Knowing storytelling techniques is not a “fluffy” or soft skill for your business. Just as your accountant needs to have strong skills in numbers and laws, so must all your staff and volunteers learn storytelling, both creating and listening.
As good accounting can be a barometer about your company so does storytelling give you a picture of your organization’s health. Like the ledger, business storytelling reveals truth about your organization. No matter if your company has just a single entrepreneur or a payroll of thousands, pay attention to these revelations.
1. Storytelling reveals what your customers really think. Gathering customer stories tells you what is truly happening. No matter what organizational myth you might have, the real truth comes from your customers. There is a reason the “Emperor’s New Clothes” is such a popular story for so many generations. Are you going to be caught naked someday because you did not truly listen to your client’s real stories?
2. Storytelling reveals who is really paying attention. Your company should make it a point to conduct regular sessions of story gathering from employees and management. Processes like my “Intentionality”(tm) activity help anyone in any company create stories about everyday experiences. Like a Board that cannot tell you about the company ledger, be very afraid of any upper management that never has new stories of the company. Stories of how the powerful are deposed are very common in world folktales. Is your CEO paying attention- even if the CEO and the janitor are the same person in your small business?
3. Storytelling reveals your organization’s ability to adapt to change. For survival, your ledger needs to show some reserve funds for your metaphorical “rainy day.” So, too, stories of change show how your company has the readiness and acceptance of the inevitable shifts in the market. Are you prepared for everything to change tomorrow? Are you stuck in the same old ways? Can you make a list, right now, of the stories that show how your nonprofit or business has adapted to change? You do not have past stories of change management and adaptability in your company? You are in for a rough future.
Corporate stories and skills in business storytelling, yes even storytelling for financial advisors, are as valuable to your group as good accounting. Are you giving storytelling the attention it deserves?
Sometimes there are surprise moments when some rather public storytelling skills are demonstrated very well.
It is common to see public figures fail at storytelling. However, at the Michael Jackson Memorial service, entrepreneur and former professional basketball player Earvin “Magic” Johnson demonstrated a command of and elegance to his story. Although many speakers spoke at “MJ’s” funeral, Magic’s few moments stand out.
Here are 4 things that anyone who wants to use storytelling can learn from Magic’s story.
1. His story was brief. I am sure that Mr. Johnson may have had more to say, but he cut through the extraneous details and went directly to his point, taking the audience with him as he experienced the wonder he felt as Michael Jackson ate KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) with him one night many years ago. Ironic as it may sound, the purpose of being a storyteller is not to talk words but rather to communicate ideas.
2. It was a story told in the “voice of the people.” I have watched and commented on many public speakers, especially politicians, who try to speak “to the people.” In the Jackson memorial, Magic Johnson used an important storytelling technique: talk so people understand. His words were simple. His illustrations were accessible to all as he talked about family gatherings, dinners, playing games with family, celebrity-meeting nerves and eventually, something as simple as a fast-food icon: a bucket of chicken.
As a pro-basketball star, Magic could have easily made sports references. However, no sports reference would speak to such a wide range of listeners as his family references did. Choosing to speak to your audience so they understand rather than using self-serving references is a sign of a mature and effective speaker.
3. In his story, he laughed at himself. Magic’s story was not to tell people how wonderful he was but rather to share how wonderful he thought Michael Jackson was. A good storyteller can reflect the focus on the story and the subject of the story.
4. His story was actually a story. It contained a beginning, a middle and an end. Magic did not tell an anecdote: “I once sat on Michael Jackson’s carpet and ate KFC with him. Wasn’t that cool?” Rather, he placed his story in the context of a developing relationship with the family and the invitation to dinner. Without being sappy or manipulative, he shared his own feelings about the invite and his surprise to discover his idol ate “real food” like everyone else.
His story supported this expression of hope for the future. At the end of his comments, when he referred to Michael’s children having family support, you knew his point of reference to make such a statement.
Although in the past Magic has been critiqued for his speaking style, his presentation at the MJ funeral was a good example for any speaker striving to improve their storytelling skills for business or personal use.
