Story Telling Making Communication Fun, Memorable, but …………
Adrian Furnham
Once upon a time… • Effective leaders know that telling a powerful story is the most effective way to engage people • Narrative consultant Geoff Mead has ten golden rules for storytelling success in presentations
Once upon a time… 1. Use stories selectively • Stories activate the listeners’ imagination and emotions by conveying a real or imagined human experience • That is their particular strength and their limitation • Use stories for what they’re good at and don’t overload them with data, analysis, opinions, and arguments
Once upon a time… 2. Listen before you speak • Know your audience and what it cares about. • You can be challenging if that is what’s called for, but people are more likely to pay attention to what you have to say if you begin by acknowledging the realities of their situation. • Good storytelling is a two-way process.
Once upon a time… 3. Aim carefully • Think about the point you want to make and what effect you want your story to have, and choose a story that illustrates your point in action • An audience works out the point of a well-told story for themselves because it gives them a vicarious experience for their imaginations and emotions to work with.
Once upon a time… 4. Make it personal • The story does not have to be about you. • In fact, it’s often more persuasive if you make someone else the hero or heroine. • But you do need to find a personal connection with the story, which might reveal your part in it or be as simple as letting the audience know how you are touched, inspired, or affected by the events you have recounted.
Once upon a time… 5. Make it real • Stories are always about particular characters doing something specific at a certain time in a particular place. • They are essentially about how characters meet obstacles that thwart their desires. • Bring your story alive with concrete descriptions, 3D characters, dramatic moments, humour, and passion.
Once upon a time… 6. Learn the story, not the words • Avoid the common error of killing a story by writing it out or reciting it from memory. • Make sure you know how the story works: the sequence of events and key turning points, and trust your innate ability to find the words. • Practise telling it aloud and get feedback from a colleague
Once upon a time… 7. Connect with the audience
• When you tell your story to an audience, use eye contact, both to see and be seen • Your relationship with the audience moment by moment is your best support, even if you are nervous • The power of your story comes as much from your mutual connection with the audience as it does from the words
Once upon a time… 8. Use simple language • The ear favours informal, straightforward language • If the audience has to spend its energy untangling complex subclauses and trying to make sense of unfamiliar jargon, they won’t be paying attention to the story itself, and will miss the point • Tell the story in your own words, and avoid clichés like the plague (no, really).
Once upon a time… 10. Remember we are all storytellers • Stories are how we make sense of our lives and always have been • There have been civilisations that have flourished without benefit of the wheel, but none has ever been devoid of stories or storytellers • If you can tell a good story, you’ll always have a willing audience
When Telling Stories Helps Enhancing your memory • Creating a coherent narrative around information improves the recall accuracy of that information or event (Kleinknedt & Berke, 2001) • It’s all about how you tell it: • Using hedges in storytelling (‘I am an expert but…’; ‘…insignificant…’; ‘all I know is…’) acts as markers for which information is important, resulting in audiences remembering those items better (Liu & Tree, 2012) • Telling a story for entertainment decreases accurate recall than telling a story to convey information (Dudovic et al., 2004; Barber & Mather, 2014) • However, telling a story for accuracy or entertainment still yields a significantly higher recall rate than just rote-rehearsing the information (Barber & Mather, 2014)
When Telling Stories Helps Enhancing your memory
• Extrinsic Mnemonics - Method of Loci (Memory Palace) • A technique using visualisation to organise and recall information • Memory Champions commit to long-term memory a familiar route with firmly established stop-points or loci. • Then in the competition they need only deposit the image that they have associated with each item at the loci. • To recall, they retrace the route, "stop" at each locus, and "observe" the image. They then translate this back to the associated item. • Simon Reinhard used this method to memorise a deck of cards in 21.19 seconds
When Telling Stories Helps Enhancing your memory • Intrinsic Cuing – Story Mnemonics • Creating a memorable sentence or story in order to memorise information • My Very Elderly Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas • Whilst there are many variations (and now out of date), this story mnemonic is commonly used to remember the planets in the Solar System • Turning a list of items into a flowing story significantly increases recall of that list • Evidence also shows that there is little difficulty in distinguishing which words of the story are from the revised list
When Telling Stories Helps Being persuasive
• Significant Objects Project • A literary and anthropological study investigated the role of stories and narrative on an object’s subjective value. • Random ‘tacky’ items were bought from charity shops and were placed on eBay with short, elaborate, and personal stories. • This pin-cushion was bought for 33 cents. It sold for $41.00. • Invested with the new significance from this fiction, the random items increased in subjective and objective value. • In the experiment, $128.74 of charity shop items were sold for $3,612.51.
