Karen Eber How your brain responds to stories and why theyre crucial for leaders TED
Transcriber: Ivana Korom
Reviewer: Joanna Pietrulewicz
Maria walked into the elevator at work.
She went to press the button
when her phone fell out of her hand.
It bounced on the floor and –
went straight down that little opening
between the elevator and the floor.
And she realized it wasn’t just her phone,
it was her phone wallet
that had her driver’s license,
her credit card, her whole life.
She went to the front desk
to talk to Ray, the security guard.
Ray was really happy to see her.
Maria is one of the few people
that actually stops
and says hello to him each day.
In fact, she’s one of these people
that knows your birthday
and your favorite food,
and your last vacation,
not because she’s weird,
she just genuinely likes people
and likes them to feel seen.
She tells Ray what happened,
and he said it’s going to cost
at least 500 dollars
to get her phone back
and he goes to get a quote
while she goes back to her desk.
Twenty minutes later,
he calls her and he says, “Maria,
I was looking at the inspection
certificate in the elevator.
It’s actually due for its annual
inspection next month.
I’m going to go ahead
and call that in today
and we’ll be able to get your phone back
and it won’t cost you anything.”
The same day this happened,
I read an article about the CEO
of Charles Schwab, Walter Bettinger.
He’s describing his straight-A
career at university
going in to his last exam
expecting to ace it,
when the professor gives one question:
“What is the name of the person
that cleans this room?”
And he failed the exam.
He had seen her,
but he had never met her before.
Her name was Dottie
and he made a vow that day
to always know the Dotties in his life
because both Walter and Maria
understand this power
of helping people feel seen,
especially as a leader.
I used that story back when I worked
at General Electric.
I was responsible for shaping culture
in a business of 90,000 employees
in 150 countries.
And I found that stories
were such a great way
to connect with people
and have them think,
“What would I do in this situation?
Would I have known Dottie
or who are the Dotties
I need to know in my life?”
I found that no matter people’s gender
or their generation
or their geography in the world,
the stories resonated and worked.
But in my work with leaders,
I’ve also found they tend
to be allergic to telling stories.
They’re not sure where to find them,
or they’re not sure how to tell them,
or they think they have to present data
and that there’s just
not room to tell a story.
And that’s where I want to focus today.
Because storytelling and data
is actually not this either-or.
It’s an “and,” they actually
create this power ballad
that connects you
to information differently.
To understand how,
we have to first understand
what happens neurologically
when you’re listening to a story and data.
So as you’re in a lecture
or you’re in a meeting,
two small parts of your brain
are activated,
Wernicke and Broca’s area.
This is where you’re
processing information,
and it’s also why you tend
to forget 50 percent of it
right after you hear it.
When you listen to a story,
your entire brain starts to light up.
Each of your lobes will light up
as your senses and your
emotions are engaged.
As I talk about a phone falling
and hitting the ground with a thud
your occipital and your temporal
lobes are lighting up
as though you are actually
seeing that falling phone
and hearing it hit with a thud.
There’s this term, neural coupling,
which says, as the listener,
your brain will light up exactly as mine
as the storyteller.
It mirrors this activity
as though you are actually
experiencing these things.
Storytelling gives you
this artificial reality.
If I talked to you about, like,
walking through the snow
and with each step,
the snow is crunching under my shoes,
and big, wet flakes
are falling on my cheeks,
your brains are now lighting up
as though you are walking through the snow
and experiencing these things.
It’s why you can sit in an action movie
and not be moving,
but your heart is racing
as though you’re the star on-screen
because this neural coupling
has your brain lighting up
as though you are having that activity.
As you listen to stories,
you automatically gain empathy
for the storyteller.
The more empathy you experience,
the more oxytocin
is released in your brain.
Oxytocin is the feel-good chemical
and the more oxytocin you have,
the more trustworthy
you actually view the speaker.
This is why storytelling
is such a critical skill for a leader
because the very act of telling a story
makes people trust you more.
As you begin to listen to data,
some different things happen.
There are some misconceptions
to understand.
And the first is that data
doesn’t change our behavior,
emotions do.
If data changed our behavior,
we would all sleep eight hours
and exercise and floss daily
and drink eight glasses of water.
But that’s not how we actually decide.
Neuroscientists have studied
decision-making,
and it starts in our amygdala.
This is our emotional epicenter
where we have the ability
to experience emotions
and it’s here at a subconscious level
where we begin to decide.
We make choices to pursue pleasure
or to avoid risk,
all before we become aware of it.
At the point we become aware,
where it comes to the conscious level,
we start to apply
rationalization and logic,
which is why we think we’re making
these rationally-based decisions,
not realizing that they were
already decided in our subconscious.
Antonio Damasio is a neuroscientist
that started to study patients
that had damage to their amygdala.
Fully functioning in every way,
except they could not experience emotions.
And as a result,
they could not make decisions.
Something as simple as
“do I go this way or this way”
they were incapable of doing,
because they could not
experience emotions.
These were people
that were wildly successful
before they had the damage
to their amygdala
and now they couldn’t complete
any of their projects
and their careers took big hits,
all because they couldn’t experience
emotions where we decide.
Another data misconception.
Data never speaks for itself.
