Why This Book

A great story.  We crave one if we can find it, and for good reason: stories powerfully connect with the audience. Stories with a narrative arc, with a beginning, a middle and an end.  Humanized stories, usually with real people in them—people we can understand, and perhaps even see a bit of ourselves in.  Humans have been telling such stories to each other for millennia.  

They are a medium through which we have transmitted our thoughts, our emotions, our cultures, our values.  Today the purpose of stories is no different, even though the tools and speed by which they are disseminated continue changing rapidly.  Our audience, once in rapt attention for hours around a campfire or in an amphitheater, is now scrolling through newsfeeds on their mobile devices, whiplashing from shiny headline to the inside scoop, and then on to pop culture’s flavor of the week.  But what makes everyone from the most cynical teenager to the hardened, harried executive stop and savor for a while is that good story. 

But what if the great story is closer to home?  Much closer.  What if we are the story?  Many of us tend to get so caught up in studying data and events, and other people, that we forget to reflect on the experiences in our own lives that have shaped us.  We think sharing these “touchy-feely” stories is somehow unprofessional, even though they are ultimately far more powerful to our audience.  We need to tell the world who we are, what drives us, what inspires us—and we can do that through our own stories.  

That is what Minutes of Magic is about.  In this book, 80 young leaders found their personal stories, crafted them into four-minute speeches, and shared them with the world.  Yes, some of these young women and men felt awkward and uncomfortable laying out their deepest—sometimes most painful—experiences in front of hundreds of people.  Yes, it took a herculean amount of courage to step on a stage and talk about what makes you, you.  For some, giving a speech was even more difficult, since they had to give it in a language that isn’t their native tongue.  But all of them were nurtured in an encouraging, team-oriented, no-judgment environment.  All of them were coached with the most important public speaking lessons around presence, speed of speech, sound bites, and Aristotle’s three appeals of ethos, logos, and pathos, amongst others.  All of them trained with sincerity, commitment and passion in one of many “Arts of Communication” courses.

Notably, the speakers worked in teams and gave each other constructive criticism that was often remarkably insightful. Their fellow students, after all, were also their audience. The classes started to transcend learning, and became a form of community building.

How and why did such a community develop? Partly because an environment was created in which people were allowed to share, and do so safely, yet pushed to create high quality work. Reservations often abound around sharing your personality in a formal, academic or professional environments. The Arts of Communication class became one in which this was the norm rather than the exception. No one was pushed to be more personal than that wanted. Indeed, it's a valuable art to distinguish between personal and private. Seeing and hearing one another’s speech, and pushing for excellence iteratively, led to the needle getting slowly but surely pushed in a positive direction of growth. 

Indeed, bringing vulnerabilities to professional communication is an important, and often under-practiced 21st Century Skill. People fear wearing their vulnerabilities on their sleeves, worrying that others may not care or understand. But in our little classroom laboratory, we noticed that our course “team” actually synergized when this happened. 

A study by Google shows that teams work better when members have a good sense of what the individual members are going through. For example, if you knew that someone on your team has an illness or a condition, you are more likely to be more patient with them, or treat them with the requisite grace. Conversely, not knowing this may make you feel that the other person is just lazy, or not motivated. Bringing your personality and your authentic personal stories into your workplace or school can actual foster greater empathy and team bonding.  

But how do we do this, striking the right balance between personal and formal, detail and big-picture. Given the multitude of life’s scenarios for such a setting, the best way to learn at this is observe how others did this, and connected. This book displays at least 80 ways in which you can bring your personality, personal philosophies and stories to connect more deeply with others. Each speaker created an impact with their speech. These speech transcripts, offered as essays, thus provide an opportunity to “learn through osmosis”. This learning is more important now than ever, given the current political, economic and social climate and COVID crisis. The environment is ripe for the expression of honest, sincere and authentic ideas, shared through meticulously crafted stories.

In the era of “fake news”, these men and women told real stories.  In the era of mis- and dis-information, their tales were refreshingly authentic.  In the era of demoralizing political slugfests, where netizens pack vitriol into 280-character tweets and hurl them across the internet, their speeches were relatively long-form and inspirational. 4 minutes. Not too short. Not too long. 

Today, as the world reels with anxieties from pandemics to violence, we yearn for authentic and inspiring stories to lift us up and move us forward.  That’s why this book matters.  It represents an important exchange of ideas, a source for learning through osmosis, and a sharing of core values from young people around the world—values forged by years of experience, hours of preparation—into four minutes of magic.