These are my live blogged notes from an eLearning Guild/Citrix presentation with Nancy Duarte, author of Resonate and Silde:ology.
The story: a likeable hero, she encounters roadblocks, she emerges transformed (the perfect three part story structure)
Organizations need to keep creating ideas to continue to reinvent themselves. The lifecycle of an org (start, grow, mature, decline)…so we need to reinvent ourselves all the time. And that’s what good presentations can do. They can spawn ideas to reinvent…
good stories make our hearts race. But there’s often a gap from storytelling to presenter…and the presenters just fall…flat.
Powerpoint so often used to present reports.
But when you have a high stakes opportunity to persuade, you need to use story.
How do you incorporate story?
Every great presentation should have a beginning, middle and end. But there needs to be a turning point between those acts.
The audience is the hero of the story. They have all the power in the room. They’ll determine your fate. The presenter is the mentor. They help the hero get unstuck, or they leave a magical tool. When someone leaves your presentation – you should be giving them something of value.
Joseph Campbell came up with an 18 part story structure: ordinary world, a call to adventure, refusal of the call, meeting with the mentor, crossing the threshold (as you persuade them…)
The shape of great speeches:
What is – what could be – and you call out the gap…
It’s like sailing – as you sail against the wind, you need to capture resistance. Think about your audience, what will they throw back at you. What will be there resistance? Plant that resistance into your presentation. Your audience will get to your point of view quicker, if you plant that resistance into your talk.
Your ending should paint the picture of what the future is going to look like. A picture of your hope.
She goes on to analyze Steve Job’s speech unveiling the iPhone.
A STAR moment “something they’ll always remember”
The stakes are higher for making better presentations! TED and Twitter…people will trash your presentation if it’s not up to par.
If you have an idea, a dream, a way to move your company forward, you need to latch onto that and share it and change the world.
Questions from the crowd:
If you’re doing product training – let’s hope you have a good product!
Nancy encourages everyone to find their passion…people won’t invest in their communication skills unless they’re passionate about what they’re communicating about…
If you’ve got to complete something in three days, odds are that the stakes aren’t that high. Instead it’s “grind this out for the planning meeting.” Categorize the importance of things and fight for the ones that are really important. When it’s really hard stakes, then fight hard for the time. And then knock it out of the park.
When you’re doing a webinar – stand up, move around, use your hands. Post pictures of people in your space to help you remember that there are people on the other side of the technology!
Make sure it’s bite size chunks of content. You need to be more interesting than their email.
Be a consumer of great communications. Watch TED talks…and then PRACTICE your skills.
For training programs where the SME wants to include everything and the kitchen sink – remind them that this isn’t a report, that we need to focus on the story.
www.duarte.com for more!