Good storytelling gives us the opportunity to feel another’s pains, joys, heartaches so that we can have empathy and connect with others and the experiences we haven’t gone through ourselves.
Michael Hyatt says “Our words have power, they impact others, but THEY IMPACT US ALSO”
A storyteller by the name of Thenkachi Ko.Swaminathan hosted the programmes INDRU ORU THAGAVAL, which ran from early 1993 to the early 2000s, and INTHA NAAL INIYA NAAL, which aired from 2002 to 2009. This is a brief five-minute show that was delivered in a Tamil dialect that even the illiterates could understand. Although the majority of his audiences had never met him, he had a profound effect on many people's lives. Not a single home in southern India awoke without hearing this man's voice. WHY? mostly because HIS WORDS WERE STRONG!!! Which is why, they say words are compared with knife
A knife can do wonderful things.
It can prepare your food.
It can cut your food into smaller pieces making it easier to eat.
It can cut open a knot.
It can help you cut wood to make a fire if you are camping.
Alternatively, a knife can harm and even kill a person.
A knife is not intrinsically good or bad. It just depends on how you use it.
Speech is no different. Speech is not intrinsically good or bad. It all depends on how you use your words. A sarcastic comment can cripple a person emotionally for years. A single compliment can launch a person’s career and make them successful for life. This is the power of WORDS. Before we understand the POWER OF WORDS.
We live in times when , we use more words than any other generations earlier! We use it not just in our daily interactions but in our Social Media, our respective professions, our communications, our reporting, our education etc... Let us briefly look WHAT ARE WORDS?
What are words?
Oxford Dictionary defines WORD as – “A single unit of language......something and can be spoken or written”
I. BUT WORDS HAVE FEATURES says DANIELLE McNamara
1. Imageability- is a measure of how easily a physical object, environment will evoke a clear mental image in the mind of any person observing it.
a. Can be imagined – Lion, Tiger, Donkey etc..
b. Cant be imagined – Love, Joy,
2. Associations – Police and Theif, doctor and nurse, good and bad, right and wrong, leftside and rightside
3. Emotions- Humanity’s experiences are packed inside words. For e.g. If I say a DOG
1. In ENGLISH it is a NOUN
2. It is a very FAMILIAR animal
3. You can SEE a Dog
4. EMOTIONS- cute, fierce, tall, short Dog
5. ACTIONS- Dog barks
So when a word is used, it has experiences associated to it! So both the communicator and receiver shares that experience. So when you are talking all the features are involved in what you are saying!
So our brain processes our language (which is a combination of words which has all these features). So words serve as proxies to actions, skills, interactions, emotions, thoughts...!
1. WORDS HAVE THE POWER TO BE CONTAGIOUS
Have you ever bumped into your colleague or friends, faculty, classmates and asked them HOW ARE YOU? If they respond,
1. Somehow fine man!
2. I don’t know yaar, don’t ask me
3. Please give me some space know
4. Hmmm hmmm
What would be your response? You will immediately, think about them the whole day, what happened to that person? You will be disturbed of that conversation. You will be carried away or caught up in that vortex of that conversation.
*So the Words of that person has affected me now!
Let me give you another example
Recently, I was scrolling through my facebook feeds, and something caught my attention! “The title goes something like this” – DO YOU KNOW THE TERRIBLE THING HAPPEND TO THE ACTOR WHO ACTED IN THE MOVIE “THE RAINBOW” Do you know his present condition?
Now I resist the curiosity & yielded to that temptation and clicked the link and entered the article and wasted a total 3minutes to find that he has lost 10kgs and become slim. The writer of that article desperately wants...
He knew it when he wrote it, but he placed it like a hook before you! In youtube we call this as CLICKBAIT and in Writing, I want to call this as CLICKBAIT!
So in our business encounters, dialogues in the various scope, space & Place of our influence, if our words are contagious, then it catches the attention of people & engages with them passively. Let it create a curiosity and make people listen to us. In this way, our engagement is sharp, crisp, clear and our target audiences are reached with the message that I wanted to communicate. Deploying this into our organizational working culture can turn our work’s performance and our dramatic stories will be embedded into one’s mind.
2.WORDS HAVE THE POWER TO ALTER THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY
Lately, downloaded an app called ADA- It’s a medical AI! So whenever, we get sick, we need to enter all our symptoms and check it. Few weeks ago, my wife developed a small lump in the right side of her neck, it started growing over few days. My wife got chills, fever as we keep checking ADA and GOOGLE, it ended up with the final and only answer THROAT CANCER.
