You really can’t move within the communication world
these days without someone banging on about the importance of ‘storytelling’. What’s
generally missing is any real clue as to what you are meant to do about it. Some people are probably a little confused; indeed, it’s possible that there
are business executives planning their next inter-office meeting and imagining
that their contribution needs to be re-thought and built around a ‘arc’,
complete with antagonist, protagonist, conflict and suspense, all divided into
three Acts and not forgetting a ‘crucible’.
Those who have started to preach about the importance
of storytelling tend to leave the notion hanging, probably in the hope that you
will feel the need to seek specific storytelling expertise from the likes of
those preachers who appear to be among a chosen few who have had storytelling
skills passed down to them in some mystic manner through many generations. So please
allow me to try and get things back into perspective.
The first point is that if you are giving a business
presentation the very last thing you want to do is deliver it in classic
storytelling style whereby you lead them in slowly and build progressively to a
big climax. In a business presentation you need to get the big point into the minds
of your audience immediately – you want to open with it, you want to close with
it and everything in between should serve to bring that big point alive. In
Army terms it’s the old ‘tell them what you’re going to tell them; tell them; then
tell them again’. If you tried to turn this process into a story you would be
giving the end at the very beginning, so ruining the story!
So where and when should
you use storytelling techniques? Three places in particular, at least one of
which may come as a surprise.
First, and perhaps most importantly, short stories
should be used as examples to bring your key points alive. Everything the
storytelling preachers tell you applies here and your big point will register
all the more effectively. If your story comes from your own personal experience
it will be all the more effective, for two reasons. First, it will be more
credible. Second, letting a little light shine on yourself has the effect of
making your audience warm to you, with the result that you are more engaging
and everything you say becomes more convincing. The other great benefit of
telling a story, which you are unlikely to hear from the preachers, is that you
will automatically go into a slightly different, more conversational tone of
voice. This brings the variation in tone that is so important to your pacing and
audience engagement.
Second, think storytelling when using PowerPoint. As
a general rule bring your bullet points up one at a time or else your audience
will inevitably be reading ahead and they will know the end of that slide’s
story way before you get to it!
Third, most graphs present storytelling opportunities;
and arguably those opportunities need to be exploited if the graph is to work
to its fullest potential. The best example I can provide here is that every
Fund Manager I have ever coached has built their presentation around one key
graph which features two lines, one showing the market as a whole, the other
showing how well their fund has been performing in comparison. They beam with
pride at the big, positive gap between the two lines, but I say: “Slow down.
There’s a story to tell here and you’re giving away the end before you have
even begun”.
The first thing you need to do when presenting any
graph is to allow your audience to familiarise themselves with what they are
looking at, rather than be bamboozled by an instant barrage of information. So
ideally you should start by displaying and explaining just the axes. Then you can start overlaying the meat
of the graph, but you should do so gradually, allowing a story to unroll. In
the case of those Fund Managers they can probably put up the whole of the line
for the market as a whole, talking about the general ups and downs. Now,
without any kind of reading-ahead distractions, your audience is all keyed up to
hear about the most important element – the performance of your fund. But again, roll it out gradually. Display it
in three or four progressive elements eg: show how you got off to a good start
and let your audience imagine ‘did they maintain that?’; relieve the tension
and show that you did; now point to the downturn that the market as a whole
went into and have your audience fearing for you, as you then go on to reveal
that you rode out the storm. Now you have them on tenterhooks for the big
finale – did to manage to maintain that performance. Pause momentarily, then
hit them with a big triumphant finish. None of this drama – and close attention
to the fine details that results - could ever have been achieved by simply
putting up the graph in its completed form.
So the preachers are right in certain respects, but
you don’t want to simply launch into storytelling without thinking carefully
about how to use it and certainly not as the basis for a whole business
presentation. Well-placed bite-sized stories, however, can bring life, meaning,
memorability and conviction to your messages while also adding a whole new
dimension to your pacing.
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