presentation of the story

Presentation Storytelling Examples & Techniques (2024)

Learn techniques for telling a story in a presentation . Get narrative presentation examples and learn to apply storytelling in business presentations .

Joanne Camarce

8 minute read

Short answer

What should a presentation storytelling structure include?

Introduction

Rising Action

Falling Action

Storytelling in business presentations matters (a lot)

Stories convey a deeper meaning, idea, or lesson. They make us feel, experience, identify, and understand.

Most importantly for storytelling in business presentations, telling a story in a presentation makes people more likely to remember the message.

Researchers Dean and Chip Heath found that after a presentation, 63% of attendees could remember the story told by the presenter.

However, only 5% could recall specific statistics from the event.

Because stories allow audiences to visualize and imagine an idea or message, stories also make them better able to make decisions.

In other words, stories bring buyers, stakeholders, and decision-makers to better understand and remember your message. Which in turn enables them to make a decision and increases the chance they’ll act on it.

What is presentation storytelling?

Presentation storytelling is the art of using a narrative structure to convey information instead of dry facts. It delivers a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end that aligns with the presentation's objectives, making the content more relatable and memorable.

Storytelling in business presentations involves 2 complementing aspects: (1) textual presentation narrative, and (2) visual storytelling.

What is a narrative presentation?

A narrative presentation is a style of delivering information where the content is structured as a relatable story. It typically includes characters, a setting, a conflict, and a resolution, and weaves complex ideas, processes, and metrics into the narrative.

What is a visual storytelling presentation?

A visual storytelling presentation tells a story or multiple anecdotes using visual elements like videos, animations, and interactive content.

Modern storytelling presentations apply scrollytelling design which combines visuals and text seamlessly to let readers interact with the presentation as they scroll down the content.

How to use the 4 storytelling archetypes

Storytelling is the art of describing vivid ideas, beliefs, experiences, and life lessons through stories and narratives.

These stories stimulate a listener's imagination as you take them on an emotional journey. There are many ways to tell a story.

These story structures have been shown to work for narrative presentations and corporate storytelling, and they will work for you.

The Hero's Journey: Communicates a transformation from struggle to success

The Story Mountain: Builds tension and anticipation

Story loop: Joins multiple perspectives into a single narrative

In-Media Res: Grabs attention quickly

There are timeless narrative frameworks that have worked for storytellers throughout the ages from the methodologies of old, through Shakespearian plays to Apple commercials.

1) Hero's Journey

The hero's journey narrative archetype involves a hero who goes on a journey and returns as a changed person.

This storytelling template consists of three distinct parts, or "acts," that include a setup, confrontation, and resolution. It makes for a well-structured and engaging narrative.

2) The Mountain

The mountain storytelling structure strategically maps the tension and drama in a story. This archetype is represented visually as a mountain, with each section building to a complex obstacle that characters need to overcome.

Think of the protagonist at the bottom of the mountain. They must climb the mountain to reach their goal (your business goals in this case). They face obstacles along the way, and they must overcome those obstacles before they can reach the top.

3) Story loop

The story loop structure contains stories within another story. However, they aren't standalone stories.

Your first story is the most important. It's the core of your message, and you use the other stories to elaborate or explain your central point.

But you stop some of the way through it, leaving the audience in suspense. Then, you share part of the second story before moving on to the last.

Eventually, in the end, you bring it all together to make one cohesive point. The purpose of this storytelling technique is to provide context, background, or a different perspective to a central narrative.

Types of anecdotes you can use in your story loop presentation

• Customer success stories
• Personal experiences by clients
• Inspirational stories
• Fictional or hypothetical stories
• Historical or factual stories

Here's a short video explaining how to use a story loop:

4) In medias res (begin from the middle)

In medias res is Latin for "in the middle of things." With this storytelling archetype, the narrative begins in the middle of a scene. It skips over the background of the story and gets straight to the action.

To choose the right type of story for your presentation, consider your audience, the purpose of the presentation, and the emotional impact you want to create.

No matter what narrative structure you choose, include visuals, sensory details, and precise language to bolster your message.

If you want to learn more about this storytelling archetype, check out the video below:

Effective presentation storytelling structure

A well-structured story can engage and persuade your audience, making your corporate presentation much more effective and memorable.

Stories can be applied in any type of business presentation, such as a pitch deck, sales presentation, white paper, report, or business proposal.

A single document can include multiple stories that make up a joint narrative.

5 basic elements of a story structure:

1. Introduction

• Sets a relevant context with background information.
• Introduces the protagonist (business or product) and the current problem or challenge.

2. Rising Action

• Builds tension by detailing the obstacles and complications faced.
• Engages the audience with the steps taken to address the challenge.
• The turning point where the main tension or conflict peaks.
• Highlights the moment of greatest challenge and the decisive action taken.

4. Falling Action

• Shows the aftermath of the climax.
• Begins to lead towards the resolution, detailing the business solution and results of actions taken.

5. Resolution

• Wraps up the story with the outcome of all actions.
• Provides a clear ending, showing how the challenge was overcome and what was learned.

After developing your story structure, be sure to connect it to your core message by creating parallels and reinforcing it with examples.

Most importantly, don’t leave your audience with the realization that they need to take action without offering them an immediate way to act.

Effective storytelling techniques for presentations

The beauty of storytelling is that the possibilities are endless. There are so many ways to tell a story in presentations. It's just a matter of finding the right one for your unique needs and goals.

1) Build your stories around your audience’s pain points

Stories establish connections. But don’t confuse your story with your audience’s story.

Your audience doesn’t care about your story, and they don’t care about your product.

But they will care if they feel you care about them.

Understanding the audience's pain points, values, and opinions can help you weave a story into a narrative that aligns with their interests. It gives you the chance to be part of THEIR story.

Stop talking about yourself. Do this and see engagement blow up, conversions increase, and greater brand loyalty .

2) Establish common ground with your prospects

One effective presentation storytelling technique is to find common ground and share experiences with your audience to establish a connection and make them care about what you say.

These commonalities are what resonate strongest with your target audience.

Common-ground stories tell your audience a satisfied client of yours overcame a particular challenge they are experiencing themselves, and offer the lessons learned while overcoming it.

3) Tell stories that foster peer envy

Peer envy is one of the strongest motivators you can flame in sales presentation storytelling.

Simply put it just means telling the story of a known industry player that achieved remarkable results with the help of your product or service.

A peer envy story should present the initial challenge, the journey to overcome it, and the final enviable outcomes. Yet the reader should feel they can attain similar or better results by following a similar journey.

Here's a fragment of a podcast where Michael Bosworth touches on this very topic:

Business presentation storytelling examples

Here are some examples of famous brands that incorporated personal stories to convey a powerful message in their business presentations.

Zuora sales deck

The Zuora sales deck was aptly named the best sales deck ever . It is truly a best-in-class example of a transformation narrative set within the story mountain framework.

It masterfully narrates the shift to a subscription economy, emphasizing evolving consumer behavior.

And by highlighting the challenges businesses face in this new economy, Zuora positions itself as the essential solution.

The deck's use of data, visuals, and testimonials weaves a compelling story of transformation, urging businesses to adapt and thrive with Zuora or stay behind and decline.

Mign sales deck

Mign’s sales deck highlights the digital shift in musculoskeletal injury recovery, emphasizing the transformation from mass production to personalized care.

Mign applies the hero’s journey story framework and positions itself as the trusted guide in this transformation.

The deck contrasts "winners," who embrace new technologies like additive manufacturing and virtual care, with "losers," traditional manufacturers stuck in outdated processes.

Tinder pitch deck

Tinder's pitch deck effectively narrates the universal challenge of meeting new people and the fear of rejection.

By introducing a hypothetical user named "Matt," Tinder gives the reader a peek into the mind of their target user - an everyday nice guy scared to approach a girl he's interested in.

This concrete personal experience gives life to a basic human need that investors can understand intuitively and even relate to.

Tinder leverages this emotional understanding to make a compelling case for its solution - a platform that eliminates the fear of rejection.

