Using Great Storytelling To Grow Your Business

Kaihan Krippendorff wrote this interesting article for Fast Company. Every month or so, Krippendorff gathers together some senior executives and innovators. Recently they found themselves with a group of actors and learned some lessons about storytelling. Here’s what Krippendorff took away from the session:

The experience shocked me, to be honest. I considered myself an expert and snobbishly thought there was little more to learn. How wrong I was. Here are my two key takeaways from this session. Apply them today at your next meeting or phone call and I am willing to bet you will have a better result.

1) Use lots of LOTS. Our facilitator, Gary Lyons, senior coach at The TAI Group, told us a story and had us dissect what we remembered. Do this, and you will realize your audience is often checked out, comatose, or unable to hear or remember what you are saying. The key to engage them is to use lots of “language of the senses,” or LOTS. When telling a story, share with us what you see, smell, feel, taste, and hear. When you trigger a sense in someone, you bring them into the story with you.

2) Build on your story spine. At McKinsey, I was taught to open presentations with a standard structure: situation, complication, question, answer. TAI suggests you use a five-step structure and do so not just to open your presentation, but throughout your talk. They call it the “story spine”: reality is introduced, conflict arrives, there is a struggle, the conflict is resolved, a new reality exists. These two tools caused a profound shift in our abilities to tell effective stories.

Here are the five parts of the “story spine”: Reality introduced; Conflict introduced; Struggle; Conflict resolved; New reality.

Let’s see now, interpreting this per my Narrative Throughline:

Reality introduced: The Opening which introduces the Ordinary World.

Conflict introduced: The Hook where something happens that jumbles the norm and calls the Protagonist to action.

Struggle: Act Two.

Conflict resolved: Final Struggle.

New reality: Denouement.

In terms of LOTS, why do you think I keep hammering the point of creating emotional resonance with the reader, and you can do that through evocative writing that appeals to their senses?

Okay, carry on.

Seriously, the ability to tell a story is a valuable skill-set in all walks of life, whether it’s a high-powered business meeting or because your darling two year-old looks up at you with their big eyes and asks, “Tell me a story.”

I’m thrilled I committed myself to a life of writing and studying stories because I find the entire subject endlessly fascinating.

For more of the article, go here.

HT to @IrishMarine13 for the link.