Now my wife & I, who have no idea what this is, no place to go, no doctors around got traumatized. Then I decided to call my SISTER who was a doctor at CMC, she asked us few questions, she didn’t even suggest a medicine, she just asked her to do few things which can be easily found in the house. Now more than the pain- A big sigh of relief came in to both of our hearts when she said,
1. NOTHING TO WORRY! – THREE WORDS = Positive change
2. THROAT CANCER-TWO WORDS = Negative Change
What am I saying? Those words in the blog and in the app, altered our reality but the words of my sister re-altered our entire reality. Your words in organization can alter the reality of someone! So choose words carefully and wisely. Cos, it can alter not only your reality but also the one who is closely associated with you.
Do you remember the site called Glassdoor.com, a site that reviews companies anonymously. Every review is a story of that individual who IS/WAS a part of that organization.
Therefore, when someone looking to join a company reads that review OR writes an evaluation of the company he worked for after quitting, he is essentially sharing his experience. Stories will thereby influence the reader's vision of reality as well as that of the author. Establishing a positive company culture is important for organisational development.
3. WORDS EVOKE POWER IN WHO IS SPEAKING
Words not only convey ideas, they give power to the one who utters the word. The spoken word carries with it the personality of the speaker, that personality manifest in emotions, visions and goals, joys and sorrows, convictions and beliefs, etc.
Note the difference in the utterance of the word ‘mother’ by different people.
- ‘my mother’ ……..pronounced by a child of 5-7 years.
- ‘my mother’ …….. pronounced by a fatherless child of ‘7-12’ years
- ‘my mother’ ……… pronounced by a motherless child of ’12 – 14’ years
All the three don’t pronounce the word in the same way. Different emotions accompany the words. So words have the capacity of conveying not only ideas which are powerful but they convey also ‘the power of the persons who speak such words’.
In our workplaces we often assume that being professional equates to being perfectly rational and logical. We feel that in a professional context, we are expected to focus on facts and figures if we want to get a point across to colleagues. However, studies show that no matter how accurately we employ data and statistics, our colleagues will hardly remember any of these. On the other hand, they will better recall a relevant narrative that illustrates the issue reaches harder and deeper.
Facts and figures won’t ever have the same emotional impact as stories when it comes to motivating your team to embark on a new challenging mission. You need a good story to get their buy-in. Big companies in the world employ story-telling culture format a boost.
Together with the idea, the spoken word carries the emotions which can drastically change the listener.
Using stories in our business communication within the company, as well as with customers and other strategic partners, can create a more open, energised and inspiring environment.
CONLCUSION
RABBI SAMUEL BLOCH, shares a true story in his article DELVE DEEPER which written on APRIL 2015.
Two girls got on a bus and they started talking to each other.
“Did you hear that Sarah got engaged yesterday?”
“No, I never knew that!”
“That’s amazing that Sarah got engaged!!”
“But she is so sloppy and unorganized! How is she going to run a household?”
“She is never on time. Also, she cooked for us once and her food was terrible! Her new husband is going to starve!!”
“She spends money faster than she receives it. How will she get through the month?”
So it went, on and on and on. Behind the two girls was another lady who suddenly spoke up.
“I am sorry to interrupt you girls but I wanted to introduce myself. My son just got engaged to Sarah. Now that I know this information, I will tell my son everything that you said about Sarah and he must break off the engagement immediately. I will also tell all my friends how grateful I am to you girls for letting me know what Sarah is really like”.
The girls were shocked. They started to stutter and struggled to find the right words.
“No, No” they said with trepidation. Please do not let your son break the engagement.”
“Sarah is wonderful! She will make a great mother! She really will!”
“She is so warm, friendly and caring”.
“We were just talking. We never meant her any harm”. “Please don’t break the engagement” they pleaded.
However, the woman was adamant.
“Thank you, but based on what you said, I will make every effort to break it up as soon as possible. The girl you described sounds like a terrible person. I will inform my son immediately.”
The girls were horrified and crushed. After a short silence, the lady turned around to the girls and said “I am not the boy’s mother, but imagine if I was?”
“Do you know the damage you could have caused to this couple? You almost destroyed a potential family just because you had nothing else to talk about?”
“Words either build or destroy, use them wisely” the woman said sternly and with that she got off the bus.
This story should terrify us all. The reason for this is because it is so easy to talk all the time without any concern for the consequences. However, unknowingly and unwittingly, we could say things that have a far reaching impact and will tangibly cause distress and pain to others.
So
1. WORDS ARE CONTAGIOUS
2. WORDS HAVE THE POWER TO ALTER THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY
3. WORDS EVOKE POWER IN ONE WHO IS SPEAKING
1. YOUR STORIES CAN MAKE PEOPLE TO TAKE RISK OR PLAY SAFE?
2. YOUR STORIES CAN MAKE YOUR WORKING CULTURE TO YIELD RESULTS OR COLLAPS
3. YOUR STORIES CAN BE SO INFLUENTIAL TO WORK WITH ONE ANOTHER (TO be COLLABORATIVE) OR EXCLUSIVE
4. YOUR STORIES CAN TEACH PEOPLE