The deck also applied great data storytelling showcasing Tinder's impressive statistics, emphasizing its global reach and popularity among Gen Z.

They also nail the one-liner. Their slogan "It Starts With A Swipe™" encapsulates the simplicity and effectiveness of the app, positioning Tinder as the modern solution to traditional dating challenges.

Brothers Pub restaurant pitch deck

Brothers Pub's pitch deck presents a captivating local business story, emphasizing the need for a fresh, community-focused social pub venue.

The deck tells the story of the owners’ journey, from the initial concept to securing a prime location in Northampton, highlighting their dedication and vision for the future.

The deck outlines the challenges faced by traditional pubs, with 7000 closures in the last decade, and positions Brothers Pub as the innovative solution.

LKE proposal

Legends Kratom Co. (LKE) creates a narrative around the origins and benefits of kratom. By telling the exotic tale of the medicinal tropical evergreen tree and its transformation into a beneficial supplement, the deck creates a vivid backdrop.

They take the reader on their discovery journey to Indonesia to find a supplier for the coveted plant.

This adds authenticity and allure, while their commitment to education and community showcases a heartfelt mission.

Testimonials provide real-world validation, making LKE's story relatable and positioning them as a trusted leader in the supplement industry.

Genius Workshop Event pitch deck

Genius's pitch deck for their storytelling workshop is a masterclass in selling an experience. The deck introduces Gabrielle Dolan's expertise, setting a foundation of trust.

The workshop's structure is presented as a narrative journey, guiding attendees from novice to storyteller.

The deck mixes video, scrollytelling, and vivid language to give rich detail to the experience it promises to provide.

The 90-day follow-up program adds an element of continued growth, while alumni testimonials serve as real-world success stories.

By framing the workshop as a transformative experience, the deck engages and entices potential attendees, showcasing the power of storytelling in action.

Barbie recruitment pitch deck

Barbie's recruitment deck immerses candidates into Barbie's vibrant world. With playful greetings and whimsical descriptions, it sets a creative tone.

The deck focuses on Barbie’s story as a human being (doll in her case), her values, and her experience, instead of focusing on the recruiting company.

The deck lists attributes and responsibilities that align with Barbie's ethos, such as "spreading positivity" and "rocking a pink wardrobe."

Nokia brand guidelines

Nokia's brand guidelines deck uses visual storytelling to effectively communicate the essence of the brand. It lets the visuals tell the story since they speak louder than words.

The deck begins by anchoring the audience in Nokia's mission and values, creating a narrative foundation.

It then unfolds the brand's visual identity, from color schemes to typography, weaving a cohesive story of what Nokia represents.

By providing clear dos and don'ts, Nokia ensures that its brand story remains consistent and impactful across all touchpoints.

This storytelling approach not only educates but also engages, making it easier for stakeholders to internalize and adhere to the guidelines.

nSure one-pager

nSure's one-pager effectively uses visual data storytelling to convey the benefits of their AI fraud protection for digital gift card purchases.

Introducing the challenge of ambiguous transactions, nSure lets the numbers tell the story.

With impressive numbers like their AI solution’s 98% approval rate. They can afford to.

The deck's visuals, combined with endorsements from industry leaders like AXA, make a compelling narrative that instills confidence in nSure's expertise.

Healthy.io proposal

Healthy.io's proposal uses video storytelling with real practitioners who tell the story of their experiences using Healthy.io’s solution.

The video testimonial from a practice nurse adds a personal touch, showing the positive impact on patient care. This brings the user's experience to the front and adds credibility to the proposal’s claims.

The proposal uses a transformation narrative to showcase Healthy.io’s remote kidney screening solution.

They highlight the challenges of legacy ACR testing against their modern home-based test using a smartphone app.

Principles of visual storytelling in business presentations

Storytelling allows you to simplify complex or abstract information and address any objections or resistance. As a result, listeners can better retain and remember the message, which improves the decision-making process.

Here are the main principles that can transform your narrative:

Authenticity

Authentic visuals resonate more with audiences. In an era where people are bombarded with staged and polished images, authentic, candid photos that reflect the reality of your work can make your message stand out and be memorable.

Your visuals should evoke a sensory experience. The goal is to cut through the noise and trigger a stronger emotional response.

For example, you can make the experience more immersive by adding interactive clickable elements, embedding videos, or images that highlight details or visual textures.

Scrollytelling can also play a crucial role here, allowing the story to unfold through interaction, as the audience scrolls through the narrative, engaging them in a multi-sensory journey.

You can see the difference that interactivity makes below. Which presentation would you rather read?

The stories told by your images must be relevant to your audience. Personalized visual storytelling, supported by data to understand what motivates your audience, can turn your story into an experience that resonates deeply.

Every story has characters that fit certain archetypes, such as the caregiver, the explorer, and the creator. Identifying with these archetypes helps your audience connect with the story on a deeper level, making your organization's mission more relatable and memorable.

Make your own storytelling presentation

We've curated an extensive collection of templates to help you achieve effective storytelling for whatever business presentation you need to make.

The business storytelling presentation templates below have been rigorously tested across various devices and refined with insights gleaned from real-world feedback.

They were designed with interactive storytelling at their core. They’ll serve you as handy visual storytelling aids to make your presentations engaging, memorable, and highly converting.

Grab a template!

Why the human brain loves storytelling presentations

According to neuroscientist Uri Hasson , storytelling fosters deep social interactions through brain-to-brain connections.

He found that when we hear stories, our brains mirror each other, helping us understand what the storyteller is feeling.

Called neurocoupling or mirroring, this process occurs across many areas of the brain, including the ones that are responsible for processing and understanding narratives.

So the human brain loves stories. But why?

The short answer is that ‌neural activity in the brain increases when we hear a captivating story. Our brains are made up of neurons, which are nerve cells that send messages throughout the body.

These neurons release neurotransmitters (brain chemicals) that transmit signals from nerve cells to target cells.

The most common neurotransmitters in the brain include:

When we hear a story, the neurons in our brain light up with activity. And according to neuroscientists, "neurons that fire together wire together."

This means that as we hear stories, the neurons in our brains are wiring together. As a result, we're more likely to remember the information we receive from a story.

Storytelling also triggers the release of dopamine ("the brain's form of candy") and oxytocin ("the love drug"). In other words, stories make us feel good.

Here's an infographic showing how storytelling affects the brain:

This can influence buying behavior because it helps to create an emotional connection with potential customers or buyers.

Telling a story, instead of making a sales pitch , is less intimidating to an audience.

The company or product you're describing is easier to understand, seems less complex, and provides relevant information in a format that's easy to digest and remember.

As a result, the buyer can relate to the product or service and will eventually want to purchase it.

Joanne Camarce grows and strategizes B2B marketing and PR efforts @ codeless.io . She loves slaying outreach campaigns and connecting with brands like G2, Wordstream, Process Street, and others. When she's not wearing her marketing hat, you'll find Joanne admiring Japanese music and art or just being a dog mom.

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How to Tell a Story in a Presentation, with Examples

July 26, 2018 - Dom Barnard

Keeping your audience engaged whilst trying to clearly deliver your key messages can be difficult. A helpful way of doing this is by telling stories where you take your audience on a journey and appeal to their emotions. In this article we discuss storytelling techniques you can incorporate into presentations.

The benefits of storytelling

Storytelling is used in every culture, passed down through generations, to help with understanding because  humans like narrative structures . It’s now becoming more popular for business presentations – this is the case for Cisco Systems who switched from fact-heavy presentations to presentations incorporating stories and consequently became more successful in promoting their products.

Research suggests that humans are hardwired to listen to stories, for example, after conducting a fMRI study, neuroscientist Uri Hasson concluded that storytelling causes the neurons of an audience to sync with the storyteller’s brain. This suggests that your brain in responding like the storyteller’s so you are experiencing the same emotions.

Storytelling has multiple benefits:

• Grabs attention
• Evokes emotion, especially empathy
• Uses the audience’s imagination
• Relatable e.g. humanises a person, company etc
• Maintains attention because stories are so engaging
• Builds anticipation by having heroes, challenges, adventures and journeys
• Changes beliefs
• Very persuasive

Different ways of storytelling

Monomyth (the hero’s the journey).

