Harnessing your energy

Tips and techniques

If you want your audience engaged from the outset, start your presentation with good energy.

Do whatever you need to do to increase your personal energy as close to your speaking slot as you can so that you have them listening from the outset.

This might involve bouncing onto the stage with a smile on your face and hearty welcome, assuming that matches your style. Equally it might mean opening in a still, calm and fully grounded way. Both require focused energy.

That way you set the scene and pace for your audience and for yourself, helping to put any nerves to one side and allowing you to deliver your best stuff.

Story prompt of the week

I remember thinking ‘And I’m getting paid for this!’ and almost felt a bit guilty.

I was busy taking notes as my client told me her story. This was a few years before storytelling was my specialist angle and she was the first person who had specifically wanted help with her story and I was loving it.

As a healer and therapist she knew she had a powerful back story but she also knew she wanted to tell it differently. Too many of her audience were ending up in tears over it, often taking them back to a time of their own vulnerability and that wasn’t what she wanted.

As she went through the narrative from start to finish, certain moments in the story popped out at me.

Those moments were the moments that drew me in that little bit more, that made my lungs gasp, my eyes widen and my interest pique with a frisson of excitement.

One of those moments popped more than the rest so I suggested she started her next talk with. If it had drawn me in, chances are it would draw others in too.

When my client fed back a few days later that the recrafting of her story had done the trick, that moment of initial guilt disappeared. I remembered a business coach saying that when you’re doing the work you’re meant to do, it won’t feel like work at all so I thought ‘Maybe I should do more of this.’

How you could use a similar story.

You will have several stories like this that illustrate your skillsets, credibility and expertise so make sure you share those stories regularly.

If you can’t think of any just now, try asking yourself ‘At what moment did I realise I had the talent to do what I do now?’ or ask close family, friends or colleagues to help you. We don’t always see our own stories in the same way that others do.

The key to when and where to use them is to consider what the key message is that you want to get across and who is your likely audience at this time, then choose the most appropriate story, or part of your story, accordingly.

That same principle applies whether you’re creating content for a speech or your digital marketing. For the latter, some of your stories will work on your About or Work with Me page, but not necessarily the same story on both pages.

If you’re promoting your range of programmes or other services separately maybe a different credibility story would work better for each programme. For example, while this story would work well for me for my Compelling Speaker programme, it wouldn’t be the right story for my Book me to Speak page.

Different perspectives, different stories

What I loved about this speech is that it’s almost an extravaganza of storytelling as a means of illustrating a very simple message: ‘What do you want?’

It’s likely to be a question you’ve been asked many times and if you’re anything like me, it can sometimes feel like too big a question. Each story gives another example of someone who did know their answer, in turn banging the message home more effectively and potentially making it easier to find an answer.

Interestingly not all of the stories are her own, although telling the individual stories of her parents and how they arrived in New York are arguably part of her own story.

In the earlier part of the speech I was left with the question in my mind though of whether we could know for sure that her parents specifically asked themselves ‘What do I want?’. It became apparent later that while they may never have asked that question, their actions were definitely driven by them knowing the answer to that

Not only have the stories been well crafted individually, the order they are told in also shows good crafting of content generally.

This is illustrated by the way that the speaker’s ability to ask herself the key question seems also to increase with each story, with the crafting of each story plus the order they appear helping to  build the momentum.

To that end, her final story about her choices with cancer help the whole speech reach its crescendo.

Disclaimer:

Many of the videos I feature in this section are of TED or TEDx talks for which the underlying theme is ‘an idea worth sharing.’

I think it’s important to state that my reviews and suggestions are focused on the examples of storytelling in these talks and are NOT a review of the speech as a whole.

When making suggestions of how the story could be told differently, I’m in no way wanting to imply criticism of the speaker but rather to suggest how you, my reader could craft your stories into your talks, more likely for a business purpose which might be quite different from the TED/TEDx purpose.

Briefly speaking:

Stories work well when your audience engages with the tension of the moment and are shown a way out.

In the spotlight

One of the things I’m currently working on is a virtual workshop I’ve been booked to run on How to use Storytelling for your Digital Marketing for Greater Customer Engagement, so I thought I’d mention it in case it sounds like something that would be useful for your teams or organisation.

All of my workshops are tailored to meet my customer’s specific needs and in this one I’ll be covering the basics of storytelling:

Why it’s important

How it works

What kinds of story to use and when

How to craft them for optimum engagement and for different purposes.

This one will be 2 hours long so will include time in breakout groups to share stories and give and receive feedback as well as time within the session to start developing some of the key stories.

Why not get in touch if you’d like to explore how I can deliver something similar for you? DM me to get start the ball rolling.

How else I can help you

Keynote speaker – Achieving approachable leadership through strategic storytelling. Leadership/wellbeing/organisational health/cultural change.

Book me to speak

Story mining – helping you identify your ‘How’ and other stories.

Speech development – working with you on structuring, creating or tweaking your signature talks.

Trainer/facilitator – on public speaking and communication skills.

Away-day facilitator – running ice-breaker sessions for your team development events.

Speaker coach - one on one or group coaching.

Communication coach - one on one or group coaching.

Work with me