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Strategic Storytelling for Business Presentations - By Doug StevensonPeople remember the stories! You can give a presentation that?s a dazzling display of your vast intellectual knowledge, but when all is said and done, people remember the stories.Studies about how adults learn show that memory is formed when a person?s attention is engaged over a sustained period of time, and it is enhanced when auditory, visual and kinesthetic senses are stimulated. In his book, The Owners Manual for the Brain, Pierce J. Howard, Ph.D. addresses the three stages of memory formation. The immediate memory is like a buffer area that can hold thousands of pieces of data for two seconds or less. The short-term memory is a like a broker that selects chunks of data to remember, but it takes about eight seconds of attention to add one new chunk of short-term memory. A new chunk of short-term memory becomes long-term memory when your attention is engaged over a sustained period of time. When you listen to a good storyteller, you hear the story with your head, heart and soul. You?re not a passive listener - you?re an active participant. As the storyteller is relating his or her experience, you?re experiencing it as if it were your story. You feel what the storyteller feels, and see what the storyteller sees. You memorize and retain the chunks of information contained in the story because you see the images, hear the sounds, and feel the emotions. The story engages your attention on many levels, for a sustained period of time, so when the storyteller makes the point, the learning sticks. Storytelling transcends an intellectual experience. When you cram a ton of information into a training session or presentation, you?re doing a data dump on your audience! The problem is, they can?t process your data as fast as you can dump it. Their brain gets stuck in immediate and short-term memory mode. You dump the data on them and they dump the data into their mental trash bin. Nothing sticks. Yet, have you ever sat in an all-day training and had a hard time remembering anything the speaker said, but still you were able to go back to the office and re-tell their stories? This is because stories stick. In my Story Theater Retreats and Workshops, I perform stories as tutorials. In one story, I act out my experience when I went streaking in the summer of 1974 in Westwood, California and got arrested, naked, by the LAPD cops. When I?m finished performing the story, I ask my students to describe what they experienced. Some say they watched me streak past them as if they were standing in the movie theater line on the sidewalk. Some describe my 1962 Volkswagen bus with a psychedelic paint job or the sound of the cop?s sirens and the flashing lights. Some describe anxiety or embarrassment, and some even say they felt the hot and humid summer night air as they ran right along with me. For a story to come alive and captivate an audience, the content, structure and performance must be crafted strategically. The story itself is only a beginning. Storytelling is an art and the storyteller, the artist. And, all artists need tools. The actor needs a stage, props and costumes. The musician needs her instrument. The artist needs his brushes and paint. And the storyteller needs form, content and presentation skills and techniques. The great storytellers distinguish themselves not just by their talent, but also by their dedication to their craft. They think about their stories constantly. They structure the sequence and flow of the story, and experiment to find the right words that are genuinely theirs. They work on a gesture or movement until it is just right. Then they rehearse it over and over until it becomes second nature ? the line and the gesture effortlessly married together. They incorporate acting skills and turn their stories into little theatrical events. In order to have an end result that is amazing, you will have to spend many hours working on your story. Your story must be worked and re-worked, formed and re-formed. You?ll want to find the drama and comedy of your stories and let them shine. You?ll create a combination of ?show and tell? to fully engage the audience ? narrating some parts of the story, and ?stepping into? the present moment of other parts to act them out. You?ll want to make your content come alive with Story Theater! As a speaker, trainer or teacher, if you want your points to stick, then stories are your super glue. Use stories to make a point, teach a lesson and move people to action. Make your stories truly memorable by making them come alive with Story Theater. People remember the stories. Doug Stevenson ------ For more information on how to design your presentations using stories to make your content come alive, sign up for the free Story Theater newsletter at www.storytheater.net. For information on retreats, workshops, train-the-trainer programs and private coaching contact Doug Stevenson at 800-773-0265 or doug@dougstevenson.com. Doug