I tell a lot of stories when I give presentations. It really doesn't matter what the topic is, I most often start with a story. Then I tell another story later. And then later after that I tell a story. And if you want to meet for a drink after I'm done, I'll tell you another story. That's how it works for me. I believe in the power of stories. I told you that already.
I'm often asked how I come up with all my stories. To tell you the truth, I don't rightly always know. Sometimes they just pop in there. Sometimes I have to work a bit. Sometimes my stories don't actually show up until right when I need them - they're sort of like the Lone Ranger in that sense. Waiting until the laaaaaast possible moment before they appear. I'm tied to the tracks and the train is a whistling and suddenly *DING* there it is. I've learned to sort of trust this process.
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But if I'm going to START with a story - and that's what I suggest to classes when I'm teaching this topic - then I usually go through a mind mapping process to find a good story. Recently I was in front of a class teaching them about presentation skills and decided to teach them this process. They had been working on a presentation all day. They each had picked a topic and had worked through an audience analysis, content preparation, call to action and introduction development. I was showing them how to then create a mind map to identify an applicable story to build credibility with their audience and get them drawn in.
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"It works!" I said, "even when you don't think you have any story to tell, if you give your mind a chance, it can find a good story that is yours that can go with nearly any topic." Then I took a risk. "Ok," I said feeling confident, "Okay, I'll prove it ... someone give me your topic."
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They were, of course, initially silent as I moved from the front of the classroom to a white board on the side of the room. I've learned to wait out the silence in these moments, someone will always crack. Wimps. I got to the board, chose the green pen from the 10 or so that were laying in the tray, uncapped it and put my marker to the board. The silence was finally too much for one person and she shouted out
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"Turning our office into a virtual office!"
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"Okay! " Virtual Office for Employees!" I wrote it on the top of the board in big fat green letters. "Now, it works like this ..." and I began showing them the mind mapping process - at least the way I do it. I'll recreate it for you here.
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First I ask myself what emotion do I want the audience to feel? Once I identify the emotion, in this case, a sense of urgency to change, I write that in the middle of the paper (or board) and draw a circle around it.
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Next, I just sort of let my mind wander. I ask myself when have I felt a sense of urgency. I immediately think of when I have a bladder infection and have to pee 100 times an hour. And even though I know I most likely will not be able to use this story, I write it down. I connect it to "sense of urgency" with a line and I keep moving.
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(It was at this point I began to think maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. But I was committed (or should have been) so I continued. )
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Bladder infection immediately leads me down a hundred paths all having to do with medical issues. And because they are all medical in nature, I bring them out of the same spot as my bladder infection.
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This line of thinking really isn't leading me anywhere - except telling my audience much more about me than they need to know - so I take a step back and look at it again
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"Sense of Urgency"
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And I ask myself "why do I want them to feel this way?" And the answer gets put in a big circle with a line "CHANGE!"
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I want them to change. The next questions come easy "When have I changed in my life?" And quickly I realize there are little changes and big changes that we make. I write some little ones down. I write some big ones down. And one of those big changes really is the biggest change I've made so I stick there for a bit. And I think about it. And as topics float into my head I write them down. The Hub, my big move to KC, Detroit, and although all of these have stories attached to them, nothing really comes to mind. Then going off of The Hub, I begin to think about The Kid. Big topic. She gets a circle all her own. I think about what it would be like to have her nearby when I work. I realized that she almost always IS nearby when I work - since I work from home. Then I think about the challenges of that and how it isn't always easy to do my job when she is, literally, in my lap. And then I think about the fact that I tell her that we all have jobs to do and her job is to be a kid. And then. Just like that. The Story comes.
I think about it for about 3 seconds and I realize it is a perfect story for Virtual Officing. It is a perfect story for creating connection with the audience. It will bring down the wall. It will create a sense of urgency. It will introduce the topic.
Granted, it will need some work. I'll have to tie it in skillfully but I can do that. I put down my pen and turn back to my audience there in the classroom and I begin:
One day I was making The Kid a chicken salad sandwich. It isn't really chicken salad, it's chicken cut into pieces but I call it chicken salad hoping that one day I'll be able to sneak real chicken salad into her bread and she'll never notice and I'll eventually be able to feed her anything and she'll eat it up and Oliver Twist me, "MORE!" After all, let's face it, the jump from chicken salad to liver and onions is very small.
So there I am, making the mock chicken salad sandwich and she says "Not so much, we won't have any chicken left."
This strikes me as odd. And I say, quite poetically, "Huh?" And she says "We're almost out of chicken and what if we want more later or for dinner?"
And I looked at her little face and I realized she was worried. My little six year old was worried about having enough chicken. And my heart about broke. I put down the knife and I squatted and I said "Honey, that's not your job. Your job is to be a kid. My job is to put chicken in the fridge. We do better when we all do our jobs. So no more worrying about my job, okay?"
See, she was distracted. She couldn't do her job - of being a kid - and be worried at the same time. There is no way she could fulfill her responsibilities of Kidhood if she was worried about the chicken. What I had to do, as her parent, was to remove those worries and refocus her on her job.
Your people are worried - about a thousand things. They are distracted about a hundred items that have nothing to do with their jobs. And because they are worried and distracted, they can't do their jobs to the best of their ability. And just like I had the power - and responsibility - to remove as many worries and distractions from The Kid, you have a responsibility to create an environment that will best help your employees do their jobs. Because ultimately, that's what you want.
I mean it isn't War and Peace but it's not bad as stories go.
The funny thing was as people started to try to find their own stories to introduce their topic they got stuck. They got stuck and then they got frustrated. They got stuck and frustrated and then they got mad.
At me.
"I don't have a good story!" One said.
"There is no way this will work for everyone." Another said
"You're dumb!" Said another. Okay no one actually said that but it was getting ugly. They began in again about how they didn't have a stories like that. Maybe not everyone has a story, they said. Can't I just skip it? But I wasn't going to let them off the hook that easily. I reminded them that people need and want to like you when you present but you have to give them a reason. "You think you don't have a story?" I asked and was rewarded with nods. "Okay then, turn to the person next to you and tell them about a challenge - any challenge - you had to overcome from childhood."
It took 3 seconds. The room exploded into stories.
I let them talk for about 5 minutes and then I said, "Can anyone tie the story they told into their topic?" And, of course, they all said "No!"
So I pointed to one woman in the room. "What is your story?" And she told this amazing tale in about 1 minute of being a child and being shuttled back and forth between her mom's house and her dad's house as a little girl because her parents were divorced and she never felt totally connected to either of them. And just when she felt like she was connecting, she had to go to the other house and she had to learn how to cope with that but it was so hard to disconnect and reconnect and disconnect and reconnect.
That was a powerful story. It had a ton of emotion. It really drew me in in about 2 seconds and I wanted to hear her talk more. It was exactly perfect and I wanted her to know it and use it. I told her I loved that story. I thanked her for sharing it and then I said "How can you tie that into your topic?"
She replied, "Well, I can't. It really doesn't fit."
"Darn!" I said, I was genuinely disappointed and thought maybe I should abandon this whole thing. But I gave it one last shot, "What's your topic?"
And she said, (You ready for this?) "Having day care on site for employees. That way they can spend more time with their kids and stuff and they could have lunch with them or whatever. But the day care would close every day at 5:30 so they'd have to go home. They couldn't just abandon them there."
Sometimes my job writes itself.