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Sean Buvala is a public speaking coach who specializes in helping you tell your core story in all situations. For free Email lessons, please see www.storytelling101.com .
Stories are being told about your company all the time. Unless you have never had a customer, someone somewhere is talking about your company. When they do so, they are speaking with passion either for or against your business. You need to have your passionate stories ready to add to that conversation. To create raving fans in your business, you need to be a raving business.
When a customer experiences your company, they leave with an impression. If they were offended, hurt or feel they did not get good value, they will passionately talk about (create the story of) their perceptions of your business. Likewise, if you exceeded their expectations, they will also talk about that story. When a person hears one of these customer stories about your business, do you have your own equally passionate company stories to counter or confirm? Can your customers find these passionate stories on your website via video or audio links?
Here are five storytelling for business tips to help you express your passion:
1. Do not be afraid to be full of passion about your product or service. For example, I am always amazed at the way small brick-and-mortar business owners can be so alive and excited about their offerings but yet have zero expressions of that anywhere on their websites, other advertising or in casual conversations. Real passion ignites real passion. Don’t tell me that you’re “passionate about the perfect cup of coffee” at your coffee shop. Rather, through business storytelling, show me your passion by telling me the story of how you spent a year travelling the country to find the best and most unique roasting machine. I want to see that look in your eyes as you tell me about the best/worst coffee you ever had that led you to start your own business. Let me laugh with you about your obsessive interviewing and auditioning in order to find the perfect baristas. Help me to feel your focus as you tell me about going through a dozen suppliers (and their unique personalities) looking for the perfect coffee beans.
2. Your employees are your best source of truth about your company. Train your employees in ways to gather and collect their own company stories. Then, on a regular basis, gather employees together to share these stories. The sharing of these stories must not be mandatory. Requiring employees to have a story results in faked stories. By the way, my coaching clients will sometimes hesitate to use this story-gathering process with employees because the session will generate “nothing but complaints” from the participants. All stories have value to your company and if you are getting lots of complaints, let those stories be the catalyst for internal change. Take the cue to understand: if your staff is producing uncomfortable stories, then you can be assured that your customers are unhappy, too.
3. If your company is very large with multiple locations or large departments, start your storytelling process in just one section of the company. Nothing squashes passion more than yet another management project that “we are all going to do.” Choose one department and let them be the first group to experience the power of business storytelling. Once they have learned and applied storytelling techniques successfully, then other departments or locations will want to join in.
4. The elevator speech is dead. For any size company, learn to tell each of your stories in a variety of time formats such as two minutes, six minutes or fifteen minutes. Always be ready to tell potential customers about your work. Your preparedness will help convey your passion.
5. Remember that storytelling is a person-to-person experience. Take every opportunity to be in front of customers or employees to tell your stories. Digital storytelling, print advertisements and social media are all fine tools, but they can never replace the benefits of experiencing your story passionately told live and in person.
Storytelling is one of your business communication essentials. Add passion to your public speaking!
*** Sean Buvala is a storyteller and corporate coach focusing on communication skills through the art of storytelling for business. He can be reached at www.seantells.net . You may also follow him on Twitter at @storyteller.
Posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago at 2:13 pm. 2 comments
Episode Five: “The Elevator Speech is Dead”
Sean talks this week about the archaic concept of the elevator speech. The elevator speech: when you learn a singular “speech” to talk about your business with new clients and customers. Rather, Sean talks about learning the power of your story to be used in different time frames. Sean also tells you the obscure Grimm tale of “Not Much.” You’ll also hear from a listener who called in to tell us his reaction to these podcasts.
Listen in: Episode Five
Posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago at 4:06 pm. 4 comments
Non Profit Leaders: Do your volunteers know your story?
Yesterday, on my way into the grocery store, a woman sitting at “animal rescue” table asked me if I would like to donate to their rescue shelter. As I made my way into the store, I had both the time and the inclination to listen to her ask for a donation as my family has been connected to the work of rescue shelters for more than six years. (You can see the website at 3lostdogs.com.) As well, we have three “rescued” shelter dogs in our life. So, I am open to the idea that these volunteers were promoting. I also know that these impromptu tables are an important non profit funding source.
