Am I Good at Telling Stories?

If you are human and breathing, then yes. You are good at storytelling. It is as simple as that.

Roughly 80% of our daily communication is some form of storytelling. Not epic novels or keynote speeches. Small moments of your day, fragments of thoughts or anecdotes that illustrate a point of view. We toss around messages embedded in a story in meetings, conversations, and Slack channels. We are telling stories all day, every day, because that is how we understand each other and absorb information. It is how humans are wired.

The question is not whether you can tell a story. You can. You have been doing it your whole life.

The question is whether you are telling the right story.

After more than ten years of working with people as a storytelling trainer, helping them learn, absorb, and apply storytelling in their work and lives, I have noticed that people rarely need help telling a story. What they need help with is telling the right story, with the right message, to the right person. They need their audience to understand why they are hearing it and what to do with it afterwards.

Let’s break it down.

Instead of asking yourself, “Am I a good storyteller?”, try framing it like this:

I want to tell a story to [audience] about [message], so they [understand or do something specific].

I love fill-in-the-blanks; I use them in my training all of the time. It forces you to get clear on who you are talking to, what you actually want them to take away, and what behaviour or shift you are hoping to create. Without those three things, even the most beautifully told story can miss.

Let me show you what I mean.

The road safety story

My mother told me this story when I was a little girl. It was simple, memorable and most of all, I learned something.

She said, “Always look both ways when you cross the road. When I was a little girl, there was a boy who lived across the road. He liked to play in his front yard with a ball. One day, while he was playing, the ball rolled out into the street. He ran after it and did not look both ways. He was hit by a car and rushed to the hospital. He missed his own birthday party.

That is why you always look both ways before you cross the road.”

Let’s take this tale apart and look at what she actually did.

• She knew exactly who she was talking to: me, her child, who grew up on a farm on a road where there was no traffic. I never had to look both ways, because there were never any cars.
• She had a clear message: look both ways before you cross the street. And she understood the behaviour change she needed to create: not just awareness, but a reflex. Something automatic that would kick in even in a moment of excitement.
• She made it sticky: I could easily remember the message because it applied to me. The birthday party. Because, as a child, missing a birthday party was the worst thing I could imagine. I still feel that. To this day, I still love birthday parties, and I never want to miss one. Mine or someone else’s.

That is a fit story. Right message, right audience, right outcome.

Breaking it down

When I teach or craft a story with a client, this is what we look at.

• The message. What is the one thing you want someone to take away? Not a theme, not a topic. One specific insight. If you cannot say it in a sentence, it is not clear enough yet.
• The audience. Who exactly are you talking to? Not a job title. A person in a situation. A child running toward the street. A new manager is terrified of getting it wrong. A client who has heard this pitch a dozen times before. The more specific you are, the more useful your story will be.
• The theme. Is this a warning? A lesson? A how-to? A moment that changed something? There is a thread running through every good story. Your audience needs to know what kind of story they are committing to. That clarity is a form of respect.
• The point of view. Who are you in this story, and why are you the right person to tell it? My mother was not just a narrator. She was a parent speaking to a child she loved about something that frightened her, losing me. That is why it landed.

Get these four things right, and your stories will land. As I like to say, story is strategy and strategy is story. You can’t have one without the other.

Want to test your story?

I have a one-page checklist that walks you through the four things every story needs before you tell it. Message, audience, theme, and point of view. It takes just a few minutes to work through, and it will show you where your story is working well and where it needs revision before you send it into the world.

Download it here.