{"id":98,"date":"2007-09-17T08:20:30","date_gmt":"2007-09-17T07:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementally.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/2007\/09\/17\/guy-kawasakis-and-stories\/"},"modified":"2007-09-17T08:20:30","modified_gmt":"2007-09-17T07:20:30","slug":"guy-kawasakis-and-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/guy-kawasakis-and-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"(Guy Kawasaki&#8217;s and) stories&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Tell stories and make a point&#8221;: that mantra pretty much sums up a huge range of useful stuff about how to make presentations.  We&#8217;ll talk in a moment about why that&#8217;s useful but take a moment, if you can, to look at this list of the <a title=\"Guy Kawasaki\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blog.guykawasaki.com\/2007\/07\/what-people-tal.html\">different types of story<\/a> you can use in your presentation.<\/p>\n<p>An alternative take on this idea is given by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Story-Factor-Annette-Simmons\/dp\/product-description\/0465078079\">Annette Simmons<\/a> in a book called &#8220;The Story Factor&#8221;.  Her six &#8216;types&#8217; of story are<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>who I am<\/li>\n<li>why I&#8217;m here<\/li>\n<li>the vision<\/li>\n<li>teaching<\/li>\n<li>values in action<\/li>\n<li>I know what you&#8217;re thinking.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>and it&#8217;s not hard to see how these can be easily used in a presentation or public speaking engagement.<\/p>\n<p>What many of these different types of story have in common is that they allow you, the presenter, to put yourself in the position of the members of your audience: that gets them onside.  You break down the barrier between &#8220;us&#8221; and &#8220;them&#8221; &#8211; which also helps with your nerves, don&#8217;t forget. That&#8217;s one of the major upside to telling stories: it&#8217;s one of the main reasons they&#8217;re so powerful a tool.<\/p>\n<p>There is a downside to using stories, of course.  Firstly, I know someone who&#8217;s every story consists of the word &#8220;I&#8221; far, far more often than it should.  It contains it to the point where I&#8217;m avoiding him altogether and this is one of the reasons why!<\/p>\n<p>Secondly, there&#8217;s a real risk for good story-tellers in particular to forget that what they&#8217;re there to do is not (just!) to entertain.  As a presenter you&#8217;re there to make a point.  Stories are a means to an end in a presentation but all too often, when the audience is laughing and you&#8217;re on a roll it&#8217;s all tooooooo easy to let them become the guts of the presentation and find yourself running out of time.<\/p>\n<p>Us them, but don&#8217;t let them be the point of your presentation.  They&#8217;re a means, not an end&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Tell stories and make a point&#8221;: that mantra pretty much sums up a huge range of useful stuff about how to make presentations. We&#8217;ll talk in a moment about why that&#8217;s useful but take a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-key-posts","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}