In a monomyth, a hero goes on a difficult journey or takes on a challenge – they move from the familiar into the unknown. After facing obstacles and ultimately succeeding the hero returns home, transformed and with newfound wisdom.

Using a monomyth is a useful way of showing the audience how you obtained the knowledge/wisdom that you will be sharing in your presentation. When you deliver your presentation you can hold the audience as the hero – they can come on the journey, you encourage them to walk through it and get passed the obstacles. Your ideas delivered in the presentation can guide them to the rewards/wisdom they seek.

An example of a monomyth: professional snowboarder  Amy Purdy delivered a speech  where she talks about losing her legs to meningitis, re-learning snowboarding and finally receiving a medal in the Paralympics.

• Engages the audience by accessing their imagination and taking them a journey
• Universal appeal – has a recognisable and simple structure
• Demonstrates the benefits of taking risks
• Quickly evokes empathy
• Shows how you learned a lesson and how you got your wisdom
• Your audience sees the value of your product, service etc

Rags to riches

This essentially is a story where the main character has various hardships in their life, usually hits rock bottom but then achieves great success.

• Relatable as we have all faced difficult times
• Provides hope

In medias res (into the middle of things)

In this type of story you launch right into the action – providing a snippet/teaser of what’s happening and then you start explaining the events that led to that event. You’ll be familiar with TV shows frequently using this technique.

This is engaging because you’re starting your story at the most exciting part which will make the audience curious – they’ll want to know how you got there.

Don’t give away too much of the action when you start the story; you’ll want to explain it in more detail when you reach it chronologically. Consider hinting at something unexpected or strange occurring – just provide the audience with enough information to get them interested.

• Attention grabbing
• Creates suspense
• Focuses attention on the fundamental moment of the story

False start

When delivering a false start, you begin by telling a supposedly predictable story and then unexpectedly reveal something before starting the story again with an altered perspective. This can be used to surprise the audience and it will get them engaged as it disrupted their predictions.

It’s useful for talking about times where you experienced a failure and then you consequently had to start again and what you learnt from this, including whether you had a special way of solving the problem.

• Changes the audience’s perspective
• Relates to the audience by sharing a failure
• Displays problem-solving

The mountain

This is similar to the monomyth – the mountain initially starts by setting the scene, it goes on to include a series of small challenges and a build-up of action, finally ending with a climatic finish. Typically something else will be introduced to the story to overcome the final challenge.

• Highlights how you overcame a series of challenges
• Builds suspense gradually – used in a lot of films
• Provides a satisfying conclusion

Practice Impromptu Storytelling

Practice telling a story with plot twists along the way. Learn More

Sparklines are when you contrast this world to an ideal world. You highlight the problems this world has and suggest what it could be like. It’s very persuasive because it gets the audience to want to make changes. A well-known example is Martin Luther’s “ I have a dream ” speech.

• Emotional appeal
• Evokes hope
• Often leads to action

Your whole presentation could follow the structure of a sparklines story:

1. Presentation beginning  – describe current life as this helps create a connection between yourself and the audience because they will agree with what you’re saying. Go on to introduce what the future can be, for example:

• What is: Our competitors have eaten up 30% of our revenue this year
• What could be: But what if we could fight back with a completely new product line in the same market? We’ve got the in-house expertise and resources to do just this.

2. Presentation middle  – now you have shown what the issues is continue to reflect on the contrast between the present and what the future could be like, for example:

• What is: We missed our revenue target by 30%.
• What could be: We’ve got to perform better next year otherwise we’ll have to start letting people go.
• What is: We’ve conducted early product trials with some of our customers.
• What could be: Over 90% said they would purchase the product when developed.

As you keep switching from what is and what could be the audience will find the possible future more appealing.

3. Presentation ending  – You want a call to action that is motivating, you want to show the audience the benefits of taking on your ideas. For example:

• Call to action: It will take additional work from several of our departments to get the new product line built in time for the launch date and to make up the revenue number for next year.
• The result of adopting your ideas: I know everyone’s working incredibly long hours, we really appreciate it. This is our opportunity to work together and give the company a massive boost. We’ll fight back against the competitors and you’ll all earn bonuses after a successful launch.

This makes it clear to the audience that everyone will benefit from your plan.

Nested loops

In nested loops, three of more stories are layered within each other. An example would be a character in your first story tells another story and a character in that story tells another story etc. The core of your message is in the centre and the stories around it explain this message or elaborate on it.

Each nested story should end in the order it was introduced, for example, the story you begin with is the last story you finish with, the second story you start is the second to last story you finish etc.

• Shows how your wisdom was obtained through a series of interactions/showing how wisdom was passed to you
• Explains how you came to a conclusion

Converging ideas

Converging ideas shows the audience how different people’s thinking came together to produce one idea. This is a good way of showing how a movement started or how an idea was created from various people working towards the same thing.

Converging ideas are similar to nested loops but with converging ideas you can show how stories with equal importance came to one significant conclusion.

• Demonstrates collaborations between people
• Can show how relationships formed
• Demonstrates how a development occurred

Petal structure

The petal structure consists of telling multiple stories from multiple speakers that relate to the main message. This is useful if you have unconnected stories that relate back to the central concept. You can overlap the stories as one story, after it has been completed, introduces the next story.

• In showing the audience how these stories are related they understand the significance of your message
• Provides the voice of multiple speakers
• Provides lots of evidence or emotional appeal around a central idea
• Shows how multiple situations lead back to one concept
• Allows a group of speakers to discuss a main message

Example of captive storytelling

Donald Blake from the Scottish Storytelling Centre tells a tale about being hungry for stories. Great example of how to tell a story during a presentation.

Watch the full video here:  ICH for Everyone: The importance of storytelling

Storytelling tips

Storytelling is used by the  top public speakers , here are their tips:

Understand your audience

You first need to find out who you’re presenting to:

• Know their pain points, values and opinions
• Topics of interest
• Try to find similarities, including any shared experiences, you have with the audience because they can relate and empathise with you. Consequently they will care about what you say.

Frame your story

Think about taking the audience on a journey and work out where to start and finish.

To find a place to start ask:

• What do audience already know about the topic?
• How much do the audience care about the topic?

If a speech is received poorly it’s usually because it was not framed well – the speaker misunderstood the level of audience interest or they didn’t tell a story.

Know your message

Ensure that you understand what you’re trying to tell the audience and how your story is linked to your call for action.

• Think about how you want the audience to feel about your message.
• For example, you might need to share facts and figures but try to deliver this is an engaging way so they will be remembered.

Ensure that you choose a story relevant to the idea you want to support or the point you want to make. The story must be  tailored to your audience  so it relates to them and meets their needs.

Be authentic

• Tell real-life stories to garner trust.
• If your story is not genuine this will work against you and the audience will judge you as dishonest.

Use a conversational tone

When telling your story speak in a conversational tone as this will sound more natural and friendly. To help with this pretend that you’re telling the story to friends or family and avoid technical terminology.

Remember that the audience is the hero

• The audience often needs to view themselves as the hero.
• Let people see and feel what the journey of achieving the goal will be like.

Visual aids increase engagement  and memory retention. Use relevant images, videos, props etc as supplements to your story.

Evoke emotions

By evoking certain emotions in the audience, they will feel more connected to the story which will help with their engagement and persuading them. Emotions also increase memory retention.

Sell your story not your product

Focus your story on the outcome that the audience is looking for and not on your product.

There needs to be conflict, contrast or action in the story; in traditional tales there would be a villain. In a  business presentation  there might be a problem that the characters must overcome. This ensures audience engagement because they want to know what happens next. To increase suspense:

• Tell a story chronologically so you can build to a climactic conclusion
• Consider telling a predictable story and then shock the audience by going a different direction to what was predicted (false start).
• Consider using in media res.

Stories need a beginning, middle and end to create drama and anticipation. Sometimes you don’t have to complete the story as this can be a useful way of making a point in the presentation.

