Early in my career, many years ago, I was in eastern Europe for the first time,
I was working with a prime minister on his public speaking skills.
I'll never forget, we were in a former dictator's palace, this was now
post-communist era and I was working with the democratically elected leader.
But it was this beautiful old communist palace, remote area,
there are armed guards everywhere, I'm with the prime minister.
And he says T.J., if you don't mind,
I'd like to practice in my own language if that's okay.
I said, sure.
So he stood up, gave his speech, and he's reading it.
I, of course, don't understand it.
But he's reading the speech head down, recording it, I play it back.
He watches it, I watch it.
He turns to me and he says, T.J., tell me what do you think?
And, a little bit of a dilemma because I thought it was incredibly boring, awful.
But I'm a little bit nervous.
I'm in Eastern Europe for the first time, the Cold War hasn't been over that long.
I'm surrounded by armed guards.
Nobody really knows I'm there other than staff and family.
So I'm feeling a little nervous.
But I finally thought, okay, this guy's paying me a bunch of money to give
him honest feedback, so here's what I said.
Well, Mr. Prime Minister, I have no idea what you said, but
with all due respect, you bored the hell out of me.
He looked shocked, he looked at me, he looked at the guys with the machine guns,
he looked at the screen again, and he turned back to me and
said TJ, you're right, it was boring as hell.
And at that moment we took the speech
we tore it into little pieces and we threw it on the ground.
We got a clean sheet of paper, I breathed a sign of relief,
we brainstormed on messages, narrowed it down to the top five,
he stood up, this time he didn't read the speech and
he gave it again, we record it, he watched it.
He thought he was a thousand times better, and
I thought he was a thousand times better.
And that's the typical reaction many people have when they go
from reading a speech, to just narrowing it down,
to a simple outline with a few message points and stories.
Okay, so what did I do there?
I told a story.
I really just wanted to make the point, which is, it's a horrible idea
to read a speech, and you're gonna be a lot better off using a simple outline.
But I told a story, the story had a setting.
Now it doesn't matter if you remember every part of the setting, but
the setting helps your audience remember things.
They can visualize being in a former dictator's palace, remote area,
eastern Europe, surrounded by guards with machine guns.
The setting is critical when you're telling a story.
Not because you're trying to make a movie or have someone remember every part of it,
but you are trying to make a movie in someone's brain.
You're trying to help them visualize it.
The human brain is much more of an image processor than it's a word processor.
So when you're telling stories, you're forcing people,
against their will, basically, to run a little movie reel.
So they're seeing what you're saying.
It's easier for them to remember.
It's also easier for you to tell the story.
Because you're reliving an experience in your mind's eye.
It's easier for you.
Another element that's crucial to a story is the emotion.
How did you feel?
The fact that I was feeling nervous, oh what do I say, there's armed guards here.
Should I be honest?
It creates variety in how you speak.
It makes it easier for people to remember.
It provides some ups and downs to the flow of what's coming out.
Because unfortunately, too many presentations are just okay,
here are the tips, when you're telling a story, make sure you have a setting,
use emotion, bring in.
It's not interesting.
It's too much like a conveyor belt.
Bang, bang, bang.
When you stop to talk about how you feel, it doesn't matter if anyone really
remembers, but it's some punctuation to the story,
to your presentation, it creates variety, makes you more human.
It makes it a lot more easier for people to remember.
So remember, you've got to describe the setting of where you were.
It doesn't have to be as dramatic as what I just said.
It could be I'm on the second floor
in my office building in downtown Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
It doesn't have to be anything dramatic.
Just something where people can visualize it and
you need to talk about how you felt and how the other people felt in your story.
Do those two things, your story will start to take shape.