Tag Archives: Storytelling

07c-Telling stories, 07d-Delivering a presentation, storyline structure

9 Public-Speaking Lessons From The World’s Greatest TED Talks

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When asked what my passions in life are, I often respond the same way – food and public speaking (in no particular order). While one is likely to help me further my career and the other is likely to help me further my waistline, they are both still passions of mine.

Public speaking didn’t come naturally to me at first; in fact, there was a time in life where it terrified me. But through practice, practice, and more practice, I came to not only achieve an acceptable level of competency in the skill, but I started to truly enjoy speaking to large groups.

I, like most, am constantly looking for ways to improve my public speaking skills. Like many, I often watch TED talks to gain ideas, inspiration, and witty one-liners to utilize in my presentations. Carmine Gallow’s article entitled, 9 Public-Speaking Lessons From The World’s Greatest TED Talks, is a great synopsis of how there is a style to TED talks, and how this same style can be incorporated into everyday presentations.

There are two ways to summarize this article. The first, and the conventional way, would be with the nine bullet points below. However, it is more exciting to view the most watched TED talk of all time via this link. This TED talk, like many others, illustrates eight of the nine points below (The presenter does not use any materials, so point #8 does not apply).

  1. Unleash the master within.
  2. Tell three stories.
  3. Practice relentlessly.
  4. Teach your audience something new.
  5. Deliver jaw-dropping moments.
  6. Use humor without telling a joke.
  7. Stick to the 18-minute rule.
  8. Favor pictures over text.
  9. Stay in your lane.

Aside from the list, I would like to add one more bullet point that I see as a theme through most of the great presentations that I have seen, the one you may have just watched included.

  1. Take chances.

I would like to point out one skill in particular that this article highlights and the TED talk illustrates – storytelling. This presenter is a phenomenal storyteller. He paints vivid images for the audience through the use of tales about his family, his friends, or moments in history that help bring his points to life. When this powerful imagery is combined with his vibrant scene of humor that both engages and captivates the audience, his message becomes memorable, and he gains instant credibility based on the audience liking him, not his actual subject knowledge.

The points raised in the article do not differ from the lessons learned in MP over the past year. Style, delivery, and content are at the heart of every presentation. The only way to improve these skills is to practice and learn from mistakes made along the way. For anyone with trepidation about public speaking, weather at school or at work, read this article and watch this TED Talk, you will be glad that you did.

Read more: 9 Public-Speaking Lessons From The World’s Greatest TED Talks

Watch the TED Talk: Ken Robinson: How schools kill creativity

 

Uncategorized

Beyond Powerpoint: Innovative Presentation Tools

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The most common presentation software, Microsoft Powerpoint, has remained largely unchanged for the past two decades, and has several well-known drawbacks that impede the ability of presenters to tell their story to the audience.  Fortunately, a new generation of presentation software has recently been developed.  Below I’ve highlighted a several innovative presentation tools designed to promote dialogue,  introduce real-time data into presentations, and foster collaboration between people creating presentations.

Presentation Structure

Powerpoint forces the presenter to present to the audience in a linear format.  The problem with a linear format is that many concepts require multiple dimensions  to display the interconnected nature of the subject matter.  Enter Prezi, a new presentation software to create a ‘spacial narrative’ that not only allows for a 2 or 3 dimensional presentation flow and visualization, but also allows the presenter to stop at any point, and ‘zoom’ to any portion of the overall presentation.  Prezi is especially great for more interactive, discussion based meetings, or for subject matter that does not have a distinctly linear format.   Links to some great ‘sample’ Prezi presentations are provided below.

Real Time Data

A blog article from the Harvard Business Review website called “Presentation Tools That Go Beyond ‘Next Slide Please'” by Nolan Browne notes that ‘presentation tools have largely been static, creating an artificial boundary between the presentation and the outside world.”  Power point slides are great for capturing the state of things at a particular moment in time, similar to how a balance sheet captures the financial situation of a company at the end of a quarter. For presentations that touch on subject matter that is constantly changing, this can cause a lot of extra work in changing the content, or require that the presenter present out of date information.  Several new tools are working to help bring real-time data into presentations.  Zoho Show, a component of Zoho Docs, an online suite of productivity tools similar to Microsoft Office, allows users to insert live media and data from a variety of online sources directly into a presentation.

Collaboration

Powerpoint impedes collaboration in several ways.  First, its difficult to collaborate with others when creating a new presentation.  Presenters either have to create slides separately, and then splice them together to create a whole presentation.  This method usually leads to a presentation with an uneven flow due to differences in writing, style, format etc. of the different presenters slides.  Alternatively, presenters either have to meet in real time to create the presentations, or email revisions back and forth, which can be difficult to manage.  Online collaboration tools like Dropbox and Google Drive help with this issue by creating a centralized document that the presenters can share.

Powerpoint also inhibits in-meeting collaboration between those in the meeting.  For example, if a presenter would like to collaborate with the meeting participants during the presentation to edit a graph, they either need to use the cumbersome and slow feature to imbed an excel plot within Powerpoint, or open up a separate excel file.  A new program called Plotly allows users to create interactive graphs that foster collaboration and discussion about the data.  Google Drive allows multiple users to use a single document at one time, and shows where each users cursor is on the document so that each participant can keep track of where the other users are concentrating.

