Dr. Martin Luther King Was Also a Great Storyteller
Category : Leadership Training
We all recognize Dr. Martin Luther King as a great leader and a great orator, but did you know he was also a master storyteller?
In my university leadership classes, we regularly study Dr. King as a leader and I have listened to his speeches countless times. As I was working on the new Leadership Storytelling Master Class for our Professional Leadership Academy, I began reflecting on Dr. King’s accomplishments and his speeches. His accomplishments came to mind because I probably wouldn’t be doing the work I do without the strides he helped make. His speeches were great, but I wondered how they worked as stories. I was quite impressed with what I learned. For this exercise, I examined his March on Washington speech from 1963 (commonly referred to as the “I Have a Dream” speech). Here are some of the storytelling techniques he used and the lessons for leaders to use in their storytelling: