Podcast Themes

Raghu reflects on his childhood and how his grandfather would read the Mahabharata or the Ramayana and also use those stories as an opportunity to share a self-reflective story about their life. He speaks about how this approach might have influenced his style of interacting with people and his teaching approach.

Pradeep speaks about Srimanta Sankardev who was a 15th-16th century polymath from Assam. He was a saint-scholar, poet, playwright, dancer, actor, musician, artist social-religious reformer and a figure of importance in the cultural and religious history of Assam, India. Pradeep speaks about how Sankardev used various forms of content to bring people together and for people to build trust with him.

Harish speaks about 4 elements that need to come together in a good story. It needs to evoke an emotion, involve human spirit, use simple language and add value and leave the user with a thought or an insight. He also speaks about some of the stories of Brands (Indian and International) that have inspired him.

Harish speaks about how the Tata Group tries and uses Storytelling as a mechanism to reinforce the culture. He speaks about the need for discipline in collecting and telling stories. He also speaks about creating opportunities for the Tata Group members to listen to the stories of some of the legends that lived these values.

Amy speaks about the term, Naïve Realism, that was coined by Lee Ross of Stanford. This is a phenomenon where we believe that we all see a certain version of reality but believe that that’s the reality. She speaks about the implication of this trap.

Bruce speaks about how he was leading a reasonably successful and predictable life till his 40s where he experienced multiple events that shook his world. He was diagnosed with an adult onset pediatric cancer (a 9-inch tumor in his femur), his father tried to take his life 6 times in 12 weeks, his father’s family business almost became bankrupt and his mother went through health challenges. He speaks about how he discovered the power of stories in healing his father’s situation and in making sense of what was going on. That eventually led him to pursue the life story project where he spoke to thousands of people and analyzed all the data with the management thinker Jim Collins and his team.

Jennifer speaks about how we grow up listening to linear stories that have a beginning, a middle and an end and there is often a very clear chain of causality. She mentions that this leads us to “making sense” of the world through simplistic stories and often that can be really far from the truth. She speaks about how we can recognize this trap and avoid it.

Sudhir speaks about the four pillars of culture at HUL – Action, Values, Courage and Truth. He also speaks about how that these elements of culture are percolated through the organization. He traces these elements to the various strains of genetic code of the Anglo Dutch parent. He speaks about how when he spoke to some of the senior alumni of HUL, they shared stories of their experiences which eventually clustered around these 4 pillars.

Indranil talks about how we can apply the concept of Story-listening in the context of understanding another human being. He also discusses the power of stories in a home context. He says that stories make things real. Very often we are busy communicating abstract concepts without giving our children an insight into where the opinion comes from.

Indranil talks about what it takes to build the habit of storytelling within an organization. He underscores the futility of one-off programmes that leave you with a high but don’t really move the needle when people come back to the rough and tumble of their daily life. He re-emphasizes the criticality of some sort of a deliberate practice programme for people to bake in the habit.

Indranil talks about some of the hidden talents that storytellers have. He mentions that a lot of them are naturals in the way they tell stories and over time they have fine-tuned that capability. He lists R. Gopalakrishnan, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos as three of the story tellers that he admires and shares a couple of his personal favourites.

Indranil talks about the curse of knowledge using the example of “tappers and listeners” – an experiment conducted by Elizabeth Newton at Stanford University in 1990. He talks about how asymmetry of information often makes us poor communicators because we are too close to the content. He talks about the criticality of understanding the context of the receiver while delivering key messages.