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May Tool : Telling Tales - A Key to Communication!
Have you ever wondered why some people are much better at getting their message across when speaking or presenting? What is their edge? How do they manage to be so consistent?
The simple answer is that they have mastered the ability to tell stories (or tales)!
Why is this so crucial? Simply put, when people listen they engage at various levels and in various ways. Throughout history the importance of storytelling as a means of transferring knowledge, information, skill and understanding was crucial. In fact, people are programmed, by culture and society, to tell and share stories. This starts from when we are little - young children are told/read stories from an early age! When they are a little older they bring stories back home - both ones they learnt from others as well as ones they made up themselves.
Back to business, why is it that a lot of people tend to dump information and expect the audience to make sense of it? How many presentations have you been to where you were totally bored (if not falling asleep)? So why do we persist in this behavior?
Next time you are going to do a presentation why not up the ante and do it as a coherent self-contained story that will engage the audience and connect with them.
So where do you begin? How do you craft a story?
You can find amazing resources on the internet and in literature. For example, a simple search in Google for ''storytelling in business' gives millions of hits!
So what are you waiting for?
