Wyzga On Words

Draw To Reveal The Story.

Who here doodles?

When we draw we are using a basic visual tool to help make sense of complex concepts, thoughts or ideas.  Drawing can help clarify and articulate our visions to ourselves as well as others in a conversation, presentation, meeting or trial.

I often use Post-It flip charts and Magic Markers when working with clients or audiences.  Drawing provides insight and problem-solving in a myriad of ways that mere conversation or brainstorming simply cannot accomplish as effectively.

Perhaps it's true that seeing is believing.

To see for yourself, visit Legal Sketchpad:

"BUSINESS SKETCHING FOR LEGAL CONFERENCES, STRATEGIC PLANNING MEETINGS AND TRAINING.

Legal Sketchpad promotes the use of basic visual tools in legal communication. As direct as possible, as low tech as possible."

I have no dog in this fight.  I am just pleased to help spread the word that PowerPoint is not the only game in town. 

TIP:    Fall back on what came naturally to you when a box of Crayola 64 helped unleash your imagination and creativity.

What Do I Mean When I Say "Power, Passion & Precision"?

 

Power.

            Passion.

                            Precision.

For decades now I have repeated my "3P Mantra" when speaking and teaching communication skills, story skills, and platform skills.  I use the "3P Mantra" on my office voice mail.

Power means coaching yourself to practice like you play.  The team plays to win.  The team practices to win.  You play to win - so practice like you play - with power.   A coach at my gym was training a member to get ready for her first tri-athlon.  It was the coach who kept reminding the trainee that she was getting ready for a race, a competition, to beat other people - not just taking a bike ride or a swim.  She took the advice and came in 4th in her class.

Passion means having life.  Does your case story come alive?  Or are you putting lipstick on a corpse?  Do you have a sense of affection for your work, for your client, for this case?  When my clients express exhaustion I always ask them, "For what do you have affection?  How do we marshall that for the task at hand?"

Precision means that state of being exact.  To be exact you must consider all the ways to get it right. To get it right you must develop the right story, right facts, right issues, right language, and right mindset. It can't be wrong when it's right.

Power.

            Passion.

                            Precision.

How Is Live Opera Like Storytelling? Those On Stage & We In The Seats Hear 'BRAVO!'

The Theater!  The Theater!  How I love the Theater!

Story comes alive on the stage.  In its own way, story comes to life on the silver screen.  Both stage and screen are art forms.  But one relies on the audience participation and the other is impervious to it.  

Zachary Woolfe writing for the NYTimes, "The Screen Can't Hear You Yell 'Bravo'," laments a recent trend whereby folks attend a televised broadcast of a live opera while seated in a movie theater.  Excerpt.

"In last week’s Arts & Leisure section I wrote about how watching opera in cinematic close-up, with Dolby surround sound, changes the performance in ways large and small. But the most distorted and distorting part of the HD experience comes at the times when a live audience repays a brave performance with enthusiastic applause.

Without fail, some watching the broadcasts shout “bravo” with gusto. But most of the audience doesn’t quite know what to do, caught between the intensity opera elicits and the sobering realization that, well, they are in a movie theater, perhaps thousands of miles from what they want to cheer and even farther from the relationship live performance engenders.

For all the praise HD deserves, and it deserves a great deal, this disconnect is damning. What the audience in a movie theater experiences is not just the opposite of opera. It is the undoing of opera, an art form in which a present, active audience is fundamental.

“Operas in general,” the critic Marcel Prawy wrote, “can only be properly enjoyed when audience, orchestra and stage form a compact community.” Its history is a history of being there: of applause and booing and rapt silence, the symbiosis between performers and audience. An image, in high definition, 3-D or any other permutation, creates only the illusion of intimacy. It is a cooler, more detached art form."

So, too this "compact community" of teller, story, and story listener is what creates the storytelling experience.  Think of a story like a living organism - like wine, perhaps.  As I have taught for years, the teller brings the listener along in a virtual journey so the listener is actually participating in the life of the story.

The same is true when you are arguing your case, giving a presentation or lecture.  You are collaborating with the listener or decision-maker.  The outcome is determined by members of that "compact community." 

TIP:     To better assure your chances of getting the outcome, verdict or decision you desire, know your "compact community," address your story to their concerns, and invite them on the virtual journey to collaborate and resolve problems along with you.

