Grab your audience with a story
Presentations full of data need a few lines from life.
By Patricia Kitchen, Times Staff Writer
Published March 2, 2008
If you want to ensure you get across the key points in a presentation, you could throw data at people in the form of PowerPoint graphs and charts.
Or you could tell a story.
Even as business leaders and managers have mastered the objective elements of communication - the charts and metrics and spreadsheets - their audience is floating "in an ocean of data and disconnected facts," says Annette Simmons, author of Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins - How to Use Your Own Stories to Communicate With Power and Impact. "The missing ingredient in most failed communication," she writes, "is humanity.
"This is an easy fix. In order to blend humanity into every communication you send, all you have to do is tell more stories and bingo - you just showed up."
Simmons, who has worked with clients such as Microsoft, NASA and the IRS, offers these ideas to help you ease into storytelling:
Once upon a time, there was a company...
Give your curiosity full rein as you listen to people and their stories: That's how you come to appreciate the details. "To be a good storyteller, you must be a good story listener," she says.
Look to your own life for material: Think of occasions when you shined, a time "you blew it" or lessons you learned from a mentor. Also look to outside material, books, movies, case studies, current events.Choose stories based on the emotion you hope to elicit in your audience: If you want people to embrace change, "tell a story that ends up in that feeling."
Beware of giving too much information: No story should last more than three minutes.
Start your presentation with the story: It helps frame data to come.Practice telling stories out loud and ask a friend to give feedback - but not criticism: Instead, ask what he or she wants more of, says Kenny Moore, ombudsman for KeySpan Energy. "Whatever people want to hear more about from your life story, that is what makes you interesting. If you can connect your message to part of your life story, it's going to be far more memorable."