Change Your Mindset

Today’s guest, Merle Heckman, truly understands the power of storytelling – and why it is needed in all aspects of business today.   You see, Merle works with engineers, but he’s not an engineer (he’s the Manager of Organizational Development at Regal Beloit). And when engineers give presentations, they can be dense with jargon and hard to understand... not unlike when accountants give presentations.   Merle wanted to know how individuals within his organization could give better presentations, so that the people listening could better retain and use the information being presented.   So, for his doctoral degree in Educational Leadership, he performed a study and wrote a dissertation titled, "Intentional Storytelling: A Potential Tool for Retention and Application in Business."   The research was fairly simple: There’s a monthly divisional meeting at Regal Beloit. Every other month, Merle coached the speakers on incorporating storytelling into their presentations, and they did this for four months. So the fi