Best Story Wins: Storytelling for Business Success

by Mark Edwards

Overview

An inspiring, practical, and timely new guide on how to harness the power of storytelling in our communications at work. 

Whether you're standing up in front of a crowd at a conference or chatting with a colleague in an elevator, storytelling is the most effective way to get your point across. It works in ninety-second Superbowl television spots, it works in ten-second social media formats, and it works in that email you have to fire off in five seconds flat.

Why? The short answer is that people don't make decisions based on logic. They make decisions based on emotions. To persuade, influence, and inspire, you need to make an emotional connection. And storytelling is the best way of doing that.

Journalist-turned-business coach Mark Edwards has developed his own methodology for telling compelling stories at work. Best Story Wins shows how storytelling will make better communicators of us all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781639366453
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	06/04/2024
Series:	Economist Books
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Mark Edwards has two parallel careers—as a journalist and as a trainer/life coach. As a journalist he began his career writing in magazines, including GQ, Esquire, and Blitz. For the past twenty-five years his work has appeared virtually every week in the London Sunday Times, and for twelve of those years he was the paper's chief pop music critic. As a coach and trainer, he works with individuals to help them live with more purpose and meaning. He is the co-author of Belonging: The Key to Transforming and Maintaining Diversity, Inclusion, and Equality at Work. He lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

04/22/2024

Whether presenting at a conference or “firing off a quick email,” spinning narratives is key to business success, according to this intermittently useful guide. Life coach Edwards (The Tao of Bowie) argues that attempts to persuade colleagues and associates using reason often fail because they prompt counterarguments and, if perceived as coercive, can motivate listeners to reassert their autonomy by rejecting the idea. By comparison, storytelling constitutes a more subtle way to get one’s point across. A six-step process for crafting effective narratives encourages readers to establish a connection with one’s audience, identify a desirable goal, detail obstacles to achieving that goal, explain why one’s proposal is the best solution, and describe how the solution will transform lives. Though Edwards aims to make the advice broadly applicable, the examples focus on presenting to business associates and will be most helpful for those pitching potential investors, rather than, for example, marketing to consumers. Edwards sometimes resorts to dubious reasoning, as when he suggests without evidence that the power of stories derives from invoking nostalgia for childhood story time. Still, there are some solid tips recommending that readers structure stories as a “hero’s journey,” with the audience positioned as the hero, and useful warnings that ginning up narrative mystery may work in movies but is merely “annoying” in corporate settings. This will help readers nail their next work presentation. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Belonging is an important book for anyone who wants to attract and keep diverse talent. It is full of new voices describing the experience of being different and unable to fully participate and contribute at work. It has practical advice that any one of us could implement the next day to make ourselves more aware and inclusive. If you want to stop just talking about inclusion and start doing something about it—this is the book for you.

Jan Gooding

If there was a time for Belonging, then it is now. This book not only underscores the need and importance of diversity but also makes the case that diversity is not just a 'nice to have' endeavour but a true competitive edge that allows companies to unleash innovation, employee joy, corporate reputation and value creation.

Rishad Tobaccowala

At a time when things need to change, and change fast, the authors of Belonging have written a new guidebook for running businesses today. Current leaders—and those who hope to become leaders—will gain critical and actionable insights on diversity and inclusion from this important book.

Bob Pittman

The most important business book of the year. Belonging functions as both a wake-up call, explaining why it is in the interests of such men to embrace diversity, inclusion, and belonging, as well as a high-level how-to guide, offering practical advice on how best to go about making such changes.

Esquire Magazine

Praise for Belonging: The Key to Transforming and Maintaining Diversity, Inclusion, and Equality at Work:

“Belonging never forgets that diversity is not a problem to be solved but an opportunity to be grasped. It's essential reading for anyone who wants to take diversity in their organization from fine words to reality.

Mark Thompson

Belonging takes a complex and often uncomfortable subject and makes it truly accessible and absolutely achievable by weaving real stories, sharp analysis and practical, business-ready solutions. Whether on day 1 of your career or a 30 year veteran of your profession, buy this book and create the change your organisation, and the world, needs.

Sarah Jenkins

A real roadmap oozing with intelligent, tried and tested success strategies that can be implemented right away is just what I would expect from three of the brightest minds in the business. Belonging is a must read for anyone interested in inclusion and self-fulfilment at work—it's honest, practical and really could not have come at a better time, when the need to change culture is urgent and small, incremental shifts just won't cut it.

Leila Siddiqi