EP 177 How to Structure Stories in Your Presentations - Public Speaking June 25, 2016

What is the best way to structure your story when giving a presentation?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life Speaking with TJ Walker.

This question comes from one of our regular Udemy students. This is from Ahmed Yousafi and he writes in with the following what is the best way to prepare the structure of my story? Stories are one of these things that really gets people tangled up. Because on the one hand, when I ask people all over the world who are the best speakers you like, what do you remember from the best speakers you've seen in the last year or five years? Everybody always says the same thing. They remember the stories. They may remember the passion someone brings, but they remember the story. They do not remember slides, even well done slides. If you ask them, what do you remember? They do not remember how many bullet points and facts and numbers are in the speech, but they do remember stories. Hence the importance of stories. Now, there are probably thousands of books and I've read hundreds of them myself just on how to tell stories more effectively. And you can spend the next six months learning every single aspect of structure and surprise and timing with your stories. I want to cut through that and try to simplify things for you because if we make this too complex, it becomes an excuse not to tell stories, and that's the worst of all possible worlds. I want to give you very specific tips in just a moment.

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First of all, let's step back and establish some basics. The reason to tell a story in a presentation is you've isolated a particular message, a point you're trying to communicate to the audience, and the story really sums it up and drives home that point in a way that people can understand, visualize and remember. Unless you are a professional comedian or humorist or you're trying to be the next Garrison Keiller, you shouldn't just get up on stage and start telling stories. To be telling stories, the stories need to make a point. So first and foremost, if your storytelling is going to be successful, your audience needs to instantly understand exactly the point you are trying to make. They shouldn't be confusing. And so it's nice that TJ has a daughter and she likes to swim. But why is he telling me this story? It doesn't make. I don't care. I don't know his daughter. You don't want people in the audience scratching their head saying, why is this person being self indulgent. So so much of the success of your story has to do not with the structure of the story, but just did you make a good decision that this story clearly dramatizes a point that people can understand is useful and relevant to them? Now, assuming you've done that, what is the best way to structure your story? In my experience, the best way most might not work for the championship at Toastmasters for the World Championship. I understand that it might not work to that degree. But for most people, business people, students, political leaders, the best way to structure your story is to simply relive it the way you experienced it and to tell it the way you first told it when you came home and told a family member or friend, oh my gosh, you're not going to believe what happened today to simply tell it you experienced. Now, there are certain Broadway stars who would take issue with this. There are certain so called public speaking experts who spend all of their time helping people with stories who would take issue with this. But this is the simplest way. You might not win keynote competitions and oratorical contests, but it's going to be easy for you. It's therefore increase the odds that you put the story into your presentation. The biggest difference between great speakers and average ones and awful ones, in my view, is not the number of ums or uhs in a presentation. It's not the eye contact, although that can be important. It's not whether you walk around during the presentation and get away from the lectern, although that can be a nice benefit. The single biggest differentiator between great speakers and awful ones is that great speakers illustrate every key point with a story. Here's the thing about stories. Since most business people and most politicians never tell stories, even a poorly told story is going to be better than no story. Even a presentation with a couple of average mediocre stories will be more memorable and will be better than all the other speakers that day in most situations. Now, if you are appearing on stage at the National Speakers association and everyone is incredibly polished and everyone has their signature story, yeah, it won't necessarily win any competitions there either. It's not that I want you to have low expectations, but I want you to have very, very specific expectations that you can actually put into action. And that's why I stress the method of simply relive your experiences and you'll be much, much better off. That's how you and the more you tell stories, the better you get. You get more experience and experience helps with any sort of presentation opportunity. I think I'm better now than I was 20 years ago in part, and 30 years ago in part, because I've had good presentations and bad ones. I've been booted off stages. I've had standing ovations. I've had media interviews that went so well, the producer says, hey, we got to have you back regularly. We need to make you a regular commentator. And I've had other interviews that were so awful that it was just humiliating. I remember my worst experience ever. I was down in South Florida on a small talk radio show promoting a book of mine. It was campaign season at this point. It was literally 20 years ago, and there was an incumbent president running for reelection. I said something positive about him, and the host did not like that. He was of a different political persuasion. So he looked at me and said, tj, I have more respect for a Klansman than I do for you. And he pulled the microphone right out of my hand. I said, that's ridiculous. And I pulled the microphone back. And we're struggling. We're going back and forth. Next thing I know, the host looks at me and says, DJ, I think you are 100% wrong. And it's talk radio now. No one can see it. He reaches under the table, pulls out a gun and points it. You know what I said at that moment? Not much. It wasn't my best media moment ever. It wasn't anything great. In fact, my friends listening to it recorded it and played it for me for years later because they enjoyed seeing me made a fool of. It was so memorably bad and embarrassing. And I got out of that studio quickly. Actually, the host said, get out of here. He screamed, call the police. Get him out of here. He was so theatrical. But was it theater? Was it real? I don't know enough about guns to know. But even though it was an awful experience, even though it was humiliating, I still went back to that station three weeks later and guest hosted for other shows. Now, I stayed away from this particular host because I do think he's crazy and insane. But I went back to the station. I didn't let it persuade me to not ever do talk shows again or not go back to that station. I went back because I like communicating. I like helping other people communicate. I have a passion for it. I'm not going to let one bad experience keep me away. All right, so what did I just do there? I told story. I've told the story many times before. It's not memorized. Could it be structured a little bit, maybe? But does the story work. The reason I tell that story is I want people to realize that their trainer, their so called expert, he's had mistakes too, and he's not perfect all the time. And that he has expertise going back years of successes and failures. And that's why I'm more credible to talk about this. So that's a story I use when I'm doing presentation training or media training. Is it the most brilliant story ever? No, but it does work. How do I know that? Because people remember it. People come up to me sometimes years later and point a finger at me and say, hey tj, you had any guns pointed at you on talk shows lately? So I know that they remember it. Therefore it works. When I told that story, I wasn't conscious about thinking of, well, let's introduce the setting and then the character and then the dialogue. But it did have a setting. It was in a talk radio show in South Florida. It did have a character, the other host. It did have a conflict. The host pulls a gun on me. It did have dialogue. It's what I said and what the other person said to me. It did have some resolution. I got out alive. And it had a moral to the story, which is not every media interview is going to be a success. But you keep trying. You go back, you try to learn. So it had all the story elements, but all I did was essentially close my eyes and relive that experience that I find for most business people, political people, civic leaders, most of the time is far and away the easiest way to structure your presentation. So that is my advice. Thanks for your question. Thanks to all the questions. That's what's driving this show. This is, by the way, episode 170, 177 shows. The questions keep coming. I'll keep coming back to you every single day. I'm TJ Walker. May all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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