Tell personal stories because the audience will enjoy seeing your human side. Consider telling a story about a mistake you made, for example, perhaps you froze up during an important presentation when you were 25, or maybe life wasn’t going well for you in the past – if relevant to your presentation’s aim.

People will empathise and relate to you as we have all experienced hardship. The more the audience relates to you, the more likely they will remain engaged. These stories can also be told in a humorous way if it makes you feel more comfortable.

Ensure that you plan the stories thoroughly beforehand and make sure they are not too long.

How you tell your story

The way you tell a story is important, if you do it effectively the audience won’t forget it. Consider:

• Using every word and image to help create a clear picture in their mind
• Using visuals to supplement the story
• Providing sensory details – using all five senses
• Using precise verbs and nouns and vivid adjectives.
• Providing short but effective descriptions

Imaginable characters

Create characters that the audience can imagine easily. Characters are significant because it’s their struggles that make the audience react. You must provide enough detail on the main character and identify their unique characteristic, such, as, perseverance.

A common technique for presenting characters in business presentations is to start with “This is…” followed by the character’s name and their job role and their important characteristics/backstory. For example, “This is Sally, a hard-working but over-worked marketing manager etc.”

Shock the audience

Build up to a dramatic event that they won’t forget – this can be a provoking image, shocking statistics etc. For example, in a  2009 speech  Bill Gates, after providing statistics on the issues of malaria, opened a jar of mosquitoes in the presentation room and said “There’s no reason only poor people should have the experience.”

Satisfying resolution

End with a resolution – this can be a piece of advice or wisdom that will help the audience.

Telling stories is a compelling way of presenting because humans relate to them. Stories engage the audience, evoke empathy, increase trust and motivate action. By working on your storytelling skills you will be more effective at persuading the audience the value of your ideas. Make sure you spend the time refining these skills so you can set your company apart from the rest.

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The 5 Steps of Storytelling – How to Tell a Great Story in a Presentation

Want to Know How to Tell a Great Story in a Presentation? The Steps of Storytelling Are Not as Important as the Story Itself.

Storytelling in our personal lives is very normal. When we get together with friends or family, we build rapport by sharing good stories about ourselves. I went to my High School reunion a few years ago. I was visiting with friends that I haven’t seen for a long time. One of the funniest things, though, was that I expected that it would be a bunch of old people reminiscing about stories from our teenage years. However, the opposite occurred. It was really interesting to hear about what my friends had done since High School. We spent hours catching up. And the way that we caught up was by telling great stories to each other about our experiences. Many of my friends had accomplished some pretty impressive things. However, none of them sounded like they were bragging.

The biggest public speaking secret that I know is that you can do the exact same thing in your speeches. When you share stories of your successes, your audience lives vicariously through your stories. I remember growing up hearing the phrase, “Experience is the best teacher.” After being a business owner for 20 plus years now, I realize how dumb that statement is. Experience is NOT the best teacher. Someone else’s experience is the best teacher. When I hear a story about how someone else accomplished a goal that I want to accomplish, I can learn from it. I don’t have to experience all the turmoil that he or she went through.

So, follow the steps of storytelling below. However, just realize that the steps, in and of themselves, are not as important as the actual stories. Pick a good story to tell, the steps don’t matter.

The 5 Steps of Storytelling During a Presentation. Follow these Tips to Become a Better Storyteller.

Below are the Five Steps of Storytelling that we have identified in our presentation skills class . These best practices will help you organize your stories better. Remember that audience members have a short attention span. Good storytelling, though, can help you capture and hold the attention of your audience. In fact, inserting better stories is a simple way to improve your presentations dramatically.

The tips below can help you improve your story structure,. However, the best way to deliver a story in your presentation is to just play the video in your head. Then just tell the audience what you are seeing. Great storytelling is really just sharing your own experience with your audience. So if following these steps is a little out of your comfort zone, start by just inserting a single personal story from your own experience into your next presentation. Then try each of these tips, one at a time, in future presentations.

• Focus on a Single Incident.
• Great Storytellers Get the Audience Involved with a “Hook.”
• Narrate the Story Using the When, Where, Who, and What.
• Use Lots of Details. Paint the Picture of Your Story During Your Presentation.
• The Last of the Steps of Storytelling is to End Your Presentation Story with a Call to Action.

1. Focus on a Single Incident.

In the early days of my presentation classes, I stopped using the word “Story” and started using “Incident.” The reason was that a novel is a story. However, a novel may contain hundreds or even thousands of incidents. I was listening to a talk radio show recently, and an ad for Legacy Box played. This is an organization that digitizes old photos, films, and videos. The narrator said something interesting, though. He said, “We don’t remember days, we remember moments.” That is so true.

8 Hours of Boring Story

1 Year Story in 2 Minutes

The second is the actor Will Smith telling about learning a lesson as a child. He tells of his father knocking down a brick wall of his story and telling Will and his brother to rebuild it. The story was an entire year of Smith’s life. However, he tells the entire year in two minutes. He does this by focusing on specific incidents. He tells about the day his father knocked down the wall. Then, he tells about the day he and his brother laid the last brick. This technique is the key to the art of storytelling.

It makes for a fantastic story.

2. Great Storytellers Get the Audience Involved with a “Hook.”

Sometimes, a compelling story doesn’t necessarily follow the correct chronological order.

I remember watching the Quentin Tarantino film, Pulp Fiction years ago. In the opening scene, a couple is discussing places to rob. Eventually, they decide to rob the diner they are eating in. As soon as they pull out their weapons, the scene cuts. The two are not seen again until the very end of the movie. I admit, when I watched Pulp Fiction the first time, I was confused. However, when Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta end up being in that diner, it made me laugh. The Hangover had a similar “start with the end” technique…

Great movies, TV shows, and News Programs use this technique a lot. They give you a taste of what is coming at the beginning. You can do the same as one of your steps of storytelling. Foreshadow something that is coming. One of the best examples is The Hangover. The bachelor party group wakes up and realizes there is a tiger in the bathroom. None of them can remember how that it got there. The story unfolds to tell us the answer later. It is obvious that the person who wrote this script has exceptional storytelling skills.

You can do the same thing in your stories. Knowing how to tell a great story starts with a little showmanship. Telling the end of the story first can often be a good hook. To do this, think about the most action-packed part of the story. Then start with that part. Fill in the prequel later.

3. Narrate the Story Using the When, Where, Who, and What.

• When I was six-years-old, my dad caught me sneaking out of his bedroom with a dollar that I stole from his wallet.
• Back in 2005, I finished a team building activity where the audience gave me a standing ovation. One of the participants said, “That was worth a million dollars.” She was wrong. It has actually been worth over 20 million dollars.
• Last week, I made an uncomfortable phone call. I had to fire my new web guy.

In each of these, my goal was to both give you the when, who, and where. I also wanted to use the hook to try to get you to want to know what actually happened to get to that point. Now, when I fill in the “What Happened,” it should make for a more interesting story.

4. Use Lots of Details. Paint the Picture of Your Story During Your Presentation.

Bad Example: Abstract Concepts Are One of the Biggest Mistakes that a Lot of People Make in Storytelling.

Our team worked on a similar project last year. We all worked together and came up with a great solution. So, teamwork is important.

This just leaves the audience with more questions. Who was on your team? What was the problem? How did they come up with a solution? How did the solution work? How is it similar to what we are going through now? If this story was a painting, it would be some type of nebulous modern art. What we really want is something more tangible.

Better Example: Important Information Creates an Engaging Story and Creates an Emotional Connection with the Audience.

Last year, Abbie had a client who hired me to deliver a breakout session at their national convention in Tampa. The topic was how to design a persuasive speech. However, since the convention was going to have over 30 different speakers. Many of these presenters were experts in the industry, but not professional speakers. In past conventions, the sessions were somewhat dry and boring. So, the client asked Abbie and me to design a way to train 30 speakers in over a dozen different cities. To come up with a solution, we brought in our video producer, Evan. We also reached out to one of our facilitators, Fiona, who has a background in producing films. We tossed around a number of ideas including webinars, having speakers come to the convention space early, and even going to the different cities for more personal coaching. The solution that we came up with, though, was to start with a webinar for the whole group. We delivered the webinar live three different times. We had each presenter work with one of our instructors one-on-one via Skype for about an hour. And, we also arrived at the convention hall a day early to work with any of the speakers who needed additional help. It worked perfectly.

