What is this the definition of it ties ideas together and enables the listener to follow the speaker?

This is the second of two posts co-written by Vanessa and Lani Peterson, Psy.D., a psychologist, professional storyteller and executive coach.

Telling stories is one of the most powerful means that leaders have to influence, teach, and inspire. What makes storytelling so effective for learning? For starters, storytelling forges connections among people, and between people and ideas. Stories convey the culture, history, and values that unite people. When it comes to our countries, our communities, and our families, we understand intuitively that the stories we hold in common are an important part of the ties that bind.

This understanding also holds true in the business world, where an organization’s stories, and the stories its leaders tell, help solidify relationships in a way that factual statements encapsulated in bullet points or numbers don’t.

Connecting learners
Good stories do more than create a sense of connection. They build familiarity and trust, and allow the listener to enter the story where they are, making them more open to learning. Good stories can contain multiple meanings so they’re surprisingly economical in conveying complex ideas in graspable ways. And stories are more engaging than a dry recitation of data points or a discussion of abstract ideas. Take the example of a company meeting.

At Company A, the leader presents the financial results for the quarter. At Company B, the leader tells a rich story about what went into the “win” that put the quarter over the top. Company A employees come away from the meeting knowing that they made their numbers. Company B employees learned about an effective strategy in which sales, marketing, and product development came together to secure a major deal. Employees now have new knowledge, new thinking, to draw on. They’ve been influenced. They’ve learned.

Something for everyone
Another storytelling aspect that makes it so effective is that it works for all types of learners. Paul Smith, in “Leader as Storyteller: 10 Reasons It Makes a Better Business Connection”, wrote:

In any group, roughly 40 percent will be predominantly visual learners who learn best from videos, diagrams, or illustrations. Another 40 percent will be auditory, learning best through lectures and discussions. The remaining 20 percent are kinesthetic learners, who learn best by doing, experiencing, or feeling. Storytelling has aspects that work for all three types. Visual learners appreciate the mental pictures storytelling evokes. Auditory learners focus on the words and the storyteller’s voice. Kinesthetic learners remember the emotional connections and feelings from the story.

Stories stick
Storytelling also helps with learning because stories are easy to remember. Organizational psychologist Peg Neuhauser found that learning which stems from a well-told story is remembered more accurately, and for far longer, than learning derived from facts and figures. Similarly, psychologist Jerome Bruner’s research suggest that facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they’re part of a story.

Kendall Haven, author of Story Proof and Story Smart, considers storytelling serious business for business. He has written:

Your goal in every communication is to influence your target audience (change their current attitudes, belief, knowledge, and behavior). Information alone rarely changes any of these. Research confirms that well-designed stories are the most effective vehicle for exerting influence.

Stories about professional mistakes and what leaders learned from them  are another great avenue for learning. Because people identify so closely with stories, imagining how they would have acted in similar circumstances, they’re able to work through situations in a way that’s risk free. The extra benefit for leaders: with a simple personal story they’ve conveyed underlying values, offered insight into the evolution of their own experience and knowledge, presented themselves as more approachable, AND most likely inspired others to want to know more.

Connection. Engagement. Appealing to all sorts of learners. Risk-free learning. Inspiring motivation. Conveying learning that sticks. It’s no wonder that more and more organizations are embracing storytelling as an effective way for their leaders to influence, inspire, and teach.

Read more about the power of storytelling in our brief, “Telling Stories: How Leaders Can Influence, Teach, and Inspire”

Vanessa Boris is Senior Manager, Video Solutions at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at 

When it comes to planned, non-spontaneous texts including written discourse and speeches, the manner in which the text is put together can be explained by elements of coherence and cohesion. While spontaneous discourse will also display coherence and cohesion, it is emphasized in planned texts because there is a greater deal of thought and intention behind the use of cohesive ties and devices of coherence.

They can however often be difficult concepts to grasp. For starters, it is essential to understand the difference between the two terms.

Coherence is defined as the quality of being logical, consistent and able to be understood. Imagine coherence as a building (It’s an analogy, go with it).

Cohesion on the other hand refers to the act of forming a whole unit. It is effectively a subset of coherence. Picture cohesion as the bricks and cement which make up the building.

Bricks and cement can be put together to create any form of structure. However, it is only when they are laid together properly that they form a building. Similarly, a text will be cohesive if cohesive ties are used however it will only be coherent if the cohesive ties are used appropriately to create meaning.

You can have cohesion without coherence but you cannot have coherence without cohesion. The picture does not make sense unless the correct pieces are placed in the correct order, even if certain pieces may be the same size and shape.

“I bought some hummus to eat with celery. Green vegetables can boost your metabolism. The Australian Greens is a political party. I couldn’t decide what to wear to the new year’s party.”

In the example above, there are lexical links from one sentence to the next; cohesive ties are used to join the sentences. There is evidence of lexical repetition, ‘green’ ‘party’ and collocations, ‘new years’. 

However, this string of sentences do not make any sense; there is no binding semantic link. This is an example of cohesion without coherence.

