Communication Secrets to Get From Good to Great | Carmine Gallo | Talks at Google

[Music] hello Googlers yes hello welcome everyone let me pimp the book no I'm I'm excited to be here this is not the first book that I've read that carmine has written and I've watched his videos on on YouTube and his interviews and I've taken a lot away from his advice and guidance III I used to be in QT one just a little over managing a team of around 75 people that it's storytelling the data in the sales context for Google and as I as I I write a blog on analytics I write a weekly newsletter Google basically pays me to write ok and now in marketing I help lead a team that analyzes are several billions dollars worth of spend on marketing and throughout it all the consistent thread is how do we tell stories better how do we persuade people how do we change people's minds and so what my hope today is to have a few different things I've picked out from the book that are they were very very sort of I connected with me very deeply but also try and pick a few dimensions where I think we can take the book and the advice of chairs and translates into our day-to-day job as a Googler longtime Googler prasad has been paying me for 10 years I see sort of sometimes that bridge is missing as we go day to day in our meetings and in our presentations so I have a bunch of questions that sort of connect back to that so let me let me kick off with the with the first one I think our mind that that I found most amazing is this is the line of high tech yes and and I love learning that Aristotle had a formula for persuasion and that was like a seems like a thousand years before the Avinash formula for persuasion and I love your what people have to understand is that Avinash and I share a a passion for communication and storytelling and how it applies to leadership and how it makes brands more effective and companies more effective and individuals as well so I I was partly motivated he doesn't know this yet I was partly motivated while I was thinking about my next book I've written eight up until this new one he and I had a long conversation about storytelling and data and I thought wow this is a really interesting area that I'm not a lot of people are writing about so he inspired me to really pursue that I ended up writing this book so thank you we are two peas in a pod so we are Wiggy Kowt when it comes to communication skills and and storytelling so you mentioned Aristotle this was so enlightening to me I love history I love American history and I love studying history and what I realized after speaking to historians and scientists and economists is that the the central theme that we all have to think about today central theme in this book and and the central thing about our conversation is that mastering the ancient art of persuasion is no longer a soft skill it is the fundamental skill that will get you from good to great in the age of ideas and we call it the age of ideas because that's where your value is locked up ideas are the currency of the 21st century no longer is your value locked up in your hands in in the a gauge or in your labor your hard labor or in the industrial age and the factories it's up here but if you you can have a great idea completely new novel different exciting but if you cannot convince another enough enough other people about your idea in a way that's clear and understandable and compelling it doesn't matter very much and what Avinash was speaking to about starting this book where there estado is the best part about all of this we already know how to do it we already know how to do what we sort of lose we lose it when we get into the whole PowerPoint culture that we're living in but we know how to do this Aristotle 2,000 years ago gave us the formula for how to persuade for how to change hearts and minds and I'm going to argue that every great speech that moves you every presentation that moves you or convinces you to change your mind follows these three elements temper of he had it as ethos logos pathos which means that in order for me to persuade you of anything and here at Google whether to persuade a customer for example of looking into a new service or a new technology in order for persuasion to occur you need to have these three things you need to have ethos which in ancient Greece was character and credibility which is why all companies today including Google are very focused on maintaining trust you don't want to lose that trust that's the ethos Avinash is an expert in the logos which is the data that that's the the evidence the logical appeal that has to be made but Aristotle and this is brilliant he said that in order for persuasion to occur you need to have a combination of ethos logos and what he called pathos pathos is emotion connecting to another human being on an emotional level that's why today Avinash and I are going to talk a little bit about storytelling it's not all of this book it's about a chapter 2 but storytelling is the best vehicle we have to transfer emotion from one person to another this is all very fascinating actually Avinash if you would can I take another minute I want to tell the audience about a few people who have inspired me this year where I learn I told you I'm a big history buff there is a best-selling book this year New York Times called it one of the best books of the year it's called leadership by Doris Kearns Goodwin if you read this book I forgot how many you know posted stickers I had almost on every page that had to do with communication the most transformative leaders of our time were great communicators and they worked at it take a look at this quote Lincoln drew crowds from the countryside eager to be regaled and entertained by a master storyteller he understood early on that concrete examples and stories provided the best vehicles for teaching but he worked that we would not have had the Emancipation Proclamation at that time if he had not built himself into a magnificent communicator through the language of story he worked at it Abraham Lincoln worked at it throughout throughout his entire career he was a crime he was a voracious learner and wanted to self-improve not too long ago a few months ago some of you are gonna recognize this man Sean Hennessey is the chairman of the board of alphabet he and I met at his Stanford office mr. Hennessy was the former Stanford president for 16 years and he had just won the Turing award which I believe is like the Nobel Prize of computer science here's what he told me when you move from the field in which you built your career in step in a leadership your technical talent becomes less important and the ability to tell appropriate compelling and inspiring stories is essential so if your permission I'm going to I'm going to run just a one minute excerpt from a very long conversation we had listen to the the power of storytelling in any