Storytelling Secrets: Persuasion Strategies with Judge Carl Aveni

Hello, my friends, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. This show is produced by the American Negotiation Institute, and with over 5 million downloads and listeners in over 180 countries, listeners just like you have made this the number one negotiation podcast in the world. Hi, my name is Kwame Christian, and I am the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Here at AI, we believe that the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And we are passionate about providing you with the best content that will help you to make your difficult conversations easier, both at work and at home. Lastly, I want to remind you that we offer consulting and conduct trainings both virtually and in person all around the world. Our focus is in three main areas. First, negotiation and conflict resolution. Second, leadership. And lastly, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Check the link in the description below to learn more about how we could work with you and your team. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Carl, thanks for joining us today.

It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to this. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. And so how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Thank you. Okay, I'm happy to. So I'm Carl Levaney. I'm a trial lawyer here in Columbus, Ohio. I practice with the law firm of Carlisle, Patchen and Murphy.

I'm excited about this one because we're going to talk about storytelling. And the last time we've had somebody talk about persuasive storytelling, I think it was January 2017. So we are long overdue to revisit this topic. And so the three things we're going to talk about today are, first, we're going to talk about why storytelling is so powerful as a persuasive technique. Then we're going to talk about the key elements of a good story, and then we're going to end up with some war stories. So let's just start off with, number one. Why are stories so powerful?

Well, because they're primal, because they're fundamental. I think, you know, we have been telling stories culturally, we've been telling stories from the very beginning of our culture. But in your life, in my life, in the lives of all of your audience members, stories are a fundamental way that they have learned about the subjects of the world, but also about themselves. You know, they. The way we learn who we are, the way we identify the things that are important to us are often through the stories about ourselves. That we embrace.

This is fantastic. And you're absolutely right. And I like the word you used, primal, because I think that's a perfect description. And we're really wired for story. Our brains are wired to get data and understand data and process the world through story. And so it's, you see a lot of times, especially in the business world, we're focusing on numbers, we're focusing on analytics, and of course those things can be very persuasive, but the reality is they don't often hit home as powerfully as a well told story can. And so for you, what are some examples of how somebody could use storytelling effectively, maybe as a leader or in the business world?

Well, so within my law practice, one of the things that I've had the good fortune to do over the years is mentor younger litigation associates. And a big part of what a lawyer does is write briefs on legal issues. And you submit those to the judge and the judge reads them and makes whatever decision they make. And one of the challenges of that is that at any given time a court has 600 cases on its docket. And the legal briefs all sort of say wherefore the party of the first part, so and so referred to henceforth as so and so does this. And as a result, it is basically the rule that that. And I think that's a mistake. I think that's a, it's a mistake because the thing that moves people, that allows people to see your frame of reference is the story. And so what I tell all of our associates when I, when I do mentor them, is forget that party of the first part. Formal legalese. Have an introduction that reads like a novel. Have it start with a main character and the things that happen to that main character and some tension and some proposed resolution. And if you do that in a well crafted introduction, you will have them interested in what happens next when you have to necessarily get to all the party of the first part, statutory stuff that happens thereafter.

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I want to focus in on the word you used to interested. They will be interested in learning more, they'll be interested in reading it. And I Remember on my LinkedIn recently I posted that college does a good job of teaching us how to sound smart, but oftentimes we're not good at communicating. We might sound really smart, but we're not communicating effectively.

If we're all talking past each other, what's the point?

Right. Exactly, exactly. And really what we need to do is, number one, simplify the communication style that we use Simplify the words so people can understand. But again, the beautiful thing about stories is that people want to listen because they're interested. I consider it the. It's like the Trojan horse theory of persuasion. You wrap your message into something that is actually something that they want to hear. They want to bring it past their. Their defenses. And then your little story soldiers go in and persuade once they've gotten past that wall.

I think that's absolutely fair. I think that's a really accurate way of putting it.

Yeah. So in your opinion, what are the key elements of a good story?

Well, you need to have a protagonist. You need to have some opposing force to that protagonist or some unfortunate circumstance that happens to that protagonist. You need to have struggle, and then you need to have a proposed or anticipated resolution. And I guess we're lucky, or I'm lucky in the fact that most of my professional storytelling is in the context of trials. And that arena lends itself to a certain kind of drama that is also very much like the character arc of a fictional character in a novel. So you can tell those stories that serve your client, that frame, the thing that the jury is about to see in a way that they can understand and relate back to much more common things within their frame of experience. Can I give an example?

