. I entertain and engage and inform through storytelling. I open my heart and allow my audience to step inside.
Here is something crazy. Perhaps the craziest thing that has ever happened to me through storytelling:
Four times I have stepped off the stage at a storytelling show and been approached by a woman who wanted to share the story of her miscarriage with me.
Four times.
In all four instances, the woman’s miscarriage was a secret. She had told no one that she was pregnant, and no one knew that she had miscarried. She told me first.
I was speechless the first time this happened. I called Elysha immediately after the show to tell her.
Elysha’s response was surprising. “Of course she wanted to tell you,” she said. “You stood on that stage and talked about one of your most difficult moments in your life with complete honesty. Your story made you safe to talk to. And she never needs to see you again. She could unburden herself of this secret to someone she knew she could trust, and she doesn’t have to see you at work or home the next day.” It made sense.
It’s why I tell the story of my homelessness to my students, and an hour later a girl tells me about living in a car with her mom over the summer.
It’s why I tell the story of spending a day in jail, and the next day a boy tells me that his father is in prison.
It’s why my friend Jeff accidentally told me the sex of both of his children prior to their birth. I told him a story on the golf course, and finding a safe and vulnerable space, he filled it with a secret he was carrying. Accidentally. Twice.
Back in 2011, Elysha suffered a miscarriage, and I watched her navigate the complex landscape of emotions surrounding this loss. Grief. Shame. Anger. Blame. Miscarriages are not often spoken about openly in our culture, so women find themselves dealing with this tragic loss quietly.
Of course it makes sense that these women shared their stories with me. Elysha had me to talk to when she miscarried, and I had Elysha, but not everyone is so fortunate. Not everyone is blessed with close, trusting friendships, understanding family members, or loving partners.
These women didn’t tell me about their miscarriages because of who I am. They told me about their miscarriages because I told them a story. A story filled with heart and humor. A story that expressed authenticity, vulnerability, and truth.
This should be our goal.
The world is filled with uninteresting people. I meet them every day. I suspect that in most cases, there is an interesting person lurking beneath their unfortunately uninteresting veneer.
These are people who answer, “How was your day?” with an itinerary of the day instead of sharing a meaningful moment. They are folks who tell us about their vacations by offering an adjective-laden time line of the week. They are the people who make meetings feel endless, dinners feel monotonous, and conferences feel disappointing.
These are the people who are afraid to talk about embarrassing moments or epic failures. They lack authenticity. Listen poorly. Fear vulnerability. Lack the skills and strategy to craft and tell a good story. They are not the superheroes of our world.
Storytellers have a superpower. They can make people feel good and whole and right. They can inspire and inform. They can make people see the world in a new way. They can make people feel better about themselves.
I may not be able to stop a bullet, but I make a woman feel better about a tragic loss. I can convince a reluctant teen to learn. I can make an audience laugh and cry in the span of a single story. I can make my children beg for more. I can make an eight-hour training session feel like two hours. I can convince a woman of absolute grace and beauty to marry me.
Me.
Fuck Superman. I’ll take storytelling any day.
I offer this superpower to you. This book is the instruction manual. All you need now is to practice. Begin collecting stories and telling stories.
Become the storyteller I know you can be.