Top salespeople, corporate visionaries, and celebrity-level professional speakers may have significantly different business backgrounds, skill sets, and philosophies – but for the most part, they all share the ability to tell a good story.
As my colleague Sims Wyeth says, “Public speaking is the number one tool of leadership.” If you know you need to improve your public speaking skills, mastering the ability to tell a great story should be high on your list.
Stories have the power to create interest and drama from even the driest data. When you tell a good story, you can teach, inspire, inform, or be persuasive. To accomplish this:
1. Your stories need to be populated with flesh-and-blood characters that others can relate to.
2. You must deliver the dialogue, not report on the dialogue.
3. And above all, you must craft your stories to emotionally connect with your audiences.
Business, after all, isn’t just about numbers and data. It’s about people, situations, conflict, empathy, drama, comedy, and countless other human interactions. Storytelling is too often overlooked as a business technique.
Fortunately, if you are not a born storyteller, the ability to tell a story successfully can be learned. Maximize your effectiveness by learning how to tell powerful and persuasive stories.
Originally published at fripp.com