organization and in any level of your career if you were speaking to the students at Stanford today what would you tell them about the role storytelling will play in their success in their careers whether they are starting a company whether they're going into academia what's the role of storytelling in their lives well I think in all these settings it provides an important tool you're an entrepreneur starting a new company yet you have a vision of what you might be able to build how you might be able to change the world that's what you take to a group of investors and even often to your first customers because you don't yet have a product if you're a leader of an organization and you're trying to take that organization to a new level take them in a different direction you need a story a story that can weave where you want to go and where you want to take them so I would try to tell the students this is going to be an important skill together with your public speaking skills it will really impact your ability to get things done in the world I love that it will really impact your ability to get things done in the world and Avinash told me when I met him you know a few months back the scale and the scope of what we're doing here at Google is so large sometimes it's best told through stories well two weeks ago I spent some time with former Cisco CEO John Chambers at his house we were talking about his book connecting the dots he said communication skills are more important today than they were 20 years ago we'll talk about that and then earlier this year boy name dropping here sorry about that guys but earlier this year I talked to Richard Branson who also is a fanatic about storytelling and entrepreneurship and and the intersection of those two and I learned a lot from this guy who you might recognize a man named Avinash Kaushik who told me storytelling is a powerful way to get our clients to think differently right and when I heard that I said wow that that is that's the tool that is the secret I had been thinking about storytelling for a long time wasn't sure what to do with it when Avinash told me that it's like ah it all came together it all came together so we that's what we need to talk about it Indra Nooyi former president of PepsiCo stepping down this year you cannot over invest in communication skills that's what we have to talk about communication and storytelling so thanks for giving me a little time yes the court has set it up Avinash yeah dono I appreciate that and and I I I've always sort of shared with my team that no matter what meeting you're in you're in the business of trying to sell an idea try and persuade somebody to change their mind to do something differently or have a more rounded opinion about something so I was wondering if if but most of us are not standing on stage and giving a talk or or presenting to the Board of Directors where we're in meetings where we're using we're sitting around a table trying to persuade a group of our colleagues or shooting off a fiery email and trying to persuade her persuade somebody so I wonder within the constraints of spreadsheets and email and in the way that we communicate how can we use the persuasion if you had any tips for my fellow Googlers well Avinash remember what is persuasion persuasion is a combination of ideas and words to change hearts and minds that's the technical definition of persuasion so I'm persuading all the time I have to persuade a publisher to take a chance on a button every time you send out an email you're trying to persuade somebody to take your side or to look into something we're to take action so we are persuaders constantly one of my favorite authors dan pink who I also talked to last year he said he has a great line he said like it or not we're all in sales now it doesn't matter what your titles are because you're always in sales and if you're looking to advance your career you have to have a combination of that ethos right you got to have your your resume and your credentials and everything you've accomplished you also have to have logic you have to make a logical appeal for someone elevating you into another position and you have to touch them in a way that connects with them emotionally so everything we talked about applies to their day to day and so your question was what can we do very specifically what's interesting about what you just said the spreadsheets the the slides everything that Google is involved with today from you know from cloud - to cars to technology to healthcare said it's all extremely complicated more complicated than ever before but while you're all change in the world the human mind has not changed the human mind has not changed since we evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago if you can understand how the brain processes information that's the key that is the secret to connecting with people because this hasn't changed the way we communicate has in fact didn't you tell me that a lot of people are watching this streaming right so what that's changed the way we transform transfer our communication has changed but not the way the human brain is wired to process information so if we let's talk about a few things that people can do today oh I have a couple of slides let me show these to you I think this will help one of the the most powerful techniques and I think this coordinates or is consistent with something that you teach your team as well Avinash I like to start with the big picture think about your next presentation your next email your next conversation the way the brain processes information and needs to see things in a hierarchical structure most of us start in the weeds because we know too much about a particular topic John Medina who wrote a wonderful book called brain rules he's one of my mentors one of my favorite authors a University of Washington biologist he said carmine whenever you talk to people tell them this information has to be set up in a hierarchical structure the brain craves meaning big picture before details and he used an analogy I'll never forget he said carmine this is the way our brains evolved when our ancestors stepped out of the cave and ran into a tiger they did not ask how many teeth does the tiger have they asked will it eat me should I run big picture before details you can't start in the weeds so I in this book I started calling it the log line and I it's because I started talking to people who are screenwriters I love Hollywood I love Hollywood movies and Hollywood folks are really good writers and storytellers well something called the logline when a screenwriter walks into a production meeting and they have a play or a movie to pitch the first thing they're asked is for a long line you know what the log line is has anyone heard of that because we're not screenwriters a log line is in one sentence what's the movie about that's what they want to know what's