The Art of Storytelling is the Heart of All the Arts

An image from an Arts & Health @ NYU event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2021

On one level, it's obvious why storytelling is considered a critical leadership skill. They just work! And they work in a way that even a well-crafted argument, built of logic alone, could never do.

But why?

Stories weave together all of the arts. And, the experience of the arts is universal to the human condition.

Storytelling can combine:

• Writing - Insights, which emerge from writing, but are brought to life as we walk along the hero's path with the storyteller.

• Dance - The power of the speaker's movement, both in the space and in the audience's imagination.

• Music - An elegant flow of thought heightened by the melody of the presenter's modulation of pitch, pace and punctuation.

• Visual Arts - Painting a vivid picture, which, when well-crafted, can come to life in the audience's mind. (Not to mention images in a slide deck that can amplify key messages!)

As such, storytelling speaks to our universal need for embodied meaning. And, in a world as virtual as ours, that shared narrative space is precious. Sure, we need to understand the moral of the story; but we need to feel it in our gut as well. Well-told stories do that by sharing thoughts and feelings and actions in a way that resonates with others. Only stories can create a deeply-felt meaning in the hearts and minds and gut of our audiences or readers. Through the story we can relive what the storyteller lived or imagines, with all its sights and sounds and smells, tastes and feelings. What would otherwise be only an exchange of information becomes a shared experience. 

Beyond that incredibly important phenomenon, stories develop narrative tension, ideally making us care about the hero and wonder whether she’ll slay — or be slayed by — the dragon. We’re drawn into this shared world, feeling all the hope and fear that a hero’s journey can create. A good storyteller must carefully manage that narrative tension by artfully modulating all the elements of the story’s world and how they’re revealed.

Some storytellers have acquired the knack for doing this well on their own. But, that’s the exception that proves the rule. And the rule is that storytelling can be learned but doing it well requires a systematic, rigorous, and interdisciplinary approach. Embrace your interdisciplinary artist and combine them in how you tell your stories. And, when you do, you'll be better able to bring your ideas to life with others.

Epilogue - The Science of Storytelling

I've been privileged to study and perform as a classically-trained musician and actor. But, for some reason, I've always been compelled to understand how even such things "work." If you're like me, you might find it valuable to explore a couple of books on Neuroaesthetics, which offer insights as to how we humans are affected by the arts. For some reason, more than a decade ago, the world of Neuroaesthetics flourished but has since faded. (My theory is the interdisciplinary nature of this field, bridging the worlds of arts and science, is just too complicated to truly master in a way that the world of higher education can robustly support.)

That said, check out former Dean of NYU’s College of Arts & Sciences, Gabby Starr and her book Feeling Beauty, the Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience, and Nobel-laureate and founder of the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Eric Kandel and his book The Age of Insight — The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present). They are packed with insights of how the arts 'work.'