This is how you make grown men cry

My student gets up in front of his whole class, 445 MBA students, and gets ready to speak. 

I can see his hands are shaking. He’s struggling to make eye contact. He shakes himself, takes a very deep breath and starts:

“Last March, my family and I were together for the 5th anniversary of my mother’s death. 

My little brother, who’s now the biggest of us, said he couldn’t overcome it, and asked, 

‘Why can’t I have a happy life?’

So we got to talking about what life is.

Life is the happy moments, the warm hug from your mother when you’re coming back late from school. 

Life is the sad moments, like asking your mother for a kiss while she doesn’t know who you are anymore, or what a kiss even is. 

Life is the despair moments, holding your mother’s motionless hand while you kiss her cold forehead, knowing it’s goodbye and not ‘see you later.’”

He’s not done yet, but I barely catch the rest of it because I’m crying so hard. 

I’d heard the story earlier that day, that’s why I put him forward to speak at the closing event. Then it moved me, and everyone in class.

Now… it breaks me. I feel it so much it catches me by surprise.

I still have my mom. In fact, I’m lucky that I haven’t lost almost anyone I care about. 

Yet. 

But I know it’s coming. And those few sentences made me picture exactly what that might look like–and how it will feel. 

Storytelling… damn. 

What did it look like? How did you feel? 

When you tell a story, you’re making a movie inside your audience’s mind. That’s something most people that teach storytelling talk about. 

But a while back I spoke to an amazing storyteller called Marsha Shandur in my podcast, and she went deeper into that analogy. According to Marsha, your story can be a

• voice-over = no pictures (“I travelled across Europe for a month”)

• montage = flashes of pictures, low-detail (“We drank wine in Paris, saw street art in Berlin, met the Queen in London”) 

• action scene = where it gets granular (“I’m standing on a bus in Rome, when this handsome, dark-haired man gets on. I feel myself start to flush as I realise he’s coming to talk to me”)

Voice-over gives you facts, montages let you pack a lot of info in little time, and action scenes show us pictures ("what did it look like?”) and feelings (“did how you feel?").

If you want to tell a great story, most of the movie you make should be action scenes.

That’s what my student did. He made a movie I couldn’t help seeing and feeling, and that’s why it hit me so hard. 

So ask yourself: 

What did it look like? How did you feel? 

The best stories answer those two questions all the way throughout. They let us picture what's happening, and leave is in no doubt about what the characters are feeling.

So we can't help but feel it too.

And that’s how you make a grown man cry…

…and appreciate you all the more for it 🤘

-Francisco 

PS. You can listen to my podcast with Marsha on Apple or Spotify (or anywhere else you listen to podcasts!)

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Getting clarity through your story to stand out from all the other coaches, speakers and entrepreneurs out there 

2. If you dream of speaking on the Red Dot, take this Scorecard and instantly discover how likely your idea is to be accepted by a TED-style organizing committee

3. If you (or your team) got any storytelling challenges, I’m sure there’s something we can do together ;-)

Thanks for reading! Reply any time.