Send to Kindle“Don’t treat communication as a transfer of facts. Tell a story.” You might have been coached thus by your boss or mentor. If you take this advice literally, you might end up being flowery and verbose. With experience, you learn that these are extreme styles; you have to find the middle ground to communicate with impact.
When you tell a story, you are interesting. If you want to be interesting, just describe reality.
How hard can that be? Turns out it is very hard! Just look around you in the workplace. Many of your co-workers probably put you to sleep when they present in meetings. They embellish they facts and they overpower you with graphics and animated slides.
When you describe reality, you will cut thru the clutter and look for facts, you will look for the proper sequence to present those facts, and in the workplace, you are asking your audience to do something different. Your audience will deem your message to be complex if you present topics are not understand, and if the topics are out of sequence.
Every example, every image, every bullet point on your slide must be selected using this test: (1) is it easy to understand and (2) does it connect with your audience’s pain points and (3) do they know what to do differently and (4) will they have fun listening to you?
Give your audience a chance to agree by first getting them to listen to you and to understand you.