5. The Last of the Steps of Storytelling is to End Your Presentation Story with a Call to Action.

You don’t want your audience to have a similar question. So go ahead and tell them what the point was. By the way we do this naturally. We will often finish a story by saying, “my point is…” or “the reason that I’m telling you this is…” I remember reading Aesop’s fables when I was a kid. They always ended with “the moral of the story is…” So, don’t leave your audience hanging. Leave them with a moral of the story.

The Real Secret of How to Tell a Great Story is to Practice Different Versions.

This final tip isn’t really one of the steps of storytelling, but it is an important part of how to tell a story. It is a good idea to practice different versions of your story. I got this from my friend Ton Antion when I interviewed him about building a personal brand . He suggested having a 30-second version, a one-minute version, and a two-minute version of every story.

By the way, I’m not saying to have three different kinds of stories. I’m suggesting that you get good at telling your stories in different ways so the timing of your story is the right length whether you have three minutes to speak, 30 minutes to speak, or three hours to speak. The best storytellers are able to condense the whole story down in time if they absolutely have to do so.

Although I had been teaching students how to tell a great story for years, I never really taught this. I’d just say something like, “If time is short, just condense your story down.” After Tom mentioned this tip, though, I began to pay attention to the look on my student’s faces when I said this. I’d sometimes see a little confusion. So, we actually started practicing this in class. It has been a big help. In fact, we sometimes find that a well-worded 30-second story can be more impactful than a longer one. Try it yourself and see!

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8 Classic storytelling techniques for engaging presentations

Emily Bartlett Feb 1, 2022 1:57:05 PM

A good public speaker takes their audience on a journey, leaving them feeling inspired and motivated. But structuring your speech to get your ideas across and keep your audience engaged all the way through is tricky. Try these eight storytelling techniques for a presentation that wows. 

You’re doing a presentation, so you start with the facts you want to get across. Wrong! Humans are hardwired for stories. They love heroes, journeys, surprises, layers and happy endings.

Deliver a presentation that captures the hearts and heads of your audience by stealing one of these classic storytelling techniques. Start with the story – the rest will be history.

1. Monomyth

The monomyth (also called the hero's journey), is a story structure that's found in many folk tales, myths and religious writings from around the world.

In a monomyth, the hero is called to leave their home and sets out on a difficult journey. They move from somewhere they know into a threatening unknown place.

After overcoming a great trial, they return home with a reward or newfound wisdom – something which will help their community. Lots of modern stories still follow this structure, from the Lion King to Star Wars. 

Using the monomyth to shape your presentation can help you explain what has brought you to the wisdom you want to share. It can bring your message alive for your audience.

• Taking the audience on a journey
• Showing the benefit of taking risks
• Demonstrating how you learned some new found wisdom

See also: The Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell

Japanese yo-yo-er BLACK tells the inspiring story of finding his life's passion, and the difficult path he took to become world champion. He closes by sharing his new found skills with the audience, bringing his journey full circle.

2. The mountain

The mountain structure is a way of mapping the tension and drama in a story. It's similar to the monomyth because it helps us to plot when certain events occur in a story.

It's different because it doesn't necessarily have a happy ending. The first part of the story is given to setting the scene, and is followed by just a series of small challenges and rising action before a climactic conclusion.

It's a bit like a TV series – each episode has its ups and downs, all building up to a big finale at the end of the season.

• Showing how you overcame a series of challenges
• Slowly building tension
• Delivering a satisfying conclusion

Aimee Mullins uses a mountain-structure speech to tell a personal story – from being born without fibula bones in her lower legs to becoming a famous athlete, actress and model.

3. Nested loops

Nested loops is a storytelling technique where you layer three or more narratives within each other.

You place your most important story – the core of your message – in the centre, and use the stories around it to elaborate or explain that central principle. The first story you begin is the last story you finish, the second story you start is second to last, etc.

Nested loops works a bit like a friend telling you about a wise person in their life, someone who taught them an important lesson. The first loops are your friend's story, the second loops are the wise person's story. At the centre is the important lesson.

• Explaining the process of how you were inspired/ came to a conclusion
• Using analogies to explain a central concept
• Showing how a piece of wisdom was passed along to you

See also:  Simon Sinek's TED talk shows how successful organizations place the 'why?' of what they do at the centre, surrounded by the 'what?' and 'how?' of their business. Nested loops are an ideal way of framing this message, giving your audience a real insight into your identity. 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie uses the framework of her experiences in university and the way that Africa is perceived in the Western world to drive home her argument about stories.

4. Sparklines

Sparklines are a way of mapping presentation structures. Graphic designer Nancy Duarte uses sparklines to analyse famous speeches graphically in her book Resonate .

She argues that the very best speeches succeed because they contrast our ordinary world with an ideal, improved world. They compare  what is  with  what could be . 

By doing this the presenter draws attention to the problems we have in our society, our personal lives, our businesses. The presenter creates and fuels a desire for change in the audience.

It's a highly emotional technique that is sure to motivate your audience to support you.

• Inspiring the audience to action
• Creating hope and excitement
• Creating a following

See also: Resonate by Nancy Duarte

Martin Luther King's speech is famous the world over because it contrasts the racist, intolerant society of the day with an ideal future society where all races are treated equally.

5. In media res

In medias res storytelling is when you begin your narrative in the heat of the action, before starting over at the beginning to explain how you got there.

By dropping your audience right into the most exciting part of your story they'll be gripped from the beginning and will stay engaged to find out what happens.

But be careful – you don't want to give away too much of the action straight away. Try hinting at something bizarre or unexpected – something that needs more explanation. Give your audience just enough information to keep them hooked, as you go back and set the scene of your story.

This only works for shorter presentations though – if you string it out too long your audience will get frustrated and lose interest.

• Grabbing attention from the start
• Keep an audience craving resolution
• Focusing attention on a pivotal moment in your story

Zak Ebrahim begins his talk with the revelation that his father helped plan the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing. His audience is gripped from the beginning, as he begins to recount the events of his childhood and the path he took after his father's conviction. 

6. Converging ideas

Converging ideas is a speech structure that shows the audience how different strands of thinking came together to form one product or idea.

It can be used to show the birth of a movement. Or explain how a single idea was the culmination of several great minds working towards one goal.

Converging ideas is similar to the nested loops structure, but rather than framing one story with complementary stories, it can show how several equally important stories came to a single strong conclusion.

This technique could be used to tell the stories of some of the world's greatest partnerships – for example, web developers Larry Page and Sergey Brin. 

Larry and Sergey met at Stanford's PhD program in 1995, but they didn't like each other at first. They both had great ideas, but found working together hard. Eventually they found themselves working on a research project together. A research project that became Google.

• Showing how great minds came together
• Demonstrating how a development occurred at a certain point in history
• Showing how symbiotic relationships have formed

See also: Steven Johnson's TED talk , where he explains how collaboration has fuelled some of history's best ideas.

John Bohannon and the Black Label Movement explain (verbally and through dance) how scientists and dancers came together to form an exciting, dynamic alternative to boring presentations.

7. False start

A 'false start' story is when you begin to tell a seemingly predictable story, before unexpectedly disrupting it and beginning it over again. You lure your audience into a false sense of security, and then shock them by turning the tables.

This format is great for talking about a time that you failed in something and were forced to 'go back to the start' and reassess. It's ideal for talking about the things that you learnt from that experience. Or the innovative way that you solved your problem.

But best of all, it's a quick attention hack which will disrupt your audience's expectations and surprise them into paying closer attention to your message. 

• Disrupting audience expectations
• Showing the benefits of a flexible approach
• Keeping the audience engaged

J K Rowling begins her speech at Harvard in a typical fashion. She talks about her time at university and the expectations of her parents. The audience expects her to talk about the growing success of her writing career – instead she focuses on a time in her twenties where she felt she had 'failed' in life. What comes next is inspirational.