Yes, please.

Okay. So I'll be careful how I say this, because client confidentiality kind of stuff, but I had a case that involved industry standards, let's say. So the way that a certain very technical thing was to be designed and built according to industry standards. And it was a. It was a computer part, a very finely finished computer part. And so my whole case was going to be about the effects of industry standards. But if I got up there in front of a jury and talked about, okay, this is the industry standard, and this is the thing that industry standards are about in this particular highly technical field, people would have just glazed over. No one would have understood. And so what I instead did was I started my voir dire, which is how you pick a jury, by asking how many of you folks came through the McDonald's drive through down the street on your way to the courthouse today? I know I did. I actually stopped at McDonald's specifically to get a coffee cup so that I could have it on my table so that I could use it as a prop in this story. And a number of the juries raised their hand, and I said, when you went through the drive through, there were two windows, right? And the first window is where you first. You stop at the sign and place Your order and then you pull to the first window and you paid. But you didn't get your product there. You got your product at the second window. So you gave them the money. And you probably didn't even think about it. You just trusted that the food you had just paid for would be waiting for you at the second window. Why? Because that's the industry standard. That's what an industry standard is. When you pull up, you know, to stop at the sign and place your order, you know, go to that first window, place your order, and you trust because of that industry standard that you'll get your food at the second window. And ladies and gentlemen, in this case, at the second window, there was no food. Now, that's not a full story, but it has a lot of the narrative components of a story. And it was a way of explaining that fairly sophisticated concept of the recipes that are used in making this very highly developed computer component in a way that every juror on that jury could understand without having an advanced technical degree. We've all gone through a drive thru at McDonald's at one point or another in our life, right?

And you know what's funny about this, Carl? That as you started to tell the story, when you said, hey, do you mind if I give an example? I knew a story was coming. And I got this childlike exuberance and enthusiasm where I'm like, oh, I'm going to hear a story. Everybody loves hearing stories. And just a pro tip for the audience, if you want somebody to listen to you, say, can I tell you a story? That is one of the easiest ways for people to wrap their attention around something. If you just say, hey, I'm going to tell you a story, it's like priming them to listen because we want to hear those stories. And the thing that I like about your story right there is that the protagonist in that story was somebody who was relatable. It was so simple. But we've all been through that situation. And then you could really empathize with, with the shock and surprise and feeling of almost betrayal that would come at the end when you get to that second window and you don't get what you paid for. Does your company invest in professional development training? If you believe that your team would benefit from a negotiation workshop, all you need to do is go to our website, fill out the workshop request form, and then we'll set up a time to chat. These workshops are completely customizable, and we've done them all around the country. Negotiation and conflict resolution skills are beneficial across all professions, but they're especially useful in procurement, purchasing, sales, sourcing, and contract management. Our calendar is filling up quickly, and we even have some workshops scheduled for next year if you think you might want one. I'd suggest reaching out soon so you don't miss out. Check out the link in the description to learn more. And now back to the show.

Thank you. Yes, and it was really important to take an approach like that in this particular case, because I wasn't representing an individual that folks would naturally relate with. I was representing an aggrieved corporation, and a pretty big one. And so by telling that story and getting the jurors to put themselves in that seat in their own car at the second window, not only did it explain the concepts of industry standards to them, but it also got them thinking about this sort of abstract concept of a corporation in a much more personalized way.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. You want to create a sympathetic character. And so let's say people are listening, and they say, all right, Carl, you've convinced me. I like the stories that you told. Now I want to do it. I want to be a persuasive storyteller in my negotiations, in my difficult conversations, as a leader, when I'm motivating my team, I want to get better as a storyteller. What are the main mistakes that people make that hold them back from being effective at this?

