Elements of Effective Storytelling

• 00:04 Stories sometimes take a long time.
• 00:06 Maybe you tell a story in 30 seconds, it's not overly complicated.
• 00:11 But if you have a point that you want people to remember,
• 00:16 you're better off giving a story to make it meaningful.
• 00:20 One of the points I'm going to stress in our next lesson is you really
• 00:25 got to practice on video if you want to see for yourself where you are,
• 00:30 what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, and how to improve.
• 00:35 Now, I've been using video ever since I started 30 years ago and
• 00:39 there was a time when it was difficult.
• 00:42 You had to bring in some production crew, and cameras were this big.
• 00:47 These days, everyone's surrounded by video cameras.
• 00:50 You've got one in your cell phone likely, iPads, webcams are everywhere.
• 00:56 It's really, really cheap.
• 00:58 Now I remember a time more than a decade ago,
• 01:01 I was doing my very first training over in Eastern Europe, and
• 01:05 I was in a former dictator's palace, it was quite elaborate.
• 01:10 And I wasn't training a dictator, I was training a popularly elected
• 01:14 prime minister of a small Eastern European country.
• 01:19 But I was a little nervous.
• 01:20 It was my first time in that part of the world.
• 01:23 Prime Minister has all of his bodyguards with machine guns around.
• 01:28 We're ready to practice the Prime Minister speech.
• 01:32 And he said to me, TJ, do you mind if this first time we practice in my native
• 01:36 language, he was fluent in English.
• 01:37 So do you mind if we practice in my native language?
• 01:42 Sure, no problem Mr. Prime Minister.
• 01:44 So he stood up, gave his speech and he proceeded to do this.
• 01:51 He basically read his speech.
• 01:56 He asked me what I thought, I said, well, let's watch the video together.
• 02:02 So we watched the video.
• 02:04 He then said, TJ, what did you think?
• 02:07 I said, I'll tell you what I think.
• 02:10 But first, I want you to tell me exactly what you thought.
• 02:15 He said no, no, I'll tell you but I want to hear your opinion first.
• 02:18 And I thought, well, this guy was really boring, it was awful.
• 02:24 And what do I do?
• 02:25 I'm surrounded by armed guards, I'm in a whole another place of the world.
• 02:29 I don't know what the situation is, some of them look quite menacing.
• 02:34 Do I tell him the truth?
• 02:36 I thought what he's paying me a bunch of money to give him the truth,
• 02:39 I'll tell him the truth.
• 02:40 So I said Mr. Prime Minister, with all due respect,
• 02:44 I don't know what you said, but you bored the hell out of me.
• 02:50 He looked shocked.
• 02:52 He looked at me, he looked at all these armed guards.
• 02:56 He looked back at the TV, and then he said, TJ,
• 03:00 you're right it was boring as hell.
• 03:03 It's awful, here's what we gotta do and he takes his speech,
• 03:09 Threw it away and we did what I had to do with most of my clients.
• 03:13 We got a clean sheet of paper, got a pen, and we started from scratch and
• 03:20 we tried to boil it down to just five messages.
• 03:24 And we did the speech again.
• 03:25 And we kept videotaping it until he could look at it and say,
• 03:29 TJ now this is a guy I would want to listen to.
• 03:34 Okay, so what did I do there?
• 03:35 All I did was tell a story.
• 03:37 Was it funny?
• 03:38 No.
• 03:39 Was it overly dramatic?
• 03:41 Not really.
• 03:43 But it was real.
• 03:45 I mean that actually happened to me.
• 03:47 And all I'm trying to do is drive home the points that it is important to videotape
• 03:53 your practice because you'll see things that you weren't aware of.
• 03:58 You'll be more aware of your strengths and weaknesses.
• 04:03 And it's really the only way to get a sense of how you're doing.
• 04:07 So it's a simple story.
• 04:09 It only took a couple of minutes.
• 04:11 But, it had a character, had the prime minister.
• 04:15 Had a setting, I'm in a dictators palace isolated in Eastern Europe.
• 04:20 It had a problem, this guy was giving a really boring solution.
• 04:25 It did have a solution, he had to look at it, and figure out what he liked,
• 04:30 didn't like, and we redid it.
• 04:32 It had a little bit of emotion.
• 04:33 I was a little bit nervous about A, telling him that,
• 04:36 B being in foreign circumstances.
• 04:38 So it had the elements.
• 04:40 Is that the greatest story ever told?
• 04:42 No.
• 04:44 Is it going to win Pulitzer Prize?
• 04:45 No.
• 04:47 But it does help people remember that message, a little more effectively.
• 04:55 And that's gotta be your big problem that you've gotta focus on.
• 04:58 How do you get people to remember your ideas?
• 05:02 As I mentioned earlier, the big problem most speakers have,
• 05:06 is not that they break out and flop sweat.
• 05:09 It's not that they freeze, it's not even that their PowerPoint stops or
• 05:14 breaks that are breaks but that does happen.
• 05:18 The number one problem most speakers have is they stand up,
• 05:23 they give their presentation, their ties straight,
• 05:27 their dresses just straight, hair is the way they want it with whatever they have.
• 05:35 And everything goes according to plan.
• 05:37 But then if you walked around the audience or the conference table afterwards,
• 05:42 with $100 bill and put it in front of people, and say, you can keep that money,
• 05:47 all you have to do is tell me two ideas that speaker talked about.
• 05:53 Guess what?
• 05:54 You would never have to give away any money.
• 05:56 That's the real tragedy of most speakers.
• 06:00 Stories are the solution.
• 06:01 When I ask audiences all over the world what do they remember the most about
• 06:06 great speakers they remember two things, the passion and the stories.
• 06:11 And they're linked, because when people are telling stories,
• 06:14 that's when their passion comes out.
• 06:16 So a lot of people have the mistaken notion,
• 06:21 I'll fit a story in if there's time.
• 06:24 And yet there's never time because they have so many data points.
• 06:27 A story is not a luxury.
• 06:30 It is a fundamental building block of what it takes to communicate effectively.
• 06:38 Examples are also good, case studies are good,
• 06:43 all of these things will help your audience remember that's
• 06:48 what's going to make your speech successful or not.

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