What is storytelling? Practical application of storytelling in business presentations

What is storytelling? Practical application of storytelling in business presentations

Can simply telling a story be an effective communication tool? Definitely yes. However, it must be done skillfully. How exactly?

The term "storytelling" is often mentioned alongside the term "hero's journey." The latter is a narrative scheme described by Joseph Campbell in the book "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." Campbell wrote this book in the 1940s and described his discovery — as a researcher of cultures and myths, he noticed that almost every culture has essentially the same myth. Or at least the adventures of the heroes in these myths follow a surprisingly similar pattern: at the beginning, we meet the hero in their safe world, then the hero faces a challenge, after which they leave the safe world and embark on an adventure. In a nutshell: along the way, they encounter an enemy, a mentor, experience a crisis, engage in their first failed battle, then experience a revelation, and finally return to their safe world with a reward. It is a multi-stage scheme that is unfortunately difficult to translate into the world of business communication. From this perspective, Joseph Campbell's hero's journey scheme is, in my opinion, not useful for those who want to structure the narrative of their speech or presentation. It's a different story if we were writing a screenplay or a novel. George Lucas himself was heavily inspired by the hero's journey scheme while working on the script for "Star Wars." If we look at the narrative scheme of "Star Wars," we will see a perfect reflection of it there.

But let's get back to the business reality.

Some elements of the hero's journey scheme can be applied in business communication.

I see four elements:

Firstly: the hero.

Secondly: the goal the hero is aiming for.

Thirdly: the enemy that stands in the hero's way.

Fourthly: the mentor. That is, external help or a solution that helps the hero overcome the enemy and reach the goal.

The most interesting elements of this four-component process are the enemy and the mentor.  In a business story, the enemy is the problem. The mentor, sometimes called external help, is the solution.

 

Let's translate this scheme into a specific example:

Suppose we want to convince the company's management to increase the budget for our HR department. We can do it according to this scheme:

The hero is our department.

The goal is to provide value to the company.

The enemies are problems related to challenges in the HR industry: higher employee turnover, a small pool of talents in the database, low team morale.

 The mentor, or the solution, is the proposal we submit to the management: to increase the department's budget by amount X. With this amount, we are able to:

A. Increase employee benefits, so that we can compete with other employers and thus reduce employee turnover.

B. Participate in job fairs among students, so that we can acquire contacts to young talents.

C. Organize a team-building trip, which will result in better team relationships and thus better cooperation.

Additionally, we can emphasize that the total costs — namely, increasing the department's budget — are still lower than the estimated costs that will arise if the mentioned problems deepen.

Thus, the entire narrative is focused on the axis: from the problem to the solution.

 

This scheme has been working for years and is used by the greatest communication masters.

Just mention one of the best examples — Steve Jobs and the premiere of the iPhone in 2007.

 

Jobs didn't start his presentation by showing the iPhone and listing all its benefits. He began by showing the current situation. That is, by illustrating the problem. He showed several competitor smartphones and said:

"The problem with them is that they have a built–in keyboard — whether we want it there or not. But what if we want to introduce a completely new application with a completely different configuration? We can't change the keyboard because it's already built–in."

For a good minute and a half, Jobs "teased" the problems of the smartphones of his time. He pointed out that they were impractical. However, he didn't discuss countless negatives. He focused on one key issue: the built-in keyboard. Only when he was sure that the audience confirmed his diagnosis did he move on to the solution: he showed the iPhone, which was the perfect answer to all the pains discussed earlier. The audience cheered with enthusiasm.

 

 Jobs structured his presentation in the scheme: problem — solution — benefits. However, the most interesting part was focused on the "from problem to solution" thread. It's the best example of business storytelling at hand.

For this reason, I recommend everyone to watch not necessarily the entire but the first 10 minutes of Steve Jobs' presentation from the premiere of the iPhone. It's a true masterpiece of storytelling. It's available on YouTube. Just search for: "Steve Jobs Presentation iPhone 2007".

 

Piotr Garlej

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