Customers must be convinced to buy your company’s products or services, employees and colleagues to go along with a new strategic plan or reorganization, investors to buy (or not to sell) your stock, and partners to sign the next deal.
But despite the critical importance of persuasion, most executives struggle to communicate, let alone inspire. Too often, they get lost in the cesspool of company speak: PowerPoint slides, dry memos, and hyperbolic messages from the corporate communications department.
Even the most carefully researched and considered efforts are routinely greeted with cynicism, lassitude, or outright dismissal.
I firmly believe that you can engage listeners on a whole new level if you toss your PowerPoint slides and learn to tell good stories instead.
Stories have been implanted in you thousands of times since your mother took you on her knee. You’ve read good books, seen movies, attended plays. What’s more, human beings naturally want to work through stories. Cognitive psychologists describe how the human mind, in its attempt to understand and remember, assembles the bits and pieces of experience into a story, beginning with a personal desire, a life objective, and then portraying the struggle against the forces that block that desire.
Stories are how we remember; we tend to forget lists and bullet points.
If a story is “good” or “bad” is relative to the opinion of the listener. But there are a few non-negotiable components that make for a great story, for both the listener and teller.
Good stories are …
… entertaining. Good stories keep the listener engaged and interested in what’s coming next.
… educational. Good stories spark curiosity and add to the listener’s knowledge bank.
… universal. Good stories are relatable to all listeners and tap into emotions and
experiences that most people undergo.
… organized. Good stories follow a succinct organization that helps convey the core message and helps listeners absorb it.
… memorable. Whether through inspiration, scandal, or humor, good stories stick in the listener’s mind.
There's no such thing as a true story. As soon as you start telling a story, making it relevant and interesting to me, hooking it into my worldviews and generating emotions and memories, it ceases to be true, at least if we define true as the whole truth, every possible fact, non-localized and regardless of culture.
Since you're going to tell a story, you might as well get good at it, focus on it and tell it in a way that you're proud of.
Storytelling is a skill. It’s not something you’re born with, it’s not based on charisma or authority. It’s more simple than you think, but it takes practice.
So tell the story of your project.
If you aren’t then someone else will be. And their version is likely to be worse than yours.
In a nutshell: You can engage listeners on a whole new level if you toss your PowerPoint slides and learn to tell good stories instead.