A to Z of Business Storytelling -26

Z— Zeal is contagious

No matter how fascinating or data rich your subject matter, without energy no one will remember what you were speaking about. Due to organizational hierarchy or due to stakeholder relationship, the audience may applaud for your speech, but that doesn’t mean that they may carry the key takeaways. As a business storyteller when you showcase your zeal while on stage, that energy become infectious and the audience are more likely to execute whatever you say. Yes. The zeal is contagious and can do wonders.

There are few leaders who have the magic pill for people suffering from insomnia. Yes; with their dull, prosaic, boring presentations, they can put people into sleep in few minutes however big the crowd be. The pity is that many leaders are not aware that they have this magic skill of making the audience sleep in the shortest time. Let us try to understand why people lack zeal or energy during their sessions. Some of them are:-

• Lack of preparation
• Too much of content
• Lack of concentration on stage
• Complacency
• Repeat content

The very purpose of business storytelling is to arouse the team members, customers and stakeholders. So, keeping the audience in mind is the prime objective of the leaders who indulge in business storytelling. Apart from audience centricity, the following tips would be useful. These tips are already discussed in the past, but nevertheless to reiterate them as a summary.

• Dialogues helps the audience to visualize the scenario, rather than boring narratives. Since each dialogue comes from a different character and with a different emotion, leveraging them obviously help the speaker to bring in the required energy on the stage. (Chapter 4)
• Five Senses — Arousing five senses appropriately helps the audience to get transported into any story. Leveraging them is to enhance the zeal of the speaker. (Chapter 6)
• Humor can certainly bring in a positive ambience, so that audience get better engaged with the speaker. (Chapter 8)
• Interaction with the audience is a must to break the dull moment and bring in energy. (Chapter 9)
• Kaleidoscopic approach — To bring monotony, one has to bring a variety of supporting elements. (Chapter 11)
• Vocal variety — By using vocal variety through changes in pace, pause, pitch, volume etc, one can bring in energy on stage (Chapter 22)

Let me add few more self-explanatory points to inject enthusiasm into your business storytelling session:

- Make eye contact with audience members.

- Speak loudly and clearly.

- Be animated with your body language and gestures.

- Smile, laugh, or make other expressions of joy when appropriate.

- Try to be enthusiastic about what you are talking about!

By this we come to the end of A to Z of Business Storytelling. However I am planning to share more examples on business storytelling in the coming weeks. In the meantime, please let me know if these 26 tips were useful to you in enhancing your business storytelling techniques.

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