288. Empathy, Storytelling, and Success: A Conversation with Michelle Auerbach (Refreshed Episode)

Welcome to episode 288 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. Today's episode is all about the power of story. Ready?

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You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello.

Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is all about the amazing power of story and it's really kicking off a theme of episodes here on the podcast. For the next several weeks there are going to be guests talking about many different aspects of storytelling and how it all can help you in various areas across life and business. I've always known the importance of really good storytelling. It's so helpful in getting people to understand and relate to whatever your trying to communicate. And this conversation with Michelle Auerbach, which originally aired in March 2021, was the first deep dive on the show into the recent research and science of what's really going on in our brains when it comes to stories. I refer back to this conversation and episode often and you'll see why. When you listen, you'll get a chance to learn about decision making and if story is a nice to have or a need to have, as well as what's going on with the chemicals in our brains differently when stories are included. And Michelle's recommend for using stories where you don't have to get into the whole hero's journey, which is way more in depth than is needed as you get into stories, especially in business and in life as well. Sound good? Before we jump into the episode, I do want to remind you that links to related past episodes, many of which have come out after this one originally aired, as well as books and articles are all waiting for you in the show. Notes for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 2888 all right, let's talk about the power of story. Dr. Michelle Auerbach, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.

Thank you for having me.

Absolutely. And I know we didn't necessarily talk about it to talk about it, but I feel like as far as a good story, a way to really kick this off. I'm not sure. I feel like I'm one of the first, maybe like dozen people getting to introduce you as Dr. Auerbach because as you know, two days ago you said you defended your dissertation.

Yeah. So thank you for doing that because it makes it real. I think there's going to be a certain amount of repetition necessary.

Absolutely. I feel like. Well, you don't want to be telling everyone that they have to call you that, but I try to, definitely. Whenever someone who's on the podcast, if I know they have a doctorate, I will go out of my way to at least introduce them as doctor at least once, just to make sure, because there's a lot of work that goes into that. So congratulations again.

Thank you.

Yeah, so tell the group, you know, the audience a little bit about you and what your background is. I know we're going to be talking a lot about story today, but I know you have a varied past, let's say, of different kind of careers along the way. So just tell a little bit about where you started, where you are now, and anything interesting as you go.

So I started out in Cleveland, Ohio, sitting under the piano at any family gathering, reading a book that would be definitely like the Genesis story. I was the kid under the piano with the glasses on, reading the book while everybody else was having a family event. And that has not changed. Well, I mean, I have to behave appropriately in public now, but I need.

A really big piano.

To sit.

I need a big piano and a smaller book. No, but. But story's always been an enormous part of my life, and when I was a kid, I was pretty sure I was either gonna be a Supreme Court justice or a folk singer. Those were the two things that were gonna happen, and they weren't that different in my mind.

Right.

You were righting wrongs and redressing harm either way, either by music or by law. And so I really. Those were my paths that I carried with me. I have a terrible singing voice. So when I went to college, I ended up majoring in literature, and I got a writing degree. I got an MFA in writing, and I was a professor for a long time of ancient world languages and literature. I do Sanskrit and Latin and a little bit of Greek and Hebrew and, you know, old French and old Italian. All these. All these kind of interesting things. And I loved them because of the way that the stories actually transmitted information about what it was to be human, that the stories were incredible receptacles for information. It was like a data dump, honestly. Like, if you wanted to know what it was like to feel omnipotent and to be brought to your knees, you read Beowulf or you read the Epic of Gilgamesh. And those stories, the plot was Great. And it dragged you along. And the characters are interesting and the details are cool, and there's snakes and chalices and all that stuff. But. But what was fascinating to me was just what it meant about humanity and being human and being present in the world. And so I was professoring, and I had somebody offer me, while I was on my sabbatical writing a book, offer me a chance to do some work in a corporate environment with a client who was struggling really badly because they had realized, or it had been brought to their attention that they'd done some harm in the world and they needed to fix it. And they were struggling more with how they felt about it than what the solutions were. The solutions were kind of obvious, like, you have to fix it. But I went in thinking the only thing I would ever do was teach college. And I left thinking, I want to do change management in organizations because it's a place where all of the wisdom that we've been handed down shows up and helps people in their real everyday life. Like, it's great to talk about it in the classroom. I loved teaching literature and creative writing. I thought it was great. But when you actually walked into a room where those stories helped people change their attitudes, their behaviors, their actions in ways that allowed them to do a better job in the world of being good citizens, corporate citizens, and individual citizens, that was, like, stunning to me.

Yeah.

So that's the story of how I ended up here. And that was about 15, almost 15 years ago. And so I've been doing organizational change, which includes, like, leadership development, that kind of stuff, but working with organizations to develop culture and change for, you know, a while now. And it all really did start under a piano bench in Cleveland, Ohio.

