Storytelling, I realized in the last few years, is not confined to a child’s bedtime. It is all around us and we do it all the time. When we’re telling people about our holiday trips, talking about our work or recounting a movie we’ve seen.
 

I’ve always noticed how some people have everyone’s attention even when they’re talking about a person from work that nobody else knows, while others can be talking about the time they climbed Mount Everest barefoot in a blizzard and still manage to lose everybody’s attention after fifteen seconds. I must have heard about a million times that “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it”, but it only really hits home after you experience it yourself.
 

An easy example for me is job interviews. I have a diverse set of experiences under my belt that include significant takeaways and could make for some good, maybe even riveting, interview stories - I grew up in several countries, have military leadership experience and volunteered with kids in different countries, for example. Despite this, I don’t do particularly well in interviews for jobs for which my experience is truly relevant and valuable.
 

I’ve been on the interviewing side enough times too to know that, since laundry lists of skills are easy to find, the emotional enthusiasm about a candidate is the most important thing in an interview. A candidate that talks about his experiences with excitement and describes his reason for wanting the job eagerly, will make the interviewer curious to want to meet the candidate again. The interviewer will usually assume the candidate will bring the same level of energy to work as he brings to the interview and will just find the interview more fun and less of a chore. A candidate who tells his stories well, who, like a good author, makes the interviewer relate to the situations he is describing, pauses in the right places to tease “the audience” and only then delivers the right answers will make a lasting impression. Contrast this to a candidate who tells the same stories but in a slow, laconic, matter-of-fact manner. This candidate may already know what the interviewer is looking for and may just serve the relevant facts on a plate to the interviewer. While this may be what the interviewer is looking for, it does not make it interesting for him in any way. Such an interview will only be remembered as a checkbox-ticking session.
 

Another, extremely common and simple example, is telling jokes. Some people deliver jokes in a way that makes everyone listen attentively no matter how long the jokes are, and make people chuckle even if the joke isn’t very funny. On the other extreme, some people can take the funniest joke in the world and spoil it with a poor delivery. Why is this important? Because it’s a valuable social skill. People who are able to keep a crowd of people attentive and eventually inspire in them one of the most precious reactions of all – laughter, possess an invaluable skill that helps them relate easily to people and make lasting positive impressions.
 

Moving up the seriousness scale, here’s a big one - pitching to investors. I have a particular fancy and dream for starting my own successful company, and the way to start usually involves pitching your business idea to investors and getting them to invest their money in you, your team and your idea. It is commonly believed that countless good ideas exist out there and that what the investors are really investing in is you – the guy who is standing in front of them and pitching the idea he is hoping to devote all his time to. You have to do two things, make them believe that you can actually execute and get them a nice return on their investment, and get them as excited as you are about your idea – and this is all about storytelling. This is similar to the interview because people want you to convince them you are worth their money, but it’s more like telling a joke because there might be several people listening to you. Do you think they are looking for someone who very factually explains why his idea will work? Or would they get more excited by someone telling them the same facts, but taking them on a journey into the future and letting them feel they would be pioneers of influential innovation and change? In fact, we don’t even have to guess what they would prefer. In a recent experience I had pitching to investors, their biggest criticism to my team and I was that we were not dreaming big enough. They actually said “we want entrepreneurs to be dreamers, all your numbers are going to be wrong anyway”.
Hopefully, I have convinced you of the relevance of good storytelling abilities. These are just a few examples to which we could add others such as telling your family about your recent trip abroad (even if there’s no tangible value in it, it would definitely just make it more pleasurable for them), getting to know new people, networking with fellow professionals, convincing others to support your position on different matters, and others.
 

I believe that being able to deliver any story well is an extremely useful skill to have. Relying on feedback I received in the past on interviews and by just becoming more aware of situations in which I am storytelling, I would judge myself to be somewhere on the medium-low end of the storytelling scale. I, generally, don’t have extreme reactions, either positive or negative – When the shit hits the fan I am usually very calm and action-oriented, but also when things are going remarkably well I do not get overly excited and energetic about it. For storytelling, it’s definitely recommended to have high energy and excitement. On the rare occasions I’ve told a “story” about which I was truly excited, the delivery was definitely more successful. However, in most situations, when I’m just telling a story I’m not especially excited about, then my delivery turns laconic and uninspiring.
 

Here are a few of my own interpretations as to why my storytelling, and my speaking manner in general, is very monotonic and unexcited most of the time. I’m no pshychologist, but since this is an analysis to myself, I guess it’s ok for me to guess:



• Difficult of being content – I am very ambitious and always try to aim very high in what I do. This basically means that I am not content with the way I do things most of the time, not because they’re bad but because I always think they can be done better. With this frame of mind, it’s hard to get excited about things. I play down things in my mind and so when I talk about them I describe them as minor, even if, objectively, the things I’m describing are major successes or extremely unique achievements.
• Humility – I was taught to be humble. I never brag about my achievements and I am often deterred by people who talk a lot about themselves and their achievements. I think this is a good quality to have but it should not stop me from taking pride in me achievements, and this includes describing them in a way that shows how truly challenging they were, and why I regard them as major achievements.
• Surrounding environment – The person I am most similar to in the way I talk is definitely my dad. There is nothing bad about, it just goes to show how much we imitate our environment.
• Fact driven – I grew up as a very analytical, math-savvy kid, a very strong quant on the poet-quant scale. I got used to things being either right or wrong and only hard evidence meriting any answer. There is no room for judgment or opinions in maths. Accordingly, when I told stories I stuck to the facts. It was inconceivable to me that “how you say it” matters just as much (at least) as “what you say”. Growing up with this mindset, the factual delivery became engrained in me. Only when I grew older I understood how much the way I say things mattered, but it is now extremely difficult to change something as basic as the way I speak.

 

Since, unfortunately, I cannot go back and relive my childhood to include better storytelling grooming, I am trying to improve it today. If I could turn the wheel back, these are the things I would do differently and am trying to do today. These are my early-learning-wishes.

• Role model – My role model growing up was Michael Jordan and he has had a profound effect on many aspects of my life. Storytelling, however, is not one of them. I would pick a role model for storytelling whose speech I could imitate or adopt parts of. I would spend a lot of time listening, memorizing some lines and trying them out in certain situations. If I were a young white kid in London again, I wouldn’t choose Eddie Murphy, of course. I would pick someone with a similar accent and a manner that would be easy enough for me to try and imitate.
 

• Practice – I would put myself in public speaking positions as often as I could. I was always “too cool for school” as a child and so I missed countless opportunities to get comfortable talking to large crowds and getting used to having a large audience’s attention fixed on me. School plays and ceremonies are probably the most notable childhood examples. In adult life, there are still many opportunities all around us in social clubs, open-mic nights, parties, etc.
 

• Bragging rights – I would talk about my achievements more often and more openly, understanding that there’s a big difference between showing off and taking pride in achievements I’ve worked hard for.
 

• Poetry – I would, most definitely, discover my poet side much earlier. There is nothing wrong in being a great quant, but appreciating that most things in life do not have a clear-cut right answer is pivotal. I think it’s important for any person at any age, and the sooner the better. Realizing the uncertainty in most issues and decisions opens the door to appreciating the value of influence, people’s decision drivers and, among other things, storytelling.
 

These are my key reflections and takeaways about storytelling. I am trying to improve my skills at it and wish I would have known as child what I know now.
 

I would love to get any comments or additions you think of on this subject, and also your thoughts about other skills that are your early-learning-wishes.​

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