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There’s nothing like finding your way into a good story. If you’re selling, it becomes a great way to connect the known to the unknown. If you’re presenting to an audience, it becomes a great way to put a spark into your performance, and pull the audience back into your conversation. If you’re simply having a conversation with another person, it becomes a great way to entertain, and make that conversation come alive.
Some say I can tell a pretty good story. As a professional speaker, I had better be pretty good at it, and yet, I do struggle with one, small issue. It’s an issue I have watched others struggle with as well. I call it, “story jumping.” Let me set the scene for you, and describe what I mean.
A person asks you a question, and not only does your mind jump to an answer, it jumps to a story that will illustrate your answer even better. Adrenaline creeps into your response because there’s nothing like effortlessly inserting a familiar story to demonstrate your ability to improv, and beef up a response.
Maybe it’s the adrenaline, or maybe a lack of focus, or maybe it’s the coffee you drank a few minutes before you entered into this conversation, but you’re enjoying your story so much, it reminds you of another story. Before you finish the first story, you absentmindedly pivot, and with a little more energy, and a little more adrenaline, you launch into another story. I’m not particularly proud to admit this, but on more than one occasion, I’ve found myself so far down a story rabbit hole, I could clearly see the look of utter bewilderment in the eyes of members of my audience. Trust me: It’s not a pretty look.
No one sets out to story jump, but when you communicate with others, particularly under pressure, it happens. My first suggestion is to not let it happen. (Wow, this Jolles guy has a way with words!) As I mentioned, I happen to be a subject matter expert at story jumping, and I can tell you that the first step is to be aware that this happens to many who communicate, and it’s particularly true for those who do it for a living. Ironically, the more comfortable you are while communicating, the more susceptible you are to making this mistake. Sometimes writing yourself a note, and putting it in a place where you’ll see it, can be a simple yet effective way to make yourself more mindful to not let this happen.
Laying off the coffee before you speak is another suggestion I’d like to offer. (Gee, this Jolles guy is full of pearls of wisdom today!) I’ve never met a person who didn’t get some sort of bounce from caffeine. Once, I gave up coffee for a year, and I decided to, after this year of no coffee drinking, to have my first cup about five minutes before I gave a presentation to job seekers. It was an hour-long keynote, and I was unbelievably amped up! At one point, to my dismay, I noticed I had been speaking for 30 minutes… and had not moved off the cover page of the presentation. I was story jumping like there was no tomorrow!
We do need to have a better answer than a visual cue, or laying off of the coffee. In fact, there is an actual process behavior I’d like to teach you, and it’s especially helpful when you find yourself story jumping. The next time you wind up miles from where you started, consider saying something like this:
“I tell you this story because…”
That simple transition reminds those you’re speaking to why you told that story, and it provides a transition to make sure you connect that story to the message you’re hoping to deliver.
Sometimes we might story jump when asked a question. We begin with our answer, but it reminds us of a story, which halfway through reminds us of another story, and away we go. You may think you’ve made the connection between your story(s) and your answer, but I’d suggest you bring it home with a phrase like this:
“That said, I want to make sure I answer your question…”
Once again, no matter how many jumps you’ve made, and no matter how far down into the weeds you’ve wound up, that transition will ensure your audience connects your response to his or her question.
I think it’s great to tell a story to illustrate a point, and being energetic and animated can really help when telling a good story to an audience. We need to be careful, however, of too much of a good thing. If we find we’re telling a story and we’ve wandered into peripheral material, it helps to have a gameplan on how to bring the story home. It may be just what the doctor ordered!