8. Petal structure

The petal structure is a way of organising multiple speakers or stories around one central concept. It's useful if you have several unconnected stories you want to tell or things you want to reveal – that all relate back to a single message.

You tell your stories one by one before returning back to the centre. The petals can overlap as one story introduces the next but each should be a complete narrative in itself.

In doing so, you can weave a rich tapestry of evidence around your central theory. Or strong emotional impressions around your idea. 

By showing your audience how all these key stories are related to one another, you leave them feeling the true importance and weight of your message.

• Demonstrating how strands of a story or process are interconnected
• Showing how several scenarios relate back to one idea
• Letting multiple speakers talk around a central theme

See also:  Carnegie Mellon University's guide to story nodes

Simon Sinek again! His theory might lend itself perfectly to nested loops, but he himself chose to deliver his talk in a petal structure. He tells his audience a series a stories to help illustrate his ideas, each one strengthening his message further.  

Start with a story

So there you have it – 8 classic storytelling shapes to brighten up your talk and really engage your audience.  

Of course there are many other storytelling techniques out there that you can use. What I hope this post has done is show you that stories are powerful. They are the language of your audience.

Your talk – however dry the subject – can be brought alive if you find the story at the heart of it all. If you'd like any help developing your story and turning it into a winning animated video, contact our friendly Sparkol Creative Services team here.  

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How to Give a Killer Presentation

• Chris Anderson

For more than 30 years, the TED conference series has presented enlightening talks that people enjoy watching. In this article, Anderson, TED’s curator, shares five keys to great presentations:

• Frame your story (figure out where to start and where to end).
• Plan your delivery (decide whether to memorize your speech word for word or develop bullet points and then rehearse it—over and over).
• Work on stage presence (but remember that your story matters more than how you stand or whether you’re visibly nervous).
• Plan the multimedia (whatever you do, don’t read from PowerPoint slides).
• Put it together (play to your strengths and be authentic).

According to Anderson, presentations rise or fall on the quality of the idea, the narrative, and the passion of the speaker. It’s about substance—not style. In fact, it’s fairly easy to “coach out” the problems in a talk, but there’s no way to “coach in” the basic story—the presenter has to have the raw material. So if your thinking is not there yet, he advises, decline that invitation to speak. Instead, keep working until you have an idea that’s worth sharing.

Lessons from TED

A little more than a year ago, on a trip to Nairobi, Kenya, some colleagues and I met a 12-year-old Masai boy named Richard Turere, who told us a fascinating story. His family raises livestock on the edge of a vast national park, and one of the biggest challenges is protecting the animals from lions—especially at night. Richard had noticed that placing lamps in a field didn’t deter lion attacks, but when he walked the field with a torch, the lions stayed away. From a young age, he’d been interested in electronics, teaching himself by, for example, taking apart his parents’ radio. He used that experience to devise a system of lights that would turn on and off in sequence—using solar panels, a car battery, and a motorcycle indicator box—and thereby create a sense of movement that he hoped would scare off the lions. He installed the lights, and the lions stopped attacking. Soon villages elsewhere in Kenya began installing Richard’s “lion lights.”

• CA Chris Anderson is the curator of TED.

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by TED Masterclass Team • September 30, 2021

To be human is to tell stories. Stories are how we make sense of the world and share our ideas, passions, and unique perspectives. This TED-Ed video shares how presentation literacy, a skill to improve public speaking, can transform storytelling into your superpower.

An impactful story stays with your audience long after you’ve told it. For thousands of years humans have shared stories that ignite a “spark” in their audience and evoke a sense of empathy, trust, and connection. Listeners pass powerful messages along, spreading interesting ideas and stories far and wide.

The importance of presentation literacy

While storytelling remains as critical as ever, the qualities of an impactful story have had to evolve to continue to captivate in our modern world. As the speed at which information and headlines are shared has accelerated, the average attention span has been reduced to just eight seconds . Eight seconds! In our current media environment it now requires more than words to captivate people. This is where presentation literacy comes into play.

Touted as “ a core skill of the 21st century ”, presentation literacy can be a critical skill to leverage in your career. It requires us to create a compelling story that engages the audience’s other senses too, using high-resolution pictures, videos, or music. Often, it’s a combination of all of the above in addition to words, spelled out and spoken, that make a story truly shine.

In mastering presentation literacy, a storyteller ushers in a clear vision, replete with supplementary audiovisual cues to convey a message or, perhaps, convince others of it. While honing presentation literacy is immensely rewarding, the idea of putting it to practice on the stage can be terrifying to many people .

What presentation literacy can teach you

Many powerful speakers have struggled with stage anxiety. Even some acclaimed TED speakers, as shared by TED curator Chris Anderson , aren’t exempt from this: Monica Lewinsky thought she wasn’t worthy of a spot on the TED stage; Jacqueline Novogratz resisted public speaking in her younger years; and even Elon Musk wasn’t reputed as a “public speaker.” And yet, their TED Talks have been collectively viewed over 60 million times.

These speakers were able to cast aside their insecurities to tell a story that they wanted others to hear. And as a result, they have amassed millions of views and received critical acclaim among their colleagues and many of those who’ve listened to their Talks.

Mastering public speaking and presentation literacy isn’t just limited to speaking onstage. The skill is also valuable in your everyday life. It can teach you how to communicate with others effectively, articulate your ideas clearly, and speak with confidence, whether to colleagues, new acquaintances, family, or friends.

Innovating storytelling

Technology has opened up avenues that allow us to tell our stories in myriad ways. Anderson explains, “we live in an age where you don’t have to be able to speak to thousands of people at a time to have an outsized impact. It could just be you talking intimately to a video camera, and letting the Internet do the rest.”

The hardest part is plucking up the courage to try. We’re ready when you are: To learn how to hone your presentation literacy skills and master public speaking, visit our website, TED Masterclass . Our course guides you through the storytelling process, so you can present your most pressing ideas clearly, concisely, and impactfully.

© 2024 TED Conferences, LLC. All rights reserved. Please note that the TED Talks Usage policy does not apply to this content and is not subject to our creative commons license.

The Importance of Storytelling in Presentations: The Why, How & Where

December 9, 2019 / Blog presentation design, storytelling

Try going a day without sharing a story. 

Sound impossible?

Stories are an intrinsic part of our experience as humans. They’re a vital part of how we communicate with one another.

That said, if storytelling is so essential to our daily lives, why do so few harness it in their presentations? 

When we address an audience, we tend to focus on the important points we need to convey. We talk about data or explain a business model.

We concentrate on information that’s crucial to the outcome we’re hoping for.  Yet despite this, we still forget to answer why everyone in the room needs to hear what we have to say.

Your presentation content has to be more than just a barrage of information and numerical data.

This is where presentation storytelling comes in handy—there’s nothing more compelling than a good story. 

Just ask Dr. Zak, who carefully explains how the human brain responds to effective storytelling in this video:

Pretty cool, right? 

The effectiveness storytelling lies in how your audience reacts to it.

As social beings, we’re naturally attuned to our emotions. It doesn’t matter whether it makes you sad, happy, angry, or nostalgic — our brains love a good story.

This is something TED presenters have capitalized on.

If you review the list of the most viewed TED Talks , you’ll see each of them has a story integrated into the discussion.

As Forbes contributor Nick Morgan points out:

“ No matter how interesting the information, you’ll run up against the limitations of the brain and quickly overtax your audience. If instead you tell your audience a story, you get to jump right into the deeper parts of their brain, where emotion and memory work together — the hippocampus and amygdala .”

So the importance of storytelling can’t be overstated, but what can integrating a story arc do for your business presentations?

1) They Make Your Messages More Relatable

There’s a reason many of us filled our notebooks with doodles during our school days.

Facts and figures can make any lecture boring and mind-numbing.  

When incorporating storytelling, the right stories can make your message more meaningful and—most importantly—digestible.

This is especially true if you take the time to understand your  audience and the type of life stories that will grab their attention.

