What is Communication & Storytelling

In short

Communication is the quiet work of getting an idea out of your head, accurately and durably, into someone else's. The hard part isn't being right. The hard part is being remembered.

1. 01Your ideas get chosen over someone else's, even when theirs are technically equal.
2. 02You stop having to repeat yourself in every meeting because what you said the first time actually landed.
3. 03The emails, docs, and decks you send get acted on instead of skimmed and forgotten.
4. 04Your work survives the hallway, meaning people can describe it to someone else without you in the room.

Aristotle, 2,400 years ago, said all persuasion comes down to three things: ethos (who you are), pathos (what they feel), and logos (what's true). Every TED talk that's gone viral in the last decade does the same thing. The host introduces the speaker (ethos, "and tonight, the woman who…"). The speaker opens with a story that makes you feel something (pathos). Then somewhere in the middle, the actual point arrives, clean and short, with one piece of evidence (logos). 18 minutes later, the audience can repeat the point to a friend. That's what "landing" looks like. The technology changed; the structure didn't.

• Specificity beats abstraction→MarketingThe same reason a positioning statement names a target.
• Story structure→Negotiation & PersuasionFraming in negotiation is the same skill as setting up a story.