I’m teaching an entrepreneurial seminar to college students starting next month. I’ve taught this class once before, but this time I plan to completely revamp it and take a storytelling approach to it. The class lends itself perfectly to storytelling because it is speaker-driven — each entrepreneurial speaker tells his or her story.
But I’m a little worried about how my students will respond to the idea of a class taught with a storytelling approach. Last time I taught it, I had a few arts and sciences majors. This time, my roster shows 30 business majors. I’ll be an INFP talking to a sea of ESTJs (probably). When I emphasized the importance of good writing when I taught business communication, my students would whine, “But Mrs. Hansen, this isn’t an English class.”
And last time I taught the entrepreneurial seminar, one of the students’ absolute favorite speakers was the only one who didn’t really tell a story. He framed his talk as the 10 Commandments of Entrepreneurship or some such thing. He was much more didactic than the other speakers. And the students ate it up for some reason.
I got a glimmer of an idea when I saw a little snippet from Steve Denning in response to someone who said “Storytelling will never work in my company.” Denning said sometimes you have to use stealth storytelling — use storytelling, but don’t tell your audience you’re using storytelling. So, I’m considering using stealth with my students. Part of me feels that I’d be a pretty rotten proponent of storytelling if I were not able to make my case to a classroom of college students that story is a wonderful thing. But I am a bit tempted by the stealth idea. What to do? What to do? Color me perplexed. I’ll keep you posted as Aug. 29, the first day of classes, approaches.