Humans are storytellers. Conversations are stories between people. Relationships are shared stories. Decisions are someone picking up a story and figuring out how to tell the next chapter.
In business, understanding how to tell effective and compelling stories is the difference between staying where you are and moving up to the next level. It’s an art that is both difficult and time-consuming when done well. Anyone can throw together a quick 30-second message that has a one-time use. But crafting a 30-second message that naturally causes others to repeat it and becomes the basis of clients becoming interested in hiring you or a team rallying together around a strategy is much more difficult.
I believe in repetition. If your story is in PowerPoint, each slide should have 25 hours of effort behind it before you consider it ready for release. Anything less than that means that the message isn’t fully ingrained in your mind and/or tested against as many counters as you can find. If you are telling a story out loud to a group, practice is even more critical because there are no cues other than those you build in for yourself. If your story is an interview or live discussion, practice is how you have canned responses ready to go that you can build and expand on as needed. Without practice, you won’t have the canned response to buy yourself time and you won’t be as ready for the response.
Everything is a story. The more you recognize that fact, the easier it is to communicate. When you talk to people today, it is informed by prior conversations. Did they understand you before? Are you remaining consistent? Is your tone the same or different and is that conveying new information? Is the topic aligned with what you’ve previously discussed and is that informing the current conversation? Are you using definitions concisely or are you talking in broad strokes? Do you sound rehearsed or personable?
It may feel silly to think this deeply about things, we do naturally every day, but if you aren’t then you can’t get better at communicating?