2) They Help You Connect with Your Audience

Stories can help establish a bond between the storyteller and the audience.

They cut through the audience’s filter better than facts, giving you a greater chance of garnering more meaningful attention, earning their trust, and — ultimately — consuming your message.

Once you have a connection with your audience, you can have them hanging on every word you say.

3) They Make Your Audience Agree with You

When stories hit their mark, they can add a greater impact to your presentations, making it easier for the audience to agree with your points.

This happens because stories shut down whatever counter-arguments your listeners have , making them less likely to develop reasons to disagree. 

Integrating Storytelling in Business Presentations

What is business storytelling?

According to Mike Murray, business storytelling is about “brands sharing their messages in ways that engage audiences and drive them to a desired action.” 

This might sound like content marketing , but Murray maintains that the two separate, but related, things ideas:

“Business storytelling is a distinct content discipline that leverages well-crafted narratives in a diverse range of content types. Content marketing is much broader and speaks to the collective efforts that companies use to communicate with their audiences in an informative and engaging way.”

But how does one integrate storytelling into a business presentation?

Actually, it’s pretty easy to create a heart-warming story for a presentation. The real challenge is turning data into a narrative that packs an emotional punch. 

First, Structure Your Presentation Like a Story

According to presentation storytelling expert Bruce Gabrielle, you’ll need to follow a simple but effective structure: Beginning, Middle, End.

Beginning: The Human Element

Start your presentation by letting your audience see there’s a genuine and relatable story behind what you’re presenting.

For example, identify a hero that your audience can relate to instead of leading with numbers or graphs. There is always a face behind all the abstract concepts and issues you’re taking on and that face will allow your audience to relate your topic to their own experiences.

Substitute “what” with “who do I really want to talk about?” For example, if you’re trying to discuss a marketing strategy, your hero could be a potential client. Describe the person you want to engage with your services. Talk about their demographics, traits, and values.

Middle: The Conflict

What would your favorite movie be like without conflict?

Like any good story, business presentations also need a bit of tension. Apart from his or her goals, you also have to identify the challenges and risks faced by your hero.

What are the things that bother your potential clients? What’s preventing them from engaging with your services?

End: The Resolution

After building conflict, offer your audience some reprieve by giving them a satisfying resolution.

At this point, you can put everything together and focus on data necessary to your discussion. While explaining the graph on your slides, keep referring back to your hero. What do these numbers have to do with the hero of your story? How does it solve the problems you identified earlier?

One thing to note is that although using stories in presentations will provide more impact, try to make use of captivating visuals, as well. While your narrative is certainly the most important part of your presentation, visuals remain to be an effective way to enhance audience immersion.

Let’s Take This A Bit Further…

To elicit even more powerful emotions from your audience, craft a story that follows the solid structure Gustav Freytag first envisioned 150 years ago:

In a literary story, this is where the author lays out some “ground work” by presenting the characters, setting, and basic conflict.

This is where you establish context for your presentation. Introduce the point-of-view you’re presenting and share some background information. If the story focuses on an experience you had with a client, set the scene and illustrate the important details.

Rising Action

After presenting the context of your story, it’s time to build tension and increase conflict.

Start identifying obstacles that prevent your character from feeling fully satisfied or happy. If your story is from a target customer’s POV, tell your audience about the challenges they face.

As the turning point of your story, the climax is the part where your character comes face-to-face with their problem.

This is where the conflict becomes fully-realized and a solution is seen on the horizon. For your presentation, the climax marks where you start driving home your core message.

Falling Action

Slowly, as a solution becomes clearer and clearer, your character takes a course of action towards the identified goal.

In the traditional sense, this is where the protagonist battles the antagonist. For your presentation, this is where you further flesh out your core message, expounding more on how it helps resolve the problems you introduced early on.

Conclusion/Resolution

Finally, describe how your character meets their goals. This is where you explain how you and a difficult client came to an agreement. In another example, the conclusion is when your target customer finally achieves full resolution.

The Different Types of Business Stories

In literature, stories are told to reveal broader themes. 

While you’re not expected to philosophize abstract themes in your presentation, the story you share should also have a purpose. 

At its core, it should be more than just a story. Your narrative should be driven by a rationale that is essential to illustrating your presentation’s core message.

To get there, consider asking  yourself these key questions:

• What is the main point you’re trying to get across?
• What is the underlying principle behind your presentation?
• What is the significance of this particular story?

The more you understand the key takeaway, the better you can deliver your presentation story.

In her book, “Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins,” Annette Simmons identified six kinds of stories that can help facilitate business communications:

• “Who am I” Stories
• “Why am I here” Stories
• Vision Stories
• Values-in-Action Stories
• Teaching Stories
• “I know what you’re thinking” Stories

( You can read about each story here. )

While Simmons uses these stories to help frame interactions that are more straightforward, her insights can also be helpful to marketing presentations.

Particularly, it’s the first three that are important to presentation storytelling. 

These are the type of stories that help reveal insights to build trust and establish rapport between you and your audience.

Obviously, you won’t be telling stories from your own personal experience. Instead, think of answers to “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?” and “What do I envision?” in terms of your brand and company identity. 

Here are a few specific questions, courtesy of Content Marketing Institute , to help you narrow it down:

• What’s your reason for being?
• What’s your history?
• Who are your main characters?
• What’s your corporate mission?
• How have you failed?

Humans have always been storytellers. It’s our way of connecting with each other. 

In whatever form, the core of all our communications is the primordial impulse to tell and hear stories. Why not use that to improve your presentations?

A Tale as Old as TED

As mentioned earlier, TED speakers are some of the best people to ask about storytelling tips. 

Human rights attorney and public speaker Bryan Stevenson has received the longest standing ovation ever given at a TED Talk. 

In March 2012, Stevenson held a TED Talk called We Need to Talk About an Injustice . He talked about his grandmother and other people in his life, allowing him and the audience to establish a personal connection. 

What made it successful was its emotional arc—a compelling story of overcoming a relatable struggle. If you don’t have a personal experience to share with your audience, tell them stories about real people —previous customers that have benefited from your company. Relevant real-life case studies are irresistible because the audience knows these are from other customers and not just opinions based on your thoughts alone.

Does your brand have an interesting origin story? This could be engaging and entertaining, like Airbnb’s—three guys making a few bucks by letting attendees at a local conference sleep at their place. 

Not only did this pay for the steep rent, but it also sparked a $30 billion-dollar idea.

TED Talks have stood out as an effective medium because it provides extensive information that’s easy to understand. 

But what else makes TED Talks special?

Carmine Gallo boils its core elements down to three. He notes that the success of these presentations can be attributed to these three qualities:

Apart from these, top quality visuals are also necessary in engaging the audience. Consider consulting with PowerPoint presentation experts, it will prove a valuable step in the long term, especially for sales pitches.

The Other Half of Effective Presentation Storytelling : Visual Aids

So what about your presentation’s visual aid (typically a PowerPoint)? Should you bolster your narrative with visuals?

Humans are highly visual creatures. We’re naturally attracted to beautiful colors and interesting patterns. 

In fact, our brain is able to process images 60,000 times faster than information presented in text. It’s also easier for us to retain visual information. 

According to Dr. John Medina , after three days, we’re able to recall 65% of information if it was presented with images or illustrations.

So if you’re presenting information that’s bulky with data, the audience will thank you if you can integrate comprehensible illustrations. Take the usual charts and graphs a step further by weaving stories through imagery.

Let’s take a look at some facts.

According to a whitepaper published by NewCred and Getty Images, the following statistics are proof:

• 40% of people will respond better to information presented visually
• 83% of human learning is visual
• 44% of users are more likely to engage with brands on social platforms if they post pictures

Articles and blog posts that contain images get 94% more views than those without

It’s easy to see why images are important to presentations and marketing materials. 

Through visual storytelling, you can create stronger emotional impact. Visuals convey a story that immediately allows your audience to connect with the message you’re sharing.

So whether you’re delivering a presentation or revamping your social media profiles, visual storytelling is the best way to go. 

