Tell Stories

There are a lot of different type of great communicators in the world. Different styles. You can be an excellent communicator and be completely different from someone else who's also perceived to be an excellent communicator. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy, all considered great communicators. But different styles and the fact that one didn't mimic the other didn't matter. However, there is one trait that I find amazingly consistent among all great communicators around the world. Here it is. Great communicators tell stories. They illustrate their key points with stories. Abraham Lincoln did it. Probably the most effective communicator in your company or organization does it. They realize stories are not extra. They're not fluff, they're not a luxury. They're not something you do just if you have extra time or time to kill. Stories are essential when it comes to communicating the point you want your audience to understand and remember. Stories help trigger the memory process. And it's really, really crucial, an important part of being a communicator. Because if people don't remember what you said, what have you accomplished? Now a lot of people say, TJ I'm not a natural born storyteller. I can't do that. Well, baloney. All of us tell stories all the time. Someone runs you off the road on the way home from work, and your spouse says, how was your day? You don't say, at 7:00am I woke up at 7:02, I went to the bathroom at 7:04, I made coffee at 7. You don't list every single thing you did minute by minute through the day. You say, oh, my gosh, Jerry, you're never going to believe it. I'm driving down I95. Next thing I know, I'm in a ditch. This guy is honk. You launch right into the story about what was the most interesting thing that happened to you that day, if something dramatic happened. So we tell stories all the time with family and friends, with one person. The problem is when we get into a different situation that takes us out of our comfort zone. For example, a job interview, a meeting with a board of directors, a speech. We tell ourselves this situation is different, and we freeze up. We stop telling the stories. And we feel like we have to be professional and just stick with the facts. No, you don't. You need to illustrate your key points with stories. And you can learn how to do this. Anyone can get better. People can improve as communicators. I'm here to tell you I make a living a pretty Nice living as a communicator. But I wasn't always a great communicator. I was very, very shy as a kid. Never said much of anything. Until one day my teacher came to me in sixth grade. Said, tj, I got good news and bad news. The good news is you're getting pretty good grades on your report card. The bad news is I'm giving you a low mark, a C minus on handwriting. But I'll make a deal with you. I'll give you an A in handwriting if you just give the graduation welcoming speech to parents, teachers, and students for the sixth grade graduation. I thought about it for a minute. I didn't really like the idea of speaking, but I said, okay, Mrs. Strute, what do I have to lose? Why not? So I got my speech all gathered up. It was probably 30 seconds long. I wrote it and rewrote it. There I was at Bruns Avenue Elementary School in the inner city of Charlotte, North Carolina, graduation day. I stand up, head down, reading the speech, sat down. Not exactly a standing ovation. But the speech wasn't a disaster. I got through it, and I graduated, and I got an A on my report card. So I learned at a very early age that if you just stand up and speak, good things will happen to you, even if it's not the best speech. Because most people don't want to do it. Okay, so what did I do there? I told you a story, had a character, had a little bit of attention. I was nervous about it, had some dialogue, had a setting. Is it the most dramatic story in the world? No. Is it going to win a big prize? No. But it does make the point that anyone can learn how to communicate more effectively. People aren't born being natural communicators. It's a learned skill. That's the only message I was trying to convey and that. Even your instructor wasn't born great at this. He had to learn, too. He had to start off being awful, too. So it's a simple story to make a simple point, but it makes it more memorable. Whatever you do. If you really want to communicate, whether you're talking to one person, 1,000 or 1 million, you need stories to amplify your key points.