the movie about one sentence if you don't have a log line there's no sale this is the most famous long line of all time Steven Spielberg walked into a production meeting and said I've got a great idea for a movie it's about a police chief with a phobia for open water who battles a gigantic shark with an appetite for swimmers in spite of a greedy Town Council who demands the beach stay open sold let's make it jaws of course that's a long line though in one sentence it gets people involved people want to hear a little bit more about that about that particular movie so I always ask people now I always ask people what's your logline tell me what the movie is about in one sentence and if you could fit in a Twitter post of on like 140 characters not 280 the even shorter if you could fit in 140 characters you're on to something but it's hard it's hard Google organizes the world's information and makes it universally accessible when Michael Moritz at Sequoia Capital heard that line he said wow I got it instantly in one line I saw the movie that's powerful so always be thinking what is the one thing the one thing that I want my audience to know and that's what you have to focus most of your time in creating now does it isn't that consistent with your framework as well isn't it other than I sure no I agree I think one of my favorite stories in this context is Bob mang cough is the cartoon editor of The New Yorker and he's written a book on creativity you should I it regardless of your role put your new agey card easier but they asked him in one of his book tour presentations how do you pick the eighteen cartoons that make it into the magazine from the thousand that are submitted every single week and the number really is thousand and he said it's not the ink it's the thing and I love that quote it's not the ink is the thing and and to the extent that in every sort of communication that I have outbound I always take a pause and say what's the thing and is it good thing is it strategic so on and so forth have a communicator to think effectively because otherwise it's just all ink and it's really hard whether it's an email or a spreadsheet or or or a meeting they get drowned in the ink so it's it's it goes very much alike but isn't it about Appa loveliness yeah you're right and looking at it from the the 30,000 foot perspective and applying it to your particular audience you can change the log line and the the thing based on your audience this calls to mind I was having the I mentioned the conversation with John Chambers two weeks ago so he said something really interesting haven't told you this Avinash he said that early on they were Cisco was you know just focused on the hardware routers and switches kind of them dry boring metal stuff that no one would clearly understood and he said it was very complex so what he said is no let's not focus on the products let's focus on the outcome and he coined the phrase the Internet will change the way we work live play and learn and he and he whispered to me goes carmine the marketing team hated it because they said it's not about the products we're all about products and he said no we're about something more than that to inspire people you have to focus on one big idea and that one big idea has to be more about the outcome not the details of the product it would that be something consistent with like saying will you teach your team yeah one of the other things I believe in a lot of controversial things I'm just gonna run them by now but one of the things that I have noticed in in our context of course a lot of stories get told with slides or PowerPoint or keynote and and I'm not one of those people who believes there is some inherent evil in the tool itself one of my most viral tweets is PowerPoint does not suck you do hmm right because it does it's just a media I love that that's one of my favorite quotes of all time and I think I used it for another book than I read a previous book I loved it and but the way that I I sometimes see people force quality on storytelling is by restricting quantity so we'll have a very senior leader thankfully this person is not here anymore but would say you can only come to me with ten slides or less and of course what what I would tend to notice is my mic Google colleague would of course make a great story would be a 60 slides ago we're gonna see person acts can only take 10 so they would delete 20 slides but then take the other 40 and put them on 10 quantity wins it's bad or some people say I don't send me an email unless it's five sentences you know I think it's massively short-sighted because not everything can be Fox if I'd you know like Fox News it make it make a little blurb out of it I'm sorry I think both of these quantity rules fail to improve quality and I was just wondering what have you seen in your experience or god forbid you have a ten slide rule no I I I don't know I don't and every time I give presentations at conferences people will always ask me for four slides or they will say they'll look at a deck that I have that might be 140 slides and it'll say oh that's that's way too many so no you don't understand they're images that compliment the conversation so to me there I there's no no there's no rule necessarily on the number of slides but I do have some rules there absolutely some rules is we need to be very careful about the amount of content that we do put on our slides because once again the the brain cannot multitask as well as you think it can so if I'm if I'm speaking to you and I'm saying something very deep and important there is it's very dense and you're looking at a slide that has a hundred words on that you can't do you can't do both so I like to have that balance that combination if if you want me to look at a slide and focus on a slide and a number on a slide great we'll focus on the slide if you want to listen to me then that slide should just be a compliment to to what I'm saying or to the content so that's a little different but again there's no it doesn't break down into ten slides necessarily it's the number of slides that you need to tell the story sometimes you don't even need slides right into it the things I wrote a book on the TED talks there are a number of TED talks that for eighteen or twenty minutes will keep you riveted with no slides at all and yet they're the most interesting conversations I've ever heard so again it's it's that using the tools that apply to that particular situation and sometimes sometimes you don't go off digital go off digital I I teach at Harvard twice a year now which is a great opportunity I told you I'm a history buff so I get to go to Boston and learn all about Harvard and all that so I teach twice a year these are executive education so everyone's already got about 20 years of experience in completely different industries and one guy was talking about Bitcoin and it was really really