The Power of Storytelling in Public Speaking – Part I
“The shortest distance between a human being and the truth is a story” Anthony de Mello
One day, a young manager was asked to give a presentation to the board of the company about a new prosthetic limb product his engineering team had developed. This product was set to revolutionise the industry, by radically improving the fit and comfort of wearing prosthetic limbs, which was one of the biggest problems for ordinary users.
It was a very personal project for him as he had grown up poor, seeing his disabled brother struggle everyday with an ill-fitting limb that his parents could not afford to replace.
Although he was an acknowledged genius when it came to product development, the young manager had always struggled with public speaking.
Determined to do a great job, he worked tirelessly on his PowerPoint presentation, slavishly creating detailed slides with impressive charts highlighting the complexity of the technology behind the new innovation, and the percentage performance improvements in efficiency of movement that his team had achieved.
He prepared comprehensive notes on cards for himself and practised daily in front of the mirror so that by the day of the presentation itself, he felt he was ready.
The board gathered, and the young manager got up to speak. But before he could put on his first slide, and say a word, the Company CEO (a formidable woman with an intolerance for waffle and a renowned ability to ask tough searching questions) interrupted him:
“So, how do we market this thing?”, she asked.
Marketing? What did he know about marketing. Surely that was down to the marketing guys with their big budgets. He was just an engineer.
But he saw from the expectant look on the faces of the CEO and the rest of the board that they were expecting an answer. He froze. Panic began to set in. What could he say? He vaguely remembered some stuff about marketing from the week they covered it during his engineering degree. Something about “satisfying customer utility” and “leveraging familiar price points”, but he hadn’t taken any interest in it then and couldn’t remember much about it now.
He decided to tell the truth.
He was sorry, he told them, but he really didn’t know anything about advertising, he was just trying to trying to solve a problem. He told them about his brother and how he had lost his arm in a car accident at a young age; how the prosthetic limb he had worn all his life was so painful and uncomfortable that it was almost worse than having no arm; that as a kid his brother would cry as he put it on everyday, but never once complained; how it broke his parents hearts that they could not afford to do anything about it.
Fighting off the tears, he told them how he had made it his life’s mission to develop something for his brother, who was one of life’s heroes; that he was proud to be working in a company that had helped him achieve his goal because the new limb was years ahead of anything else ever produced.
He showed them how the limb work, its key features and why it was such a great innovation.
“So, I’m sorry I don’t really know much about marketing”, he ended. “I’m just an engineer trying to make life better for people like my brother”.
And with that he walked out of the room, leaving behind a stunned board and CEO that hadn’t interrupted or said a word throughout his entire presentation.
Stories work. They capture the hearts and minds of your audience in a much deeper and more meaningful way than facts, figures and PowerPoint slides. Best of all, stories are far easier to deliver than straightforward presentations, but also far more effective.
For instance, did you not find yourself reading to the end of the story of the young manager because you just had to know what happened?
Find out why in the next blog post.
Coming next:
Part II – Why Storytelling Works
Part III – The Anatomy of a Great Story
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