Storytelling

This is the second part of my Stanford experience. In this post I tell you a story about the power of great stories and how to tell them.

Start with a story

Dan started our session with a story about his experience learning to take over the famous dancing part in a talent show in a tent camp many, many years ago. There was so much emotion and conviction in his storytelling that we were all sitting there silently, hanging on his every word. This is quite interesting when you consider that the audience consisted of seasoned business people from around the world. How did he do it, and how did he manage to use every bit and piece of his story at the end of his session, which caused a standing ovation?

Why are stories such a powerful tool?

Did you know that the emotional part of our brain makes decisions? The other part is merely reasoning for the decision, finding good rational arguments that the decision we made was a good one. This means our brain is hard-wired to react much stronger to emotions than to mere facts, which is crucial in our modern society, constantly flooding us with input data that we try to make sense of. In other words, our brain is filtering all the time, and only a fraction of the input we receive daily passes through. Stories are how we humans have been passing on our memories for centuries. There is no one who hasn’t heard the sentence, "A long time ago, in a kingdom far, far away...". Immediately we are back in our childhood, listening to someone we care about telling us something that changes our world—or at least our perception of it, which is pretty much the same.

Practice and get feedback

Next exercise, new partner of course: you have two minutes to tell any story about a journey you took, but now the listener gives two different kinds of feedback. First, what was the story literally about, and second, what was the story really about. This was quite an eye-opener. As trivial as it sounds, I've never asked someone to give me feedback about the message they took from a communication I had with them. Especially in business presentations, this is extremely powerful because it gives you the chance to ensure that the message you want to deliver, like "we need to change process A" or "we should invest in B," is perceived as intended. In my case, I had the pleasure of listening to a story about a journey to China as a student, which was upgraded to a business class trip through a series of cascading events. It turned out that I completely misjudged what the message of the story was about. We always believe that it is completely obvious to our audience what the message behind our stories, presentations, and discussions is, but as this little experiment showed—this is not the case! Or in other words: "Do you know what the problem with common sense is? It is not so common!"

Every story is structured the same

Did you ever realize that every great story out there has the same structure? First, let me tell you about it and then give some examples that you most likely know

1. Platform
2. Tilt
3. Series of cascading events
4. Climax change
5. New reality

Platform

'Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, there was a princess, who....' Luke Skywalker working on Tatooine, Harry living a miserable life under a staircase at his uncle and aunt’s, and so many more. All of this is setting the platform or stage for the story to come. To get emotionally attached to a story, ideally, it is something the audience can identify with, and emotion is what you want to ensure that your audience is listening to you.

Tilt

Something happens to the hero that turns everything upside-down—Harry is getting letters delivered by owls, Luke learns from R2-D2 that Princess Leia needs help, or Cinderella gets an invite to the ball. The same should happen in your story about the next process change or the necessary investment.

Series of cascading events

The adventure begins, and the events start to roll. Harry and Luke stumble from one event into the next one, everything building on top of each other, finally leading to the...

Climax change

The grand finale! The fight against Voldemort or against the dark emperor (hey, they could be related to each other), or in your business presentation, the big thing that the C-suite needs to approve.

New reality

And finally—"they lived happily ever after"—the big thing is over, and we reached a new state. Or, in business terms, how will the bright new future look after the board agreed on the investment and the team delivered on everything you promised?

Make your audience a gift

Every word is precious or even more important, every second that your audience is willing to listen to you is something you need to work quite hard for. Studies have proven that you have seven seconds before your audience loses interest if you didn't catch them. This means if you start your presentation with anything your audience does not understand or know is important for them—you've lost them after the first sentence and will have a hard time getting their attention back from their cell phones. Which brings us to the last paragraph, what are dramatic techniques to keep them engaged?

Details - visual, auditory, kinesthetic or digital

Start with a picture that everyone can relate to. Remember that you want to trigger emotions. So, draw something that the audience can see in front of their imagination, hear, or feel. If you caught their attention, drop the "sexy" number. Something to impress, which is easy to digest.

Dramatic techniques - Surprise, Suspense, Mystery and secret

Do you know the movies that start by showing the audience something the actors seem not to know? Imagine that you see a couple sitting at a table. They are engaged in a vivid discussion, and everything is brilliant. Now the camera moves slowly down, and you see there is a bomb under the table! I guess you want to know how the story progresses, right? The same applies to your audience. If you manage to integrate a burning question, mystery, or riddle into your presentation, the likelihood that your audience is keen to learn the answer is quite high.

Practical tips

• The audience always has questions, but no one has the "first" question. Why not bring the first question with you? Open your slide that says "Questions?" wait for some seconds, and if there is silence, continue with: "A question that you might have:" and pass on some more information. The likelihood that you broke the ice and there will be more questions is quite high.
• Memorize the first and the last line—but not everything. Your audience will realize if you learned by heart. They want to be entertained. Remember the 7 seconds and make your first sentence count—maybe this is the only one that everyone is listening to. The last sentence, on the other hand, needs to conclude the story and close the circle. Or in other words, it should send the listener on a journey, and you have decided the route.

Conclusion

The session with Dan was mind-blowing! Thank you very muchfor it! But wait was about the standing ovations? Well do you remeber that Dan started with a story from the talentshow in a camp and that it was about someone doing a special kind of dance? Well he ended his session with exactly this performance just fo us - and what could I say - we were cheering, shouting and clapping for such a brilliant masterpiece of storrytelling!

Literature

• As we speak - awesome book that I'm reading in the moment and there will be a new post about it!
• Do Story: How to tell your story so the world listens