This is the most common question I get from people who recognize the power of storytelling, but aren’t sure where to begin.
Using and teaching storytelling for over 20 years, I’ve found that there are two paths to finding and selecting stories. The first path starts with the story and then identifies how it can be used. The second path “starts with the end in mind”—the key points and take away messages—and then reverse engineers those into stories that will illustrate, explain, and/or add impact to each point and message.
In this post, I am going to talk about the first path, because it’s the easiest and the most fun. I’ll talk about the second path in a future post.
The Secret to Finding Great Stories: Pay Attention!
Question: Where do you find all these great stories you can use to make your presentations and programs come alive?
Answer: Life! Both yours and other’s.
Here’s the trick, though. You need to pay attention to seemingly insignificant moments of truth if you want to be an effective “story catcher.” The more you practice mindfulness and practice being present to what’s happening all around you, the more you will realize that everyday life gives you an endless supply of stories. When you are out and about, living your life, or when someone is telling you about something that happened to them, notice when you:
- Think, “How funny [as in weird or intriguing] is that?”—Pay attention to any experience that causes you to have that reaction. It probably has major teaching-story potential. For instance, I got an email from a client friend that included this line in response to my asking him about what he’s doing in his workouts: “Yes, i try to stay fit w/barefoot weights, running, and cycling. As a hardcore fitness nut who loves working out barefoot, I couldn’t wait to hear more about his experience with that. When I emailed him back, all enthused about his discovery about the wonders of working out barefoot, his response caught me by surprise.
- Realize that what you believed was true, wasn’t—These include experiences where you “just knew” you couldn’t do something, and then discovered you could. It also includes experiences where you believed something was obviously true, that it was self-evident, and then…surprise!
- Feel Charmed or Intrigued—These experiences are great for making your key points more memorable—i.e. “Sticky”. I once took a simple experience I had with a caterpillar while walking one day, and turned it into a perspective shift story to illustrate how every crisis contains an opportunity waiting to be discovered.
He said, “w/barefoot” was actually an Autofill from his phone. Ever since he had emailed his sister that he would come over “w/barefoot” (as in the brand of wine) his smart phone “saves him the effort” of typing in the rest and Autofills it for him.
I was amused by this and thought, “Hmm…what could this be a metaphor for?” This simple experience is now a teaching story I use both in customer service training and management development programs to make these points:
- “Are you TRULY listening to what the other person is saying or are you simply hearing what you expect to hear…and therefore NOT hearing what they’re saying?”
- “Do you ‘save’ people the effort when they’re trying to explain their problem to you by interrupting them and giving them your ‘answer,’ rather than truly listening?
That amusing experience resulted in the article “ Are You Auto-Filling Instead of Listening?”
You can use these powerful stories to challenge someone’s limiting beliefs or certainty that theirs is the only valid perspective, without triggering a defensive response.
These stories can challenge people without triggering defensiveness because you are merely telling them a story. You’re not directly challenging them. Also, when you are the person in the story who just “knew” they were right, it is especially disarming. The self-effacing nature of the story makes the challenging message “just because you believe it, doesn’t make it true” more gentle and therefore easier to hear. Here’s an example of taking such an experience and using it as a teaching story: “ Limiting Beliefs: What’s Your ‘Tie Behind the Glass?’”
So watch out for experiences that trigger the above responses. Then, reflect on how you might use those experiences as teaching stories.
And how about letting the rest of us know what you noticed and how you can use it as a teaching story or…share your experience below and I’ll show you how I might use that experience as a teaching story.
Finally, if you have questions about what stories to use for a specific teaching point or want feedback on a story you use, please ask your questions for me (@HumanNatureWork) here or on Twitter using the hash tag #LDStories.
I will be doing a live coaching session based on these questions n the near future, so ask away!