it was very complicated and so I asked him oh yeah we came up with this was it we came up with an idea there was a classroom at Harvard in Harvard Law the brand-new classrooms twenty-five million dollar building they have chalkboards do you know why they have chalkboards is because they found that people seem to learn best when they pick up a piece of chalk and write so I said if we're gonna talk about something that complicated why don't we go retro go retro and then your next presentation instead of putting up a PowerPoint slide go to chalkboard and see what happens you know a totally change the way he was approaching that particular topic which is extraordinarily complex but again all of this gets down to creativity good communication is hard there are being a being an effective communicator takes creativity you have to think through these things you have to think through the narrative that you want to tell how am I going to tell it what are the words I'm going to use Alvin Asha and I have talked about different audiences right so there's the an audience that's more tactical versus an audience that's more a higher level that might be more spec the data I use and the way I present that data has to be different based on the audience that I'm facing so some of this is hard work that's why you see so many bad powerpoints or slides so there anybody any slide whether it's Google slides or powerpoints or Apple Keynote I've seen great ones I've seen a really bad ones and the bad ones are kind of lazy because we just put a bunch of information there's no hierarchical structure like John Medina talked about there's no story there's no narrative there's no theme there's no log line it's just information I don't ride for average people I don't ride for people who want to just get along I ride for those people who want to take themselves apart and stand out as communicators and as leaders it does take a little extra work it does it does yeah you've studied it for years yes yes and for our team I just had created a rule that limit the number of stories not the slides so we would go in and say if you have an hour at most you can tell three stories if you want to have actually influence and persuade somebody if you have an hour in half tell four stories if you have six hours tell four stories because humans are exhausted after a live one but but I find I found in my in my experience that drove very good behavior people automatically figured out what their own speaking style is or presenting or whiteboarding stylist and so you okay this idea remember three stories yeah tell three stories however your style by three we did a lot of research around how many ideas people can absorb and one of the most key influences on me I have to admit I was rather boring I'm a huge fan of this American life okay I would marry Ira Glass I'm married already like anybody I think they've done a really good job of figuring out you know story in three acts and and and IRA says that if you listen to the first five minutes of this American life it's an hour-long radio based programmed radio people used to have in the past I think your kids call it podcast but if you listen to the first five minutes their retention rate is 95% all the way through 60 minutes she's incredible and so that was a big influence on us and we found that he actually transformed we just took away the limitation on quantity of slides and number of lines in an email we said well you have this much time inside it you can tell these many stories effectively and that ended up sort of allowing each person to flower on their own some somebody I mean I I present an hour I'll have a hundred slides sorry what's your name at least likes to present twelve slides in an hour and that's okay that's her style but both of us can actually tell three stories by adapting to our individual style and that's that I think comes through quite a lot in fiestar's where you emphasize reflecting on ourselves instead of how we are most comfortable and then kind of take back to five stars can i riff off your rule of three by the way okay so that's another perfect example of how technology has changed the way we communicate has changed but the human mind has not the human mind has a capacity for about three ideas in short-term or working memory this goes back to a man named Aristotle who said that stories should be broken up into three parts a beginning middle and an end and if they should be as brief as possible as brief as possible to get your point across so even 2,000 years ago he was talking about breaking things up into three so in 1776 John Adams was going to ride the Declaration to break away from England and his committee came to him and said John we you're the most you have the most ethos out of anybody we want you to do it he said no I'm not gonna write it we're gonna dig this guy named Thomas Jefferson he's a much better writer than I he can combine arguments for why we should break away along with the pathos with the emotion so John Thomas Jefferson gave us three unalienable rights to run life liberty and the pursuit of happiness he did not give us 18 because the Declaration was meant to be read at street corners and taverns most people didn't read at that time so the Declaration go back and read it was written for the ear everything is broken up into threes I didn't know that until a few years ago when I read an entire book just on the Declaration but it's interesting the this whole idea of three I love what you just said if you have one hour in front of a customer give them three stories or three ideas or focus on three features of a product that apply to them once you start giving them 18 they forget the whole thing yeah that's not new though it's not new we just don't apply it to our business world it's it's something that's ingrained in us and something that is ancient why do we forget it why do we forget these things when we and we you and I have talked about this why do we forget these basic rules of communication when we get into a business situation and we have a slideshow I think there's a very good you know there's an incentive to the ink tends to seem to seem to sort of win at least certain kinds of executives in certain cultures end up with incentives that are based on the ink and you must be fabulous because you have 48 slides anyway different different topic one of the ones there are there are frameworks you speak about in the book that I absolutely love and one of the things that I I have I've said that I tend to think as we look at stories in a business context I think of four important pieces the first one is problem explain to people where the problem is because I think we are almost always overestimate an audience's understanding of the problem whether the audience is three people in our team or or or a thousand people you're speaking on at i/o sorry 100,000 I think most people over