Awesome. So, I mean, if you think just to expand a little bit. So there is an episode on change management I'll be linking to. And most of the audience knows I teach a class on change management, internal communication, and we happen to get connected. As I was working on curriculum for class Texas A and M, about power of story and presentations, and then told me what you did, and I thought, well, this is perfectly timed. And so, you know, here. Here we are. So when you look at change, how does story impact, you know, helping people to be more likely to change? Or is it about learning more about themselves or seeing having more empathy with others plus more, you know, sort of. What do you look at when you talk about story and its impact on change?

So this is a good question, right? It was part of my dissertation. Story does a couple of really important 4 really important change tasks. The first thing it does is it's biologically based and so it gets, it has a somatic impact on the way that you take in information. Right. So that's an important thing. The second thing is that it is, it helps you to co regulate with the person telling the story. Right. So there's a safety aspect to also does learning really well. Like when you. Story. Story is an intrinsic part of learning and it doesn't matter. I remember I was studying art history in college and we had to memorize the names, dates, artists of paintings and you'd look at the painting and have to like draw this information from your brain. And we would make up little stories about the painting that included, you know, all of the bits of information and then we would like act them out as a way to memorize it. And I didn't know at the time how useful that was, but that the story moves stuff from your short term memory across, you know, into your long term memory and allows you to hold on to information. So I can still like make the shape of my body I made when I was memorizing the name of the Brancusi, you know, thing that I was memorizing and it's all still there, you know, many, many, many decades later. So it does that and then it also allows you to see possibility that you wouldn't necessarily see otherwise because story by default is not. It feels in your body like it's happening, but you know, it's not. So you're able to take in a lot of information about different possibilities, different experiences. And they call this transportability when they talk about story. But it's a fabulous way to share possibilities with people. So if you're giving presentations and you're doing communication and you need to tell people stuff that's either not yet true, you know, or that you want to be true, or that's going to happen. They can live it a little bit and that helps them to feel it and understand it and see it. So if you give people pie chart and you just say 67% of our whatever is lost because of whatever, you know, 67% of our profit is, you know, blah, blah, blah. And people look at the pie chart and they're like, well, that's a big number. Like, okay, I guess, yeah, I care, I care about that number. But if you, you know, you tell them the story of what it would be like to recapture that missing 76% and how that would feel in their job, they're going to be like, oh yeah, I'm right on that. And so story does those things and it's just a biologically based mechanism for actually getting stuff done well.

Right. I work with story with so many of my clients and knowing where coming from a marketing and brand strategy, communication background, there is a lot of helping to tell a good story to draw people in, you know, and with those, you know, I'll have a client maybe that's talking about helping underprivileged or those who don't have good access to money for, you know, credit unions I've worked with in the past, things like that. And same, you know, they want to have the example of, you know, 60% of households don't have enough saved for a $500 emergency or whatever it is. And I'll always recommend we need to start with, like, that's great, that's fine. There are some reasons I wouldn't share it that way anyway. But before you get to that statistic, you want to say like, this is Sarah. She's a nurse and is working an extra job to help take care of her kids and get them to soccer practice. Worried about she has enough money for milk and the field trip, whatever, and is, you know, walking to the kids to school because she can't or taking the bus. You know, you tell the story and then say, she is one of the X million Americans that blah. And we can help them. We can help Sarah and everyone else by this. And that's where you get kind of the. Those goosebump moments, especially if it's a real person that you're able to relate to. And a lot of businesses, I find, have a hard time when you hear someone else's story. You get why one is valuable, but you don't want to just focus on one person because it feels like you're not telling enough. You know, you're not getting the whole thing out there. But, you know, if you really, really, really focus on one great story, we feel everyone else, you know, it has so much power behind it. Do you have any insights on why and how that works?

Yeah, my insights are this. Cortisol.

Yeah.

And oxytocin.

Yes.

Right. So what storytelling does is there's just so much going on in our lives all the time, and way more information is coming into our brains than we actually are aware we're taking in. And we tend to. Our brain decides basically what to pay attention to. And so in that environment where attention is a pretty limited resource, stories heightened, there's. There'll be a character you care about and Then something will happen to them that puts them in jeopardy. Or what I call makes trouble. And what that jeopardy or that trouble does is it focuses your brain. You're like, whoosh, right there. I'm here, I'm paying attention to this because this could be me. And I can learn from this experience by hearing it. And it doesn't. And then I would behave differently and it wouldn't have to happen. And your brain actually marks it in the same way that it would mark some other danger to let you know, like pay attention. So that's the cortisol. And I think cortisol gets a bad rap. People always think, you know, it's the stress hormone, but actually it's what gets you out of bed in the morning. You need it. Without it, you'd be like, you know, boneless chicken. So you need it. And then the other thing that happens is you care about Sarah, right? And you want her kids to get a good education and you want her job to go well and you, right, and that produces oxytocin in your bloodstream. So that oxytocin allows you to identify with her, want good things from her, learn from her, and those two things together. There's some research by a guy by the name of Paul Zak who has been doing some research for darpa and he says that those are what creates pro social behavior. So when you actually want to get people to do things that are good for the world, good for each other, good for themselves, supportive, you know, those two factors, getting those two things in your bloodstream, and they've actually taken people's blood before and after hearing a story versus hearing a list basically of events and not told as a story and discovered that, that those two hormones are higher in your blood. And then what happens is you're more likely to say, donate money or take an action or give part of the earnings from the research away to an organization if those things happen. So the reason that you would do that is a really biologically based good reason.

