Storytelling: Setting and Emotions

00:00 When you're telling a story to the audience, you're not telling a story just to be a storyteller. You're doing it because there's a message there.

00:08 Ultimately, as speakers, presenters, communicators were there to communicate messages. So the story isn't driving this.

00:14 Your message is a story is simply a vehicle for making the message come alive, to make it more memorable.

00:23 So realize that it's message first.

00:26 In an ideal world, maybe we wouldn't have to tell stories.

00:29 We could just lay out all the facts.

00:31 But people don't remember just the facts.

00:33 They remember the stories, and therefore they often remember the message behind the story.

00:40 But remember when you're telling a story, it's the message first.

00:45 That's what is driving this engine, not the desire for you to become a big storyteller. When you're telling a story, it's crucially important for you to describe the setting. Now, the setting could be as mundane is I'm on the second floor of my office in Huntington, New York, and it's a cloudy day.

01:03 There's nothing particularly interesting about that.

01:05 But when I said that you have a certain image come to mind, you perhaps have never been to Huntington, New York, in an office building.

01:14 In fact, I haven't been hunting in an office building.

01:16 But the point is it creates a picture for you.

01:19 The human memory is much more of a visual processor than a word processor.

01:26 We're image processors, not word processors.

01:28 So when you take the time to physically describe a setting, whether you're in a desert island with a typhoon coming on or just sitting in your house at 7 a.m.

01:39 on a Saturday morning in your favorite easy chair, paint the picture with words of the setting.

01:45 Now, it's not that important that people remember all of that, but what it does is it starts to get your audience to run a little movie camera in their brain, and they're visualizing what you're saying.

01:58 That's the beauty of describing the setting.

02:01 When you're telling a story, when you are telling a story in your presentation, it's critical that you share your emotional state.

02:09 How did you feel? How did the person you're talking to feel? Were you frustrated? Were you angry? Were you elated? What was the emotional component? Describe that. Now, part of it needs to come out in your tone of voice, your facial expressions. But don't be afraid to tell people how is scared and let people get a sense of exactly what you feeling.

02:33 Human beings are emotional creatures, like it or not.

02:37 And in my survey of clients all over the world, the thing they do remember the most from the best speakers, the stories and the emotion. You put the two together, and it is quite powerful.

02:50 So that's why it's a problem when people say, Oh, I need to be professional now I'm giving this professional speech and here's a point and here's the point, here's a point.

02:59 Well, if one of your points is profits are down 17%, don't just quickly go from there to the next point.

03:06 If you have to tell a story about a client who's very upset about your new product change, exactly why they're upset, exactly why they're not going to be a client anymore, share that story, because that may be helpful to your board of directors in figuring out maybe we should bring that that service or that product back again because our clients are missing it more than we thought.

03:29 You must describe the emotional component.

03:33 Otherwise, your speech is going to be too consistent.

03:36 It's going to be too bland, it's too boring.

03:38 Now, I'm not suggesting you yell and scream the whole time in your presentation or in your story, but you do need to describe the high moments and the low moments in your story to make it more interesting and more memorable.