Our brains love to anticipate
and as we anticipate,
we fill in the gaps
on what we’re seeing or hearing
with our own knowledge and experience
and our own bias.
Which means my understanding of data
is going to differ from yours,
and it’s going to differ from yours,
because we’re all going to have
our own interpretation
if there isn’t a way to guide us through.
Now I’m not suggesting
that data is bad and story is good.
They both play a key role.
And to understand how,
you have to see what makes a great story.
It’s going to answer three questions.
The first is:
What is the context?
Meaning, what’s the setting,
who is involved,
why should I even care?
What is the conflict,
where is that moment
where everything changes?
And what is the outcome?
Where is it different,
what is the takeaway?
A good story also has three attributes,
the first being it is going to build
and release tension.
So because our brains love to anticipate,
a great story builds tension
by making you wonder:
“Where is she going with this?”
“What’s happening next,” right?
A good story keeps you,
keeps your attention going.
And it releases it
by sharing something unexpected
and it does this over and over
throughout the story.
A great story also builds an idea.
It helps you see something
that you can no longer unsee,
leaving you changed,
because stories actually
do leave you changed.
And a great story communicates value.
Stanford has done research
on one of the best ways
to shape organizational culture,
and it is storytelling,
because it’s going to demonstrate
what you value and encourage
or what you don’t value
and what you discourage.
As you start to write your power ballad,
most people want to start with the data.
They want to dig in,
because we often have piles of data.
But there’s a common mistake
we make when we do that.
I was working with a CEO.
She came to me to prepare
for her annual company-wide meeting
and she had 45 slides of data
for a 45-minute presentation.
A recipe for a boring, unmemorable talk.
And this is what most people do,
they come armed with all of this data
and they try to sort their way through
without a big picture
and then they lose their way.
We actually put the data aside
and I asked her,
“What’s the problem
you’re trying to solve?
What do you want people
to think and feel different
and what do you want people
to do different at the end of this?”
That is where you start
with data and storytelling.
You come up with this framework
to guide the way through
both the story and the data.
In her case,
she wants her company
to be able to break into new markets,
to remain competitive.
She ended up telling a story
about her daughter,
who’s a gymnast who’s competing
for a scholarship,
and she had to learn new routines
with increasing difficulty
to be competitive.
This is one of your choices.
Do you tell a story about the data itself
or do you tell a parallel story,
where you pull out points from the story
to reinforce the data?
As you begin this ballad,
this melody and harmony of data
and storytelling come together
in a way that will stay
with you long after.
Briana was a college adviser.
And she was asked to present
to her university leadership
when she realized that a large population
of their students with autism
were not graduating.
She came to me because
her leaders kept saying,
“Present the data, focus on the data,”
but she felt like university officials
already had the data.
She was trying to figure out
how to help them connect with it.
So we worked together to help her
tell the story about Michelle.
Michelle was a straight-A
student in high school
who had these dreams
of going to university.
Michelle was also a student with autism
who was terrified about how
she would be able to navigate
the changes of university.
Her worst fears came true
on her first phone call
with her adviser,
when he asked her questions like,
“Where do you see yourself in five years?”
and “What are your career aspirations?”
Questions that are hard for anybody.
But for a person with autism
to have to respond to verbally?
Paralyzing.
She got off the phone,
was ready to drop out,
until her parents sat down with her
and helped her write an email
to her adviser.
She told him that she was
a student with autism,
which was really hard for her to share
because she felt like there was a stigma
associated just by sharing that.
She told him that she preferred
to communicate in writing,
if he could send her questions in advance,
she would be able
to send replies back to him
before they got on the phone
to have a different conversation.
He followed her lead
and within a few weeks,
they found all of these things
they have in common,
like a love for Japanese anime.
After three semesters,
Michelle is a straight-A student
thriving in the university.
At this point, Briana starts
to share some of the data
that less than 20 percent
of the students with autism
are graduating.
And it’s not because
they can’t handle the coursework.
It’s because they can’t figure out
how to navigate the university,
the very thing an adviser
is supposed to be able to help you do.
That over the course of a lifetime
the earning potential of someone
with a college degree
over a high school degree
is a million dollars.
Which is a big amount.
But for a person with autism
that wants to be able
to live independent from their family
it’s life changing.
She closed with,
“We say our whole passion and purpose
is to help people be their best,
to help them be successful.
But we’re hardly giving our best service
by applying this
one-size-fits-all approach
and just letting people
fall through the cracks.
We can and we should do better.
There are more Michelles out there,
and I know because
Michelle is my daughter.”
And in that moment,
the jaws in the room went –
And someone even wiped away tears,
because she had done it,
she had connected them
to information differently,
she helped them see something
they couldn’t unsee.
Could she have done that with data alone?
Maybe, but the things is,
they already had the data.
They didn’t have a reason
not to overlook the data this time.
That is the power
of storytelling and data.
That together, they come
together in this way
to help build ideas,
to help you see things you can’t unsee.
To help communicate what’s valued
and to help tap into
that emotional way that we all decide.
As you all move forward,
shaping the passion and purpose
of others as leaders,
don’t just use data.
Use stories.
And don’t wait for the perfect story.
Take your story and make it perfect.
Thank you.
(Applause)