Ep 287 | How to Tell a Great Story

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Have you ever tried to motivate your team or your peers or your family to go take an action or to go a certain direction and you were unsuccessful? Like you just didn't motivate them? Or have you ever been standing up in front of a room and you wanted to convey a message and you were all excited about this message and you thought it was going to inspire and it was going to rally everybody or that you were going to get some excitement and it's just a total dud. You just totally bomb. I hope you haven't had that experience. I definitely have. And I realized, and still realize today, that a lot of the reason that I am not gaining buy-in or support or motivation for an idea, say with a team or a group, or when I'm trying to inspire and maybe miss the mark, I've realized that a lot of that has to do with the fact that the story I was sharing was really either not that good or not good enough. And I think that we could all get better at storytelling. As a matter of fact, some of the greatest leaders this world has ever seen are in fact great storytellers. So I'm prepping, even though we are, uh, I don't know, probably 6, 7 weeks out from our next Metrics Masterminds event, uh, in mid-June, you know, here we are almost beginning of May, I think is when this is going to air. So, uh, mid-June, so we're about 6, 7 weeks out. From our next Metrics Masterminds event, I've been working on, you know, some themes that we'll be discussing. And one of those themes in fact is going to be around storytelling. Ben, my partner in Metrics, and I, we're going to talk about our experiences with storytelling and what we've studied, what we've implemented. And in the spirit of that, or in the process of that, I thought I had to share some brief notes for you to be thinking around if in fact you want to start being a better storyteller. We tell stories to our coworkers, to our peers all the time. And again, that's to persuade them to support a project or explain how, you know, someone might improve or to inspire a team that's facing challenges. It's an essential skill to tell a great story, but what exactly makes for a compelling story? In a business context? And how in fact can you improve your ability to tell stories that motivate or persuade or inspire? In reviewing some Harvard Business Review content this week, I thought I had to share some of the points that I found with you. Number 1, you got to start with a message. It's kind of a given, but every storytelling exercise should begin by asking Who is my audience and what is the message I want to share with them? I want you to think about that. Seems kind of obvious, but when you've been telling a story in a business context in the past, have you really thought around your audience and more importantly, the message you wanted them to hear? Every decision about your story should flow from the answers to those questions. Leaders need to ask, what is the core, uh, moral movement or influence that I'm trying to implant in my team? What do I want them to feel? How can I boil that down to a compelling single statement? Start with a message. Get clarity around the intent around the story that you're about to share. Number 2, I want you to think about your own experiences. The best storytellers I know, probably the best storytellers you know, look to their own memories and life experiences for ways to illustrate their message. So what events in your life make you believe in the idea that you're trying to share? So I want you to think about a moment in which your own failures, say, led to success in your career, or a lesson that you were given by a parent or a mentor or whatever it may be, depending on your topic. These are things that could shape your story. Now, there may be a tendency not to want to share personal details, especially in a work scenario, but anecdotes that illustrate a struggle or a failure or barriers to overcome are what make you as the storyteller authentic. And accessible, and most importantly, vulnerable. Now on that note, if number 1 was start with the message and number 2 is, you know, leverage your own experiences, number 3 is make sure you don't make yourself the hero. You cannot be the star of your own story. A story about you is the central— like you could be the central figure, but the ultimate focus should be on the people you know, the lessons you've learned, the events you've witnessed, Make the audience, if you can, or the employees or whoever you're talking to, the hero. You're trying to increase their engagement. You're trying to increase their willingness to buy into your message. Likely, you're likely not going to be successful if you were in fact the hero. One of the main reasons we listen to stories is to create a deeper belief in ourselves. But when the storyteller starts talking about how great they are, It shuts your audience down. Take a moment, think about a storyteller that you know, or a present— presentation that you've been to when the storyteller makes themselves the hero. More oftentimes than not, I'm going to guess that you probably shut down a little bit and you stopped hearing that message. I witnessed one of these speeches not too long ago by one of my absolute favorite podcasters. My opinion on him did not change. But I listened to him talk for an hour and 45 minutes of the talk were about him and his accomplishments and the things he's overcome, but he never related those things back to the audience. He still stayed focused on himself overcoming these odds and what a hero he ended up being. And so he didn't connect with the audience as a result. The more you celebrate your own decisions, the less likely your audience is going to connect with you. And it's less likely— the audience is less likely to connect with your message. Highlight a struggle in your story. Remember, start with the message, use your own experiences, don't make yourself a hero. But number 4 would be highlight a struggle. A story without a challenge simply isn't very interesting. And I think good storytellers understand the story needs some degree of conflict. Is there a competitor that we have to beat? Is there a market challenge that has to be overcome? Is there something coming up that's gonna throw us all for, you know, a trip or a ride? We actually like— audiences like to be told it's going to be hard. And I think really smart leaders tell their people, this is going to be tough, but if we band together, if we hang in there, we can achieve something amazing in the end. You've got to highlight that struggle and craft the story with a rallying cry of sorts. Last couple things, keep it simple. Not every story you tell has to be some sort of edge-of-your-seat epic. Some of the most memorable stories are pretty straightforward, pretty simple. So don't create some sort of needless details. Less is more. Work from that principle that less is more. It's one of the biggest mistakes I think storytellers make. Is they put too much detail of the wrong kind into their story. The audience doesn't know, doesn't need to know what the, what day of the week it was, for instance, or, you know, what you were wearing. Like, we don't need that detail. We want to know how you felt, right? We want to know, you know, what you were experiencing internally at that moment. We want to know about the humble beginnings of what's now a great company. Like, we want to hear that sort of thing. Immerse us as the audience in your story and drive home your message. Very last thing, of course, practice. You want to be a great storyteller? It's an art form. It requires repeated effort to get it right. So practice, practice your stories. You know, some great storytellers, odds are they've got some natural behavior that sets them up to be a good storyteller. Odds are they tell a lot of stories too, which means they have a lot of practice. So tell your stories that you intend to present, tell them often and get practice around the words you're using, how you're saying them, the pacing, all of that. In summary, right? We all aim to be better leaders. We all aim to inspire, motivate, lead. The way we do that Or one of the ways we do that is to, is to become great storytellers. So think around all that I shared here today and ask yourself, gosh, where's there an opportunity for me to improve? Think around that tonight, present a story tomorrow and see how it goes. Use this framework and let's see, you know, how your story sounds in comparison to what you may have been doing haphazardly before. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.