Effective Storytelling in Presentations: Familiarize, Don't Memorize
Are you planning to tell a story in your next presentation? That's fantastic! Stories are a powerful tool to humanize yourself as a presenter and connect with your audience. However, there's one crucial piece of advice: don't memorize your story. Instead, familiarize yourself with it. Here's why and how to do it.
One of the greatest advantages of using a story in a presentation is the opportunity to humanize the presenter. By sharing real events, genuine emotions, and perhaps even a relatable mistake or misguided effort, you can connect with your audience on a deeper level. This connection helps break down barriers and puts everyone on a level playing field, making you more relatable and approachable.
When you tell a story, it allows you to be your genuine, authentic self. This authenticity helps you relax and enjoy the process, which in turn makes the audience enjoy listening. However, reciting a memorized script can interrupt this natural flow. When we memorize something, we are memorizing words. Presenting a memorized story replaces the natural back-and-forth flow with a rigidity that the audience can feel, causing them to disconnect. This defeats the purpose of using a story in the first place.
Instead of memorizing your story, familiarize yourself with it. Determine what the story will be, outline it, and identify the emotions, characters, and key details. Use the Normal, Explosion, New Normal framework to structure your story. Then, practice telling it out loud several times before the actual presentation. Tell it informally to a friend or colleague, or even to yourself during your daily routine. The more you practice, the more familiar the story will become, and the words will fall into place naturally.
Don't get caught up in the exact wording. The words will come naturally with repetition. So, the next time you decide to use a story in a presentation, remember this: do not focus on memorizing the words. Instead, familiarize yourself with the story. Your audience will thank you for it.