because you're so close to to work you're so close to Google guys that you are like immersed in problems but I'm sitting there in TGIF I'm so far away that I should I don't understand the problem so the first ones explained the problem the second one is put it inside a framework because if you don't teach people a way to think then when you walk away the only thing they remember is your solution but in all of the ways they don't know how to apply your thinking the second ones give them a framework the third one is the one everybody does which is give the solutions right that we all do really well maybe too much ink let's think but we do do that and often but not always the last pieces tell them the impact so if you do something here's the impact that's gonna happen so there are those four pieces you know problem framework solutions so that's in fact that's that's your model yeah it is problem framework solution yes exactly right and and I I often think I've invited you to react to it is that people rarely spend enough time describing the problem which which I think I see manifested as them not understanding it completely so that that's one okay yeah the second one is we don't normally think when we speak when I leave will people only remember my solution or have I changed the way they fundamentally think this is the role of the frameworks I just wanted to react to those two things I love the fact that you're focusing on the problem yeah when I was in graduate school learning journalism and a lot of what I do goes back to 15 20 years ago when I was an active journalist the very first thing we learn in journalism 101 is why do I care and you can't convince people that they should care about a particular solution unless unless you frame the problem and often they don't know what their problem is now his this was the genius of Steve Jobs I wrote a book called a presentation secrets of Steve Jobs it was one of my first big presentation books and it's as close as you'll get to actually being in one of those rooms with him because I got a lot of input from designers and people who worked with Steve Jobs he was brilliant at explaining the problem first in 2007 he did not walk out on stage and say we've got a brand new phone the first phone from Apple to introduce today and boy is it cool let me show you what it does features he didn't do that instead he spent about five minutes building up the problem what are the problems with existing smart phones on the market today and then he showed a slide where they uh I think back then it was blackberry and the others where they had the plastic keyboards that wouldn't change okay so before he sets up his solution he wants he talked about suspects he even used the language of narrative he said these are the suspects that are making your life miserable by the end of that part you're thinking he's right I have a problem and I didn't even know I had a problem what's your solution brilliant ad that he did that with the the first ipod in 2001 did that with the I had to do that with the iPad 2010 because most people at the time said why do we need a middle device but I've got a smartphone I've got a laptop why do I need a middle device he didn't just come out with the iPad he spent five or ten minutes building up the problem his genius of course was he could convince you you had a problem you didn't know you had that was that's genius that takes a whole nother level of communication and what I've learned since he passed away from people who've known him including John Sculley who I had a long conversation with he worked at it Steve Jobs worked at communication for many many years to get to be a more compelling storyteller and presenter so this all of what we're talking about takes work you have to dedicate yourself to be an extraordinary speaker and communicator so let's talk about the problem though because that Avinash is absolutely right nobody talks about the problem they are so in love with their solution but once you get people nodding in agreement yes yes I have that problem if they know me then the solution makes a lot more sense I want to show you something if you can see the screen here this is the three-act story structure every great movie every great book throughout all of history has to fall within a three-act structure if it wasn't for this three-act structure you never would have had Star Wars because George Lucas was stuck he was writing a script for this Space Odyssey type of movie and he didn't know where to go with it because it was kind of dry and then he was introduced to Joseph Campbell in the power of myth and he goes oh this is great this is actually a mythology story and he completely changed and then we had Star Wars the Star Wars was based on the formula that all great stories have to follow I don't I guess they don't have to but they won't be commercially successful so this too is a Hollywood technique so all great Hollywood movies have to follow this structure what Hollywood movies have we seen recently anybody what saw what's a theatrical release movie that you've seen recently maybe over the holiday season the favorite I heard about that well have not seen that one okay um what else have we seen favorite crazy rich Asians yep so crazy rich Asians I watched that twice crazy crazy rich Asians has every scene that is supposed to be in a hit Hollywood movie there's about 15 scenes that have to be in a movie 15 each and everyone is in crazy rich Asians how many of you have watched Bohemian Rhapsody yep I love it so Andrew carton is a screenwriter for that and I talked to him two years ago when he wrote the Winston Churchill movie darkest hour and since I understand a little bit about storytelling the screenplays I would ask him I said okay so the these the conflict act ii must have started on this scene and he said okay think about that carmine maybe it didn't maybe it didn't what about this scene that's actually a scene to right so in other words he knew that every Hollywood movie has to follow this formula here's the formula but it also works for presentations and it's very consistent with your structure act one always has to be the setup so the first twenty minutes first thirty minutes of any movie has to be the set up the characters where was freddie mercury working in Bohemian Rhapsody when in the first frame of the movie where was he were other than a concert scene where was he working remember where he's working at but he was at Heathrow Airport taking luggages off the rack that's the setup who are the characters and what is their life at that time otherwise you don't care the next hour of the movie has to be the the conflict that is where villains hurdles have to be overcome and that's where you can have a lot of fun and games finally is the resolution but as one screenwriter told me and this is beautiful the resolution does not necessarily mean a happy ending