Transform your business meetings with these 5 tips from Story
I make a living giving workshops and trainings on Story. In my trainings there are mostly business people (which is great, because story is a powerful tool to ease up the absolute zzzzzz you can sometimes feel in a business meeting).
Anyways, one day I’m giving a virtual presentation on how to use stories in business. I’m about 50 minutes into the slides, feeling great, in flow, in the zone. Then someone asks: “Will a story take down the seriousness of a topic in a business setup?”
Seriously? That question?
“Yes, seriously.”
I would be surprised by the question, but it’s the #1 question I get asked. So I’m prepared.
“Stories aren’t professional”
I get it. How many times at school, when you didn’t do your homework, your teacher said “Don’t tell me stories!”. Telling stories is synonym to tellies lies, fabricated tales that never happened.
And then, even if stories were real… they’re not considered professional. For some people stories is like the opposite of professional.
But I’m going to argue the opposite. Stories are professional. It just depends on what we mean by “professional”.
The origin of the word is “pertaining to or appropriate to a profession or calling”. That’s beautiful, it refers to your calling!
However, over time, being professional has evolved to mean being standard, excellent, logic, correct, … And sometimes all that can become impersonal, boring and artificial. Far from what connects humans.
And now my question: In most business, isn’t connecting humans what we want to achieve the most? Your answer is probably YES!
And there is where stories can help. Business reports full of facts and data may very well be correct and logic. But they will not change people’s opinions. Stories may do that (there’s no guarantee, but there’s much higher chance than just data).
Stories for Business Meetings
Maybe you don’t want to become a total storyteller in your business context (because, why would you do that?). But you may want to have more effective meetings, where meeting participants don’t doze off but rather rethink their opinion. If that’s the case (and I really hope it is), here are 5 story-elements you can add to your all-correct, 100% professional facts and figures:
1 — Don’t just show them numbers. Give them a Context
To my despair, I often see many plots and graphs without a basic explanation of what the variables mean. What do 50.000, 50 millions or 50 billions mean? All in vacuum, they could be all or nothing.
For instance, we know that bacteria kills people, but we all have 3,9 trillion bacteria in our body. Less 1% of all bacteria can actually kill you. Put in a context, it seems we shouldn’t be afraid of bacteria.
The same thing you can do with your data. Just give us a context, a map of reference. Tell them what the numbers mean. You may think that people already know what they mean (after all, they’re probably experts in your field). But you may be surprised to see a relief in their faces when you help them make sense of the numbers.
2 — Define a clear and specific intention from the beginning
Intention is central in any story. You talk with your partner during your coffee breakfast in the morning differently that you talk to your barista at the coffee shop. That’s because you (normally) have very different intentions (unless of course you want to flirt with your barista, but that’S a different story…).
The same way, we should have a clear intention. Every meeting needs to lead to a clear action. You should know if you want a team to:
- Understand
- Decide
- Distribute tasks
- Convince someone
- Ask for money or resources
- Align people
- Strategize
Sometimes you may have more than one intention. That’s okay. The problem starts when you want to achieve too many different things or, worse, when you don’t really know what needs to happen. Then there is a good chance that you need a “meeting after the meeting.” And that’s worse than listening to your 8-year-old rehearse the same piece over and over again on the piano.
3 —Have a hero and a journey
In any good story there is a great and brave leader that experience incredible adventures. Equally, your meetings need a hero (could be your customer, your boss or your colleagues [it shouldn’t be you]) and a journey (something they can win, improve, get better at…).
You may think “I just have the quarterly report, it’s just numbers”. I know. It’s hard to find a who is this really about, and focus the action around this character. But it really pays off to do that, because your participants can relate to people much more than to numbers (try it, you’ll thank me later).
4 — Show contrast
Nancy Duarte is a brilliant story and presentations expert. And she talks about constantly shifting between “what is” and “what could be”. She says that this dance between these two opposites creates momentum, persuades people and it helps people act and move.
5 — Co-create your meeting
In my house we have a ritual every night at dinner. Each person says what they’re grateful for. My 6 year old daughter, Luisa, is normally grateful for “having had sweets” or “having watched the TV”. I sometimes share small things I’m grateful for. But last week, I wanted to share something deeper. I started sharing that I had been mean to my husband, and after thinking about it I apologized to him.
It was all very moving… for me.
My kids didn’t pay attention.
My advice to you: Don’t be like me at dinner. Know your audience, read the room. Are they following you? Ask for feedback. Create the meeting with them, and change the course of your meeting if your plan doesn’t seem to work.
Conclusion
These Story-elements will make your meetings the best meetings your colleagues have in their calendar. And don’t worry about perfection. The great advantage of many people underestimating the power of story is that the bar is really low. With little effort, you will make a big difference.
