Archive for the ‘story’ Category

The 3 Keys To Telling A Good Story During A Speech

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011
Image Credit Stories Have Worked For Public Speakers For A Long Time

Stories Have Worked For Public Speakers For A Long Time

Once you’ve found a way to overcome the fear that we all feel when it comes to speaking in public, you move on to the next stage: wanting to become an effective speaker. I mean, as long as you are going to the effort, you may as well make it count! It turns out that you already have the skill that you need in order to make your message stick with your audience…

The Power Of Telling Stories

All too often speakers dismiss stories as being something that are only suitable for when we deal with children. The reality is that stories are how adults exchange information every day. Think of all of the books, TV shows, and movies that you’ve watched – they were all telling you stories.

In fact, mankind has been using stories to exchange information for over 1,000,000 years. The reason that we use stories is because they are a fantastic way to get our audience to remember what we’ve said.

Stories cause our audience to create pictures in their head. The better a story that we tell, the more vivid the picture that we paint in their minds.

The 3 Keys To Telling A Good Story

In order to tell stories that “stick”, you need to understand and use the 3 keys to great storytelling.

The first key is to invite your audience to listen to your story. This is often done by asking them a question that catches their attention and makes them want to know more. An example would be “Two months ago I was homeless and living out of my car. I met a man who shared with me three words that completely changed my life, would you like to know what they were?”

The next key is to tap into your audience’s imagination. What this means is that you don’t actually have to draw the entire mental image for them. If you provide just enough detail, they will gladly fill in the rest of the picture. What’s so great about this is that they’ll add far more detail to your story’s mental images than you ever could.

Finally, as you tell your story you need to make sure that you are having influence over your audience. This means that you need to carefully watch them and make sure that you adjust how you are telling your story in order to make sure that you grab their attention and don’t let go of it.

What All Of This Means For You

As speakers there are a lot of different things that we can do in order to accomplish our main objective – changing the lives of our audiences. One of the most powerful tools that we have at our disposal is storytelling.

In order to tell an effective and memorable story, you need to know and understand the three keys of storytelling: invite, imagine, and influence. Master these techniques and your stories will make a lasting positive impact on your audiences.

We are all born storytellers. This is a skill that somehow comes along with our human DNA. However, we can all become better at this skill. Use these three keys and you’ll become an even more effective speaker.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: Which of the three keys do you think is the most important for the types of stories that you tell?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.
P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Communicator Newsletter are now available. Subscribe now: Click Here!
 
Note: What we talked about are advanced speaking skills. If you are just starting out I highly recommend joining Toastmasters in order to get the benefits of public speaking. Look for a Toastmasters club to join in your home town by visiting the web site www.Toastmasters.org. Toastmasters is dedicated to helping their members to understand the importance of public speaking by developing listening skills and getting presentation tips. Toastmasters is how I got started speaking and it can help you also!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

You’ve got fantastic thing to tell your audience. They are lucky enough to be able to sit in the room when you give a speech. If you want to do a good job of connecting with your audience, then you’ve got to know and put into practice the most important secret that all successful public speakers already know.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in story | 2 Comments »

What’s The Best Story That A Public Speaker Can Tell?

Friday, October 17th, 2008
Using A Personal Story Can Really Help Your Speech

Using A Personal Story Can Really Help Your Speech

Oh, this one’s an easy question to answer: your story. I don’t care if you are giving a speech about the company’s 3rd Quarter profits, or telling an audience about the best way to water-proof a roof, if you work a personal story into your speech it will instantly become a memorable speech. Now with that being said, if you do a bad job of working your personal story into your speech you will probably bore your audience to death. Hmmm, I wonder what the secret to doing this correctly is…

The first thing that you need to realize is that if you just up and tell a personal story, the odds are that it’ll fall flat. Although we might think that every story we have to tell is a great tale, this simply is not the case. Instead, your story needs to be taken out, sharpened, and perhaps even polished just a bit before you tell it to an audience. One way to get things started is to sit down and just write / type it all out. Don’t hold back here, just make it as long as it wants to be. Capture your story of overcoming a challenge, fighting a setback, dealing with a health issue, bad relationship, or financial disaster in all of it’s glory. Remember, your audience was not there so you need to remember what it felt like and communicate what all of your five senses were feeling.

Once you have it all written down, now is the time to start to shape it. Your story needs a good clear opening. Let your audience know why this is important. You also need to be aware of just how much time your have for your speech and your story within your speech. You’ll need to trim it down to fit the time available.

Once you’ve got your personal story sorta looking like it’s ready for prime time, now is the time to do some extra checking in order to make sure that it really is a good story to tell. The first thing that you can do is to be very clear about where and when your story took place. Instead of saying “back when I was in college” instead you need to say “12 years ago…” This will allow your audience to better identify with your story.

We all love movies and we’re use to watching them. Just like a movie, your personal story will “play” better if you are able to tell it as a series of connected scenes. Your words will paint scenes in your audience’s minds and these images will then blend together to create a complete movie of your story for them.

Create some drama by telling your story just like you felt it. If you hold back on some information and allow the audience to discover it just as you did, the tension in the room will quickly start to rise. The good thing about creative tension is that it means that your audience will be hanging on your every word.

Finally, you need a great conclusion that brings your audience back into the here and now. One way to do this to take just a moment and explain why the story that you told was so important to you. What did it all mean to you? Your personal story is yours and yours alone. You never have to worry about someone else telling it because it’s all about you. Good luck in adding a personal speech to your next public speaking opportunity and making it unforgettable!

Have you ever had a chance to work a personal story into a speech? How did that speech turn out? Do you take the time to practice personal stories or do you just wing it because you knew the story so well? Have you ever heard a speaker tell a personal story that was badly done? What was wrong with it? Leave a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in story | No Comments »

“Once Upon A Time…” – The Role Of Storytelling In Business Communication

Thursday, July 24th, 2008

Business Storytelling Can Be Effective If Done Correctly

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: , , , , ,

Posted in business, communication, impact, lie, story, storytelling | 2 Comments »