it has to have a transformation so the end of Rocky spoiler alert rocky one how many have there been now I saw Creed Rocky one he doesn't win he doesn't win but he's transformed so transformations are really powerful you don't necessarily have to have the happy ending and and and the victory but every great presentation that I watch from Steve Jobs when I was doing the Steve Jobs book every single one falls under this the set up let me tell you the state of the world today there's a there's a problem there's a lot of there's villains out there there's suspects and villains that you don't know about especially in the data world that are coming after you a lot of people and data and security may not even be aware of the conflicts that are coming but if I can create this tension and then resolve that tension and show you how your world not necessarily can not necessarily saying you'll have a better life but if I can show you how to transform your company to be more effective to be more successful then I can entice you to listen to more of that conversation so this can be the setup for a 30-minute presentation it can be a 30-second conversation but it has to have all those pieces mm-hmm and so the setup of a nosh is your is the problem yeah and most people don't start there they don't even start it they don't even talk about the conflict here's the problem that you're having here are the hurdles that you face if I talk to a potential customer in those in that language they under they know I understand them but if I start with here's the how we're gonna solve the problem here's my solution I'm starting in act 3 it's disjointed yeah I think one one one one challenge I see in in that I had to overcome and and I think it's to take advice and become a good storyteller is is highlighted by the fact that it's especially in a business context it's very difficult to to put ourselves in the presentation ourselves in the story ourselves in the email I did a talk at director's cut you know of internal Google thing and hundred people doctors VP's and somebody came up to me later and and they said and this is quite amazing but they said oh that was great talk thank you I could really see you oh are you in the back yes here was a big room and I was like kind of nice that he could see me but I said no no I could see you and and before you the speakers I couldn't see them but I could see what you stand for and you jumped up on the sofa and which I did but but they said that that's the thing that connected with them and that's the thing that was had a very big impact on them and honestly I don't think I've had a better compliment after any talk but but I do think that's very important is people should be able to see a lease and and Jamie and what makes you you and the magic that is you so I believe that super super important and so I I curse I I stand up I jump whatever makes me happy right telling that story I am the font Nazi nobody cares right but my count your aphorism right and I love it like the fact that it's there I love the fact that it's there even though none of you probably care but makes me happy and so because I believe in this so much I want to encourage every one of my colleagues to put themselves in the present very few people do that yeah how are you people yet give tips on how can can somebody in a business setting whether they're talking to a hundred people or on a whiteboard how can they put themselves in a partially ah okay oh yes mercifully yeah we are not IBM yeah clearly are not dressed for IBM but we can I think Google is an amazing culture and yet I think people don't put enough well the the different types of stories that people can use or case studies so that's easy we have a million of those we can tell stories about the brand very few people to help personal stories and insert themselves and their personality into stories and into presentations and yet that is the most memorable that's what people remember the most it takes a little courage to do that takes a little courage but on this at the same time it is a way of emotional contagion you know really transferring your emotion to another person when people get to a certain level of leadership I've noticed they're very they're more open about talking about certain things that you wouldn't expect them to John Chambers was very open to talking about dyslexia and overcoming adversity and how dyslexia at first he thought it was a weakness and he realized oh wait it's my strength it's an asset and so he was very open about talking about this when I spoke to Richard Branson he told me about all his failures all the failures he had as an entrepreneur and was very open about that and I and I and finally I asked him I said why are you always talking about your failures you know don't you want to talk about your successes and he gave me a great quote up and I shall love this he said well if your life is one long success story it's kind of boring so that the point is to in jail you don't have to you know reveal all the skeletons in your closet but ya show some personality I learned a lot about this from this man his name is Bryan Stevenson mm-hmm Bryan Stevenson for those of you watched TED talks Bryan Stevenson's claim to fame on a TED stage is that he gave a TED talk that received Ted's longest standing ovation and Ted's 30-year history I spoke to him shortly after his TED talk he is a human rights attorney a human rights attorney does a lot of good in the world there was a very famous book this year called the the Sun does shine it's about Anthony ray Hinton who spent 30 years on death row as an innocent man and if it wasn't for Bryan Stevenson he'd still be there so Bryan Stevenson spent 15 years trying to free him Stevenson is an extraordinary communicator he tells personal stories in every presentation he tells personal stories about people he's met he tells personal stories about growing up poor in the south and what is some of the lessons his grandmother taught him and I asked him why do you tell so many stories about your grandmother because I looked him up on Google and I saw all these videos and he always tells the story about his grandmother he tells the same stories so why do you I always tell the story about your grandmother he said oh because everybody has a grandmother it's an instant connection it connects me with people and it brings down barriers you have to find those personal stories that people will connect with and he told me Bryan Stephen sent carmine narrative and story is hugely effective in persuasion and he should know he is won cases before the US Supreme Court but again he's thinking through how am I going to connect with people and the best way to connect with people is what Avinash just said is showing your light and showing your personality right any questions yes anything at all yes sir Jamie may be kindly bring you a microphone thank you