I think part of the loss of storytelling, to the extent that we've suffered from it in the last 20, 30 years, has been a function of social media and time pressures in our culture. People are used to immediate, short answers, and they rush right down the center of it. And really good stories almost never work that way. In a really good story, before you talk about the thing, you often talk about the stuff that's around the thing. And so it's important to set the stage. It's important to take your time. You want to be respectful of people's time, but you need to take a moment to provide a context. If you simply say, here's the guy, and here's the thing that happened to the guy, you've really lost that opportunity to say, can you just imagine what it must have been like in that moment when he rolls down his window at the second window of the drive thru, and he can imagine what the food's gonna taste like, and he's ready for it because it's been a long day and he's tired and he's hungry and he's paid his Money, and then there's nothing. And that's so much more effective. Just that little bit that I just threw together there. I did not say all that to the jury. But just using that as an example, that's so much more effective than saying, and he pulled up to the second window and there wasn't anything there. You know, by taking your time, by building up a little bit of the framework to put your audience into the context where the scene is going to happen, you tap, I think you said it before, you tap into an emotional response that really is primal. It really does come from childhood. It comes from your. The stories that your parents would tell you when you were, you know, a toddler or an elementary school kid. And it goes back to the pictures that are painted on cave walls. And, you know, in Europe, from prehistory, you know, you go into some of those caves in Lascaux, France, and there are stories of hunts. And those stories, by the way, they're not just pictures. They have a start, they have a middle, they have an ending, they have conflict in between. And it's not even in a language that we recognize, it's their pictograms. But they, they tell a story in a pre literate society through the images. And the pictures of the protagonist at the front of those, at the place where you're supposed to begin in those pictures isn't the same visually as what happens at the end. The same representation of that same character because of the narrative arc of their story. I think that's amazing.

Yeah. And again, let's go back to that term primal, because when we're talking about those feelings, these emotions, we have to understand the power of those emotions. Because we always think that we are just rational actors. That was always the thing, especially when you think about economics, when you think about law, we assume rationality. Then we get out into the real world after we leave the ivory tower and we say, where are the rational people? I was told they're out here somewhere. And the reality is, when you look at the psychological studies time after time, it shows us that decision making is an emotional process. And usually the logic comes at the end. After we've already emotionally come to a conclusion. Then what we're doing after the fact is we are rationalizing the decision that we've already made. So it's critical for us to tap into that emotional piece. And when you talked about the problems that people often run into when it comes to storytelling, not giving enough detail, not taking the time to build the story, but at the same time, Being respectful of people's time. Really what we're trying to do is we're trying to find that Goldilocks zone for this story. Not too short, not too long enough detail, but not too little detail. And nailing the punchline, because like you said, if I just said, yep, the food wasn't there, you ran through the punchline and you missed that emotional punch that comes at the end. And so what I would suggest people do is test out your stories, almost treat yourself like a standup comedian, because when you see a standup comedian at the end, when they're doing their special, they've gone through it a hundred times in different audiences and they've recognized the way that people like the story being told and the way that they don't. And so if it's a really critical negotiation or conflict that you're trying to resolve, test the story out with a couple of friends, get some feedback, make those adjustments. So then when it's actually time to perform it, you're really sharp and the story is really tight.

I think that's exactly right. By coincidence, I filmed a commercial for my campaign yesterday, and it's just a little 15 second spot that's going to air a little later in the season, right before election day, and it's only 15 seconds. But on the drive over to where we were filming it, I spoke aloud to myself the entire time in the car, practicing how I was going to say most of the words that I ultimately say. I personally don't like to have every single bit of it scripted in an inflexible way because I think you lose some of the spontaneity of the moment. And I think spontaneity, which is that feedback from your audience, also can be effective. But I practiced the putting the things I wanted to say in various orders to see what resonated the best.

Yeah, that's a great example. And let's transition now to the war stories, the stories from your experience as a trial lawyer. We got a taste of it there too, but also as a candidate, because creating a powerful story for your candidacy is going to be important because again, this is a persuasive endeavor. And so for you, what are the key stories that have been beneficial to you on the campaign trail?