Absolutely. I was so glad that you mentioned Paul Zak. I used some of his research is cited in my book when I talk about the novelty and story. And I have also linked in the show notes for everybody to the episode on the dose brain chemicals. If you want to learn more about oxytocin, you know, there's some information about that for sure. And there's tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of great research about story. Obviously we'll only touch on some of it today. I know when we think about Story. One of the arcs that most people are familiar with, if you've heard of any, the one you know is the Hero's Journey. Right. This is the foundation of so many stories, and it may feel like you need to be more creative than that and come up with a different arc, but we just really love that Hero's Journey story. So would be curious if you have any examples of maybe using that arc in business or if you have some others that people might not be familiar with. That can be really powerful when telling a great story.

You're reading my mind. The hero's journey is so complicated and has so many different steps, right? It has a lot of steps. And if you do it right, you end up with Star Wars. You know, you have the good stuff.

Harry Potter.

Yes. Harry Potter or every.

What feels like every story ever, right?

Every classical story. Because what they did was he looked backwards at what existed in classical mythological stories that had heroes or heroines and said, this is what happens. So we're really familiar with that. But there's some really fascinating stuff out there that that makes it a lot easier for the average person to use story. So there's this great organization, I don't even know if they're an organization called the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale. And they do work on how to share scientific information with people who you disagree with, basically, which is just about everything that's going on in the world right now. How do you talk about climate change, how do you talk about COVID vaccination, how do you talk about wage inequality? All these things that are actually data driven. They've discovered that you can't really like just sharing the data doesn't bridge that gap. And so they've done a whole lot of work on what does bridge that gap. And they didn't take it as far as you and I are about to. But they basically say you have to share your experience and what you hope for in order for people to see the gap bridged. And so I've done a lot of work on using a very simple story structure that only has three parts where you set the stage for what's going on. And then you describe the trouble or the crisis and then what you did about it and the benefits from that. And it's just three steps. So then you can say there was, you know, there was a fire. This is true. What I'm about to say is actually true. There was really raging fires. I live in Colorado, in my friends and my neighborhoods over the summer. And one of the things that we'd always been told to do was cut back all of the landscaping around your house. Well, everyone wants the landscape around your house to look pretty, right? So for the folks who were like, don't worry about it, you know, what's a few pine trees here and there? A lot of those people lost their houses. And the folks who actually had kind of a barren yard with some rocks and some whatever were able to keep their houses. And so, you know, what I took from that was that there's a really higher calling here in my neighborhood about your landscaping, which is that you darn well better use rocks and, you know, gravel and whatever and not lean into the trees. Right? But that very simple thing when you tell people, cut back your landscaping period doesn't work when you say the fire came within 100 yards of my house, but it was the way my yard was landscaped that allowed the firefighters to save my neighborhood.

Right.

People are more likely to act. Right. And that's just a very simple three part story. And in my book, I talk about it a lot. I have the story equation, and that's all it is. And that makes it easier when you're giving a presentation, when you're talking to people, when you're trying to have a conversation with relatives who you disagree with. I was scared to get the COVID vaccine too. But when I talked to a doctor, they told me all these things that really reassured me. And I write and you just tell it as a story. You don't say, oh, don't be such an idiot. Right. Because that doesn't get you anywhere.

Oh, that doesn't work. That's compelling.

Not compelling. Not at all. I mean, it might sound. Feel really good to say.

Yeah.

But it's not. Doesn't. Doesn't really help. So that's, that's fabulous, right? That we can take it down to a three part structure. Right. That's just a story equation. And then you can even get. Then you can have a lot more fun too, because they're all over different cultures, they have different kinds of story equations. So in Japanese story equations, the middle part gets kind of squiggly. So it's like, tell us what's going on and then take us on a little journey where we explore the things that we're going to need to know. And then tell us what you came to and we'll come there with you. So that's another cool way to do it. I would tell you the name of that structure, but I mispronounce it according to my Japanese friends. Every time I do it. But it's the Japanese story structure that's in a lot of anime cartoons and stuff. So if you've ever watched any good Japanese cartoons, chances are you've actually seen that story structure. There's a griot structure that are in certain parts of West African storytelling tradition where they tell stories that are both sweet and salty. And that contrast helps you understand decision making and all kinds of things because they give you a little bit of sweet and a little bit of salty. So that's another cool story structure. So I think, you know, there's more out there than Joseph Campbell's monomyth, like the hero's journey. And plus, like, who in the world wants to set up a presentation, right, with 12 slides to capture the 12 steps of the hero's journey, right? I mean, that's just a lot. So you really only need three, right?

