Story goes like this, in a conference, one speaker did away with the Power Point by saying that it has "neither the power nor the point". I along with many others could see the point. With out referring to text or numbers on the screen he went on to share the story of his topic,with proper build up into the subject, lessons and inferences drawn and closed his narrative with moral of the story rather than conclusions.
We have always been communicating through story telling, as kids with our friends, as grownups in our homes with siblings and parents. Outside with our friends in school. One on one with our colleagues. However when we move on to higher education, specially MBA, we learn to get more " focused" on numbers, graphs, charts and ppts with text and graphics. So much so that bright MBA students start thinking through these tools. What it does? Well these are more like props to help us deliver better. For a moment, imagine, if there are half a dozen props for an actor to deliver his dialogue and do a scene, can he really make it good? I feel even the best one in the world will not be able to engage her audience. That's why at the most a single prop used well, may help in enhancing the narrative. But more props will be distraction from the main theme.
Sit back and think, while speaking in a conf., a board meeting, making a pitch or selling an innovation if again and again speaker refers to the props on the screen, the point may not stick, story may not impact and the job may remain half done. On the other hand, increase the effectiveness of your message and contents by providing the skin of a story and share it as a story. Listeners will listen better, remember better and carry the message better. The posive tradeoffs are the ones which we keep striving for in our professional life.
An experiment was done, where the same information was shared oveor email, social networking site, plain mail and also the colleagues sharing one on one. The result, the last, where colleagues shared one on one, was remembered better and proved more effective.
Most of the MBA pass outs, even from the best of schools, abandon story telling in favour of ppts and excel sheets. My preference for sharing my thought process or a formal topic through story telling, at times elicited comments from the hardened MBAs, that who will listen to her stories, with out realising that only stories are listened to rest are skipped over or skimmed over.
Try this age old communication skill. Still not convinced - just visit the blog dastangoiblogspot.com
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2 comments:
Business guys are short on time. An engaging storytelling needs time, persistence and persuasion. What would work (and is known to work) is a combination of the two.
Quality story telling is an art by itself and requires sustained training and deep practice. People in hurry do not get this right.
One of the best power points is the movie "An inconvenient truth". It smartly combines video techniques (with background story telling) to a simple power point. And it works well.
And finally, the phrase "A picture is worth thousand words"!!! Visual learning is definitely easier and more effective (images last longer) than auditory.
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