I am always amazed the power of storytelling. Many people snicker and poke at me when I call myself a storyteller and like to diminish the role of telling stories. It’s not real. It’s for the fun things. It isn’t for grown-up businesses. Which is actually where storytelling matters the most, has the most power, and I always find the people in this camp are the ones who are easiest to manipulate using stories. Because they are completely unaware of what is going, or are they?
The power of storytelling has been with me the entire time I’ve been doing API Evangelist. As a folkorist in the family, my wife Audrey instilled this in me early on. However, the power, and the different shadows and sunlight of their power regularly surprises me. It is a power people want, but rarely known what to do with, or how to yield proper. The first time I encountered this was working for the Obama administration, where they invited me to be part of the 2nd batch of Presidential Innovation Fellows, and after shaving and suiting up they were disappointed that I had conformed, and expressed they had expected me to keep being me. My leadership understood the power of my storytelling to change things, but didn’t fully understand the storytelling normas and constraints put on people who work for the White House.
Since then I’ve encountered a lot of companies who like my storytelling, wanted what it created, but then once they started paying me money wanted to change that formula to match their approach, not understanding that they would change my storytelling to no longer be what they wanted. Sometimes I genuinely believe that companies don’t understand the forces that surround them when it comes to the stories they can tell, and they don’t understand how they can be a wet blanket. They want what true unfettered storytelling brings to the table. They truly want to change things, but underestimate the system they operate in. Others I know brought me in specifically to shut me up with a wet blanket, and use the power of money to change my storytelling for what they desired.
I had seen it a number of times before I started to work at Postman, but working there is where I understand this phenomenon in a deeper way. The leadership at Postman believed my stories, and over time they stopped believing me. I could write something on API Evangelist and on Twitter and they would believe it, and I could tell them something in person and they wouldn’t believe me. Over time my writing on my blog dwindled as my management duties increased, and Twitter began changing politically, and my power diminished over time, until I was just in the corner not being listened to. This demonstrates how I think many people operate. They believe the stories out in the through the channels they’ve invested in, and often don’t believe what is right in front of them.
This is why I can never put down API Evangelist. No matter where I work. It is key to my power. It is key to how I convince people to change their behavior. It is how I open doors. It is how I have an impact on conversations. I can be in a meeting and make a suggestion and people will ignore me, but when I publish a story and distance myself, and speak through my API Evangelist persona, people will believe me. Then when people chime in on social networks, it adds to the weight of my stories. It is a frustrating super power, but one that I am thankful for and respect. I love telling stories. But I also love talking to people. In the end, I’ll spend more time listening to people in person and then telling stories publicly via my blog, as this is how I will have the greatest impact. I don’t think people understand this very public performance, but I do, and I will keep using it until I exit this realm.