Well, as a candidate, I think that there's a lot of value in explaining not just who I am, but why the voters, the audience, should care who I am. And so, you know, oftentimes you'll see a political candidate, particularly a judicial candidate. We can't talk about big public policy issues in quite the same way that other political candidates can. There's rules that affect the things that a judge or a judicial candidate can talk about. And those rules exist for a good reason. But they do tend to force judicial candidates into sort of a dry recitation of their biography. And I don't think that fundamentally that's what voters care the most about, nor do I think that it should be what voters care the most about. They really should care about why you're the right person for this office, why they should put their faith in you. And so I tell stories about that more than about I went to school at this place and I graduated at this point in my class. And I've had this experience, and that experience. I often in front of a room, and it's hard now with COVID because you don't get quite that same feedback on a zoom call that you would in a room full of actual people. But I like giving 15 seconds of I'm Carl Levani. I've got 24 years of trial experience in courthouses all over the state. I'm a litigation partner at one of the larger law firms in town. I'm highly recommended by the Columbus Bar association. But frankly, I'd like to talk about something else, if that's all right with you. And then I launch into the other things that I want to talk about. And the first thing that I often talk about is judges matter. You know, here's why you should care about it. Judges affect people's lives more directly than other branches of government. A judge has more power over you in the moment you're standing in front of a judge than a mayor or a county commissioner or a city council person or even a president. So judges matter. And that's sort of framing the why you should care about the thing I'm about to tell you. And then once I've gotten them to that place and sort of gotten their buy in that. Yeah, that's right. I guess judges really do matter. And they do. Then I talk about some anecdotes that are designed to create drama and tension. So, for example, I often tell people, and I don't want to have it just sound like this is a technical magic trick that I'm doing. It's not. It is actually designed to give information about me that I actually think voters are going to want to care about. So I will say something like, as many of you know, I ran for judge in 2018, and I lost that race by 931 individual votes out of a swing of 365,000 votes cast with a little bit of a pause there. And in a race that was too close to call for almost a month. Why do I include that information? Is that something that directly affects the race that I'm in right now? It does, but not in a direct, linear sort of right down the middle kind of way. It's telling. It's getting the audience of voters to say, oh, this is a guy that has seen some things that's been, you know, can you imagine the disappointment that goes with that? Can you imagine? What did he do next? And then I tell the story of why I'm doing it again. And by taking that moment and setting the stage on the front end of it, rather than just saying, I've run for judge before and I'm running again, or even forgetting, not even mentioning the past race, part of what it's doing is getting the jury or the voter or the audience to stand in my shoes for a moment and to understand the thing that I want them to understand the most about me, which is that I'm a relatable human being that has had, like them, successes and failures that I'm working to do, to do things that are important to me and for our community, and that they can put their faith in me in the same way that they can put their faith in themselves. And so when I start there with, you know, it's funny. Howard Stern, I guess, came out with a movie about himself a few years. I don't even know why I remember this, but Howard Stern came out with a movie about himself. And the place where he starts in his movie is the most embarrassing thing that happened to him in his career. And then he rewinds from there and then moves forward. And so he starts with the most awful thing, the most public awful thing that ever happened to him, where he tried something that he thought was gonna be funny, and it completely bombed and offended everyone. And from that place, he then tells the story of how he got there. And once he's done that, he tells the story of how he moves forward from that to the present. And I think that's a really, really effective way of framing a story.

Carl, this is fantastic. Audience, I'm going to pull out some of my favorite gems from this, because this is really great. And so let's start off with this. Everybody knows that in business and life, especially in politics, we will go with people who we know like and trust. And you're able, in this story to hit on all three of those things. And it reminds me of a study. As somebody with a psychology degree, I really love nerding out on these studies. They had a study where they had somebody who was very professorial, very smart, intelligent, speaking on a recording. And so he was talking very intelligently about the topic. And so that is what the control group heard. Just a flawless presentation. And then in the other group, what they did was they had the same guy speaking, but then at some point, they had it sound like he spilled something on himself. And then he cleaned himself up and continued speaking. And at the end, they asked, which one did you like more? And the people like the guy who spilled stuff on him more. Because the thing is, we don't trust perfection because we know it's not real. And so being able to humanize yourself like you did in that story is incredibly powerful because it makes you more relatable. And so you started off at the beginning, just a few seconds, just saying who you are, the experience that you have, and the fact that you work on work at a prestigious law firm, firm, Carlyle, Patchen and Murphy. I happen to be there, too, for everybody. And so here's the thing, though. You wanted to establish that baseline level of intelligence, but, you know, that only gets you so far when it comes to this persuasive endeavor. They just want to know you can do what you say you can do, and you handle that very briefly and very sufficiently and efficiently at the beginning. And so then you set the stage by talking about how important it is to have a judge to be that judge and the gravity of the situation. Because I don't think even lawyers sometimes who might be more transactional, I don't think they fully appreciate just the power that a judge has over the citizens in these cases. And you really do a great job of outlining that so people recognize this is something I should actually pay attention to. And then you use a story to create tension by talking about the heartbreak that you experienced. And this is where you humanize yourself. Carl went through something incredibly difficult, and you really tease that out. So they can empathize with you, so they can feel that pain that you felt, but then they can relate to the fact that you're coming back. This is recent. This only happened two years ago, but you're still coming back. And people love to see that comeback character, and they want to be part of that story as well. And so I think this is an incredibly well crafted approach to trying to persuade the voters.

