The Positives—and Perils—of Storytelling; HBR IdeaCast, Episode 840, February 8, 2022

Curt Nickisch, HBR IdeaCast, Episode 840; The Positives—and Perils—of Storytelling

"JONATHAN GOTTSCHALL: Ever since I published The Storytelling Animal, I became part sort of on the edges of what I’ve called the storytelling industrial complex – keynoters and book writers and consultants who’ve traveled around the country and are giving lessons to businesses and other big organizations about how to tell more persuasive stories, more memorable stories, more contagious stories. And I’ve also been spreading the good news that stories are a good thing. They’re good in the sense that they do good in the world. And they’re good in the sense that they also happen to make good business. And I’ve become increasingly troubled by the overstatements or the things left out of the messaging.

So the first thing is that stories aren’t good. They just aren’t. Stories are just powerful. I think it’s better to think of the force of storytelling as a mercenary that sells itself just as eagerly to the bad guys.

The other thing about storytelling is as soon as you’re telling a story, you’re in an ethically fraught situation, because basically what you’re doing is you’re trying to use a form of messaging that’s not quite explicit. Storytelling is always sort of indirect. And that’s the power of storytelling, and so people don’t get as skeptical and they don’t get as suspicious.

In my years in the storytelling industrial complex and attending conferences and reading other people’s books, I’d noted quite frequently that the power of storytelling was often likened to a Trojan horse. And this is a pretty good analogy for how stories work. The idea is that you have this beautiful structure, this thing we all love. The Trojan horse is this beautiful work of art, but it’s smuggling in something else. It’s smuggling in a message."

Americans are tuning out as omicron rages. Experts call for health messaging to adapt; NPR, January 12, 2022

YUKI NOGUCHI, NPR; Americans are tuning out as omicron rages. Experts call for health messaging to adapt

"Some say the messaging needs to shift to become shorter and simpler and even nod to a brighter future when the pandemic is over...

The problem with COVID-19 messaging, of course, is that the pandemic is not simple to understand. And public health recommendations are based on an evolving understanding of new science, so messages are necessarily complex and they change frequently.

Normally, whether it's seat belt recommendations or smoking cessation, messages do not change often. Yet even consistent messages take time for the public to absorb.

"The challenge we always have with communications, they always say people need to hear things seven times before it really sticks," says Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association...

But vaccines also offer an opportunity for more effective messaging, Benjamin says. Vaccines have altered the threat that COVID-19 poses to people who are vaccinated, he says, and public health leaders can acknowledge that progress and give people a road map for the future, based on how previous pandemics have ended. He argues that people might be more receptive to listening to messages if they're focused on looking forward.

"There is a reluctance to give people information because we're afraid of being wrong three months from now, but I think we do need to give people a sense of hope and we need to tell people what we anticipate going forward and how this ends," he says."