Alan Gutierrez

I have purchased the No Asshole Rule. I read some of it. It is a good book with a good point. At the heart, when an organization builds itself around prima donnas, the net effect is bad for the organization. I’ve found the blog of the author, Bob Sutton. In his blog, he is recommending Made To Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. I am developing an RSS discipline. I do not want to add Bob’s blog to my list of feeds, and make myself unhappy. Instead, I am going to take the time to write about his blog and the post that caught my attention, while it has my attention.

Today (no not today, last week, I didn’t post this then), a I met a man walking across the 7th Ward, taking pictures. He was fussing with a home that was going to soon be demolished. The home was in very bad shape. It was occupied before Katrina, but it was in bad shape then. From the looks of it, the house would have collapsed already, except that it leaned back onto a tree in the back yard.

This man told me his evacuation story. It was stunning. The story itself was stunning, but what’s more, the story telling was stunning.

At some point, I realized that I was entertained by the story. It was one thought then the next. The first thought was that was aware of the time spend telling and listening. The sun was going down. I was walking at the time I was walking because the sun was going down. It is a good time to take pictures. I thought, I had better keep going, because I was supposed to take pictures. The second thought was that I was none the less listening. I wanted to hear the story.

By now, I know the series of events for a New Orleans Katrina evacuee.

Hearing a person tell their story is like Shakespeare. You have heard the story before. You know what is going to happen next. Like Shakespeare, you want to hear the story again, with new particulars. You want to hear how this person will tell his story. Every story is unique. How individuals handled themselves is unique. The togetherness of certain agencies and non-agencies, and the incoherence of others.

In hindsight, I wasn’t aware of the time, until after I’d understood that the story would not end in tragedy. Then I wanted to hear the details. What was the experience of the different agencies? Where did you go and who did you see? How deep was the water and where?

What I’d like to say, is that the story I heard today was well told. At points, I’d step back and think about how he constructed a scene. How it was unfolding in my mind’s eye. The metaphors were carefully chosen.

Why was he so good at this? He didn’t try to control the story. He told it. He didn’t waste time setting the scene. He’d offer one piece of evidence that it was dark. Not the hackneyed hand before the face. No cliches. A point of reference. Then I was on my own to know what dark was, as he described what he had to deal with in the dark.

My take away was that, in order to be an effective speaker, I need to lighten up. That was the take away before I knew why. At first I thought that the same sort of nuance you put into telling a story that will keep an audience enthralled, will be embarrassing you if someone is not interested in what you have to say. (Which is my personal challenge to post this somewhere.) I know I’m more interesting when I allow myself to be animated and self-deprecating.

The real take away, though, is that you let the story tell itself. Let the story tell itself through you.