We have always taught by stories • Parents, Politicians and Priests; Academics, authors and authorities have always used stories to make ideas come alive and to make central points more memorable • Parables • Case Studies • Children’s readers
To work stories need • A clear structure • Many rich images and characters • An appeal to the heart as much as head • Good presentation: pitch, pause and pace. • The use of good rhetorical devices
Not everything is best conveyed by stories. • Highly technical and specific information
Do stories really have a role to play in the business world? • Leadership involves, amongst other things inspiring people to act in unfamiliar, and often unwelcome, ways. • Numbers, tables or PowerPoint slides won't achieve this goal alone.But effective storytelling often does. Look at the great speeches through time • Although good business arguments are developed through the use of numbers, they are typically approved on the basis of a story--that is, a narrative that links a set of events in some kind of causal sequence. Storytelling can translate those dry and abstract numbers into compelling pictures of a leader's goals .
Stories in organisational research Gabriel, 2013
• Stories educate, inspire, indoctrinate & convince. • Used by teachers, orators & demagogues. • The requirement of accuracy is relaxed in the interests of making a symbolic point • Stories can evade internal and external censors and express views/feelings unacceptable in “straight talk”. They talked to the heart not head. • There are comic, epic, tragic and romantic stories
Components in a Story 1) Create an emotional connection • It often strikes people that those who were most adept at engaging their teams were those with a very specific communication ability. • They were able to make their communication accessible to audiences by presenting them as stories or anecdotes, which allowed the listeners to make an emotional connection with what the speaker was saying. • Even more popular were those who could add to the mix a healthy dash of humor and a sprinkle of self-deprecation. This maybe culturally dependent however!
Components in a Story 2) Illustrate the strategy for better understanding Traditional organizational communications have for a long time taken the form of "death by PowerPoint", an excessive use of numerical statistics and pie charts.
However, if you can put your strategy into context by illustrating it with a simple, compelling and emotionally engaging narrative, then the ability of your audience to recall, relate to and act upon your words will be far higher! An important consideration once you've all left the meeting room and are expected to perform.
Components in a Story 3) Drive engagement • One of the most important business successes we seek from our current leaders is the ability to engage with their employees. Driving engagement has been proven to reduce attrition, drive retention and improve productivity. • What better way to engage with someone than by reaching out on a personal level with a uniquely inspirational story? • The best leaders are able to make those personal connections, to use illustrations which can be delivered to a mass audience, yet whose strength lies in their individual appeal or resonance. • In a way, storytelling can be an even stronger engagement communication tool than participative action teams, as the story can become a viral communication around and external to the organization.
Why does Storytelling Work? • A recent study by the London Business School' demonstrated that information retention levels for traditional communications media can differ quite substantially. • The sole use of statistics in a presentation can lead to a retention rate of around 5-10 percent at best. • If you couple the statistics with a bit of storytelling, you can increase the retention rate to around 25-30 percent. But the biggest impact comes from using storytelling as a stand alone communication. • This can drive the retention rate, it is claimed, of your audience up to as much as 65-70 percent. • This is a pretty important message for any leader trying to communicate the brand offering, the mission and the strategy statements to their employees.
Benefits to Storytelling Overall • When the person telling the story is both skillful and persuasive, this technique can be used to: • incite action • to communicate personality and drive • to build the brand • to share key knowledge or learning • to drive collaboration • to illustrate values and behaviors • to dispel rumors • to define and give context to the strategy With the aim to shape the future direction and success of the company.