There's a reason that's used in epic tomes, right? Like it's the long.

You need like nine Harry Potter novels that are 800 pages thick to get.

Through that, to make it happen really, really well that you can experience that. So I love hearing and seeing these different stories in the way that they've evolved and showing it's such a great balance in the nature nurture, brain development, putting tribes of people together as they develop over time. And everybody has story, but the way that it has resonated what's carried through in this area, Africa versus Asia versus Western cultures, just a little bit different nuance, but still all showing that story matters no matter where you are. And you can tell them in different ways. But you know, there's some tips, I guess, in the way that you talk about it. So curious question from me here would be, is there a lesson to be learned there that if you were working.

On international teams, do you need to.

Change up the type of story structure that you use if you're working in a change management or internal communication within your team?

Team.

If I'm working with a team from Japan versus one from America or the uk or do they all kind of work even if you weren't brought up with a certain type of story?

So that's a good question. I think you can answer both directions. If there's a tradition that you know really well that you do a good job of working with, that's always great, right? Because. And that would be true of also not expecting other folks from other cultures to use your tradition, but to actually listen for what theirs is as they sort of. They give it to you with A lot of mastery. Right. So you get to it. You know, I think the problem is that we run things through. Oh, well, that's not. It's called Freytag's arc, that three part story structure. Oh, but that doesn't follow a Freytag's arc structure. And therefore it's right. Like, forget it. If they're a master storyteller in whatever tradition that they come from, you're gonna know and you're gonna feel it because your skin will prickle and, you know, it'll all work. So I think allowing there to be much more diversity in the way stories are told is fabulous. The other direction is good too. I did a big, huge story transformation project for a very large company, and we went all over the place, Europe and Asia. And so when I was going to Japan and China right before COVID so it was like November of 2019, I knew from graduate school that I knew these altern story structures, and I even knew the movies and the TV shows and stuff because I'd watched them. And so showing up, being able to say, like, this is what I know about story structure where you're from. Talk to me about it was really useful. And then people got really into it and sharing it back. So we, you know, we ended up doing the storytelling workshop and me saying, all right, do it your way and let me learn from you a little bit. And they had so much, so much to offer. But it. But it worked because I knew enough going in to number one, know I am never going to be the expert in someone else's story structure, but that I can ask questions and be curious and be kind of super into it. And that worked both in Japan and then also in China. We. I have actually studied a lot of Chinese stuff because I did ancient languages. And so I don't know any Chinese, but everyone who does translation, who I respect, for whatever reason, translates Chinese. So I was able to at least go in and say, like, here's what I know, and let's fill in the gaps. And I love giving the leeway for folks to do their tradition and also show up knowing just enough to be helpful without ever pretending to be the expert.

Right.

So that's fun. So one of the things to do if you're on a team that's got people from all over the world or from more than one culture, is like, tell me one of your favorite stories from when you were a kid and listen and try to see, like, how. What are the parts of it and how does it work? And those are things I often will do as openers with groups. Tell me your favorite love story. Because if we're going to talk about pro social behavior, that's a good way to start. Tell me your favorite hero story or tell me your favorite, the plot of your favorite book or movie from when you were a kid. And that way you get to hear how people tell you their stories and you don't correct them and say, well, what you really need is ascending action in the first third of the book. That's messed up. You know, the first third of the story that's met by. Because that, that may not be the structure.

Right. That's a really great way to kick off a session too because you can also hear so much about what people are passionate about and it can build an affinity where if I'm talking about Harry Potter and someone else like I love Harry Potter, but you wouldn't necessarily know or talk about it versus, you know, the Star wars people and the Romeo and Juliet people, you know, you get to learn a lot about colleagues that you might not have otherwise known or gotten to. It also helps with that, you know, in group biases versus out of group biases. And I want to make a note too, when you were talking about having the participants helping to shape the workshop when you were there, that's a lot of using the IKEA effect and for the, you know, audience listening, I'll have a link to that episode in the show notes as well. But helping them to participate in shaping the experience will make it so they are more invested and more likely to.

Want to move forward.

They're part of the story, which makes it a very different experience overall. They're more invested and can have it just be that much more effective.