Yeah. Thank you. Like I said, it's important to emphasize this isn't Just about technique. It is also about. It is also an important part of why I think voters can actually trust me as a candidate. And it is an opportunity for me to talk about other and bigger things. I do a presentation to a teen group every couple years, unrelated to my campaign, where the theme is. The theme is fail better. There's a Samuel Beckett poem that I love, and it's very short, and it's ever try, ever fail. No matter, try again, fail again, fail better. That's it. That's the whole poem. And I think that there's real value in telling people stories about failure for lots of reasons, but in part to give them the courage to try and to fail things as well. So I hope that I'm tapping into some primal. Some primal mechanisms, but I also hope that I'm inspiring the people that I'm talking to, number one, in a campaign to think about our democracy in a particular noble way, because it really is. And number two, I am trying to counter a certain narrative that's out there about a cynical narrative about our democracy and about people that run for public office. And so those are. I guess that's another piece of storytelling that we haven't really fleshed out, but is also important, which is what are the other stories that are going to immediately be in people's minds when you are telling your story and how do you respond to and either embrace those other stories that they may be thinking about or find ways to reject them in a way that's palatable. And you see that look, every movie you go to has Easter eggs. And those Easter eggs are making little inside jokes about other. Other movies, other stories, other cultural narratives, winks and nods to the audience that address what the audience's expectations were coming into the movie. We do the same thing in other parts of our lives. Right?

This is great. And, you know, something else that we haven't had a chance to talk about. And I know we're coming up on time, but I want to give you an opportunity to talk about this because we've been focusing so much on storytelling and persuasion on the micro scale. So one on one, or maybe you with the jurors or things like that. But it's this particular interaction where we're trying to persuade, using storytelling as one of our major persuasive tools. But we can also use storytelling as a persuasive tool in the macro sense, personally, when it comes to personal branding. And one of the things that I really admire about you is that you had this vision for the way that the court system can work in a way that can promote equity and inclusion within the court system. And even though things didn't turn out the way that you wanted to in 2018, you still pursued this. And I think this for you is a major part of your story and speaks to your character. Can you tell the audience a little bit about that one, too?

I would love to. Thank you. Well, if where we left off was me losing in 2018, the next piece of the story is what I did next. And that was go to. Well, first I reflected for. For about a month, and then I went to the guy who had just beaten me and said, I have an idea for how to make our courts better, and I would like you to be on board, because if you join us, that's about good public policy and not just about politics. And the idea was bringing child care to our courthouse, which is an issue that I'm really passionate about. When I say child care to our courthouse, I don't mean just for county employees, although certainly for them too, but also for defendants, for victims of crime, for witnesses, and especially for jurors. The fact that we don't have child care for jurors operates as a structural barrier that prevents full and inclusive participation in our jury system by an entire segment of our society, which is effectively single parents. And the fact that our jury pools underrepresent those voices has to have a distortive effect on how our justice system works. So this is an issue I'm really passionate about. It's an issue I've been working on for a couple of years. And in telling that story, it was important to me that the first adopter, the first person on board, was the guy that had just beaten me. And for a whole bunch of reasons, one of which is to say something about me. But another thing, and another equally important part of it is saying something about how our society can work, how it should work. And so, by choosing that frame first to build the story and then to tell the story, I think it does a valuable service independent of the substantive thing that we're talking about. I want people to say, you know what? We can come together once an election's over, across party lines. We can do that these two people who spent all year competing against each other can work together on the next thing together. And isn't that, you know, isn't that what America is all about, too? So it was important to me from a narrative perspective. It was important to me for something more deep and fundamental than simply how the story is told. As well, so thank you for giving me the opportunity to. To talk about that for just a minute.

No, well, thank you for doing it, first of all, and also for serving as such a powerful model for how we can work collaboratively with each other. And I think that's really one of the main messages of the podcast, just demonstrating how we can have these difficult conversations in order to make our society, our community, our workplaces better. So, kudos to you, my friend. I really appreciate you taking some time with us and sharing your expertise. And so for the listeners who are interested in connecting with you, what's the best opportunity way to reach you?

Well, so www.carleavaney.com is my campaign website, and I invite your listeners to visit me there and learn more about what we're trying to do and reach out. And if any part of this has inspired someone to enter into public service as well, I love hearing those stories, and I would welcome a chance to hear from your listeners. Thank you.

Fantastic. Thanks again, Carl. We really appreciate it.

I'm grateful. Thanks all.

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