Storytelling
What do all successful leaders have in common? They are story tellers.
If you are good at something but not good at story telling, you end up being the second-in command.
You want to be in the top 1% of your field? Easy trick - deliver exactly the same as everyone else but be a story teller.
Story telling is not finite art. You continuously iterate and perfect it.
Why should you care?
People are always bored and no one has time. Modern minds are used to having personalized, dopamine-inducing external input within a reach of seconds. We are more agitated now than our ancestors were at sitting idle.
Story listening is ingrained within us. When we were hunter-gatherers, a typical day brought in many levels of anxieties. You never know if you will get food enough for that day. Or if you will die hunting that day. Or if you will die from an unknown disease. So when they came back to home at the end of the day, the group used to huddle around and listen to one person in the group - the story teller. The story teller told marvelous stories- some are beyond wild imagination, some invoked laugh, some invoked warmth, some invoked surprise, some invoked tears. But all stories did one thing - they made you forget the problems of the present.
World rewards beautiful story tellers
We elect politicians not because they are better leaders but because they are better orators.
We don't have time and we have lot of anxieties. Story tellers crystalize the knowledge and present it in a fashion that is beautiful, concise and removes uncertainty.
So we pay/reward anyone who does that.
How do you do it?
Content, structure and delivery are the pillars.
If you don't have content, there is nothing to paint a story about. Go build your content bank.
Structure your thoughts
Write first. Speak later.
In the initial days, what helped me the most is to just write what I was going to say, before I say it. Once you write down, you will know how boring your content is. So you can truncate the unwanted portions.
Order of points
All of your points cannot be equally important. Prioritize.
Points inside points
Sub points give more weight to the parent points. They also give you priority. You can use them if you/your audience need them. you can discard if they don't.
Rule of 3 (read more here)
If you can tell one and only one thing. That is the best place to be. Clear. Simple. Easy to remember. Easy to nail. The second best is 3.
Have 3 main points. And inside each main point, have 3 sub points and so on.
It forces structure. You will sound more decisive. It grabs people attention.
Try saying out loud - "I have 10 things to tell you", "I have 3 things to tell you. First... second... third..." Which one is better?
Empathy and understanding of audience is the difference between knowledgeable speaker and wise speaker.
Understand your audience - What do they know before this? What do they have to know after this? Your speech cannot be the same for every single person. It has to be tailored to every single person (ideally). The second best is tailor to groups.
Know when to go into micro level details and when to paint macro level picture. Enjoy dancing that thread.
Ease and surprise the audience mind.
Setting up agenda upfront eases the minds. So there is less chaos. Audience opens up to you to entertain them.
And when they do- surprise them.
Minds remember first, last and highest-peaks. Everything else is ignored. Use those effectively.
Closing thoughts
I still remember the first time I was on stage for a hackathon presentation. My hands shaked like a Parkinsons patient. I was nervous as hell. No one understood even one word I said. And despite having, I think, the best product we didn't win.
Cut to few years later. I was a Product Manager giving a product update to 50+ people in a startup.
And I still have a long way to go. My English is bad (or more like a five-year old). I blabber when I am not conscious or if I am caught by surprise.
Story telling is a very fundamental art. Writing and speaking are just two ways to do it that are relevant to modern workplace. It takes time. It takes patience. But the rewards make it worth it.
Do it actively and do it because you want to be that person.