Yes, very much so. And there's a concept called priming, which I'm sure you've talked about. But when you choose what kinds of stories you'd like people to open a session with, whether it's a meeting or in this case, it's a long, you know, day long event. If you ask the right questions, you're priming them to reach into their memory or their brain or their body or wherever and come up with already the feeling that you'd like them to have and the feeling that you, that you'd like to bring to the work that you're doing or the feeling that they're going to need to bring for their clients or their customers. And so it works very well also in organizations that have a really strong why or a credo based organization where they know why they're doing it. If you can bring that into the room in a really tactile way, people will spend the rest of the day leading from that place.

Yeah, absolutely. I was remembering when we were just talking here, one of the things that I've done and have used quite a bit when I'm doing my day long workshops and whatnot. And we're trying to make sure you got people across teams that don't necessarily know each other very well, needing them to open up. I've used a tool called story cubes, which I. Yeah, and so I love these. And for anyone who's not familiar, I'll link to some in the show notes too. They're a lot of fun, but they're just dice and on each side they have little kind of squiggly looking pictures that you can interpret in different ways. And so you roll the dice and then you have to tell a story based on what came up, something that you remember from when you were a kid or whatever. But the images will bring up something different for me than somebody else. And you get to learn something totally random versus if you were to say, just tell us a story from when you were a kid. It's hard to grab something, whereas if you see there's one with a bumblebee on it, you would remember, oh, this time when my sister got stung by a bee or whatever, which is a story you never would have told. But it just makes such a difference. So I really like story cubes. Do you have any good story cube stories?

So I use story cubes all the time, which I love, but then I also created. And of course nobody's gonna be able to see them but you. But I created these story cards. I had a friend whose daughter was in graduate school and she was studying art in like an MFA program. So I got her to find amongst people she knew and just folks who are artists, all of these really evocative pictures. So I have these cards that have like a hundred different just pictures on them that were from these art students. And then we put. I use those all the time to have people tell stories. So then all the story arcs that I use, so you know, like the Freytags pyramid and the three part story, they're all. There are cards for those too. So then when people are learning to say, put a presentation together or do whatever, you can put the card on the floor, lay the pictures out around it and tell the story from the pictures. Because this picture brings up the feeling that goes with the story and that's probably the best thing to take away from this is it's the details that evoke feelings that make the story work. So when you were talking about Sarah the nurse and she's walking her kids to school, like that'll stick. Like I don't have enough money to both pay for gas for the car to drive the kids to school and pay for sandwiches. Right. And those details really stick in your mind and they bring up a feeling. And the feeling is what anchors the story and anchors the learning and also the change. So, yeah, anything you can do to add visuals to storytelling is a really good idea because it helps to be. It helps to evoke the feelings in another way also. Right. So you're telling, you're showing people are. People are getting it right.

That's for. I do a lot of presentations as I know you do as well. And my slides where people ask, you know, oh, can we have your slides for anyone who can't attend, say, yeah, sure. It's just a lot of images. So, you know, there's that. I know what they mean. When I see this slide with penguins on it, I know what I'm going to talk about. And it doesn't necessarily, necessarily need to have all the words, but by using chunking techniques, you know, I know when this slide comes up, it's got something to do with priming. And I know I'm at a conference with bankers versus veterinarians versus entrepreneurs. And so this is the example I'm going to use that I can just very quickly get that versus having a super memorized verbatim script which you can get stuck, you know, knowing it's about that, that moment and that I'm priming what I want them to feel and grab onto with the image, which ties in with what I'm talking about. Even if it feels a little bit strange, maybe if it's a silly picture or something, but it helps. It's all part of telling that story and keeping them engaged along the way.

Yeah. Sensory details and storytelling are so important. And if you can evoke the feeling with the slides, then you're as they're going to be feeling it as you tell the story again, helping them to get there with you or with each other in a more efficient way. Right. It's using our biology and the way our brains and bodies work to benefit how we do things and to benefit learning and to benefit group cohesion and for things that are really hard to talk about. I've done a lot of work this year on diversity, inclusion, justice within organizations. And when you're talking about things that evoke a trauma response, which those things often do for everybody, we've all played a part in some way in that situation. And so it evokes trauma on different levels for different folks to be able to use a biologically based system for talking about. It allows people to have better conversations, be more open, feel more grounded while they're doing it right. And all that stuff is a product of storytelling, and therefore it's really easier to get there. I always know when I'm like a speaker at something and they have some expert who's going to come in and talk about diversity and they start pulling up the slides with the percentages and the whatever and the whatever. I just think we all know, like, we all intellectually know things are unfair and really, like, whatever, systemically unfair, but make me feel it so that. Right. Make people feel it so that they come at each other, come towards each other with feeling. And so I think it's appropriate to everything from talking to bankers about, you know, client relations. I have a great, you know, conversation that I had with a bunch of insurance agents because, like, there people are showing up on your doorstep to buy insurance and talking about the bad stuff that's going to happen. Right? Like, you don't sell insurance because everything's going to be great. So how do you have conversations with people about potentially traumatic events? Right. You tell them stories that help them understand sort of how it would feel to feel a little bit more secure. And then on the converse, one of the things that they mentioned to me is they hear a lot of stories. So story listening becomes a really important part of the job too, Right. That bankers and insurance agents and, you know, social workers and police officers, nurses, all these people spend a lot of time listening. And you can also develop skills at being a really good story listener and evoke good stories from people in ways that are healing to the people telling the stories.