 

 

Anne Lamott Has Words For Writers & Lawyers.

I am a card-carrying member of the Anne Lamott fan club.

No question about it.

I have been insanely intimate with her books: Traveling Mercies, Bird By Bird, Plan B, and Rosie, among others.  The margins are filled with notes, the words are underlined and re-underlined.  I, like so many others, are convinced that Lamott wrote a particular book just for the reader. 

Something Lamott said rings true for all writers, and especially for lawyers who write their opening statement or closing argument but so rarely read what they've written aloud.  There's a big difference hearing with the ear:

"Nothing can break the mood of a piece of writing like bad dialogue. My students are miserable when they are reading an otherwise terrific story to the class and then hit a patch of dialogue that is so purple and expositional that it reads like something from a childhood play by the Gabor sisters. ... I can see the surprise on my students' faces, because the dialogue looked okay on paper, yet now it sounds as if it were poorly translated from their native Hindi."

TIP:     Any time you have something to say aloud, speak out loud what you've written to hear how it sounds before you have to stand and deliver your words to the decision-maker or listener.

A Plethora Of Story Influences.

I am delighted to have been invited to join Kathy Hansen's blog, A Storied Career!

Just in case you missed us, over the next several days I'll be re-posting the interview she conducted with me and began publishing on April 9th.

Click here for Question #5.

 

Content + Context + Value = Emotionally Meaningful Story.

I am delighted to have been invited to join Kathy Hansen's blog, A Storied Career!

Just in case you missed us, over the next several days I'll be re-posting the interview she conducted with me and began publishing on April 9th.

Here's the first post:

Content + Context + Value = Emotionally Meaningful Story.

What Decision-Makers Look For From The Lawyer.

A book review holds a good lesson for lawyers. 

Sylvia Brownrigg writing for the NYTimes Book Review, "A Wedding and a Funeral,"  leads with several observations sure to be shared by readers and speech listeners alike. Excerpt.

"A very good book is not only more satisfying, memorable and coherent than its lesser neighbors on the shelves. It’s also more relaxing to read. That wary inhalation as you take in the first lines — Will I believe in these characters? How distracted will I be by implausible dialogue, or forced plotlines? — lasts a page or two and then gives over to a long, slow breath of relief. You don’t have to worry. This writer knows exactly what she’s doing. She won’t let you down."

Lawyers, speakers, politicians, what are the take-aways here?

TIP:    Have you developed believable witnesses or characters?  Do they have fidelity to what we know?

TIP:    Will the listener or decision-maker be distracted by implausible rhetoric?  Plotlines that fail to hang together seamlessly?  Is your trial story or presentation congruent from start to finish?  Or does it unravel like a poorly knit sock?

TIP:     Do you know exactly what you want to convey and to whom so your listeners and decision-makers can relax into the story, go with you on that virtual journey, and "translate images into action"?

"Emotional Meaning Leads To Listener Action."

My dear friend, colleague, author, writer, mediator, blogger and story-tracker, Stephanie West Allen, emailed me the link to The Inside Story, an article on the power of narrative by Peter Gruber published in Psychology Today.

Gruber's article is a tidy review of what we storytellers live and breathe.  Excerpt.

"Telling stories is not just the oldest form of entertainment, it's the highest form of consciousness. The need for narrative is embedded deep in our brains. Increasingly, success in the information age demands that we harness the hidden power of stories. Here's what you need to know to tell a killer tale."

I was encouraged to revisit many of the themes I have been writing and speaking about since 1994 when a book of stories fell off a shelf into my hand and said, "Come follow us."  Themes like "virtual journey" which Gruber calls "virtual transportation."  Either way you look at it the notion is a well told story invites the listener inside the story to share the experience. Remember to release them at the end.   

Stories are not fluff - they have become the "cornerstones of our conscience" as lawyers have learned. Pull accurately on the collective community conscience and you are likely to get them on your side of an argument.

This is another oft-told notion:

"The first rule of telling stories is to give the audience—whether it's one business person or a theater full of moviegoers—an emotional experience. The heart is always the first target in telling purposeful stories. Stories must give listeners an emotional experience if they are to ignite a call to action."

