The Power of Storytelling: How to Stand out and Increase Your Influence

Picture this: it’s Tuesday afternoon and you’re up next in a seemingly never-ending day-long meeting. Your audience is exhausted, their attention spans shot from a barrage of dry, forgettable presentations. How do you break through the fog,
capture their attention, and leave a lasting impression? It’s simple: tell a story.

Our brains are story-making machines. We naturally seek to create meaning from whatever data we received. Stories are the way to transform your message into an engaging, memorable experience that moves people to action. For a story to grab people’s attention, there’s some upfront work to do. Start by answering a few questions:

What’s My Point?

No one wants to listen to a rambling story with no clear point. What is the one insight you want your audience to glean from your story? The answer is your North Star, guiding all your choices on what to include and leave out of your story.

What Does My Audience Care About?

You are never telling stories in a vacuum to blank slates. What do they already know and feel? What assumptions are they holding? Or put another way, what stories are already in their heads? When you’re clear on that, you tailor the story to the audience. For instance, you would tell one story to your boss about why you should be able to work remotely full
time and a different story to your spouse who shares a one-bedroom apartment with you.

Does My Story Make Sense?

Good stories hang together so that our brains don’t have to do so much work to try to “make up” the connections or fill in gaps. For a story to feel satisfying and not just a series of unrelated data points, it needs to include a beginning state, a shift, and an end state. Like this:

• Beginning State: Our processes were confusing and broken.

• Shift: By implementing value stream mapping, we improved how work gets
  done.

• End State: Now we can scale and keep up with our growth.

When you use those three questions as guideposts, you are on the path to being a standout presenter – no matter the timeslot!