A person can have the greatest idea in the world - completely different & novel - but if that person can't convince enough other people, it doesn't matter - Gregory Berns
Steve Jobs once said that the future belonged to the great story tellers - The story tellers set the vision, values and agenda for an entire generation that is to come. To me the greatest achievement of a Mahatma Gandhi or a Nelson Mandela was just this! The story that they sold to an entire generation. A story that would have been ridiculed by many... A story that a majority would have thought was just not possible... A story that would take years to take shape. Yet, the greatness of these two story tellers was to plant this seed of thought that united their respective nations to dream of something that was unthinkable.
There were many freedom fighters who took part in the freedom struggle that lasted close to 100 years before India finally gained independence and it would not be right to say that one mans contribution was more than the others - for each one of them played a very important role at various stages. However, no leader could bring the masses together the way Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi did! To me, it was his ability to connect with the masses and influence their thought process through his story telling that was his greatest contribution.
There are two aspects to story telling - One is the story that we tell the others and the other is the story that we constantly keep telling ourselves. The latter is as important, if not more. For, it is this story that helps us sail through the hard times. What is the story that Steve Jobs would have told himself when he was thrown out of the very company that he founded? What was the story that Arunima Sinha told herself when she was thrown out a moving train and 49 trains passed over her train through the night? Did they feel sorry for themselves? Did they accept it as their destiny? Did they curse those who were responsible for it and give up?
May be what separates such great achievers and the others is the stories that they constantly keep telling themselves. I find it most intriguing that Arunima Sinha - while at the hospital bed having lost her leg was thinking of how to scale the Everest! Any other person in her place would have taken close to two years just to come to terms with what had happened, may be few more months to start walking at a normal pace. But Arunima scaled the Everest in 13 months and she is not done yet. And as I write this piece, Arunima conquers Mount Aconcagua in Argentina!
Arunima's journey started when she planted an impossible thought in her mind - which was to scale the Everest! At times, when we set ourselves such goals, the very thought of it is so overwhelming that we end up in giving up those goals. It is in the pursuit of such dreams that the stories keep us going. I would like to reach that stage in my life when I can tell myself the same kind of stories that motivate me regardless of the situation I am in.
When we reach that stage - there is no goal that cannot be achieved.
So what makes one a great story teller? Is it the content? Is it the language? Is it the conviction? What are the aspects needed to become a great story teller? When you tell a story to your employees, how do they receive it? Are we all not in the business of selling stories - Teacher to a student, Employer to an employee, Team lead to a colleague, sales person to a prospect. It is the story telling and the stories that will help each one of us scale greater heights!
Steve Jobs once said that the future belonged to the great story tellers - The story tellers set the vision, values and agenda for an entire generation that is to come. To me the greatest achievement of a Mahatma Gandhi or a Nelson Mandela was just this! The story that they sold to an entire generation. A story that would have been ridiculed by many... A story that a majority would have thought was just not possible... A story that would take years to take shape. Yet, the greatness of these two story tellers was to plant this seed of thought that united their respective nations to dream of something that was unthinkable.
There were many freedom fighters who took part in the freedom struggle that lasted close to 100 years before India finally gained independence and it would not be right to say that one mans contribution was more than the others - for each one of them played a very important role at various stages. However, no leader could bring the masses together the way Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi did! To me, it was his ability to connect with the masses and influence their thought process through his story telling that was his greatest contribution.
There are two aspects to story telling - One is the story that we tell the others and the other is the story that we constantly keep telling ourselves. The latter is as important, if not more. For, it is this story that helps us sail through the hard times. What is the story that Steve Jobs would have told himself when he was thrown out of the very company that he founded? What was the story that Arunima Sinha told herself when she was thrown out a moving train and 49 trains passed over her train through the night? Did they feel sorry for themselves? Did they accept it as their destiny? Did they curse those who were responsible for it and give up?
May be what separates such great achievers and the others is the stories that they constantly keep telling themselves. I find it most intriguing that Arunima Sinha - while at the hospital bed having lost her leg was thinking of how to scale the Everest! Any other person in her place would have taken close to two years just to come to terms with what had happened, may be few more months to start walking at a normal pace. But Arunima scaled the Everest in 13 months and she is not done yet. And as I write this piece, Arunima conquers Mount Aconcagua in Argentina!
Arunima's journey started when she planted an impossible thought in her mind - which was to scale the Everest! At times, when we set ourselves such goals, the very thought of it is so overwhelming that we end up in giving up those goals. It is in the pursuit of such dreams that the stories keep us going. I would like to reach that stage in my life when I can tell myself the same kind of stories that motivate me regardless of the situation I am in.
When we reach that stage - there is no goal that cannot be achieved.
So what makes one a great story teller? Is it the content? Is it the language? Is it the conviction? What are the aspects needed to become a great story teller? When you tell a story to your employees, how do they receive it? Are we all not in the business of selling stories - Teacher to a student, Employer to an employee, Team lead to a colleague, sales person to a prospect. It is the story telling and the stories that will help each one of us scale greater heights!
5 comments:
Great Initiative Shashank.. Congrats for Rolling out your Blog!
Nice thought and very true one.
Thanks for writing something sensible in a world full of crap.
Indeed very thoughtful!!!
As rightly said...Each one of us have a story to tell...it is up to us, how we want our story to shape up and how we want the world to perceive it.....
Kudos!!!
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