As I wrote on bookmark give-aways in 2003:

"Storytelling thrives on imagination.  Images touch the heart and become sensations, sensations trigger memories, memories create meaning and meaning leads to listener action."

Any story must be emotionally meaningful for the listener to care about it. That does not mean the story has to be emotional and fraught with drama.  No.  It must evoke a value or values that the listener identifies with as personal to them and their life experience, their view of how the world turns.  This is especially true of decision-makers, those people you want to give you some action in exchange for the story.

Not all of us are called to be storytellers.  There are three distinct and interwoven parts to any story: the story itself, the teller and the listener.  Listening attends to the images and helps translate the metaphors into "this is like that."  Without the listener there is no story.

If it's true that we read to know we are not alone, I believe we listen to stories for the same reason. 

How Memorable Are Your Words? Or Is It All Charisma And Passion?

On March 23rd I read the following post from The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor:

"It was on this day in 1775 the lawyer Patrick Henry spoke at the Second Virginia Convention in Richmond, a meeting of American colonial leaders that included George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The four-day assembly turned into a fierce debate about whether or not to raise a militia and arm Virginia in the fight against the British. On the topic, Patrick Henry delivered a famous speech that probably included the line "Give me liberty or give me death!" At least, some people thought he did.

There was a problem with Henry's speeches. They were charismatic and passionate, but afterward, no one could remember what he had said. Thomas Jefferson said of Henry: "When he had spoken in opposition to my opinion, had produced a great effect, and I myself had been highly delighted and moved, I have asked myself when he ceased: 'What the devil has he said?' I could never answer the inquiry."

The speech wasn't written down until 1816, by Henry's biographer, William Wirt. Wirt talked to people who had been present at the speech and had them reconstruct it from their memories."

What struck me were the words of Thomas Jefferson asking, "What the devil has he said?"

Who here has asked the same question after hearing a lawyer, speaker or presenter?  Who here has had the courage to ask it of her own work?

TIP:    To ensure that your listeners and decision-makers are not asking the same question Jefferson posed, make certain that your speech, oral argument, presentation and the like blends content (facts) with context (the set of circumstances that surround a particular event or situation and give meaning to the content):  Content + Context.

TIP:    Support or undergird the "Content + Context" storyline with a value or set of values to create emotional meaning for your listeners.  For example: Rail Train Crash (content) + Engineer Sending Text Messages (Context) + Inattention, Safety, Disregard (Values).  The emotional meaning you deliberately created grounds the story in the listeners' own world view so they remember what you said and, if necessary will act on your words. 

TIP:     Create memorable arguments and presentations (oral and written) by incorporating The Mighty Three Elements I call "Power, Passion and Precision" - weighting each element equally.

What other tips have worked for you to create meaning and action for your listeners and decision-makers?

 

Q&A Tuesday: How Do I Get Down The Story?

Q:    "I have so many details, so many facts, so much information....How do I get down the story?"

A:    Sentence by sentence, using index cards.

When I work with lawyers and others who need to tell a story, I am fond of the compression exercise I learned from Jay O'Callahan.  The trick is to get your whole story down to 15 seconds.  It works.  And then you can put down the paper and no one gets hurt.

Here are two more techniques you can use.

This first one comes from a favorite author, Anne Lamott, who wrote "Bird By Bird - Some Instructions on Writing and Life."  I am charmed by the little story that gives us a clue to the treasures her book will hold, as follows:

"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write.  [It] was due the next day.  We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, ans he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.  Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.'"

That is the very same advice I give those with whom I am working. 

Imagine that you are walking in a great swirl of papers.  Each sheet of paper is an item of information for the story.  No wonder you feel lost.  Grab one paper and begin there.  Then take it piece by piece or, bird by bird.

This last tip came to me this morning.  A high school senior by the name of Ben Breedlove wrote his story early last month before he died from a longstanding heart condition. His technique is profoundly stirring.  Words written on index cards, no sound, only the expression in his eyes and the occasional grin.  He was gorgeous.  In his memory I would like to share the technique with you in the expectation that it will be another tool for you to get down the story.

Click here to access  This Is My Story (Part I) and Part II.

Imagine having your clients do the same work.

It's as simple as that.  And if you're still perplexed, call me and we will create the story together.