19 Oct Three Powerful Reasons Storytelling Works in Business

Storytelling is an advanced communication tool that can build rapport, increase retention and powerfully persuade.  Capturing, structuring and delivering relevant stories is an invaluable skill in business.

1)  Build Rapport – Experiences are unique; however, emotions are universal.  Telling a short, interesting personal story allows the listener to tap into the same emotion as the teller, creating a memorable rapport.  The effectiveness depends upon expressing the relevant emotion in the story.

2) Increase Retention – How often have you been in a networking situation and found it difficult to remember someone’s name and business 30 seconds after she or he said it?  Try telling a short story about your business, tapping into precisely how what you do benefits humanity.  Focusing on how you benefit humanity will resonate with your listener, whom we assume is a human.

3)  Persuade –  Storytelling answers the question, “Why?”  Telling a relatable and relevant story that answers what will happen if I do or don’t do something can be very persuasive.   The listener can imagine him/herself in real-time and feel the consequences of the choice at hand when the story is told well.

There are countless ways to use storytelling as a communication tool in business.  You may have noticed that relevance is the thread that runs through all three.  Use storytelling to demonstrate the relevance to your listener, if you can’t do that, you should not be talking.  Relationship building, making information stick, and convincing others are three of the most common ways to use this skill.

29 May He/She Always Interrupts Me

Both sexes can perpetrate and suffer interruptions. Yet researchers in the art of communication have repeatedly found that from the age of three on, males tend to interrupt and females tend to pass the conversational ball. The right to interrupt or dominate a conversation often serves as an expression of superiority or status. Nevertheless, when women yield the floor to men, it is not so much a display of inferiority as an indication of the importance they attach to accommodating others in conversation.

Even conversationally accommodating people can come off as interlopers. Women like to overlap a speaker with words of encouragement, agreement, or a parallel situation. (“I know what you mean, Bill. My family also had to struggle to make ends meet.”) Though she intends to establish empathy, she may annoy a man who doesn’t value verbal displays of support. (“That wasn’t my point. Let me finish.”)

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20 Jul How Obama Talks: Why Obama Needs a Teleprompter

Commentary by Laurie Schloff

“When Obama’s telempromter screen shattered abruptly at a White House press briefing last week, the audience held its collective breath.

Obama’s communication strength lies in his ability to deliver a prepared, pre-written speech, not to ad lib, “wing it” or be impromptu. Communication coaches observe that this difference in skill depending on context is not unusual at all. In fact, John McCain (remember him?) was way more smooth when responding to on-the-spot questions than
reading off a teleprompter.

Luckily for Obama, there was an additional teleprompter screen at his briefing and he continued on with his usual grace.”

Question: What do you like or not like about the way Obama speaks?

Next Obama Talk: What’s he doing with his hands?