Galactic Activity 27

Storytelling uses words to create new worlds and experiences in a reader or listener’s imagination. Storytelling is a powerful tool for leading people to accept original ideas or encourage them to take action.

Activity 27 – Storytelling for the workplace

Duration: 5 -10 mins
Applicable Streams: Personal challenge, Leadership, Learning & Development, Workplace skills, Inspiration/Motivation, Conference/events, Education, Technical, Sales, Meeting Skills, Humour, Comedy

Aim

In this activity you are aiming to:

Tell a story with a particular theme or moral

Objectives

To do this, you will need to keep the following objectives in mind:

Decide on the purpose: what you are trying to achieve by telling the story.
Decide on the emotions you are trying to elicit from the audience.
Structure the story for success with background, supporting details and ‘punchline’.

The Why…

The aim for this activity is to use storytelling to engage an audience, make an impact (in terms of whatever you’re aiming to achieve with your presentation). Why? Stories are easy to remember and help people remember you, your organisation or the reason you’re presenting. When you tell a story people can relate to, it also helps build trust and can be powerful in terms of persuading people to take action.

Where do I start?

The core challenge in this activity is to work out what story you can tell that will have an impact on your intended audience. If you’re in business or employed, think about situations where you need to build trust with your clients or colleagues, and the stories that could help you do that. If you’re part of a community organisation or NFP, which success stories could you tell about work you’ve done in the past that could help drive new members or attract new donors?

The How

Specific guidelines on how to tackle this activity.

First, decide what type of story you’re telling, with what aim and to which audience. As per the variations listed below, you can choose to tell stories for whatever purpose suits your career or community roles; however it’s recommended that you choose business storytelling if you’re employed and/or running a business.
Decide on what the purpose of your story telling is. What are you trying to achieve? If it’s for business for example, can you tell a series of success stories to show the audience how powerful your product or service is? If it’s purely for entertainment, what moral or lesson are you trying to get across?
Decide on what emotions or actions you’re trying to elicit from the audience. This is key to keeping the audience engaged and helping you structure your story for maximum impact.
Structure the story for success. Ensure there is adequate background or context so that the main characters are introduced and the issue, problem or conflict is clear. Add enough supporting details so that the audience can follow without being overwhelmed with unnecessary information; the main part of the story should also be leading the audience towards whatever the resolution, conclusion or outcome the story is going to be. Ensure the moral, lesson or ‘punchline’ is clear at the end, which shows how the original issue or problem is solved.

Variations:

Any of the below can be with the intent of being outrageous, humorous, tear jerking, sad or any emotion you think will build trust with your audience and inspire them to take action.

Business Storytelling
Fictional
Humourous
Children’s storytelling

Tips and traps

TRAPS:

Telling a story logically and chronologically without any entertaining details or twists, makes for a very dull experience. See our tips below!
Adding too many unnecessary details that don’t help you directly deliver the punchline or moral.
Exaggerating or making the story ‘bigger’ than it really is for ‘wow’ factor – audiences can see through this kind of behaviour fairly easily and it will work against you in terms of building trust.
Jumping all over the place because you haven’t practised enough.

TIPS:

Make it as entertaining as possible – the more your audience is engaged, the more likely they are to take the action that you’re hoping for.
Make it as universally appealing as possible – try not to choose a story that would only relate to a small portion of the intended audience.
Keep it as simple and succinct as possible – waffle is a killer!
Be honest – especially if the story also taught YOU something when it was happening – people love it when you can be 100% authentic, admit your mistakes and what you’ve learnt from them – it also helps build trust!
Practise practise practise – the more fluid the story the more relatable it will be to your audience.