In Part I of this series, we explored how stories provide both “inspiration and simulation” as Chip and Dan Heath noted in their book Made to Stick.
In this installment, you’ll see two stories used in a presentation, first to grab the audience’s attention, and second, to create the foundation for discovery-based learning.
Finally, we’ll talk about how to activate your “Story Radar.”
Using Stories To Bring Your Presentations To Life
In the following video, you’ll see stories used to:
- Grab the audience’s attention when starting off a presentation. Stories are among the best ways to start off a presentation. Not only do they instantly pull in the audience, they also help you get into a calm, empowered state. If you have the jitters before a presentation, it’s far easier telling a story about something you experienced than to recite a quote or start off with some abstract take away message. Telling a story first instantly puts you “in the zone” rather than having it take several minutes to get in your groove.
- Provide a simple Case Study to catalyze discussion and discovery-based learning. After the brief intro story, I then tell a story about employees at Fantastic Foods demonstrating what Southwest Airlines calls a Warrior Spirit. I use this to get the audience involved right away, but more specifically engaging their minds to identify key practices that might have led to the behavior described. This is obviously far more engaging than reading off PowerPoint bullet points about what managerial practices led to that behavior.
- Create a “Behavioral Vision." Just as the FedEx story in Part I could be used as a teaching story for new hires at FedEx to communicate “This is the kind of Go The Extra Mile Behavior we do here,” so could the story you will hear me tell about Fantastic Foods.
- Create Mini-Learning Modules. You can use short stories that describe a Moment of Truth—whether between managers and employees or employees and customers—to provide quick, inexpensive learning modules. By adding discussion questions or even self-study questions, you can deliver bite-sized training. This allows you to engage your employees in continuous learning in a way that doesn’t require major time away from their jobs. It also allows you to provide more frequent, ongoing learning because it’s not requiring a major time commitment away from one’s job. For jobs that are especially hard to block out training time—such as call center customer service—this can be an extremely useful model.
Two Stories: One to Capture Attention, One to Engage The Audience in “Discovery Learning”
To watch the video, click here.
Activate Your Story Radar
One of the points the Heaths make that might sound familiar if you’ve read any of my articles on onboarding is the importance of being what they call a Story Spotter and what I call being a Story Collector.
Be on the lookout for things that happen in your organization that illustrate:
- What a great organization you are.
- How every employee can make a difference.
- Behaviors you would like everybody to emulate.
- How much your customers love you.
- Other teachable moments.
Then, write out what you saw and heard. Then, archive your stories in a search-able database and make them available to your leaders.
Smart leaders and smart employers use such stories to:
- Communicate their Employer Brand.
- Reinforce organizational values.
- Provide a “Behavioral Vision” that clearly communicates what behavioral norms you wish people to demonstrate
- Inspire pride in new hire orientation.
- Provide managers with inspiring, concrete examples of desired behaviors and attitudes they can use in their coaching sessions.
- Keep employee morale high during difficult times.
In Part III of this series, we’ll explore how to use stories and analogies to make your ideas “stick,” and help make complex ideas and abstract concepts more understandable at an emotional, visceral level.
David Lee is the founder of HumanNature@Work and an internationally recognized thought leader in the area of optimizing employee engagement and in onboarding. He has used storytelling as a teaching and transformation tool for over 20 years. He is the author of over 60 articles and book chapters that have been published in trade journals and books in the US, Europe, Australia, India, and China. For more of his articles, go to HumanNatureAtWork.com.
Photo credit: Guldfisken