Benefits to Storytelling Transferable skills are highlighted • Storytelling can also help companies to identify and harness transferable skills within their workforce. • If you place a group of co-workers into a situation where they're encouraged to share personal stories, then you can learn about them. • You'll find individuals with specific skill sets in their home or social lives which can be easily transferred into their professional environment to enhance their individual and company performance. • Not only does this act as an ice breaker, but it allows other members of the group to establish an immediate connection and association with a total stranger.
Benefits to Storytelling Messages are retained • Often amazingly you may bump into a person and remember little about them other than intriguing facts or personal stories because the stories are "sticky". • Although the positive triggers for such events is not specifically work related, the positive association remains and can have a knock on effect on your views of that same person in a professional context. • By sharing a story, one drives people to break away from pre-judgement and supposition, to break away from established patterns of thinking and to view colleagues, situations and business in a different light. • In short, storytelling can shape behaviors and encourage alternative thinking.
Benefits to Storytelling Clues are given to employees' behavior • It can also reveal to us how our colleagues will react in a given situation. • Characteristics and behaviors that we glimpse in people when we hear their personal stories and see them being tested by circumstances will surely impact their involuntary reactions and behaviors in professional situations. • Stories reveal how people react in particular situations, and shape our expectations of their future performance. • Based on the stories we hear, we make personal judgments to categorize the characters as heroes, villains, fools or victims, and we anticipate behaviors in accordance with those categorizations.
Other Ways to Storytelling in the 21st Century Telling stories through blogs • What's a blog other than a personal account or story, to give context and meaning to a particular issue, for example? • Microsoft for example has independent bloggers within the organization, who use personal accounts to communicate to both internal and external audiences, recounting their personal experiences to allow others to understand and empathize with the company. • Used in this way, storytelling becomes a vehicle to enhance organizational communication, performance and learning, internally and externally, as well as facilitating and managing change. • In this instance, their stories and metaphors build context, dispel myths, create positive rumor and illustrate strategy. • They allow their audiences to get a sense of the culture of the organization and to access normally tacit knowledge and data to enhance their perception in a positive manner.
Other Ways to Storytelling in the 21st C Online storytelling • We now have an explosion of online first-person narratives in the social media and networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo and My Space. • This is actually where some of the inherent weaknesses of the storytelling medium are starting to become apparent. • Although stories can be engaging, at the end of the day, they are narratives which don't necessarily have their basis in fact. • Is it more important for a story to emphasize a particular point or promote a certain emotion, than to be accurate and stick to the facts? • Given that the history of storytelling is one based on invention, entertainment and exaggeration, it's easy to see how this communication tool, in the hands of inexperienced users, could actually cause massive damage to an organization.
Dramatic (and unsubstantiated) claims That storytelling already constitutes more than $1 trillion in the US economy Stephen Dennings claims • Why storytelling can handle leadership challenges for which conventional command-and-control techniques are impotent? • Why companies waste billions of dollars on advertising? • Why the ideas that are rejected in a company are usually worth more than the company itself? • That business audiences who are sceptical or hostile to a new idea can be turned into enthusiastic converts by telling the right story? • That stories can not only fuel the rumour mill but also kill it? • Why most leaders have difficulty telling a compelling future story? • The secret behind generating high-performance teams? • What ever happened to ethics in corporate management? • What do transformational leaders actually do?
Story telling to inspire change How to inspire enduring enthusiasm for a cause and connect with cynical, difficult, risk-averse audiences • Grab their attention • Stimulate desire • Reinforce a desired action pattern with reasons Inspire
Storytelling
Change
The story • Purpose: To spark actions • Needs to be “have some”/be “more-or-less” true • It needs to be affectively positive • It does not need detail • The outcome desired action should be clear
Content & Style • Relevant • Pitch, pause and pace
A good story occurs when • It addresses the audience’s problems • Describes how to handle adversity • Contains warnings and challenges • Says something unexpected & counter-intuitive • Shares something of value to all • Has an admission of responsibility • May contain some musical performance
Do stories really have a role to play in the business world?