Stevenson is a professional speaker, presentation skills coach and former actor. He is the author of Never Be Boring Again ? Make Your Business Presentations Capture Attention, Inspire Action and Produce Results. He brings a unique perspective to the challenge of business and sales presentations, training and public speaking. He has coached over 500 speakers and professionals on speaking, storytelling, speech construction and delivery. With backgrounds in real estate, construction, and professional acting, Doug brings a salesman?s attitude and a performer?s instinct to all of his presentations. He is dynamic, spontaneous, funny and thought provoking. He now speaks to thousands of people each year on Change, Leadership, Presentation Skills, Strategic Storytelling for Business and Strategic StorySelling for Sales. Doug is a past president of the Colorado chapter of the National Speakers Association, a member of ASTD and a former columnist for the Denver Business Journal. Planning for Success? Don`t Leave Out the Most Important Ingredient! - By Susan Dunn, M.A., the EQ CoachAccording to research by Martin Seligman, Ph.D., pessimists are more often right, but optimists accomplish more. Optimism is an emotional intelligence competency, can be learned, and it can be twice as important to your success and happiness as your IQ. Take a look at some of this exciting research!Optimists attribute every success as permanent, generalize to all parts of their lives, and attribute it to their personal effort. When an optimist wins a contract, he or she thinks, "I always win contracts because I`m good at my job!" Optimism energizes. It leads to energization and anticipation of success in the future. The consequences of negative beliefs are negative things which leads you to withdraw from the situation with decreased enthusiasm. Because pessimists generalize negatively, failure at one task becomes decreased enthusiasm for the job as a whole and their abilities in general. This is the `quitter` mentality. Optimism can equalize other factors. Met Life hired 129 people who didn`t quite pass the industry test but they tested high on an optimism attributional style test. These optimists outsold pessimists by 21% in the first year, and by 57% in year 2. Optimists get better and better; pessimists get worse and worse. University swimmers were told they did poorly in an event (not true). The next swim, the optimists did as well or better, while the pessimists did worse, some (including the team`s best swimmers) considerably worse. Pessimists attribute one failure to their overall ability and lose confidence. Optimists can lose one point and go on to win the game, lost one game and go on to win the match. Optimism indicates when to use a particular player. Use optimists in difficult circumstances, and after failure. Don`t use pessimists when they have just failed. Keep this in mind when managing the team--your success team at home and at work. After all, you can`t do it alone! Sports studies indicate that teams have measurable and meaningful attributional styles, the team attributional style predicts how well the team will do over and above the team`s ability, success is predicted by optimism, failure by pessimism, and explanatory style seems to have its greatest effect when a team is under pressure - after a loss or late in close games. Criterion for using optimism: What are the consequences of failure? If they`re high, don`t use optimism. If they`re low, use optimism. Seligman suggests using Optimism in achievement and performance situations, and when you want to inspire and lead others. Think of Mohammed Ali. How could he enter the ring if he didn`t believe "I`m the greatest!"? When not to use Optimism? When planning a risky and uncertain future and the stakes are high. There`s a certain element of reality-bending to optimism, and some jobs and some situations don`t lend themselves to this: financial analysis, bridge building, flying a plane. Optimism works best in sales, high stress jobs, performance situations, and anything where frequent rejection is a factor. Don?t confuse Optimism with a quick-fix positivity thing. The essence of optimism is what you attribute bad events to and avoiding the negative spiral. Think of the 3 Ps -- permanence, pervasiveness and personalization. The more to attribute negative events to temporary things, limited only to the specific situation, and having nothing to do with you as a causative factor, the more optimistic you`ll be and the more success you`ll have! When you plan for your success, plan first of all to be an optimist. It`s the first thing I put in place for my coaching clients, and I`ve seen it work wonders. Susan Dunn, M.A., The EQ Coach, offers individual coaching, workshops, presentations, Internet courses, ebooks on optimism and other emotional intelligence competencies to give you and your office the winning edge. Visit her on the web at www.susandunn.cc. Project index
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