- Everybody loves a good story,
and stories are a great way to open a presentation.
That attention-grabber is a key moment
in every presentation.
A lot of people tell me though I'm just not
a good storyteller.
Well I'm going to show you a very simple recipe
that'll help you improve.
(soft music)
Hello, I'm Alex Lyon, and this is Communication Coach.
We're here to help you increase your impact
to lead your teams to higher levels of excellence,
and presentations are a really important part
of your leadership, and the attention-grabber,
that first part of the open of your presentation
is critical to gain your audience's interest,
and stories are a great way to do that,
so let's unpack this a little bit.
First, your stories have to be concise.
That means about 60 seconds, maybe even 30 seconds,
for a shorter presentation.
You don't want to get long-winded
the first thing out of your mouth in a presentation.
So keep it tight, and that may take
a few repetitions through the story
as you're practicing to pare it down to the bare essentials.
To next tip is to make sure you follow
the classic story format.
There's like a little template that you can follow
to make sure you're telling what sounds like a story.
Every story has for example a beginning, middle, and ending.
The beginning is really simple.
You can do it in about once sentence,
and that's where you establish the time,
the people, and the place or setting.
So it sounds a little bit like this.
Several years ago my brother was hanging out
in the garage with his young son
working on their motorcycles.
So that just told you the time, several years ago,
the people, my brother and his son,
and the context or the place, the garage.
Next, you move to the body of the presentation,
and that's where all the action takes place.
That's where you build up to a climactic event.
Here's an example.
They were hanging out in the garage
working on their motorcycles, handing tools
back and forth, and at one moment his young son
turned to my brother and said, dad, am I small for seven?
My brother turned to him and said,
buddy, why would you say that?
He said, because the kids at school
were calling me a shrimp.
By the time you get to that line,
the kids at school are calling me a shrimp,
you have reached the climactic moment of that story,
the high emotional point.
The whole reason you're telling the story
is to get to that moment, so you have to figure out
what your climactic event is in the story
and get there within a couple of moves.
The next part is the ending, or the resolution.
This is where you have to bring everything to a close
'cause you left them on the cliff there
with the climactic event.
It sounds a little bit like this for this story.
My brother leaned in and looked him in the eye and said,
buddy, you are just perfect for seven.
The doctor said so himself at our last visit,
and I know that you're gonna continue to grow
into a strong and healthy young man.
Period.
That's the resolution, the ending to the story.
Beginning, middle, and end, and if we squashed it
all together, the story would be
between 30 and 60 seconds.
Now there's a hidden fourth point in every story.
It's the moral to the story, the lesson learned.
The whole reason you're telling the story
is to drive to the heart
of the message of your presentation.
That's why we tell a story, to draw their interest
into the heart of the message.
You don't want to tell some unrelated story
just 'cause it's funny or it's a nice story.
It has to go to the central idea
that you're gonna express in the presentation.
You can express this moral directly
or it can come out in the flow of the introduction.
That's up to you.
I personally like to come at the moral to the story
in a little bit of a subtle way.
I don't like to state it directly.
It sounds a little bit like I'm trying to teach them
the lesson learned too soon.
It'll come out in the rest of the presentation.
One of the great techniques when you're sharing
an attention-grabber though is leave a little bit,
for example the resolution of the story,
for the ending of the presentation, your closing,
your clencher, the very last thing you do.
This is very satisfying.
I talk about this in another video
called How To Open and Close a Presentation,
and it's where you tell most of the story here,
and then you tell your whole presentation,
and then you remind us of what you're saying earlier
and finish it off.
So I'll give you an example here
where I tell most of it and then I break it
right after the climactic event.
Many years ago I was hanging out on campus
and I saw this beautiful woman standing there.
Over the next few weeks I tried to get to know her
and made some small talk, and finally got up the guts
to ask her out.
She looked me straight in the eye
and with a huge smile said, no thanks, I'm not interested.
And then she zipped her mouth.
I was devastated.
See, that's the climactic event there.
She's rejected me and then that's all.
She gave me no wiggle room whatsoever.
So let's say now I'm telling a story,
I'm telling a presentation about perseverance
or relationships or rejection or taking risks,
whatever the topic is for that particular presentation.
I tell my whole introduction, all the body points,
I say in conclusion, and I wrap things up,
and there's this one final moment
called the closing or the clencher.
And I can bring the story back around,
reminding people that I shared it earlier,
and then give them the resolution.
It's a very satisfying prize.
They love it.
So it sounded a little bit like this.
Well even though I was rejected
by that beautiful woman in the student union
many years ago, she finally did go on a date with me,
and 15 years later I am still proud to call her my wife.
That by the way is a true story,
and I love it because it has this natural element
where you feel like you've got most of the story,
but then there's a little bit more to it.
So if you have a story like that but you can break
in a nice spot and bring it back around,
it's very satisfying.
As you can tell, the stories should come
from some relatively predictable sources.
Your own life.
The people in the lives around you, with permission.
You don't want to just tell stories
without asking permission.
You may read biographies and things like that
and gain stories from that.
One of the things I recommend against however
is taking stories from other speakers
that they're already telling, or other authors
that they're already telling.
You want your stories to be fresh and original.
It's gonna be way more impactful.
So question of the day, what are your tips
for telling great stories?
I would love to hear your comments in that section below.
So thanks, God bless, and I hope you tell
a great story in your next presentation.