
A Nez Perce ceremonial shirt. The body of the shirt is made from elk hide. The fringes are deer hide. The shirt is decorated with porcupine quills and Venetian glass beads. It was undoubtedly a treasured possession of its owner.
Around the world, shirt owners have treasured some of their shirts, especially those worn in social gatherings. When disputes arise in these gatherings, and when the parties to the dispute elect to resolve the dispute by physical conflict, it is often customary to remove one's shirt if it is highly valued. This is the origin of the phrase, "Keep your shirt on!", which is a slightly older version of "Chill!" See, for example, Eric Partridge's book, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. Order from Amazon.com.
Photo courtesy U.S. National Park Service.
Eye rolling. Doodling. Checking the tweet stream. More eye rolling. More doodling. These are signs of bored exasperation. They can happen in any meeting when the speaker's tale includes details that seem irrelevant to whatever the speaker's point turns out to be, if he or she has a point.
Listeners who feel powerful might interrupt, "What's your point?" or "Tell me why this matters." Storytellers who feel powerful might respond, "Be patient," or "Chill, I'll get there."
Storytellers who feel less powerful might deliver hastily formed summaries that make little sense without the details. The point-demander must then ask for details. A dance of Q&A ensues in which the questions don't elicit the right details, and the answers are meaninglessly skeletal, because the storyteller is intimidated into excessive brevity.
It's all unnecessarily painful for the storyteller, the point-demander, and the lookers-on and listeners-in. Worse, it takes twice as long it should to get the information into the open.
Here are two guidelines for breaking the deadlock — one for storytellers and one for point-demanders.
- For storytellers: Master drama-free storytelling
- Most storytelling is designed for entertainment. It's dramatic. It's suspenseful. But neither drama nor suspense is helpful in relating complex tales at work.
- Listeners need to know from the very start where the tale is heading. Not necessarily in full detail, but at least the basics: "We'll make the deadline, but we'll need more of Phil's time than we thought;" or, "I don't think we can close this deal unless we can get some time with Andrea this afternoon."
- Leading with the ending goes against all our storytelling experience. That's why it's so powerful.
- For listeners: learn to guide drama-oriented storytellers
- Listeners who try Dramatic storytellers feel devalued
by coercion. Coercion often
begets resistance to the
extraction of facts.to coerce the punch line from a storyteller who doesn't know, understand, or believe in the importance of drama-free storytelling will almost surely fail. Dramatic storytellers feel devalued by coercion. Coercion often begets resistance to the extraction of facts. - At the first sign of a dramatic tale structure, the listener can interrupt with, "I want to hear the whole story, and I want you to start with the end. Tell me, first, how does the story end? Then tell me the story." Do not use the word "point," as in "What's your point?" because it has baggage.
- Honoring the storyteller's desire to tell the story usually earns the listener permission to influence the order of telling. And with the drama removed, the urge to spin a long yarn usually expires quietly.
Pressing some storytellers for the point can be problematic if they don't actually know what the point is. It might not have an ending yet, or they might be stumped. Demanding that they get to the point might yield nonsense. Tread carefully. Top
Next Issue
Do you spend your days scurrying from meeting to meeting? Do you ever wonder if all these meetings are really necessary? (They aren't) Or whether there isn't some better way to get this work done? (There is) Read 101 Tips for Effective Meetings to learn how to make meetings much more productive and less stressful — and a lot more rare. Order Now!
Your comments are welcome
Would you like to see your comments posted here? rbrenogMhuqCxAnbfLvzbner@ChacigAthhhYwzZDgxshoCanyon.comSend me your comments by email, or by Web form.About Point Lookout
Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and
found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.
This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.
Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.
Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.
Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.
Related articles
More articles on Effective Communication at Work:
Have a Program, Not Just an Agenda
- In the modern organization, it's common to have meetings in which some people have never met —
and some never will. For these meetings, which are often telemeetings, an agenda isn't enough. You need
a program.
Inbox Bloat Recovery
- If you have more than ten days of messages in your inbox, you probably consider it to be bloated. If
it's been bloated for a while, you probably want to clear it, but you've tried many times, and you can't.
Here are some effective suggestions.
How to Misunderstand Somebody Else
- Misunderstandings are commonplace at work, as in most of the rest of Life. At work, they might be even
more commonplace, because at work it sometimes seems that people are actually trying to misunderstand.
Here's a handy guide for those who want to get better at misunderstanding others.
Twelve Tips for More Masterful Virtual Presentations: I
- Virtual presentations are like face-to-face presentations, in that one (or a few) people present a program
to an audience. But the similarity ends there. In the virtual environment, we have to adapt if we want
to deliver a message effectively. We must learn to be captivating.
Chronic Peer Interrupters: III
- People who habitually interrupt others in meetings must be fairly common, because I'm often asked about
what to do about them. And you can find lots of tips on the Web, too. Some tips work well, some generally
don't. Here are my thoughts about four more.
See also Effective Communication at Work and Workplace Politics for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming September 27: On Working Breaks in Meetings
- When we convene a meeting to work a problem, we sometimes find that progress is stalled. Taking a break to allow a subgroup to work part of the problem can be key to finding simple, elegant solutions rapidly. Choosing the subgroup is only the first step. Available here and by RSS on September 27.
And on October 4: Self-Importance and Conversational Narcissism at Work: I
- Conversational narcissism is a set of behaviors that participants use to focus the exchange on their own self-interest rather than the shared objective. This post emphasizes the role of these behaviors in advancing a narcissist's sense of self-importance. Available here and by RSS on October 4.
Coaching services
I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenogMhuqCxAnbfLvzbner@ChacigAthhhYwzZDgxshoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.
Get the ebook!
Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:
- Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
- Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
- Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
- Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
- Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
- Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )
Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info
Follow Rick





Recommend this issue to a friend
Send an email message to a friend
rbrenogMhuqCxAnbfLvzbner@ChacigAthhhYwzZDgxshoCanyon.comSend a message to Rick
A Tip A Day feed
Point Lookout weekly feed
