178: The Secrets to Effective Storytelling. Jeremy Connell-Waite, IBM

Storytelling is bloody difficult. It is only easy if you don’t know how it is done.

Fortunately, Communications Designer Jeremy Connell-Waite breaks it down for us. He leads IBM’s “Wild Ducks” industrial storytelling programme, where he coaches partners to create compelling pitches and presentations.

Stories are how you move people to action as a leader. But not random ones. Effective stories and speeches have structure.

Following the structure gets you to into the top 20% of communicators. But structure doesn’t move people to action. Emotions do. And the one emotion that can change people’s minds and get them to act is surprise. So ask yourself: How can I surprise this audience?

“We need to become students of emotions. If the purpose of a great communicator is to let the audience feel something, the only way to get really good at communicating is to learn how emotions work.”

Only emotions move people to action, and the key emotion is surprise.

More about Jeremy: https://jeremy.earth

Take a look at his one pagers: https://issuu.com/jeremycw/docs/the_art_of_the_one_pager_isuuv2