for being here I'll give you a big picture first okay is it possible to create a context where people are more receptive to good storytelling and here's the question we live in a distracted world and and sadly I'm pretty sure you all have been in that in meetings at Google where can you think half of the people might be on their emails and they're not really paying attention so if I'm the person storytelling in that meeting do I just suck and should I ramp up my storytelling and they're magically close their laptops and be enchanted or view guys I mean the questions to both of you actually do you have a device to create a situation or context where people are more receptive to good storytelling well I want to hear what Avinash has to say but this whole idea of grabbing people's attention I think that we we are learning in the lab things about story that we've known intuitively for thousands of years but now we're starting to prove it and that is when two people are engaged in story when you're actually telling another person a story they don't just they don't tune out there is a rush of neuro chemicals going on oxytocin which is a bonding molecule dopamine and a lot of other chemicals that that connect two people with one another they're proving this in Yuri Hassan is doing this at Princeton University Paul Zak is doing this in Los Angeles there is a number of there are a number of studies out there which reinforce though people pay attention in a presentation when they hear the story because we didn't get into this we're hardwired for story this is something that I've learned over the last few years anthropologists will tell you this that when our ancestors gain control of fire fire was a major milestone not only because our brain got bigger because we could cook food we were safer because we could ward off predators and this was a big revelation to me Paulie Weisner at the University of Utah talks about this that we told each other stories and stories ignited our imagination and inspired people and that's how it became explorers because we wanted to take those adventures to the people who have evolved since then are wired for story yeah so and they're in there now with MRI machines they can see it they can see how story works on the brain so if you just give them not hierarchical information just information straight facts figures data with no narrative structure to it people were gonna lose attention very quickly because we're not wired to think in bullets on a PowerPoint slide yeah I'll give it to mundane tips this this is the big thing right the first one is people are inherently selfish in some way and so you have to at the very outset tell them what is in it for them so I I went to CREN who's our vp he has 500 direct reports it's very big org he has a lot of pressure and so I opened the meeting with him just last Friday and said are you know I'm gonna tell you three things are you gonna be able to quote to Lorraine Lorenz or CML he's only ended Wow I love you he wants more things to be able to tell the rain right was of course manages the multi-thousand org so it quickly you know why I am there right it's actually to have you the other one is in meetings to your point about all of us being on laptops which is very common including I see these people here and oh do two things I I do two things first one is if I'm talking in the person I want to really listen is not listening I just pause I stop talking and everybody looks this pause you won't even take you five seconds everybody looks up and the other one quickly is one of the things I found in my I've 200,000 Twitter followers I'm always experimenting with them and one of the ways other things I found in my Twitter experiments is people love hearing their own name so my replies on Twitter always have people's name in them I have to look up sometimes well because their funny title of funny handles I have to fire to go to LinkedIn to find somebody's name so stupid so in meetings like this ammonia I was in a meeting and I wanted somebody to really listen to what I'm saying and I said and I want Nick I said the name and immediately Nick looked up right because he knows I said his name and he it's directed to him so here's this no tricks pause here's the person's name and they would always stop whatever they're doing and look up because people love hearing their name I love this technique that even did you did you see that technique he used in the presentation though yeah like ten minutes and he said I've got three things that you can tell all right okay so now now you've connected with them you've given him the movie poster in one sentence that can fit in a Twitter post to one sentence here's what's in it for you that's why I always end with this we'll take some more questions but I like this I always talk about this always remember that you're not selling a product you're not talking about the product because people are selfish people are narcissistic we're all with it's all about me which is not a bad thing but it's it's anybody everybody so they're thinking in the first 30 to 90 seconds of a conversation what am I gonna get out of this so if you can create that long line that one sentence that tells them here's what this movie is about and you're gonna love it oh now tell me more he also uses the rule of three I've got three things to tell you if if you said I had 28 things that you can tell the rain would've lost me immediately so again all of these things are kind of basic human understanding if you can understand how the human brain processes information and wants information it's a very powerful technique really powerful tool was there uh yes quick question from somebody watching the lives okay quickly wanted to get Kevin Liang wanted to get your take on influence versus persuasion influence versus persuasion well influence takes into account inspiration too I think you know a persuasion I can persuasion technical definition is I'm going to convince you I'm going to convince you to take an action and so persuasion is what we're talking about but if you really dig deep into it the great persuaders are people who can influence and inspire and inspiration is an even deeper topic because to inspire means you have created an enthusiasm within me I want to follow you I want to follow you because I have such a good feeling about you I want to be a part of his team that's a that's taking it one step deeper so we have to start with persuasion the kind of the basic building blocks of persuasion with them within persuasion there's a plenty of room to get even deeper into inspiration and then influence he can't have influence I can persuade you to buy a book okay but that's not to me that's not necessarily influence influence is not only am I going to buy his book I'm gonna go to his seminars and I'm gonna follow him on social media and I want to work for him that's then