I asked her, “What does your shelter do?” The volunteer was not ready to answer my question. She did not know the story of the shelter she was representing. Her only answer was, “We do the adoptions at the (name of pet store).” Outside of that, she did not know what to say.
So, unlike most people passing her table, I stopped long enough to actually talk to her. I was a prime-candidate to donate money to her cause. However, she had not been trained in how to talk to potential donors. Either she did not know the story of her group or she had not been trained to speak about her organization.
This, of course, is not her fault. Her lack of preparedness was the fault of the director of her non-profit organization. It is possible that she had been trained on where to find the table that she needed, what to do with the money she collected and where to turn in the forms at the end of her shift. She was not trained in talking about the mission of her organization.
How about your volunteers and employees? Have they been trained to tell both their story of why they volunteer as well as the story of your organization? I am not talking about elevator speeches here. These elevator speeches, also know as unique selling points, are static anecdotes used to snare others. Rather, knowing the multiple stories of your organizations and how to adapt them to both casual and formal situations is a key skill for your staff, both volunteer and paid.
Here are three steps you need to follow to prepare your staff to use the power of story in your non-profit organization.
1. Collect the stories of your group.
There are a variety of techniques available to aid any organization in the collection of their stories. However, the best method is the oldest method: listen. Train your staff to think about stories. Ask them to think: what is happening/has happened that others need to know about? Find a way to share these stories at regular gatherings. Never make story sharing mandatory in any setting. Although many trainers advocate this, the pressure of “I must have a story” results in poor stories shared when your staff is under pressure to come up with anything. Stories should always be gathered in an organic or grass-roots process.
2. Train staff in the essential skills (the how-to) of storytelling.
The best investment you can make in your organization’s future is to enlist the help of an experienced storytelling coach to teach your staff and volunteers to tell stories. You want your team to be able to know and tell your core or essential stories in a variety of time formats. For example, the volunteer I encountered outside the grocery store might have known the 20-minute story of their organization but had not been trained to tell it to me in a two-minute setting. She would need to know both the long and short versions. You also want your team to be able to use stories as frames for presentations that require quantities of data and shared information. Teach storytelling techniques first and save the high-level theories of storytelling for advanced classes once your staff has had success with storytelling.
3. All non-profit leadership must use stories at every gathering.
In every public speaking setting, from formal board meetings to casual walk-arounds, the leadership of the organization must fully immerse themselves in the use of story. Despite the glut of storytelling-for-business consultants available, the idea of storytelling for adults in a business setting remains challenging for many. Your leadership team, from the top on down, must clearly demonstrate the importance of story in all settings.
In even good economic times, a non-profit organization must have a strong command of their past, present and future stories. Your potential donors are interested in what their money can do in your organization, assuming your mission aligns with their values. Are your volunteers ready to speak your mission statement, not in overused mission “statement-eese,” but rather in the geniune stories of your group’s daily experiences?
Expressing your organization’s story should be a skill for all of your staff. It is a requirement for business communication today. Consider everyone in your organization to be public speakers. Your experiences, expressed in story, are the unique features of your group. Be sure your donors can understand them.
I did explain to the volunteer outside the grocery store about my family’s history and thanked her for the good work she was promoting in defense of abandoned animals. Her work was important and I hope she had some success in collecting funds for their rescue project. However, I knew that she was unprepared for real conversations about the work and mission of her group. I hope that the leadership of her group soon gets a chance to teach their staff to tell the real stories of the challenges and successes of their charity.
Good stories, willing listeners and a staff trained in public speaking skills are tangible assets for every non-profit group must have.
Three Quick Fixes to Your Storytelling for Business.
Having done executive coaching and corporate storytelling training over the last 23 years, I have seen many common mistakes from folks wishing to use storytelling for business presentations. Here are three of my quick fixes for public speaking issues.
Fix Number One: Take your story seriously.
