Storytelling techniques for memorably “sticky” presentations

Storytelling techniques can mean the difference between applause for your presentation or walking off stage to the sound of your own footsteps. Here are our top tips on making sure your audience sparkle with rapturous understanding rather than slump into a state of semi-consciousness. 

Storytelling is not just saying what you want to say, it’s about being understood by other people. Transform your presentation into an effective story by including a few basic ideas.

Why do presentations need a story?

Humans are social. We have a fundamental need to communicate, to belong, and to connect with others. Throughout human history, connections have developed in families and groups through storytelling.

“Storytelling is a hugely important part of human evolution and possibly even helps to explain our success as a species”, according to archaeologist Adam Brumm.

In order to be understood by other people, it’s important to build your facts, data, action points, or pitch into a compelling story. How do you do that if your material isn’t exactly the stuff of Hollywood?

How do you turn a presentation into a story?

To build a compelling presentation, your story doesn’t need to be a potential movie script. You just need three fundamental components: credibility, structure, and a dash of emotion such as optimism. Together, these three make up the secret sauce of storytelling.

There’s nothing new in this. The Greek philosopher Aristotle described these same three “persuasive appeals” in his Rhetoric treatise, which has been described as “the most important single work on persuasion ever written.” Here’s a modern take on Aristotle’s key points:

Credibility (‘ethos’)

Before you think about stories or structure, think about you. You might be delivering important breakthrough news about a merger, product launch, or sales data. But the first thought any audience will ask is whether they can believe you? Are you credible?

For Aristotle, the credibility, character, and stature of the person (or organisation) who was speaking was summed up as ‘ethos’, a sense of underlying authority. A presentation delivered by someone who seems unprepared and uninterested is hard to believe, no matter how important their information.

Build credibility among an audience who might not know you by referencing your previous successes. Breathing exercises before you begin will help you feel at ease, the audience will follow your lead and feel just as comfortable. And be sure to know your material. Vague uncertainty is neither credible nor persuasive.

Structure (‘logos’)

Any story needs structure, which at its simplest means a beginning, middle, and end. Sounds simple enough, but any one of these can be easily rushed or missed altogether. Without all three, your presentation may be confusing and unconvincing.

Structure leads your audience into the heart of your story. They may not know the material as well you. They’ll need to be walked through your key points, step by step, and a beginning, middle, and end is the best way to approach this.

For Aristotle, this approach was known as ‘logos’ (which translates as discourse or speech). It involves creating a structure that funnels the audience along a specific line of thought, building understanding one step at a time until eventually there’s little choice but to accept the conclusion.

Emotion (‘pathos’)

Give your structure memorable zing by connecting with the audience. A spark of emotion, such as ambition, can help the driest set of numbers catch attention. Similarly, emotional intelligence – such as welcoming body language, friendly rapport, and perhaps a little humour, will help the audience warm to you, in turn making it easier for them to accept your conclusions.

Your data and arguments may be new to the audience, human emotions however are immediately recognisable and useful in any presentation. For Aristotle, logos gives clarity and direction, but emotion breathes life into a speech. He called this ‘pathos’, which for the Ancient Greeks had a wider meaning than the narrower modern reference to feeling compassion, pity, or sympathy.

Here’s a story so powerful it’s been told in one form or another for a century or more. It has a beginning, middle and end, it’s soaked in emotion, and at only six words long it’s hard to beat:

“For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.”

This story is often attributed to Ernest Hemingway but in fact it probably predates him. It’s based on data (two shoes) and action, (a decision to sell). The power at the heart of this story lies in its simplicity. The beginning, middle and end are each no more than two words long.

In a presentation, you’re not looking to rival Hemingway. Nevertheless, simplicity and emotion help to create impact, which is particularly important when you need to persuade people of something.

3 ways to structure a persuasive presentation

The key to a persuasive presentation is understanding your audience. From the start, your material needs to be put together with the audience in mind. There are three ways to do this:

1. Write for the audience

Whether you’re pitching a new product or hosting a regular update on sales figures, it helps to think about what you’re looking to achieve. What do you need from the audience? Perhaps a basic level of awareness, emotional buy-in, or maybe decisions, actions and investment.

Imagine someone introducing a new product. They might explain how the product works. And they may finish by thanking the audience, at which point everyone in the room might be forgiven for thinking about lunch. This way of doing things doesn’t have much impact.

An alternative way might begin by outlining the audience’s need for the product. The core part of the deck would show how the product would benefit them. And the conclusion would focus on after-sales attention, as if the audience were halfway to committing to buying the product already. By packaging your material in a way specifically suited to your audience, you’re more likely to win them over.

2. The story behind the story

Unlike AI, people are able to – as journalists say – look for the ‘story behind the story’, in other words understand the bigger picture through experience and judgement, and explain it with nuance.

The reason you’re delivering the presentation is that you are seen as being informed about the subject. The audience want to know your take on it. This is more than reciting the data. It’s offering in-depth perceptions that maybe lead to unexpected conclusions.

For example, the story behind the story might reveal things that can’t be easily seen in the data, perhaps a shift in company culture or a wobble in market sentiment.

The story behind the story shapes your conclusion, which in turn indicates the emotion you need to adopt from the beginning, an emotion that sets the scene. It’s what people will be looking for right from the start. They will be reading between the lines, looking for clues, listening to the tone of your presentation to see whether things are good, bad, or middling.

3. ‘Sticky stories’

An advanced set of storytelling skills borrows from a phenomenon that is tantalising, elusive yet worth its weight in gold. Some stories fall flat and some linger on. A precious few go viral.

Narratives presented in the workplace don’t need to go viral but they do need to easily and memorably command attention. One way to achieve this is via memes, for example familiar tunes, catchphrases, fashions and technologies.

Memes are a useful way of quickly getting to the emotion you want people to feel. A funny image, a useful quote, a picture of a familiar scene from a film all help to lift your story and give it impact.

The more familiar the memes, the easier it is to remember the story they illustrate. This is because you are engaging people on a personal level, exploiting their familiarity with cultural references, making yourself easy to relate to and making your story stick in the minds of the audience.

The best storytellers give something of themselves. They speak with authority, their presentation has  a clear structure and a little flourish of emotion – but most of all, they are relatable! They maintain focus, direction, and pace, yet can rise above the structure in a way that feels human, natural and comfortable. For the audience, seeing that someone is a rounded individual helps to develop trust.

These are qualities that we at Working Voices encourage in our training sessions. Like many of our courses, personal identity lies at the heart of our storytelling training course. If you can quickly connect with your audience through presence and rapport you’re more likely to win them over, so that your presentation will live on in people’s minds long after you have finished.