Gideon Resnick, The Daily Beast; Meet the Boston City Councilor With Visions of Becoming the Next Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
[Kip Currier: Massachusetts candidate Ayanna Pressley's "Treadmill story" is a great communication example of using the power of storytelling to persuade and make a lasting impression.
Another excellent example of highly effective storytelling that I've highlighted in my Management and Leadership course is this one from a 2011 New York Times interview, A Blueprint for Leadership: Show, Don’t Tell, with Amy Schulman, executive vice president and general counsel at Pfizer:
Q. [Adam
Bryant] Can you give me an example of one of those stories?
“A. [Amy Schulman] A story I
often tell is about the first time I took a deposition. I got there early, and I
thought that the most important thing was to control the witness. I didn’t
realize the first time around that the way you control somebody is not by
intimidating them. But I adjusted the chair that I was sitting on so that I’d
be really tall, and could look down imposingly on the witness. But I raised it
so high that as soon as I sat down, I toppled over and fell backward. I tell
that story for a few reasons. I want people to know I’m not afraid to laugh at
myself. And the best way to show people that you’re not afraid to laugh at
yourself is to actually laugh at yourself and tell a story of a time that
you’ve been embarrassed.”]
"Most politicians running for higher office don’t publicize embarrassing tales of personal physical harm.
But on scorching mid-July morning, Ayanna Pressley, a 44-year-old Boston city councilor seeking to become the next progressive candidate to knock off a well-known white male Democratic incumbent, regaled a group of kids about that time she fell off her treadmill.
“A girl got on the treadmill next to me,” she told a group of young, mostly African-American girls at a summer basketball clinic at Wainwright Park in the neighborhood of Dorchester. “And she had a cuter outfit on and she was running even harder and her form was even better. And I was so busy watching her that I fell and cracked my tooth on the treadmill.”
Pressley’s tale was an altogether human one: a former high school track runner trying to find her way back into shape. But it was a political metaphor too—one that she was applying to her own candidacy.
“Now that is a lesson for life,” she said, peering down at the girls underneath a sun hat. “I was so busy looking at her race that I wasn’t focused on my own. You have to run your own race.”"
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