World stories, myths and legends have endured for many centuries because of their ability to carry powerful messages in the small space of well-selected words. Use this power carefully. When I work with clients, they will often have spent many hours on their appearance, their eye contact and the slides they will project. However, they only spend minutes on story selection and presentation. This is a big mistake. There is no such thing as a simple story. Stories are powerful tools and, used incorrectly, they will explode back at you. Stories selected with care, crafted with good storytelling techniques and told with an intentional purpose will create a long-lasting impact on your audience. Your listeners will remember your stories long after the memory of your nice tie, fancy dress or overhead slides quickly fades away.
Fix Number Two: Plan the gestures you will use.
Your hands do not always need to be in motion nor held clasped in front of you as if you were carrying a bouquet of flowers. Avoid making choppy hand movements with eve-ry syl-la-ble you speak. Plan your gestures to match your story and move effortlessly and smoothly from one gesture to another. Let you hands rest naturally at your sides in between gestures. Try to avoid the finger pyramids or hand clasping between gestures.
Fix Number Three: Speak in your natural voice.
One of the best time investments you can make as a public speaker is to watch a professional storyteller speak to your target demographic of adults. You will see and hear the differences between how one tells stories to adults and how one practices storytelling for children. You must avoid the “sing song” voice of the unpracticed storyteller, who, like revered hosts of children’s television programming, makes a lilting vocal pattern that sends adult audiences screaming out of the room.
Also, be aware that when you speak personal or “real” stories about your company you do not imitate or mimic the voices of others. Speak in your own voice. In most cases, do not change your voice to reflect your perceptions of the gender, race, regional origin or social status of those of which you are speaking. Mimicking another can quickly backfire on you, causing you to lose goodwill and trust with your audience.
Applying these quick fixes for public speaking will help your audience to be fully immersed in your presentation. Your storytelling, well prepared and well coached, can lower your public speaking anxiety and make you one of the best business speakers your audience has ever heard.
** Sean Buvala ( Twitter him @storyteller) is an award-winning storyteller, experienced business speaker and executive speaking coach who helps businesses grow their bottom line and create employee satisfaction through the power of storytelling. His website is http://www.seantells.net. He offers private training and coaching. Learn about his small group, multi-day workshop at http://www.executivespeakingtraining.com .
Posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago at 5:00 pm. Add a comment
Use Storytelling Techniques Improve Your Communication Skills
Storytelling is the “mother” of all communications. Every art form relies on Story to convey meaning. Despite this truth, many communicators only approach storytelling as an adjunct to their speaking and presenting. For this quick article, I am speaking about oral storytelling, not digital storytelling that does not rely or build on a presenter’s public speaking skills. I suggest that mastering oral or traditional storytelling should be at the top of every speaker’s list of priorities.
Here are three foundational reasons that storytelling helps you improve your presentation skills:
1. Storytelling teaches you to think on your feet. When you learn to be a good storyteller, telling stories to all sizes of audiences from 2 or 2000 people, you must learn to adjust your energy and pace to match the audience reaction. “Reading” or understanding the mood, energy and desires of your audience is a good communication skill at all levels.
2. Storytelling teaches you to be spontaneous. While you are learning to tell a story, you focus on thinking about your story in an outline form, or episode-by-episode. Good storytellers do not memorize their stories word-for-word and do not use notes or other ways of reading their stories. No matter how you are communicating, it is never a good idea to deliver a canned, memorized speech to anyone. As a storyteller, you learn to rely on your ability to “see” a story as it happens, letting different parts of the story take precedence at different times. You will never tell a story the same way twice just as you should never speak to an audience like any audience before it.
3. Storytelling helps you to think about the deeper meanings of your content. Almost all stories carry some type of moral or ethical message and understanding. As you adapt personal and world stories to your presentations, you will start thinking deeper about the meaning of your communications. Of course, you may or may not act on those meanings, but you will generally find your presentations more satisfying as you understand their impact on your listeners.
All cultures use storytelling. Storytelling is a universal language and a core-skill for all presenters. My best public-speaking tip: seek out learning and coaching in the art of storytelling and work stories into all your presentations.
