I’m going to let you in on a little secret, but please don’t tell anyone. When I tell a story during a presentation, I most likely have told that story before. In fact, I may have told that story hundreds of times before. The trick is that I can’t let it seem like I’ve told that story before. Of course, if it looks like I’ve told that story hundreds of times before, that story and its message will land like a thud. How do I know when a story has landed like a thud? I can see it in the audience members’ unimpressed eyes.
I thought I might be imagining a few of those thuds, so some years ago, I performed a little experiment. I’m only human, and that means it was nearly impossible to prove I was telling the same story, the same way, with the same energy, vocal tone, pitch, pace, pause, and more. That dilemma forced me to get creative. I used a video clip from one of my favorite movies, Tommy Boy, to prove a point I was making in the seminar. I knew the video clip would be 100% consistent, not have off days, or deviate in any way in its delivery. What I was surprised to notice was the experiment had less to do with the video clip, or the audience’s reaction to it, but it had everything to do with how I was reacting to the clip.
It’s not as if a presenter can duck under a table when a clip is playing, but I began to intentionally position myself a little closer to the side of the screen so the audience could see me even better. I decided I would react to the clip the way I wanted the audience to react to the clip. Much like a story I have told hundreds of times, I started subtly reacting to it as if I had barely seen at all. I threw a smile in here, and a light chuckle in there, and like magic, my audiences began smiling and chuckling along with me.
When I showed more than one clip in a workshop, I’d switch up which clips I would let the audience see me react to. At the end of the workshops, when I’d mingle with the audience, I’d ask them which clips they liked the best, and almost always it would be the clips I chose to personally react to.
I then applied the same strategy to my own storytelling. The fascinating part of this experiment was how important my personal reaction to my own storytelling really was. With each story I’d tell, I’d make more of a conscious effort to let myself smile more in certain areas, and lightly pause to catch my breath in the middle of the stories I was telling to show my own mild laughter to what I was saying… just like I was finding the words and telling it for the first time. The audience smiled where I was smiling, and laughed even more when I had to pause for my own, light laughter. What’s more, the more they laughed, the more natural it was for me to laugh, and the more I laughed, the more they laughed. Apparently, we both happened to be watching each other.
That leaves us with the last piece of the puzzle – how do you convince an audience that you’ve never told a story you’ve told hundreds of times before?
- Throw off your own pattern. Try adding something, anything, that would clearly show you’ve never told your story quite the way you’re telling it now. Bring in a person’s name from the audience, add something from the current news, or even something that happened in the session you’re currently conducting. Those little changes inject authenticity into your own story.
- Be in the moment. Don’t approach the telling of a story like you have to tell it; approach it like you want to tell it! Approach that moment like it’s one of your most precious stories, and it’s a gift you want to share with this particular audience. It’s a story you never get tired of telling it. If you can make yourself believe that, your audience will believe it too.
- Avoid perfection. Unless you’ve told a story hundreds of times, it’s nearly impossible to tell a story perfectly… and for that matter, why would you even want to? Search for a few words as you’re telling a story. In other words, pretend like you’re looking for a word – even though you already know the word you’re going to use. Throw in a couple of filler words to season that story, and maybe even slip in a grammatical error here or there.
When you tell a story, the key is to remember that the audience isn’t just listening to you, but they’re also watching you. Tell your story like you’re telling it to your best friends, and deliver that story like it’s a gift you want to share with them. If you do that, your story, and the message it delivers, will never grow old.
Related: The One Block Away Rule