Storytelling is fact + experience, framed to connect with your audience. Using storytelling means going beyond the facts to include experience, something human, relatable. Experience means something authentic and human, even heartfelt, that will resonate with an audience, and it can be simple:
• “It started with my first chemistry set, a birthday gift from my parents, since then I have never stopped learning about how science shapes us.”
• “Losing my glasses on a European holiday – that’s how it started – I knew there needed to be an easier, cheaper way to create prescription glasses.”
(the Warby Parker story)
It’s everywhere. In marketing and sales, in arts and culture, in social media strategies, data visualization, pitches, presentations and more.
How we tell stories means alot. While you may not perform in front of an audience, you are sharing stories all the time - stories of your day, your day at work, a meeting you loved or hated, or a childhood memory - we weave in and out of narratives all the time. And these stories - how we tell them is revealing.....if your stories are all about failure or all about unchallenged success what would that say about you now? What do our stories say about where and who we are now?
Stories grow empathy. Storytelling engages the imagination - and while we are imagining together, we get to maybe walk in the shoes of others, and grow empathy. And empathy opens a channel - maybe we hear better, work better, understand more when we feel/express empathy.
Telling stories really matters. What's your story?