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Cohesive devices effectively help the discourse flow. They include collocations, lexical repetition, linking adverbials, substitution, ellipsis, conjunctions, synonymy/antonymy, hypernyms/hyponyms and referencing (anaphoric, cataphoric, deictic). These devices create physical links between the words in a discourse.

Coherence which we previously defined as understanding can be achieved through devices such as cohesive ties, formatting techniques, inference, logical ordering of information, semantic patterning and consistency.

These all enhance the ability of a text to be successfully interpreted and understood. Recipes, terms and condition documents, informative brochures all make use of formatting in the form of headings, bolding, underlines etc. to emphasis certain aspects of the text and draw audience attention to the most important elements.

The focus of coherence factors is determined by the social purpose of the text. Is the text made to entertain? Inform? Persuade? Celebrate? If so, why? What is the overarching intention of the text? Answering such questions can help explain the purpose of coherence factors and cohesive devices within a discourse.

This is effectively what you are aiming to do in your analytical commentaries and short answer questions in the exam. Identify the social purposes of the text and use them to explain the role of coherence and cohesion within the discourse.

The other major factor of consideration is the intended audience of the text. Is the text aimed at teenagers? the Australian public? Or specifically to “bogan” Australians? The language choices and ideas implied in the text will reflect the intended audience. If a text is aimed at Victorian’s it may include lexemes such as “Mornington Peninsula” or “Shepparton” which Victorian’s can infer as locations within Victoria, however these terms would need to be further explained to those who reside outside this state. Lexical choices which require outside inference would be included if it can be reasonably interpreted that the intended audience would be aware of their meaning. Finding examples of inference in texts can be useful in identifying the social purpose of the text.

The main thing to be mindful of is that finding cohesive devices and evidence of coherence in texts alone is not enough. You will gain your marks in your exam for linking these fragments of evidence to the wider social purposes of the text.

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• Describe a scene or a character.
• Tell a story.
• Share a personal experience.
• Relate to a recent event.
• Piggyback on a previous speaker’s remark or theme.
• Point out something important about the audience or the current setting.
• Show a compelling visual image.
• Ask a provocative question.
• State a fact that is troubling, amusing, or remarkable.
• Spell out what's at stake for your listeners.
• Offer a humorous observation or anecdote.
• Explain your own interest in the topic.
• Tell listeners what the topic has to do with them.

1. Define unfamiliar terms.
2. Use concrete, specific examples to illustrate points. Tell stories.
3. Make statistics meaningful: Use graphics to help clarify numerical data. Round off big numbers. Interpret stats, translate them into human terms. Make comparisons.
4. Use analogies to relate the unknown to the known. (“It’s kind of like...”)
5. Build audience involvement by making your subject immediate, personal, and local.
   • Connect to the here-and-now.
   • Refer to your listeners’ experience. Mention your own experience.  Personalize the subject when that’s appropriate.
   • Highlight the local angle—a person, a place, an event. Bring it home.
      

1. Use previews and summaries.
   • Previews tell listeners what's coming next or how you're going to develop a point. For instance, in a discussion of why discrepancies exist between cars’ EPA gas mileage ratings and actual gas mileage, you might say “First I’m going to explain how the EPA arrives at its numbers. Then I’ll explain how the Consumers Union conducts its tests.”
   • Summaries remind listeners of what's important in what was just covered. A summary is especially useful in reframing or refocusing the discussion after a string of supporting details or after any fairly lengthy discussion of a point.
2. Use signposts and transitions.
   • Signposts are words or phrases such as “In the first place...,” “The second issue is...,” “The key argument is...,” etc. They tell the audience where they are in the presentation and flag what’s important to note or remember.
   • Transitions make sure no one gets left behind when you move from one point to the next. They show how pieces of content relate to one another and to your thesis; they tie things together and improve “flow.” Transitions in oral presentations often must be more obvious than those used in writing. They tell listeners not only that you’re moving on but also where you’re going next. Changes in body position, gestures, and voice can help listeners recognize a transition.

1. Avoid vague pronoun references. These are bad in writing but terrible in speech.  Listeners don't have the option of looking back over the text to figure them out.
2. Similarly, avoid words like “respectively” (as in “John, Ashley, and Tamika represented the Departments of Economics, Biology, and English, respectively.”) and “the former...the latter” (as in “You can purchase beef that is either dry-aged or wet-aged. Professional chefs know that, for the best steaks, you want the latter.”)  Like pronouns, both of these constructions require the audience to remember certain details in order to understand a later reference to them. The problem is that listeners may not have paid close enough attention to the earlier details; they didn't realize they'd be “tested” on them later. Whenever you’re tempted to use this type of verbal device, ask yourself, “If I had only my ear to depend on and heard it only once, would I get it?”

1. Summarize and refocus. Recap the main points or arguments you’ve covered.  Reiterate your purpose, thesis, or research question. Reinforce what’s important for the audience to take away from your presentation.
2. Close. Create closure, a sense of finality. Here you can use many of the same kinds of devices suggested for openings. You can even return to exactly the same anecdote, quotation, or remark you used at the beginning—and give it a twist. Other approaches are to lay down a challenge, look to the future, or simply to firmly restate your basic conclusion or recommendation. Avoid introducing new evidence or opening a new line of argument.