you've got real influence yeah I mean a quick tweet for Kevin is I always think influence is something I earn through my actions and ideas a persuasion is something I do this taking leveraging that influence to actually you had a question yes please you know in other words often I should tell my three minute answer and turned it into a headliner that's a brilliant communicator can you give us an example and maybe this applies to both of you of a time and maybe especially carmine when you had a really bad conversation or something that was really bad and then he realized oh I really need to you know I don't know maybe before you learned more about communication and the importance of persuasion and presenting the story like something that went really bad and you realize like oh I kind of need to overcome this can you guys give us an example think about that for a second there were plenty of plenty of problems that I had early on you know especially when I was growing up in my career as a as a business journalist I was vet I was a very good journalist but I was very fact and data-driven very fact and data-driven and I didn't understand the connection of emotion and so today I read of The Wall Street Journal cover to cover and I read a lot of economics and they're talking about so many big complex issues of our time and I get frustrated because I understand what they're trying to say but I don't think a lot of people understand it because it's just all facts and data-driven and really really dry so this whole thing about learning how to connect with people emotionally has been a real journey for me because I was econ political science major then I went into business news and everything was very very fact driven very evidence-based which is fine for news that kind of should be fact-based but there was very little room for emotion and now I'm starting to look at bigger much bigger topics economics how do you convince people of climate change how do you convince people to take action on climate change that's a that's a major challenge because it's so complicated and you have the people who are working at convincing people to take action are the ones that are all about data and and numbers that doesn't necessarily connect with people if you don't understand that we make decisions based on our emotions how do you convince people to take a vaccine how do you convince people to get a flu shot these are some of the things that I'm talking to different entities about because these are major communication challenges today but yeah I had to go through that process where I I think I I didn't understand the role that emotion plays and everything we do in every decision we make so you can't just connect with people just on information alone that's why we're here because Google has the best information but in order to get people to act on that information it has to be packaged in a way that connects with people I mean I look we're all gonna screw up it I do it on a daily basis and the thing to ensure is it doesn't paralyze you that's the reason I think you don't see people in their stories is because they're afraid if you make a mistake or you discern you made a mistake there's only one solution apologize and over-index they reply so say I'm sorry right I messed this up or that up and if whatever you were gonna do so let's just do a lot more they realized not only are you are you apologizing for making a boo-boo shall we say but you're there to fix it and you'll do a lot more but the one thing to put into your idea is another sort of little slogan that we had is I always like saying that when I create a story I do a lot of challenging stories that's actually my job at Google my stories are there to challenge you in a very deep fundamental way so I have to worry a lot more about screwing up so by my little slogan is tough an idea soft on people as long as your story has that it's depersonalized it's it's tough on a particular idea or a particular thing then and you say that look we're gonna be tough on ideas often people then I think I screw up a lot less because you created this context within which we can operate it's about the idea it's about this new thing but it's about this current thing that's not going well toughen ideas often people it works out well first off thank you for being here really like that a structure actually use that in my kind of LinkedIn content that's really awesome so I was gonna ask you like I won't actually like write a book like one day so I was gonna ask you like what inspired you to write your books and how what advice would you have in regards to read your own book well right now you've got a great opportunity with LinkedIn with writing on LinkedIn writing articles and writing on blogs so I started with writing for Business Week com I still write for Inc I still for Forbes wrote four different platforms because I love sharing ideas I'm a little a DD actually I'm diagnosed ADHD so you know it's nothing to be afraid of so I've got a TD so I've got like a million ideas and I always wanted even from college days I always wanted to share those ideas it wasn't enough for me to learn something from someone like Avinash I got to share it so I had to share with somebody else so I started writing but mostly for all of these platforms and then you started to begin to see what type of writing resonates with a particular audience what does this audience want what can I teach them that nobody else can teach them based on my unique experience or or background so from there that's why I wrote a a where I wrote a piece on how to give a presentation like Steve Jobs and that blew up and a lot of people love that and I realized okay well maybe I'll look at this one person and use that as a presentation book and that became a popular book around the world but it all starts from starting to write and write more and and getting that response from people to see what what resonates and what people want but there has to be the passion of I love ideas I love learning and I want to share it with everybody else so I had that passion if you're not if you don't have that passion for ideas and sharing ideas and teaching people then books are really hard but if you do that's a great area to go into but now we have this opportunity we have this incredible opportunity to amplify our ideas on ways that we never had before fabulous all right book is five stars Carmen stars thank you thank you thanks for coming you

Channel: Talks at Google

Views: 32,230

Keywords: talks at google, ted talks, inspirational talks, educational talks, FIVE STARS The Communication Secrets to Get from Good to Great, Carmine Gallo, how great persuaders change the world, Avinash Kaushik, simple strategies to sell ideas, motivate teams, inspire people to dream bigger

Id: lbOavq7rJuw

Length: 61min 42sec (3702 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 21 2018