Yeah, when you were talking about the insurance piece, it was also making me think about the availability bias, which I will link to the episode on that and the show notes, which is essentially, you know, you were talking about fires earlier. And so when are people most likely to get fire insurance? Right after a fire, not necessarily when you needed it, which is before. And then enough time goes by and you think, I haven't ever had to use that. I'm going to drop it off my insurance. And then, you know, fires come back right after the fact. So that awareness and making something real, you know, the best time to be Selling insurance for floods and fires and earthquake protection and whatever is right after some other traumatic event has happened that's gained a lot of publicity because it's very much in people's minds. And there are a lot of stories that we're hearing on the news that's making it feel more relevant to us even if we're not there, that can make you want to take an action.

Right. And storytelling and the emotional response to storytelling is part of our decision making functions. I think it's probably like anybody who reads any neuroscience knows the story of the guy who couldn't make decisions. Right. Because he had had damage to the affective centers of his brain and feeling function. This is a pretty famous story by a very famous neurologist. And decision making is impossible without feeling. And stories are what evoke feelings. If you need people to be making a decision in the room while you're there, you need to be telling stories along with the data that you're giving them because otherwise all the possible outcomes, buying insurance or not buying insurance kind of feel emotionally the same. Like, if I bought insurance, I'd have insurance, that would be fine, but then I'd be out some money. And we have this tendency to bias certain outcomes. Right. Like opportunity cost. Right. We bias certain outcomes and that are different. We're biased against them. Right. That's going to cost me something. And we don't tend to have a bias against the things that are going on in the present that are actually costing us and we don't know about. And so one of the ways that evoking those feelings helps is you can say like, oh, actually just sitting here in my neighborhood having bad landscaping should be concerning to me. Right. But it feels like, oh, it'll be fine. It's always been that way. And. And that's where the storytelling comes in to be able to say, well, maybe it was always that way, but let's think about ways it could be different. Right. So there's a lot of work in the communications world about those biases, but storytelling definitely gets people over the hump of overvaluing their current state and undervaluing a change.

Yep. Getting past that status quo bias, which I just did an episode on, so good timing on that.

Oh, that's funny. Yeah.

Knowing that you do day long plus workshops on these sorts of things and there are dissertations and years and years of research going into, of course, the expertise that you have. But if you were going to give just some top tips for people who have a hard time, say, getting people on board with their ideas at work, who struggle to change other people's minds. And if they want to try to use story either in just verbal conversations or when they're doing a presentation to a team or up on a stage, what are kind of the top things to do and look for? Where should they start?

Start by listening. Start by listening to other people's stories and hear what you like and what doesn't work for you. You know, I work with a lot of other consultants often, and I know who's kind at end the storytelling I like and it would even be possible for me to do. One of the consultants I've worked with a lot is like an ex, you know, college football player. And he's very slick and very, like, whatever, charismatic, and that's just not me. And so I listen to him tell stories and I think, well, that's really nice, but I'll never be able to do that, you know, and I'm. I'm the person who's going to walk in, drop the books, like something's going to go wrong. You know, I. I had a spider fall in my hair once in the middle of a presentation. You know, those are the things that are going to happen to me. So I have to know, number one, what I like in other stories, and number two, like, what's really possible for me to do. And knowing yourself and telling stories from a very authentic place is much more useful than me trying to be slick. So those are the first two things to do. Listen to other people's stories and figure out, oh, I like that, and then realize, like, this is who I am and in the world, and I need to be comfortable with telling stories from that place. And then it actually is a really great skill to be a good story listener. Practice asking people the story questions and seeing what happens. So you say, what was going on? What did you do about it and what happened? Those are the three story questions. What's going on? What did you do about it and what happened? And see what they tell you back and see how you can guide them and into super comfortable storytelling. And once you're kind of good at being a story listener, you can, you can flip it around and tell stories from the point of view of being a storyteller, right? Because you've gotten good at taking your audience into consideration. So that's, that's the best advice I can give. I think it's natural. That's how we learn to love stories in the first place, is to have.

