Find out what motivates other people —
Stanford lecturer and storytelling expert shares how
I love what I do.
I teach students and industry leaders — about the emotion behind their work through my storytelling methods — in my classes — in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Stanford University.
It’s not about discussing a feeling for feeling sake —
it’s about a feeling attached to an idea with the intent to change something for the better…
But before I tell you more about today, and my work in Silicon Valley,
let me take you on a little mental time travel —
and flash back to when I was a freshman in college — at Holy Cross located high up on a beautiful hill, in Worcester, Massachusetts. It was early September, autumn on the east coast. Decades ago… I can still see the ivy climbing Fenwick Tower, and I can still hear the sounds of excitement — you know those sounds —
and the way it feels when you are in the middle of a memorable moment of a first time.
It was Introduction to Psychology class. I was sitting in the second row in the third seat.
Something happened that first day in my first college class…something I will never forget. Dr. Paul Rosenkranz was our professor. We knew he was a brilliant doctor and we’d heard the stories — about his hard work, reading hundreds of books on the boats as a merchant marine in Poland, preparing before he came to the United States–to study clinical psychology.
He walked into the room. And he just stood there.
Then, he commanded our attention when he spoke with a thick accent:
“Why are you here today? Why do you want to be Psychology majors?”
— he asked all of us.
He looked at the person sitting in the first row, a girl, and waited for her response.
Her voice wavered,
“I want to be a psychology major, because…I want to learn about other people.”
Dr. Rosenkranz nodded, and turned to the guy sitting behind her.
The guy said,
“I want to figure out why people do the things they do.”
And then the next student,
“Me too, I want to understand other people.”
I listened intently and looked around at my classmates. They looked scared. (Do you remember a time when you were waiting and worrying about what you would say when it was your turn to speak? That’s how I felt.)
But Dr. Rosenkranz shifted away from the questioning, when the guy sitting in front of me confidently responded,
“I want to be a Psychology major because I want to learn what motivates other people.”
Dr. Rosenkranz firmly said,
“Stop. None of you are here for the reasons you are saying or thinking. All of this talk — I want to figure out what motivates other people — is just a bunch of crap — you are not here to learn about other people — You are here because you want to find out about yourself! You need to learn what motivates you before you can figure out what motivates anyone else!!!”
At that moment I knew two things:
- I was in the right place and
- I was going to learn SO much in that classroom.
Years later when I was the Instructor — teaching psychology — and I first stood in front of my college classroom, — a student asked me,
“Professor Karanian — Can you teach us what motivates other people?”
I still smile when I look back on that question, and remember thinking that I knew I was in the right place and I was going to learn so much in that classroom.
Barbara is a Lecturer and previously visiting Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford. She make it possible for teams to generate change with her proven methods from a socio-cognitive psychology, art, and engineering design approach. She teaches some of these methods, specifically though a storytelling focus, to her students, in classes that help them traverse from the early inspirational phrases of a project to reality.
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