Once upon-a-time, in the bowels of College Building, our two adventurers, James and Rachel, set out to discover how the technique of story telling can be used to create great presentations.
I signed up to this morning masterclass with the aim to make my presentations more engaging. Whilst it was not run in the way I expected it certainly delivered what I was after, along with a bit of self-discovery and therapy thrown in!
Stories have been told for millennia and help us relate to each other. Created well they can be a valuable weapon in your presentation armoury; good stories grab people’s attention and create emotional investment, winning your audience over and selling your point.
The session itself was emotionally challenging for some participants as we were asked to reveal quite a lot about ourselves. But this engaged us with the topic, and generated ideas for the stories we had to tell at the end of the session.
There is so much more I could write about the session, but if you are interested in using the storytelling technique in your presentations, do consider the following:
- An impactful opening line, a hook to draw your audience in
- The end point. You must have a clearly identifiable end, keep this in mind as you write your presentation
- The structure:
- The state of play at the start
- A pivot point
- The state of play after
- Signpost where you are going in your story without giving the resolution away!
- Brevity, you should be able to get your story down to 6 bullet points with a meaningful and logical progression
- The written word is not the same as the spoken word (which is why I’m using 7 bullet points).
If you want a chance to reflect upon how you deliver presentations and work on a different way to engage your audience I’d recommend this session, or any other on storytelling
And so, James and Rachel went back to the Library and worked happily ever after, delivering engaging and persuasive presentations to all.
The end.