I’ve recently been working with some teams on presentations that summarized a 6-month training program we led with them. The presentations were supposed to share each team’s journey throughout the program, highlighting wins, losses and learnings to the work as well as to their ways of working. We worked with the teams to iterate their presentations nearly 3 times each. The end result was worlds apart from where they started – in a good way. The teams did a fantastic job sharing the story of their journeys. 

What this demo day exercise reminded me is that storytelling is such an important part of doing great work. Many of us don’t lead with authority. Compelling stories allow us to lead with influence. The other thing I was reminded of was that storytelling is hard. It’s intentional. It’s designed. Those of us who can compose and share engaging stories are more successful at getting our message across and influencing even those who outrank us. Here are 2 things I think about when crafting a story (presentation, talk, keynote, pitch, etc):

Who am I presenting to?

In any situation, but especially If I’m trying to influence without authority, the first thing I consider is who I’m telling the story to. If I know the people personally I’ll focus my conversation based on what I know about them. Either way, I want to get my mind around:

• What role do they play? 
• What role does my initiative or idea have in their lives? 
• What level of experience do they have with the subject matter? 
• What language do they use?

Are they executives weighing funding a new initiative that may redefine how the company does business? Or are they individual contributors who need to be convinced to try a new way of working? 

Are they technical people? Or is their domain expertise somewhere else? Is the language I’m going to use not only relevant to them but clear? Am I going to use jargon that I expect them to understand? How do I know they’ll understand it?

All of these questions start to give me a sense of how to make up the initial components of my story. 

What do they care about?

Once I have my target audience persona laid out, I ask the next most important question about them. What do they actually care about? In other words, what will make them heroes at the end of this presentation? 

I know that you may love the technical solution you and the team came up with to build your new product but if you’re presenting to a room of finance and legal folks you’ll likely have to gloss over that part of the story. Instead you may focus on how this new product is already helping us make progress towards our budget goals, reduce our operating costs and minimize our exposure to lawsuits.Or you may be super proud of the business model you came up with for this new service but the room full of technical software engineers are more concerned about whether or not they can build it – before it makes its first cent. 

If you’re trying to influence a specific audience persona ask yourself what you want them to take away from your story. This helps you understand exactly where to “land” your story arc. Interviewing a few of these folks ahead of time to get a sense of what they’re expecting from you is never a bad idea either. It will also help you get a better sense of what the big takeaway should be. 

Just the beginning…

We’re just starting to cover the various to put together a compelling story. There are lots of other steps but, for now, it’s best to start with your target audience. Build a confident model of them and the rest of the pieces start to fit in much more easily. 

P.S. – Josh Seiden and I are putting together a cohort-based storytelling course. Interested? Let me know.