Academy Awards remind us: Stories Still Key to Reaching People

An aging film star falls only to rise again. A boy connects with the father he lost on September 11. A baseball manager makes his team more competitive in the most counter-intuitive way. And African American working women illuminate their lives simply by telling their stories.
Those are the stories of, respectively, The Artist, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help and Moneyball – all films that were nominated as Best Picture at the 84th Annual Academy Awards, and they remind us how much we learn and remember from stories.

Of course, intuitively, we all know the importance of stories. After all, don’t we ask for stories when we are children? And when many summers pass, we are happy to share stories with children and others. We revel in stories, as they make facts and theories more personal, more relatable. We often tell of success through rags to riches tales. Also, think back to Hurricane Katrina. Most of us were not interested in how fast the winds were blowing at that time or the hour when the levees broke. No, we paid most of our attention to the individual accounts of how everyday people were affected by the storm.

We also want a story to unspool, with a beginning, a middle and an end that ties it together. Ernest Hemingway once famously wrote the story with just six words: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” It is said that Hemingway declared it his best work. But really, are we satisfied with that? Where are the characters, the setting, the plot line?

Whether we are speaking to large groups, a smaller department of only a few people, or one on one with a direct report, we can use stories to our advantage if we follow these tips:

• Maintain your audiences’ curiosity. The most-popular books and movies have stories that keep us wanting more. Your first step is NOT to start with the phrase, “I’m going to tell you a story.” That can be an instant turn-off. Instead, lead your listeners into it sneakily. Similarly, don’t telegraph the endings with an obvious outcome (e.g., the hero gets the girl, the disease is miraculously cured), or else your listeners will quit on you before you are finished.
• Know what you want your audience to feel in the end. It is said that we can evoke certain specific responses: think, feel, do (something!), persuade, inspire or entertain. Before you either craft or use a story, understand which of these responses you wish to evoke.
• Do not make yourself the hero of your story. Too self serving, and therefore, very off-putting.
• Don’t tell your audience, take them. Use your body, your place on the stage and your voice to bring your audience into the story. As a Toastmaster colleague once advised me, “BE the speech!”
• Make sure there is a point in the end. Psychologists tells us that the process behind the concocting of narratives is similar to that of learning. Create a payoff.

In this video, Story Time, to a group of fellow speakers, I incorporated the elements above.  Take a moment to view it to understand how they all worked together.

After the Oscars have been handed out, think back to how this year’s winners got their awards. Also, remember the past winners. When you think back to the tales of a down-and-out Philadelphia boxer, a stuttering monarch, a doomed luxury liner, or the decades of a mobster family, you will remember that the story is paramount.