Here are several sample Prezi presentations.  My goal for this MP course is to create at least one Prezi presentation for my job and gather the meeting participants feedback on the experience.

Source:

Browne, Nolan. “Presentation Tools That Go Beyond “Next Slide Please””Harvard Business Review. N.p., 24 Apr. 2014. Web. 12 July 2014.

07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 07c-Telling stories, 07d-Delivering a presentation, metaphors, Uncategorized

Storytelling: Displaying the Struggle Between Expectation and Reality

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Most of us in the evening MBA program are knowledge workers.  We don’t work with our hands, we don’t physically produce goods, we either create, analyze or transfer knowledge. Transferring knowledge from one person to another is the most challenging, because no two people think in the exact same way, but also the most important, because it is what drives change. Whether its giving a presentation, writing an important email, or having a tough conversation, my instinct is to fall back on my engineering background and rely on data and facts – and more often then not, doing this doesn’t inspire action.

The Harvard Business Review conducted an interview with screenwriting coach Robert McKee called “Storytelling That Moves People.”  In the interview, McKee talks about how storytelling is a crucial skill for business leaders to be able to motivate their coworkers, customers and partners to navigate through business challenges. McKee describes two types of storytelling that business leaders use.  The first uses conventional rhetoric and statistics, which, if successful, persuades people only on an intellectual level, which doesn’t inspire people to act. The second method of storytelling is to unite an idea with an emotion to persuade people on an emotional level and get them to act.

In the conversation, McKee describes the most difficult part of effective emotional persuasion through story-telling:  discussing the struggle. We all have a tendency, especially at work, to paint a rosy picture.  We want to be viewed as always succeeding, always in control, and always right.  McKee argues that story without a struggle doesn’t inspire because it doesn’t connect people on an emotional level about the challenges we all face.  To be a good storyteller,  according to McKee, “you want to display the struggle between expectation and reality in all its nastiness.”  McKee goes further to say that “the energy to live comes from the dark side…as we struggle against these negative powers, we’re forced to live more deeply, more fully.”

As an engineer working for a marketing company, the most difficult part of my job is persuading others to act while not falling back on data and statistics, and not painting a rosy picture.  Even though its challenging, telling stories that include a struggle has a tendency to unite people as they think about adversity in their own jobs, which usually causes them to rally around your goals.

As McKee says in the article, being a great storyteller alone won’t make you a great leader, but it is a skill that will help make you a better leader and help you to inspire action in others.  You can access the article through the Goizueta Business Library website, through the “Business Source Complete” database (search “Storytelling That Moves People”).

Source:

Fryer B. Storytelling That Moves People. Harvard Business Review [serial online]. June 2003;81(6):51-55. Available from: Business Source Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed July 12, 2014.

07c-Telling stories

Easy on the Slides, Heavy on the Story

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I currently work for a large energy management company, specifically on a team that develops new software applications that promote internal efficiencies of business processes. Every few months I find myself in front of groups of engineers, project managers, and business managers presenting information regarding the latest set of features released in our software applications. The presentation material is always technical, the demonstrations are always technical, and the questions and answers exchanged with the audience are always technical. My purpose is to equip the audience with the technical knowledge to enable them to turn-around and use the software applications to their fullest.

Needless to say, I don’t often weave storytelling into my technical presentations. I’m not particularly looking to close a sale or win over a new investor with my presentations. However, with aspirations to venture into entrepreneurship post-MBA, I have been considering the art of storytelling as a skill that may be extremely beneficial in my near future. An Inc.com article by Riley Gibson highlights three reasons why mastering the art of storytelling can help entrepreneurs and start-ups succeed (Article Link).

1. Stories are Memorable.

No matter how great your idea is or how much data you have to prove its greatness, if your audience isn’t connected to what you are saying, they won’t care or remember after you finish. Gibson points out Dollar Shave Club and their over-the-top hilarious commercials. No PowerPoint slides or bar charts, just a witty and entertaining delivery that won’t quickly be forgotten by viewers, or more importantly investors.

2. Stories Travel Further.

Gibson suggests that memorable stories are much easier to recall in the future than detailed specifications or statistics. The accuracy to which your business idea or venture is retold by others after your initial presentation is very important. In essence, a memorable story will travel more accurately and further than other techniques.

3. Stories Inspire Action.

Finally, Gibson points out that entrepreneurs often need to inspire action, which may be among investors, employees, or even customers. Spilling out data or specifications isn’t likely to motivate the majority of audiences. Rather, a compelling story can reveal the what, why, and how that is behind the action and in-turn can help to inspire the action that is desired.

With a technical background, it will be a challenge for me to punt the PowerPoint slides filled with technical jargon and transition to the development of a story that is 1) memorable, 2) can be accurately recounted, and 3) inspire action. However, I fully agree with Gibson, with a high level of competition in the marketplace for investors and customers, it is of the upmost importance to be able to set your company or idea apart from the rest.

 

Article Link: http://www.inc.com/riley-gibson/3-reasons-every-start-up-should-tell-more-stories.html