How to…Tell Stories in Your Presentations | Presentation Guru

WHAT YOU NEED ARE THE 6CS OF PRESENTATION STORYTELLING

If you are going to tell stories in your presentations, make sure you cover these six points.

1) Context

This is the setup and the situation. This is where you bring people into your story and change the tone of your wider presentation. Probably you will also lower your voice, change its tone, maybe even slow down and turn the projector off. Or have a picture to illustrate the scene you are setting up. Evocative, specific details help – the clouds scudding, the waves kicking up, smoking, etc.  This brings your story alive and gives it realism. Detail is good.

2) Character

All your stories need a hero. In my prison story, it’s Andy. In my presentation story the hero is me. Your audience needs someone they can identify with and who overcomes some sort of challenge, or resolves a mystery.

3) Challenge

What is the obstacle our hero has to face? Typically, this will be something that they overcome and results in some sort of change. How they overcome the challenge will typically result in some lesson or moral – the point of your story.

4) Conflict

This is where the outcome is unclear. You need some tension and jeopardy. Something goes wrong. Will there be a positive outcome?

5) Conclusion

Success! The challenge is overcome and the conflict is resolved. (For example, I resolved my situation by making the links between my case studies and the client’s challenges much more obvious.)

6) Connection

This is where you bring the story back to the audience and draw out the key lessons for the audiences. Ancient fables used the technique “and the moral of the story is….”. We’ve lost this expositional technique in modern storytelling but the risk of leaving it out is that the audience doesn’t ‘get it’. Make it clear and squeeze the meaning for them.

Source: How to…Tell Stories in Your Presentations | Presentation Guru

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