Here’s a great example straight out of a For Impact training session.
During breaks, at lunch and after the training, I stood in the front with a flipchart and tried to help people with the MESSAGE part of our For Impact sales process.
As always, their message was too much, too complicated, too many words. However, when I asked each to simply TELL ME THEIR STORY … the ‘WORDS’ JUMPED OUT!
HUGE lesson for all of us: Design the STORY! Tell the STORY! SHARE THE STORY!
Stories are magic!
If I say, “Tell me about your organization,” I typically hear a bunch of blah, blah, blah about services, methodology, numbers, plans. (Yawn.) It’s not ‘engaging!’
But if I say, “TELL ME YOUR STORY,” the reply is completely different. It’s heartfelt … and ENGAGES me!!
Stories are about AUTHENTICITY … PASSION … EMOTION and ENTHUSIASM! Stories also involve VISUALIZATION … IMAGINATION. They engage the listener!
As we continued through the training, there was a lot of ‘talk’ about the whole idea of ORAL storytelling. (Campfires, passed along from generation to generation, songs, etc.)
That led to some discussion about the story as the WRITTEN WORD. Playwrights, authors, poets, etc.
I would add one more way to tell a story: VISUALLY.
ORAL STORIES. WRITTEN STORIES. VISUAL STORIES. POWERFUL stuff!
Don’t ‘tell me about your organization’ … TELL ME YOUR STORY!