YES ‘A route to the heart is needed to motivate people not only to take action but to do so with energy and enthusiasm’ – Steve Denning
Three types of Cues • Verbal: Words (newspapers, books) • Vocal: Sounds (radio, telephone) • Visual: Pictures (television, face to face)
Diana, Princess of Wales ·Eye-puff smile to widen the eyes and make people feel more protective/nurturing of her. ·Spencer smile which was authentic, heartfelt, genuine ·Pursed smile which occurred in times of shyness and embarrassment ·Dipped smile which involved lowering the head so the eyes look up showing childlikeness ·Head-Lilt smile which means tilting the head to one side to show she was unthreatening ·Turn-away smile which gives two opposing messages (approach/avoidance) which Darwin called a hybrid expression and is thought to be “irresistible”
Theme: Not every story has a theme, but it’s best if it does. You shouldn't have to say what the moral is. Plot: Plot is most often about a conflict or struggle that the main character goes through. The conflict can be with another character, or with the way things are, or with something inside the character, like needs or feelings. What the character learns is the theme. Story Structure: Decide about writing the story either in “first person” or in “third person.” Decide about writing either in “present tense” or in “past tense.” Characters: Your main character should be someone readers can feel something in common with, or at least care about. A main character should have at least one flaw or weakness. Perfect characters are not very interesting. They’re also harder to feel something in common with or care about. And they don’t have anything to learn. There should be at least one thing good about a “bad guy.” Setting: Set your story in a place and time that will be interesting or familiar. Style and Tone: Use language that feels right for your story. Be simple, focused and clear. Don’t give alternative points of view. Truth: One can be economical with the truth. Never mind the details
Telling the Story How to get the technique right • First, it's easy to get carried away and overdo the storytelling. This can lead to a dilution of the original communication, mixed messages and a result which is the exact opposite to the one envisaged. • It's a fine balance to strike: manufactured stories will generate cynicism, mistrust and even ridicule, thereby undermining and destroying any positive emotional connection being established. • In order to reap the benefits of this often overlooked communication tool, its users need to be disciplined, they need to understand the tool they're using and they need to be wary of the pitfalls in using it incorrectly or inappropriately, as it can cause untold damage.
If your objective is: Sparking action: You will need a story that describes how a successful change was implemented in the past, but allows listeners to imagine how it might work in their situation. – Invokes: ‘Just imagine if...’ Communicating who you are: You will need a story that provides an engaging drama and reveals some strength or vulnerability from your past. – Invokes: ‘I want to know him’ Transmitting values: You need a story that feels familiar to the audience and will trigger discussion about the issues raised by the value being promoted. – Invokes: "That's so right!" and ‘Why don't we do that all the time?“’ Fostering collaboration: You will need a story that movingly recounts a situation that listeners have also experienced and that prompts them to share their own stories about the topic. – Invokes: ‘Hey, I've got a story like that.’ Leading people into the future: You need a story that evokes the future you want to create without providing excessive detail that will only turn out to be wrong. – Invokes: ‘When do we start’ and ‘Lets do it’
Storytelling Benefits • We can recall more and are much more accurate in our recall of events. • We co-create stories which helps retain our attention for longer. • We are able to release non-conscious feelings that we have no awareness of - revealing needs we didn’t know we had. • This helps us define what we really care about. • Stories help us post rationalize things, which in turn helps us to come to terms with events that go badly for us.
The Science • Memory is at the heart of decision making and neuroscience is helping us to better understand how memories are formed and consolidated. • When we are exposed to any type of stimuli, it fires neural activity; specific neurons become activated in the brain and what is really interesting is that the very same neurons are activated when recalling the experience of the stimuli - often the neural activity happens up to two seconds before it is reported.
The Science • Researchers have noted that single neurons, when firing, were not acting alone but were part of a much larger memory circuit of hundreds of thousands of cells responding at the same time. • It is proposed that our brains were ‘hard wired’ for storytelling due to the sequential alighting of neurons when we encounter any type of stimulus that we have to make sense of.
