‘We are born problem solvers, stories deepen our understanding as human beings’ – Andrew Stanton (writer and director of Pixar Toy Story, Wall-e ) shared in TED talk on clues to a great story.
In meetings, conversations and presentations, stories make your content come alive for your audiences.
To cut through the busyness and clutter of short attention spans, meeting schedules and overflowing email inboxes; we need to become storytellers to engage others in a conversation. It’s more productive. It is how you fold time in a conversation.
To create experiences, shape characters and show our audiences we care, the ideas below will help you develop this skill. Include more stories daily, we promise your listeners will become more fascinated and captivated in your conversations.
Create experience
There are many techniques for story telling. You could start your conversations or presentation by asking a question, get your audience to help you fill in the answers. Add color and details when sharing stories and encourage your listeners to use their senses – outline smell, tastes and touch. Andrew Stanton also said ‘story telling is joke telling’, while I agree with this in a small way NEVER open your presentation with a joke (I don’t care what you read or who told you that it is a good idea, it isn’t. Period).
Create care
When telling a story you want to help your audience care. To do that you can make it a personal experience and make it relatable to those in the room. As a storyteller, make your audience a promise that your story will go somewhere.
Create characters
When shaping the characters in your story give them depth, give them nicknames, let the audience see them and experience them through your descriptions. To give your stories even more emphasis, get into character by acting out the personalities in your story. Be a character in your story.
In business you can use stories and metaphors to bring technical information come to life, engage people’s attention and increase the energy every time you speak.
If you want an example of a video, Andrew Stanton TED talk is great (fast forward the first few minutes if you find his first joke offensive).
What are your ideas on how you can incorporate more stories in your presentations and conversations today? Share your ideas with us here on our blog.
PS. If you want more ideas on how to increase your productivity – check out other blogs here and several eBooks you can share with your team.
