Teri Schwartz ’71

When veteran film producer and longtime TFT professor and executive board member Peter Guber was seeking inspiration for his new book, he found it nearby in Dean Teri Schwartz ’71.

“The ability to move people emotionally is also the power to move them transactionally,” says Guber, who has distilled the hard won lessons of a lifetime into those popular talks and now into an engaging new book, Talk to Win: Connect, Persuade and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story.

“The aim,” he says, “is to empower the reader to tell emotionally resonant stories, in order to persuade, motivate, excite and incite others to your goal for success. Most importantly, how it provides the impetus for them to viral market your concept or product for you, because a good story is something people can’t wait to pass on. I’ve designed this book to be exciting and inspiring to read and also to deliver tools and takeaways that readers can use today to change their tomorrow.”

Schwartz is proud to be included in the book, which she calls “a ‘page turner’ – certainly as entertaining and galvanizing as Peter’s talk at our 2010 Commencement, and totally grounded in the captivating concepts he presented that day.”

Guber began his ongoing exploration of the power of storytelling at TFT in 2008. Guber taught a popular workshop course at TFT called "Navigating a Narrative World," which studied the different types of narratives that permeate our work and everyday lives. Participants learned how to find and create their own narratives. Many of the same concerns later informed his 2010 commencement address and the writing of “Tell to Win.”

The wide variety of situations in which the power of narrative can be decisive is a cornerstone of Guber’s message. “Whether you’re a manager, housewife, entrepreneur, lawyer or non profit,” he recently told The Huffington Post, "you often must get someone or a group of people to do something – buy your product, adapt to your organization’s culture, invest in your vision, donate to your cause, meet a curfew – and embedding the call to action by telling purposeful stories, preferably in the room, face-to-face, is the most effective means of achieving that goal.”

To illustrate his claims about applying the power of purposeful storytelling to a wide variety of life situations, Guber includes the testimony of a diverse array of “voices” – master storytellers, including Schwartz, with whom he has shared turning-point life experiences.

“As you can imagine,” Schwartz says, “Peter’s amazing professional experiences have played a big role in the development of his theory of ‘tell to win,’ which he has successfully tested both in the classroom and in the boardroom. The stories and the people Peter chooses to highlight in his book dynamically bring to life his wonderful ideas and insights.”

Schwartz finds herself in great company in the book. Other highlighted individuals include former President Bill Clinton; record-breaking NBA coach Pat Riley and NBA star Magic Johnson; former South African President Nelson Mandela; film directors Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton and Curtis Hanson; actors Tom Cruise and Sidney Poitier; world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali; restaurateur Wolfgang Puck; novelist Alice Walker; rock legend Gene Simmons; and physician and author Deepak Chopra.

“Everyone is a natural teller of stories,” Guber has said. “The ability to tell purposeful stories for success isn’t a gift from me to you. It isn’t a special talent bestowed upon a select few. It’s hard wired in all of us.”

Guber ranks storytelling as one of the core atributes of human nature, as ubiquitous across all cultures as language itself.

“The telling of stories was critical to the survival of our species. In order to compete and triumph against far more ferocious predators we had to develop rules, beliefs, values and strategies. This meant the development of the ability to communicate, remember, and act upon the information embedded in stories told around the campfire. This social cohesion allowed us to move from the bottom of the food chain to the top – from prey to predator.”

“Tell to Win” will be released on March 1 by Crown Business.