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Sean Buvala is a professional storyteller, the director of Storyteller.net and a nationally recognized storytelling consultant. Please see his website to learn more about his storytelling techniques for corporate training. You can learn how to tell a story through his Ebook at at www.storytelling101.com
Posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago at 2:48 pm. Add a comment
One of the most searched-for communication skills on the Internet is “how to tell a story.” I would like to give you a quick step-by-step guide to this process of story telling, drawn from my 23 years of being a professional storyteller. This is the fast and quick method to learn a new story.
1. Decide on a story. Sounds elementary, but at some point, you need to find a story that you love. If you are having problems, search the Internet for some simple Aesop fables or find some good stories at a site like Storyteller.net .
2. Break the story down into an outline of events so that you can remember the episodes of each story.
You have two choices for step three. Do one or both if you would like.
3A. Write out or draw out the parts of the story. Using longhand, that means pencil and paper, write out the episodes of the story in your own words. Do not copy the story. Rewrite it in your own words. Doing this process by hand allows your brain to overcome any resistance you might have to the story. Knowing you can do this process with your story is also a way for your brain to overcome some fear of public speaking that might hinder you from telling this story.
3B. The other way to break down a story is via “storyboarding,” a technique that many storytellers use. Take a letter-sized piece of paper. Fold it in half along the length. You now have an eleven inch piece of pager that looks like a taco. Then, fold the right side up against the left and then fold the same way again. When you unfold the paper you will have a piece of paper divided into 8 segments.
Starting at the top segment, draw out each step of the story. This is only for you to learn so stick figures and bad drawings are just fine. This visual method may help you grasp the story better than writing alone.
4. Begin to tell yourself the story, aloud, using your own words while looking at one of the #3 tools above. Repeat this process several times.
5. Think about the story you are telling. Are there parts of the story that do not really need to be there? Do they drag down the story? Cross them off the list or the storyboard and tell yourself the story one more time with those parts of the story removed. Again, at each of these times, you are speaking your story aloud. Let your face get a feel for the story.
6. Put your notes down and tell yourself the story a few more times. This is a great exercise to do while you are driving your car or cleaning your house. Just keep talking to yourself.
7. Call up a friend or find an associate and tell them your story. Use no notes or storyboard. When you finish telling the story to your associate, ask them if it makes sense to them. Did they think you left out any parts? This is not the time to see if they “get it” or understand the deep meanings. You just want to know if the essential delivery of the story makes sense.
8. As your confidence in the story grows, you will want to start thinking about the emotions represented by different words in the story. You may find that you wish to emphasize one part or character over another. These things come with time. If you feel better about saying “once upon a time” at the beginning or “the end” as one of your story endings, then do so. As you grow to understand storytelling even more, you will learn so many other ways to start or end a story.
9. When it is time for your story’s debut, be confident. Look at your audience. Speak clearly. Slow down and enjoy the story experience. As a professional storyteller, I can tell you that it takes a dozen or more tellings of a story to find the your true rhythm and delivery for each story.
There you have it, how to tell a great story! This is a quick, get-it-now guide to storytelling. There is so much more you can learn about how to tell a story. Remember- get started today telling stories. Like a painter who must paint often to get better at painting, you, too, must speak stories often and to many groups in order to improve.
Some resources:
To get my free ECourse on storytelling, see the front page of my website at www.seantells.net.
To order the EWorkbook on storytelling that includes live coaching and audio files, please visit www.storytelling101.com
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Based in Arizona, Sean Buvala is a full-time professional storyteller and storytelling consultant who works throughout North America teaching storytelling for business. Along with storytelling techniques for corporate communication, Sean is also sought after for teaching storytelling for teachers of middle school and high-school students. For more information about Sean’s work as a storytelling coach, please see his site at www.seantells.net.
Posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago at 12:39 pm. Add a comment
Here’s a brand new, eight-minute video on using gestures in storytelling and public speaking skills. We are thinking about making a series of storytelling techniques videos. Storytelling for teens? Storytelling for business? This is a prototype we assembled here in the office. (I said “we” like I have a monkey in shirt pocket.) YouTube of course botches the quality of these things but you can see a High-Quality version at YouTube or I can get you the 1.7 Gig version if you want it. Don’t watch it in full-screen. Eww.
Have fun watching. It was fun to make. Any of you video production people want to joint venture with me on a project? Ahem.