Storytelling & Co-Creation • When you listen to a story you participate (imagine yourself in the same situation) and it’s this that makes story stand out as the most effective weapon in the battle of attention. • The more something is co-created with an audience (even faceto-face presentations) the more likely it is going to be remembered and acted upon, which is useful to remember when making presentations or seeking approval for something internally or at home.
Tension • Stories can draw audiences into their world by creating tension. • Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end, and if we are not for any reason aware of how a story began or how it ended it evokes tension and tension needs to find an outlet we need to find ways of resolving it.
Tension
Remembering • We often find ourselves, without being consciously aware of it, creating stories in our heads to help us remember important facts and figures. This is how ‘memory masters’ remember things. • Other ways of improving our memory of facts and figures is to associate the new information with information we have learned previously. So string might be associated with Sting and so on.
Cast • Research done on the most memorable stories shows that they follow the same predictable pattern, which handily follows the CAST framework: • Characters - archetypes. • Attention Grabbing Beginning. • Story Format - the basic structure and the seven basic plots. • Tension - will your story be remembered?
Characters • The Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung discovered that stories created in our dreams (even in different parts of the world) were based on the same characters which he called archetypes. • We are familiar with these archetypes and we expect them to behave in an archetypal way - when they don’t we are surprised. • In Aristotle’s time the authority of the character telling the story was referred to as Ethos. • Every story comprises any number of characters drawn from Hero, Sage, Foe, Shadow, Magician, Warrior, Outlaw, Lover, an Innocent and the Fool.
Characters
Attention Grabbing Beginning • Every novel, story, film, theatre plot, or presentation should start with the aim of getting the audience’s attention - in the first few seconds. • We need just a few seconds to decide if something is worthy of our attention and we can easily drift into ‘cruise control’ if our minds are not switched on at the outset.
Attention Grabbing Beginning
Story Format • Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Stories are defined by the basic story structure. • Within the story structure there are numerous stories or narratives that will fit into the story structure. • It means that different stories have different beginnings, different middles and different ends - some are more conclusive than others and some are happy endings and others are not.
Tension • Tension is created by uncertainty and by the unpredictable nature of events - e.g. characters changing sides (the bad guy turns good guy etc.) Aristotle referred to the need to create tension as Pathos. • Even when we think we know what the outcome of a story will be (we know that the male Hero always gets the girl) we still like to know that it will end that way we predicted or if not, why not? • Tension is also evoked by missing pieces of information - when we lack complete information (e.g. why is the Hero in this position, why is he or she being victimized by others?)
The battle for audience attention Conversation vs. Audience – problems in paying attention • Speeches and presentations go on for a very long time compared with the average length of turns we are used to experiencing in a conversation • If we know that we’re not going to have to be ready to say something within the next few seconds, we have much less of an incentive to listen • It’s more difficult for speakers to know whether they’re being understood and for audiences to ask for clarification when they need it • If we find the talk difficult to follow, we’re likely to stop making the effort to listen
Public Speaking: Lend me your ears • There is the “writing” of the story • There is also the telling of the story
The battle for audience attention When audiences have more incentive to listen • They have a chance to join in • They are on the lookout for a chance to clap, cheer, boo, or heckle • The speaker makes them laugh • The speaker keeps eye contact with them
The battle for audience attention Making the most of eye contact • The more you look at the audience, the easier it is to monitor their reactions, so you should always be on the lookout for positive and negative signs • The more you look at the audience, the greater the pressure on them to pay attention • Some audience members are more responsive than others, so keeping an eye on them is a useful barometer of how things are going • Make sure you include everyone – spending time looking only at one section of the audience may please them, but will make others feel excluded • Look people in the eye – looking above or below their heads will not do • Spend as little time as possible looking back towards the screen, blackboard, or flipchart – touch, turn, and talk
Speaking in private and in public • Ums and ers are normal in conversation, but distract and irritate audiences • Silences may be embarrassing and troublesome in conversation, but pausing at regular intervals is good practice when making a speech or presentation because: • It slows down the pace of delivery, and breaks material into short, digestible chunks that are easier for audiences to understand • It helps to clarify and convey different meanings • It can increase dramatic impact • It gives you a chance to recover when things go wrong
Speaking in private and in public • Changes in intonation, stress and emphasis convey different meanings and moods • Of all the emotions it is possible to convey through intonation, enthusiasm is the most important one of all • Everyday conversational intonation flattens out across a distance, so you need to exaggerate your everyday conversational patterns to avoid sounding monotonous • When using a script, underline or highlight words to be delivered with extra emphasis
The sight and sound of words The cloak of formality • If you speak in a ‘hyper-correct’ way, you risk sounding unduly stilted, wooden or pompous • Using words that are hardly ever heard in everyday conversation will make it more difficult for an audience to understand what you are talking about • Jargon and acronyms should be kept to an absolute minimum. If you must use them, make sure that the audience knows what they mean
The sight and sound of words The cloak of formality • If you always use the full forms of words that are usually shortened in conversation (‘will not’ rather than ‘won’t’) you are likely to sound formal and stilted • As using slang and swearing may offend some members of an audience, the safest option is to avoid doing either • The longer and more complicated the structure of a sentence is, the more difficult it will be for audiences to make sense of it.
