A to Z of Business Storytelling -09

Interactions

Business Storytelling is no more a lecture done behind the lectern or a presentation using slide decks. It is more like sharing corporate stories in an informal manner. In this context, engaging the audience using specific interactions with them is vital. An involved and engaged audience is more likely to pay attention to you and connect with your words. Business storytelling always comes with a purpose. Either to inform, educate, persuade or inspire the audience. To achieve these goals, audience paying attention to the speaker is important.

Interaction with the audience may be broadly covered through two ways. One is by verbal means and the other one is by non-verbal mode.

Asking Questions

The most prevalent way to interact with the audience is thru asking questions. Asking questions not only provides a way for interaction, but also helps to boost the ego of the knowledgeable audience. You might agree with what an audience member says, or you can use the opportunity to refute or rebut their response. This further involves your audience with your message. But in either case, you shall be mentally prepared to manage the responses from the audience.

You can also choose to call out some names from the audience, rather than asking question in general. This would give an impression that you are really mingling with the audience. You also need to thank the person who has responded the question.

Sometimes, you may play a video and pause and ask a question. After getting the right response, the video may be played.

Using Technology

Today technology is helping every industry in many aspects. Speaking industry is no more an exception. As a business storyteller, you may use several Apps, website to ensure audience interactions. Some of the online features that can be leveraged are:-

Live Polls — Some of the points of your business storytelling can be converted into a poll and the audience can be asked to respond one of the given options. When the results of the poll are displayed on the screen in real-time, audience remembers the key message as well understand the pulse of the audience. When the audience crowd is large (say 100 or more), the response takes time, When the results are shown in real-time, audience would be keen in seeing the trend of voting as well the final verdict.

Word Cloud — For specific questions, audience can type in their response in a free format. You may pose your question and audience would be delighted to watch vibrant words appear in real-time.

Whiteboard — Today many online tools come with whiteboard feature. There is no need to give share screen feature to every participants. One benefit of the whiteboard feature is the ability to make annotations by the audience. It is possible for multiple participants to make annotations from their screen. This makes it easier for the team to work together to brainstorm and collaborate with one another to complete the task they are working on.

Body Language

A business storyteller may engage with the audience through appropriate use of body language. Body language comprises of Stance, Posture, Gesture, Eye Contact and Facial Expressions. For example when one of the audience gives an unexpected response, the speaker may give a weird look, that can bring laughter amongst audience. However, one has to be cautious while making certain gestures and see if any of them would any way offend or hurt the sentiments of the audience.

Get Off the Stage

Today storytellers seldom stick to the lecterns. They move around freely on the stage and makes natural gestures. But if the storyteller is able to get off the stage and mingle with the audience, that would be considered as one of the vital interactions. Especially when there is a large townhall kind of meeting, the business storyteller can get off the stage, move around the audience, spend couple of minutes with segments of the audience and make eye contact with them, nothing like that. This particular technique has got several hidden messages.

• When the leader leaves off the stage and mingles in the crowd, it symbolizes that he/she sheds the hierarchy. Now there is no mental barrier to accept the leader.
• When the speaker changes the traditional norm, it brings obvious attention towards him/her.
• When the speaker makes an eye contact with the audience instead of seeing elsewhere, the audience gets the comfort feeling. In same manner directly interacting with members of the crowd makes the rest of the audience engage as well.

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