By Dr. Jim Anderson

In the eternal quest to communicate better and have our message “stick” with our audience, a powerful tool is often overlooked by us technical types. A good story, told at the right time, in the right way, to the right audience can have a lasting effect that can transform an organization. Proof of this can be found on the business best seller list over the past few years: “Who Moved My Cheese“, “Zapp: The Lightning of Empowerment“, “A Message From Garcia“, etc. have all proved that everyone loves a good story. Ah, but as always, the devil is in the details. Done wrong, a story can backfire and send your career down in flames. Let’s see if we can discover how to tame this wild stallion so that we can ride it to career success.

We’ve got lots of ways to communicate information, why bother with stories? We all know how to create and use analytical charts and their associated graphs (3-D pie chart anyone?), written reports, etc. A story is the right tool to use when your standard tools just aren’t working. Joseph Badaracco, a Harvard Business School professor, says that “People don’t simply hear stories. It triggers things – pictures, thoughts, and associations – in their minds“. The end result of all of this triggering is that a story can communicate your point in a very powerful way that fully engages your audience.

As always there is a catch. The catch to storytelling is that you need to know where to draw the line between making a dry business story more compelling by embellishing it and changing the story into an outright lie. I can’t even begin to stress just how important this rule is. An embellishment is when you transform “I took the test on a hot day” into “As I walked to the most important certification test in my life, the hot Texas sun felt like it was hovering just 10 feet above my head and the melted asphalt splashed as I walked though it.” See? You’ve made a dry story just a bit more interesting. A LIE would be when you say “I worked at ACME products for over 10 years in the Coyote specialty division where I invented the first rocket powered shoes.” If you weren’t there for 10 years or if you didn’t invent that, then that’s a lie.

In order for your story to have the impact that you want it to have, it has got to ring true with your audience. If your audience doubts even one part of your story, then they will spend the rest of the time looking for other holes in your tale. However, if your story is true and contains a powerful message that your audience can both picture and feel, then you will have accomplished what very few other communicators can do — you will have gotten your message across.

Tags: story, storytelling, business, communication, lie, impact

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In the world of information technology, we actually have it pretty good. We don’t work around spinning industrial machinery nor do we operate fork-lifts or work out in the hot sun. More or less everyone remains fairly healthy and we generally don’t get injured on the job.

That being said, we do live in the real world and bad things happen to people. When something bad happens to a member of your team or your department, communicating with the rest of the team about what is going on is a critical part of your job. As always, the lawyers often jump in with valid concerns about the revealing of other people’s personal information, etc. Let’s put that aside for right now and make an abstract concept more concrete: lets talk about how you would handle it if a member of your department died.

If it falls on your shoulders to let everyone know what’s going on, then this topic will require more tact, knowledge, and preparation than just about any other discussion you will have. Do it correctly and you’ll be viewed as a sensitive leader. Do it poorly, and you’ll instantly lose the respect of your team.

News of this kind of shocking nature will generate the full range of emotions in your audience. This, somewhat amazingly, includes hostility. The loss of a teammate could cause someone to get angry about having to pick up their work when they feel that they are already overloaded. This may not be a real issue, but instead it is how they start to deal with the loss. This will be the wrong time for you to get into a fight with someone as they are trying to come to terms with what you are saying. Instead, stay professional no matter what and make sure that you stay tuned in to your audience. One way to stay tuned in with your audience is to be sure to maintain eye contact with them. This shows them that you are talking “to them”, not “at them”.

Its the small details that will get remembered. Hopefully it goes without saying that your body language will always be talking louder than your mouth in this case. When you are talking about grief, you need to be sure to choose your words very carefully. In the case of a teammate’s death, saying over and over again that he’s “dead” or “been killed” can be very harsh and jarring. Saying it differently and talking about the “loss” can communicate the same meaning in a more gentle way. Finally, in our multicultural workplace, make sure that you have names correct. Nothing could be more disrespectful than a verbal fumble at this point in time.

We’re lucky because we seem to be able to avoid having to deal with “heavy” topics most of the time. However, when these situations come up, and they always do, being ready to say the right things in the right way can make all the difference in the world.

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Great technical skills are no substitute for poor communication skills. All too often some of your company’s best innovations and problem solving skills are locked up within your technical staff. They struggle to communicate their ideas using overloaded PowerPoint slides, rambling speeches, and confusing jargon. No matter if it’s the entry level programmer or the CIO, poor communication skills mean that their talent & ideas will remain untapped.

What to do? How many times have you sat though yet another set of presentations that took forever and yet you can’t seem to recall what was being said? I’m just a guilty as the next guy and yet, the information just won’t stick if the presentation is bad.

This is the blog to go to if you have been nodding your head to the above question. We’ll peel back the cover of just what makes technical staff tick and come up with ways to help them clarify their message. We’ve got to do something — nobody has time to waste in pointless presentations any more!

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