The sight and sound of words The cloak of formality • Repeating the first few words at the start of each sentence in a sequence works like bullet points on a page, as it reminds the audience that a list of similar items is in the process of being delivered • Repetition can also greatly increase the impact of the message you want to get across • Not all forms of repetition are helpful: the repeated use of a particular word like ‘actually’ or ‘basically’ is likely to distract the audience
The sight and sound of words The cloak of formality • Using the passive can sometimes obscure the precise meaning of a sentence • The passive tends to convey neutrality, objectivity, detachment or distance from direct responsibility for something – impressions that you may not always want to give • When it comes to word selection and sentence construction, the interests of audiences are best served by keeping things as simple as possible on all fronts
The sight and sound of words Information overload • Writing provides a means of storing and transmitting detailed knowledge far in the excess of anything that can ever be achieved solely by the spoken word • One of the most common mistakes of all is to try to get far more detailed information across to an audience than is possible within the limitations of the spoken word • The slide-driven style of presentation has enabled speakers to project huge amounts of detail on to screens, acting as a deterrent against simplifying the subject matter
The sight and sound of words Information overload • If you go through endless amounts of detail you risk coming across as insecure and lacking in confidence • Simplifying the content not only makes it easier for the audience to follow, but also gives the impression that you are authoritative and in full command of your subject matter • It is almost always a mistake to include as much detail as possible. The aim should be to make your summary so interesting that your audience will want to go away and read it for themselves
Reading from slides and talking with chalk Advantages of chalk and talk • Focus of attention • Because you are at an arm’s length from what you are writing or drawing, audience attention is not continually divided between having to look from speaker to screen and back again
• Coordination of the talk and the visual • Writing and drawing while speaking ensure a close fit between what you are saying and the visual, which makes it easier for audiences to relate what they are hearing to what they are looking at
• Pace of delivery • Having to develop your argument step by step makes it easier for audiences to follow than when they are confronted with a large amount of information all at once
• Spontaneity and authority • It gives the impression that you are in control of your material – even if you are copying or tracing very fine pencil lines that had been put there beforehand
Showing what you mean • Visual aids that go down well with audiences • • • • • • • •
Objects, props, and demonstrations Pictures Video Maps Organisation charts Graphs Bar charts Pie charts
• Non-visual exceptions • Blank slides (e.g. black background) • Using hand-outs during a talk
Showing what you mean • Visual aids that go down well with audiences • • • • • • • •
Objects, props, and demonstrations Pictures Video Maps Organisation charts Graphs Bar charts Pie charts
• Non-visual exceptions • Blank slides (e.g. black background) • Using hand-outs during a talk
Showing what you mean • Visual aids that go down well with audiences • • • • • • • •
Objects, props, and demonstrations Pictures Video Maps Organisation charts Graphs Bar charts Pie charts
• Non-visual exceptions • Blank slides (e.g. black background) • Using hand-outs during a talk