The most complicated of ideas can be made simple by the power of a vivid anecdote – a story.
For example, imagine you’re negotiating a deal between yourself and a supplier and you’re both holding your ground so no progress is being made. Here’s a skeleton anecdote you could use. Two cars are heading towards each other – who’s going to give in first? Well if you’ve already thrown out the steering wheel, the other car knows that if it doesn’t swerve you’ll crash and both of you will be harmed.
Successful storytellers understand when they find the right anecdote [preferably one they can make personal], they can help their audiences to understand and so retell these important messages to other decision makers.
Stories are part of our DNA – so if you tell them well you will have an appreciative audience open to your ideas.
What is a story?
“A fact wrapped in emotion which compels us to action.”
If you were to analyse the stories of Ulysses, Peter Pan or James Bond, you’d find their story plots follow a similar pattern – a detailed, character-based narration of an individual’s struggle to overcome obstacles and reach [or not] an important goal. And they surprise you.
What is storytelling in business?
We have a saying: “a presentation is a story well told, not a reading lesson.” (Sadly presenters often rely on reading text heavy slides to deliver their argument.) Presentations should be about delivering a narrative of the salient facts and insights in order to help the audience make decisions. This is simply good practice for presenting, but it is not storytelling.
We love the careful use of a case history or two to help prove an argument. It needs to be the right case history, crafted succinctly, but this isn’t storytelling.
In the world of consumer profiles, it is now common practice to deliver a ‘day in the life of’ and not rely on age-old categorisations, but this isn’t storytelling.
Storytelling in business is the delivery of an anecdote – a story – to make one point – a point that matches the one you want to make and that your audience is aware of and will understand its relevance to them. Friends might indulge you telling a story with a number of points but in business you need to deliver a narrative with one point.
Posted by Sally Clare on Wednesday, January 4th, 2017 in Features › News ›
Tags: anecdotes, communication, connecting better with your audience, simplify messages, Stories, storytelling