Them told to us right from a Very, very young age. From the beginnings, you know, we're always hearing stories for, with morals and things that we learn and we remember those again, more than just don't do that versus, you know, the boy who cried wolf or, you know, whatever it is that we're able to learn from beneath the story. Funny enough, my second grader was having to learn about and was talking about stories and the lessons underneath. It's like what he's learning about in school right now. We're talking about it this morning. I thought, oh, what perfect timing. It's so serendipitous that we're having this conversation today. So. So with those three questions, the what's going on? What'd you do about it? And you know, what happened? Does that follow that three point kind of story arc that you were talking about?

That is exactly the three point story arc. Yeah. Because what's going on is like the baseline, blah, blah, blah, things were happening and then something happened, right? Like there was a fire in my neighborhood and you just do something about it and that's the place where the trouble happens and you resolve the trouble. And then you know, what's going on, what I do about it. And what happened when you did that, like, because if you tell people how to feel about something, most people will push back against it, right? We have, we don't like, we don't like to be told what to do. But if you ask people to tell you in their own experience what happened to them, you can, you just want to reach towards it and understand it better. So if you, if you say this is what, what was going on, this is what I did about it and this is what happened for me, then the person will go, oh, I wonder what would have happened for me in that situation, right? And they start to take it in much more deeply than if you tell them you're supposed to feel this way about this thing. You know, when we first started wearing masks, you know, a year ago, I had just been in Japan where it's a very polite thing to do, to wear a mask on the subway. And so as I was leaving my, you know, nice business hotel in Tokyo, I was walking out of the door and the doorman had masks for the Westerners who didn't understand that this is what you were supposed to do. And he would hand them, hand you the masks and say for politeness. For politeness, right. And it was, he wasn't like, it was just, it was so nice, like genuinely nice. And like they figured out how to explain it and So I thought about that a lot when we started having to wear masks in the U.S. i was thinking, it's just for politeness, right? You're taking care of the people around you. It's politeness. And that story stuck with me. Like, if he had said, stupid Westerners, you never know to wear masks, when really, what you need to do is make sure you're not sharing your germs that you brought from America with all these unsuspecting people on the street, right? I would have been a little less likely to feel good about it, but because he just sort of like, for me, I did this for politeness was basically what he was saying. And he hands you the mask. And so it made. Made a much quicker behavior change for me. I took the mask, put it on, and I was like, I'm polite in Japan. And I think that because he didn't tell me what I was supposed to feel about it, he actually told me his motivation.

It worked, right? And you're already primed. When you're traveling to a culture like Japan, where you know that you're gonna do things wrong and you don't want to accidentally offend people. I think for most people, when you know that you are traveling to a place that's very different than where you're from, you do a lot of research of, how can I avoid the dumb things that other people do. You know what? Nice. In my culture, that's very offensive here. And so to say. Like, I assume this. I mean, this is getting into our nudging piece too. You were expecting error that you don't know this. I'm gonna give you some feedback. I made it really easy.

Here's the mask.

It's at a moment where you need it right now. And I've given you just the little bit that you need to help you take that good action. So simple nudge to change behavior.

It's a simple nudge, and it's a very positive nudge, right? It's saying, you go get them, lady. You go out there and be polite. There's something very uplifting about that. I just. Obviously, then it became very pertinent in America, so it stuck with me. But there is. That story does all of those things. I mean, all of those things that you research on behavior change, and you realize that story actually has those things, right? Because as you're telling a story where things are getting worse and worse and worse and worse and people are trying things, a lot of those things you actually read as a reader as nudges oh, they should have done this. Oh, they should have done that. Oh, why didn't they do that? Oh, right. And by the time they actually do it, it, you're so over it because you're like, I figured that out 10 pages ago. Right. And that's, that's part of the amazing thing is that story works with all of this, you know, like behavioral science that we're beginning to understand about ourselves. And it, because it knows it culturally, because it comes from really long historical wisdom traditions that we've been part of for, you know, thousands of years. That's where our storytelling traditions come from. Right. I mean, that's when we started talking about the hero's journey. It looked back thousands of years through storytelling tradition. And all that wisdom were getting proven to us through social sciences, through neuroscience, through behavioral economics. We're having all these things prove to us that story already does.

Right?

Yeah, absolutely. And just showing why it's so powerful. And I love this breakdown of making it really simple to use it yourself. Like you said, the 12 part Hero's Journey with tons of research and foreshadowing and so much you would have to do to make it happen. So breaking that into a really simple structure, anybody can ask these three questions, answer them, build it in, you know, kind of and go from there. So that is just really fantastic advice. Thank you so much. And would say, is there anything that we should have asked or talked about as we wrap things up? I'll of course give you then a moment to share about best way to get in contact with you, learn more. We'll link to your book in the show notes, all that good stuff.

Just know that everybody's good at it. Right? Everybody can be a great storyteller. And I think people think in the same way, like, oh, I can't draw or I can't sing that I'm not good at it. And just know that you actually are. But do those two things, listen and figure out who you are the way you tell stories. But just know it's in there.

