propoint resident storyteller brian roff sat down with columbia professor and presentation consultant jesse scinto to talk about creating and delivering great presentations. in this excerpt from his conversation, we focus on the narrative. In our next article, we’ll continue to explain how to really succeed as a presenter.
brian roff: what exactly do you do for the typical customer?
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Jesse Scinto: I see my job as helping clients develop the story they want to present. you start with a problem, it must be a problem that the audience has, and then you develop it. when you develop that problem, it makes the audience a little bit anxious and a little bit excited to hear the solution. then you position your product or service as the solution. (Disclosure: Jesse Scinto has provided consulting services for ProPoint.)
roff: how do you define what a story is? And what is storytelling?
scinto: I think the word “storytelling” gets thrown around a lot, especially within agencies and by clients. A story essentially has two parts. the first part is a complication. for example, you have a character who gets into trouble somehow or doesn’t see her needs met. that character struggles, searches for a solution, tries different things, digs deep, finds inner courage, and then comes to a resolution. so the two main things a story has are a complication and a resolution. and it is as simple as that. I’ve found from my own experience speaking in front of groups that you don’t have to do much to make the story structure work. I mean, if you talk about a problem at the beginning and then a solution at the end, you’d be surprised how much that alone can engage the audience.
roff: Why do you think stories fundamentally encourage us to pay attention and care?
scinto: there’s a great book called the storytelling animal by jonathan gottschall. it’s about how much of how we understand the world focuses on problems. when we dream at night, we dream of problems. when we see children play, it is always because of problems or problems that they are having. that’s a pretty standard way for kids to play. once people start hearing that a problem is developing, they want to know what’s going to happen. We’ve all had the experience of watching a bad movie or bad TV show just to see what happens. then in the end we may feel like it’s a waste of time but we did it anyway. we listen for two hours just to find out what happens! so the stories grab our attention. but they also help us remember things. the details in the stories serve as a kind of index for the mind. We store much of our knowledge in the form of history. So when we use storytelling, we are using a means of persuasion that is natural to the human mind.
roff: Do you think there is a difference between the kind of storytelling we do at work and the kind we do in our personal lives?
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scinto: I mean, anyway, one of the main benefits of storytelling is audience participation. the audience will wait for the resolution, they want to hear it. if you pay attention to television commercials, almost everything is narration. in a 30-second ad, 25 seconds are spent developing the problem (some humor is usually included), and then, in the last few frames, you see the product logo. so the product or service is positioned as the resolution of the story.
roff: If you want to turn a presentation into a good story, and I’m going to try to oversimplify here, is it as easy as “this is the problem you should care about, and this is how you do it?” are we going to solve?”
scinto: absolutely. you want to structure your presentation not according to your own needs, but according to the needs of the audience and how they learn. start with the audience problem because that’s what matters to them. They often don’t care about your credentials or your company’s background at the opening of a presentation. in most cases, you’re in the room because they already believe your credentials are good enough to be there. if you need to add credentials, you can do so later in the presentation. but that’s one of the biggest mistakes, I’ve seen it in many presentations, in presentations for big agencies. Agencies often introduce work by starting with “we’ve been around for 15 years and we’ve had these clients and these clients.” your target audience doesn’t care about that. what they need to know, first and foremost, is that you understand their problem and that sometime in the next half hour you will tell them how they can fix it.
roff: If I have a business and want to use these storytelling techniques, where do I start?
scinto: There are tons of books on persuasion and selling. For 2,000 years, people have been writing about persuasion. aristotle wrote one of the first and most important books called on rhetoric. but there is tons of stuff out there and tons of research. I think often what happens is that people are exposed to only a small portion. I just read this book called selling is human, which was pretty good as a book. is a popular book on sales techniques and persuasion. but often what you get in a popular press book is only a small portion of persuasion’s possibilities. there are so many specific strategies for very different situations. so I think in terms of choosing a strategy, sometimes you need help.
roff: how do you get that help?
scinto: But really, you’re talking to a presentation consultant or a communications strategist, someone who’s spent their career studying these things. At a minimum, they can show you some of the alternatives out there.
Want to learn more about storytelling?
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here are five books jesse recommends for learning to wield the power of storytelling.
the storytelling animal: how stories make us human by jonathan gottschall
the story factor: inspiration, influence, and persuasion through the art of storytelling by annette simmons and doug lipman
Writing for a Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction by Jon Franklin
resonate: presenting visual stories that transform audiences by nancy duarte
made to stick: why some ideas survive and others die by chip heath and dan heath
jesse scinto is a presentation consultant at propoint, working with leading organizations including the united nations. He teaches the critical mind and the dynamics of persuasion at the Columbia University School of Professional Studies.
This article was originally published on the propoint blog.
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