Stories are one of the most powerful ways to get people to engage with your ideas
At the last Confident Speakers Masterclass our speaking discussion point was storytelling and our theme was innovation and imagination.
We heard 2 distinctly different speeches. The first was a speech from Marko entitled “The post-modern man”. This speech led us through a carefully crafted journey with a trio of stories beginning with Napoleon Bonapart. We were left with the clear message “The truth doesn’t matter it’s all about how we feel”.
Our second speech was from Lorenzo entitled “Innovation for human beings”. It was highly descriptive and peppered with humour. And introduced us to a highly quirky Japanese invention; the hugging machine! Altogether a thought-provoking speech that prompted us to consider innovation to help others.
Storytelling is an essential tool in the repertoire of any interesting and inspiring speaker. And let’s be honest that is what we all aspire to be.
We want people to listen to what we have say and for them to find it useful, inspiring, funny, surprising and any number of positive reactions.
We all have stories that we love to tell about things we believe others will find interesting.
But delivery can sometimes let us down and we lose our audience before we are able to communicate that gem of information that we really want them to know about.
How not to be boring when telling a story
Bring the details to life
In my early career I was in logistics which is essentially solving the problem of moving boxes from A to B in the most efficient way possible. This means add nothing in, remove as many steps as possible, keep it lean.
This is perhaps the antithesis of storytelling. When you tell a story you want your listeners to visualise, feel and imagine the experience.
You can achieve this through descriptive language, embellishing, going into enough detail to really transport your listener into your world. This is not the most direct, utilitarian expression of an idea. This is taking the time to set a scene that your listener wants to step into and know more about.
How can you be descriptive?
The technique we explored at Confident Speakers was the use of VAKS. A way of describing situations, places, people and events by using all the senses.
V = Visual – what you saw
A = Audio – what you heard
K = Kinesthetic – what you felt / experienced
S = Smell – what you smelt
Most efficient route
Visual – It was raining so hard I couldn’t see the road.
Audio – I could hear the rain on the roof.
Kinesthetic – I jumped when I heard a clap of thunder
Smell – When the rain stopped everything smelt fresher.
Descriptive route
Visual – The rain was falling out of the sky in sheets. I could barely see where I was going. The windscreen wipers were moving so fast that they looked like they might snap off at any moment.
I could hear the rain pitter-patter on the roof whilst the wipers screeched across the wet, smeared windscreen.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when a huge clap of thunder made the surrounding buildings shake.
When the rain stopped a fresh, earthy fragrance filled the air.
Using descriptive language adds colour, feeling and emotion to stories
