Stop Talking, Start Communicating: Counterintuitive Secrets to Success in Business and in Life, with a foreword by Martha Mendoza

16GIVE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT

FEW THINGS CONNECT LIKE A STORY

Not long ago I gathered with my mother’s family to celebrate a seventieth birthday. With all her siblings present, the stories poured out one after the other. I begged my uncle to tell me again about the time that he and my granddad were trimming a backyard tree, and he obliged. The story goes like this:

 

Years ago my uncle and his dad (my granddad) decided it was time to prune back some limbs that were growing too close to the house. My granddad, who was 80 years old at the time, climbed a tall ladder that he had leaned against a sturdy limb and began trimming with a handsaw. My uncle was collecting the limbs as they fell when all of a sudden the ladder, the saw, a large limb, and ...