Episode #167: Using Micro Stories When Presenting

Storytelling is one of those things that we all know about, but where we could do a much better job of utilising this facility in business. It allows us to engage the audience in a way that makes our message more accessible. In any presentation there may be some key information or messages we wish to relay and yet we rarely wrap this information up in a story. As an audience we are more open to stories than bold statements or dry facts. The presenter’s opinion is always going to trigger some debate or doubt in the minds of the audience. The same detail enmeshed in a story though and the point goes straight into the minds of the crowd and is more likely to be bought as is.

When we are planning our talk, we think about what is the key message. We should get this into one sentence, able to written on a grain of rice. Okay, you are not likely to be able to achieve that any time soon, but the keys are brevity, clarity, focus, conciseness, and paring the message down to its most powerful essence. We build the argument to support our key message, broken up into chapters throughout the talk. We design our two closes, one for before Q&A and one to wrap up the whole talk at the very end. We design our blockbuster opening to pry the phones out of the hands of the audience, to get them to listen to what we are saying and going to say.

We can inject micro stories, by which I simply mean short stories, into every part of this design. The opening could be a short story which grabs the attention of the listeners and primes the room for our dissertation. It might be focused on an incident which relates to the key message of the talk or about an episode from a famous historical figure or about someone in the firm or a client that drives home the message.

Each of the chapters of the talk can rely on micro stories to back up the evidence being presented to justify the conclusion we have come to and the point we are making. These stories bring flesh and blood to the dry facts and details. They can enliven the point we are driving hard on, by making it something the audience can relate to. These facts don’t just appear. They are there because of a reason and there are bound to be stories aplenty attached to them.

Both of the closes can be separate stories that enhance the final messages we are delivering to the room. We keep them short, bountiful, memorable and attractive, such that they linger long in the minds of the audience members. We want our story attached to the inside of the brains of the listeners, so that they remember it long after the event has passed by.

A thirty minute talk would probably have five chapters, an opening and two closes, so at least room there for eight stories. These stories can be our own, garnered from our experiences or they could be folkloric stories from the firm’s rich history or we could be borrowing other people’s stories to make our point.

We all have products and solutions. Where did these come from? How were they created and who created them? What about the firm’s founders’ stories? Why does this company exist and how has it manage to stay in business for so long? Taking the key chapter content, we can inject some life into the data points by looking for creation stories or application tales of high deeds and gloried achievements. Other client’s stories can be some our stories too, as we relate how our solution changed their world. These stories lend themselves for inclusion in the “about us” component of the firm’s website and for placement in the corporate brochure.

The point is we have so many stories to choose from, we have a surfeit of content lapping all around us. All we have to do is collect it. So from now on build a library of stories about the firm, the personalities, the products, the client successes etc. When you are reading about other companies look for their stories that you can borrow to make a point about your own business. Add them to the library so that you don’t have to go scrambling about trying to think of stories. You have them there, ready to go whenever you need them.