Right. We're born with it. It's who we are as a species.

And we're acculturated with it our whole lives. And I think we just have an idea that it's more complicated than it is and it's really not.

That's great, great advice for sure. So go ahead then, give us a little bit. What's the best way to find you social handles, websites, name of your book?

You know, so the book I wrote is called the Life Saving skills story and you can anywhere you normally would buy a book. It's everywhere. And I have a website for my writing that's michelleauerbach.com, just first name, last name, dot com. And then the website that I use for my work, for my like, consulting work is called Modica Communications M O D A K A Communications. Modica is the. There's a story behind it. Let's just put it that way. There's a great story about what Modica is, but it's a kind of dessert that is liked by a change agent in a story. So that's why the name. But you can find me there. I also am on Instagram as Michelle Auerbach. If you go to my website and you sign up for my newsletter. I send out a newsletter once a week, usually on Thursdays, that has a really cool story I heard that week, a recipe, because I feel like that's the way we tell each other cultural stories. There's always food. And then the third thing is a bunch of stories to follow that I've found interesting. So, you know, essays I've read or just really great storytelling examples so that people can sort of up their story IQ so that if you sign up for that on my website, you'll get it. And get to Choco Flan this week, which was.

There you go. Right. And I love that Just, you know, as we kind of wrap up that there's. When we think about our businesses and you feel like you have to have this very specific academic y. Whatever newsletter or it's kind of all about you, which, I mean, for you, sharing recipes, I'm sure something that you like as well that you're already doing. But knowing it's. It's a type of a tip that I would want, like, oh, what's the recipe today? And I want to go in and find that thing, you know, the New York Times having the crossword or whatever is, you know, something that you look forward to, want to go in and check out. So that in itself is a story and a lesson in engaging with people and making it that they actually want to open your newsletter. So really great, great tip. Even in just something that you do all the time now. So thank you so much for sharing that and just for being here today. It's been great to talk stories with you.

Well, thank you. It's been wonderful to talk to you. I'm very excited about the work you're doing. And so this was very fun.

Thank you so much.

Thank you again to Dr. Michelle Auerbach for joining me on the show today. Where could you use story in your business? Be it change management like we discussed a bit today, or in persuasive presentations, or in creating more compelling sales pitches, they're all more effective when you use the power of story because, as Michelle said, emotions are needed to make a decision. Are you helping the people you engage with to feel something? Take a moment now and think of one point in your business where you could use story to be effective and consider again those questions Michelle said to ask. Take some notes if you have the time. What's going on?

What did you do? What happened?

Of course, to learn more about using this story framework in your business, pick up your own copy of Michelle's book the Life Changing Skill of Story.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about the magic of storytelling today? For me, I always go back to the fact that fact that emotion is needed to make decisions and that stories evoke emotions. I mean, it's a pretty mic drop.

Statement for the value of stories, isn't it?

If you want someone to make a decision, which is the point end goal of most moments and conversations, stories are a great tool to get you there. It isn't just any old story though. You need to be thoughtful about which stories you choose, why you're telling them based on what you want someone to do and where they are now, and how that all comes together with the right metaphors and connections. I'm linking to my recent conversation with Sarah Thompson about cognitive semiotics in the show Notes for you, because if you haven't already learned about the amazing power of metaphor, get ready to have your world rocked. For example, one thing you'll learn in that episode is that every 20th to 25th word we say is a metaphor. And we don't just use metaphors as as fun language enhancers. Research shows we actually think in metaphor. And when it comes to stories, it's all about making an abstract concept or idea more tangible to make it relatable and help someone understand what you're talking about, really feel it, so they can make a decision they feel good about. As I said at the beginning of the episode, I chose to refresh this one today because it's kicking off a series ish of conversations about behavioral economics and storytelling and how it can all help in various aspects of business. This coming Friday, I'm speaking with David Paul of Dialsmith and Lillian Labs and a coach for TEDx Portland speakers to talk about his behavioral storytelling approach. Troy Campbell's also coming back to discuss multi narrative storytelling and Rohit Bhargava will.

Be here talking about how he used.

Story at Ogilvy and now he's using it to shape the future, normal and so much more. It's going to be a great series. It's not straight through. There's, you know, some other stuff mixed in, but really we're kind of having a summer of storytelling. It'll be fun. I know you're going to love it, so if you aren't already, now's a great time to hit that subscribe button to be sure you get all the episodes as they come out. And don't miss any of this great, great content. And of course, don't forget about the show notes for the episode, which include related past episodes like that conversation with Sarah on Cognitive Semiotics, my episode on the Dose, Brain Chemicals and more, as well as related books including Michelle's and articles. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 288 and just like that, episode 288 on the power of Story is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with David Paul on behavioral storytelling. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness. Com.