The most common objection I hear. And why neuroscience disagrees.

Welcome to edition two of our weekly newsletter. Every Wednesday, one storytelling insight you can use straight away.

This week I want to address something I hear in almost every conversation with a potential client.

“Storytelling sounds interesting. But we are too busy for that. We need to be professional and to the point.”

I understand the objection. And I used to struggle to answer it quickly.

Now I just ask one question back. How much time do you lose every week because your message did not land the first time?

What neuroscience tells us

When we communicate with facts and data alone, the brain processes the information and moves on. Nothing sticks. Nothing changes.

When we use storytelling techniques, something different happens. Mirror neurons fire. Oxytocin is released. The listener does not just hear the message. They feel it. And what we feel, we remember.

This is not a soft skill. It is biology.

Storytelling at work is not about speaking more. It is not about being entertaining or theatrical. It is about being precise. Concise. And emotionally relevant.

Done well, it saves time. Because you say it once, and it lands.

The cave painting exercise

In our Art of Storytelling workshops, we run an exercise early in the day that always surprises people. The exercise is called “Welcome to the cave”.

I hand out large sheets of paper and coloured markers. The instruction is simple. Create a cave painting with a few simple instructions. But you are not allowed to write a single word.

Only drawing.

No text. No bullet points. No slides.

Just images.

The room goes quiet for a moment. Then people start drawing. Stick figures, arrows, suns, houses, animals. Some participants laugh at themselves. Others get surprisingly creative.

What you see below are real drawings from real workshop participants. Students. Business professionals. Managers. Team leaders.

Cave painting exercise - picture 1

Look at them. Each one tells a story. And each one reveals something about how that person communicates.

The founder who saw himself clearly

At a recent full day workshop, one of the participants was a founder and business owner.

When he presented his drawing to the group, something interesting happened. Not everyone could quite tell what it was about. The image had many elements, lots of detail, but no clear thread. The group tried to interpret it. They guessed. They asked questions. They could not land on the meaning.

After a moment of silence, the founder said something I will not forget.

“I see a connection to how I communicate verbally. I add too many details. I lose the thread. I make it hard for people to follow me.”

The drawing had done what ten coaching sessions might not have. It made the invisible visible. In just 10 minutes.

He left the workshop with a clear goal. Not a vague intention to communicate better. A specific, concrete awareness of what to fix and why it mattered.

That is what storytelling training does. It does not teach you to speak more. It teaches you to speak less. With more clarity. More precision. More impact.

What the exercise teaches

The cave painting exercise delivers three insights that no presentation on communication theory ever could.

The first is clarity. If your story cannot be understood without words, it is not clear enough. Words often hide the gaps in our thinking. Remove them and the gaps become visible.

The second is concision. When you cannot write, you are forced to choose. What is the one image that captures the essence of what you want to say? That discipline carries directly into how you speak and present.

The third is emotion. Drawings are personal. They reveal how someone actually sees their work, their team, their challenge. Not the polished version. The real one. And real stories build real trust.

Storytelling is not a luxury

The objection I started with “we do not have time” gets it backwards.

When your team is disengaged in meetings, that costs time. When your message needs to be repeated three times before it lands, that costs time. When a presentation fails to inspire action, that costs time.

Storytelling techniques do not add time to your communication. They make the time you spend communicating worth something.

One drawing. Ten minutes. A founder understands himself better than he did after years of running a business.

That is not entertainment. That is neuroscience at work.