When selecting pictures to use, try to keep in mind the four key characteristics of visual storytelling:

The best stories come from candid moments.

It’s why photo sharing has become so prevalent in the age of social media. Replacing the super-polished stock photos are snapshots that allow others to see the world through a more personal perspective.

Take, for example, Dove’s Real Beauty campaign. Instead of featuring models that are photo-shopped to perfection, Dove featured everyday women and challenged today’s absurd beauty standards.

To find images that are more authentic to your story, focus on what your brand stands for. Look for images that convey your identity and experiences as a brand. Next, look for something that will resonate with your audience.

Think about the people you’re addressing and what might be authentic for them.

Visual storytelling should also take into account what’s happening in the world.

After all, your message doesn’t exist in a bubble.

It’s contextualized in a milieu—a world where billions of individuals are discovering new things every single day. Make sure your visual stories are relatable and relevant to the audience you want to target. Consider what Oreo did to make the most out of a blackout that interrupted the Super Bowl.

For your own visual story, choose images that evoke a sense of time and culture.

The only thing better than a picture is the real thing.

But since you can’t have real situations on a PowerPoint slide, you’re going to have to settle for the next best thing. Visual storytelling thrives on imagery that can heighten emotions and senses.

Close-up and macro shots are great for showing textures that audiences can almost touch. On the other hand, a long shot can also take your audience into a particular scene, allowing them to experience it through a wider perspective.

Lastly, the best of visual storytelling alludes to narratives that are practically as old as time.

If you think about it, you’ll notice that all your favorite stories are tied together by recurring themes and archetypes.

These are universal symbols—called such because they can be found across many different countries and cultures. For your visual stories to be a success, you need to take these symbols and turn it into your own.

Find an archetype that relates to your brand and make it your own. Get to know your own new character and find images that correspond to this new version of a well-loved symbol.

Visual storytelling is a great technique to use in presentations and marketing efforts. By weaving imagery together, you can create a story that speaks volumes about your core message.

Integrating Visuals to Enhance Your Core Message

There’s more to visual storytelling than sticking random pictures to your slides. You can probably guess what we mean by “visual storytelling:”

• High-quality, relevant imagery
• Eye-catching animation
• Data visualization

Your statistics won’t make much sense if the visuals you add only serve an aesthetic purpose. Visual storytelling is about using different media that contribute to the message you’re presenting.

As an example, here’s a small part of an interactive infographic by Collaborative Fund, Hyperakt and Start Up American Partnership:

The infographic showcases the positive effects of car sharing to the environment.

It offers a lot of statistics that are perfectly illustrated to create more impact. It’s hard to envision the difference a vague number makes but through this illustration, you can perfectly see how much carbon dioxide emissions have diminished.

Related: Mastering Data Visualization for High-Stakes Presentations

Your text-based, bullet point-ridden PowerPoint design isn’t helping anyone. It’s not engaging your audience, and it’s not helping you get your message across.

Instead, you should consider taking inspiration from visual storytelling. Showcase and illustrate your key points with visual elements, and your PowerPoint design will have more impact.

Hopefully this post has conveyed the importance of storytelling in presentations from both the aural and visual perspectives. Ready to take your next high-stakes presentation to the next level? Schedule a free presentation consultation!

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How to Tell a Story in a Presentation – 4 Simple Steps

Storytelling is vital to a professional presentation . Once you learn how to tell a story in a presentation, you can build your reputation significantly.   Storytelling can help you connect personally with your audience and make your presentation more memorable.  

Many people hesitate to tell personal stories.  Common self-doubt include

• “What does this have to do with anything?”
• “How can I talk about this in a professional presentation?”
• “How can I tie this in without sounding weird?”

Here are the easy answers- your story has a LOT to do with your content. Yes, you CAN talk about it in a professional presentation. And there’s an easy way to seamlessly tie the story back without sounding awkward. That story you’re thinking about sharing- the first time you stood up on a pair of skis, or the way you divvy toys among your children to keep the peace, or how your high school golf experience paid off when you sank a difficult hole-in-one- can bring a new depth of personal connection to your presentations. It will enhance your audience connection, enjoyment, and retention. Let’s take those concerns off your plate!  Follow these four simple steps to figure out what your story is really about, where to use it, and how to tie it back to your content.

4 Steps for Seamless Story-telling

Step 2: Is it the story of your whole presentation? Or just a part? : Using our example above, we can determine if the story is worthy of building an entire presentation around (like a TED Talk ) or if it’s useful just to illustrate a moment within a presentation. To do this, you need to marry the thrust of your presentation with the meaning or metaphor. Say your entire presentation is about introducing a new software product that will finally solve a consumer problem that has existed for a long time. You could build your entire demo presentation around that golf story- how the effort of you and your colleagues finally paid off.

Or perhaps there is just one small section of the presentation that deals with that idea. Guess what? You can streamline your story and use it to briefly illustrate that point in one moment of your presentation. Remember, while a story can be on the long side, it doesn’t have to be. A story can be a few sentences long and still get the point across.

Step 3: Give it a specific, creative “in” : You don’t have to say “let me tell you a story” to weave one into your presentation. There are lots of other ways to set up your story, now that you know where and how it fits into your content. For now, let’s look at using a story to illustrate one thought in your presentation.  Saying “and now, let me tell you a story” can sound stodgy- you want the idea to flow right from your content, and there are a few ways you can do that.

One option is to be daring and just launch into the exposition of your story- your audience will go with you! It will also give them a bit of a mystery to follow as they are suddenly taken on a new journey.  Or, if you truly feel that you need a segue, use specific details about your story itself as your lead in: “Believe it or not, one brilliant moment on the golf course hit this idea home.” “This reminds me of my awful golf swing in high school.” “The last time I felt this accomplished, I was pulling out my golf clubs.” Whatever it is, using those details will help you seamlessly begin a story without asking permission to do so.

Step 4: The conclusion or main point should bring you back to your content : Use the conclusion of your story as a bridge back. Once again, don’t feel you have to telegraph your meaning to the audience by saying something along the lines of “the moral of the story is…”, but do revisit the big idea of your story. One way to do this is to actually make your content part of the story. Let’s keep using our golf example. At the end of your story, you can say something like “I knew the frustation we were having with the old system was like my years of unfulfilled golf games- even though all of the knowledge and experience were there, we just couldn’t make it work. But we knew that, if we just persevered, we’d sink that elusive hole-in-one, and be able to celebrate.”

When you find the real meaning behind a story, then you can free yourself from feeling the need to ask permission of your audience to tell it.  With a personal story, you can do some truly effective business storytelling that also seamlessly ties back to your content.  The big ideas, both of your story and within your presentation, will help you succeed.

Your comments:  Do you tell personal stories in Presentations?  Do these steps help?   Try it today and let us know how it goes.  Share your comments below

Like this post?  Then help us share it on Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and by email

New to this site? Then Start here –  Soft Skills – How to Succeed Like an Executive

This is guest post with edits by Lei Han

Guest Author: Bridget Beirne – Bridget has a background in Theatre and in business.  She currently works in marketing and social media for Ovation Communication , and is also the acting chief editor of the OC Blog . 

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How to Use Storytelling in Presentations

Where ordinary presenters inform, great ones engage in storytelling.    

Their main objective is to get a message through to their audience. But while some do so by relaying facts, effective ones take their audience on a journey using great storytelling techniques.  This all boils down to having different mindsets and approaches. In this post, we’ll dive into the importance of narratives and provide you with a storytelling template.

The importance of storytelling in presentations

What must a storytelling presentation include, storytelling structure template example, visual content.

Speakers should aim to connect with their audiences. Aside from motivating and inspiring, they should also get them excited and help them identify with their message. To do that, their presentations need to be embedded with well-crafted messages that stick with viewers during and after the fact.  That’s where a narrative comes into play. It does much more than inform⁠—it portrays concepts or data with the use of a story.  It takes the speaker’s core message, repackages it, and delivers it in a way that engages with the audience and helps them digest the information, retain it, remember it days, weeks, or even months after, and above all, be able to retell it to others.

When it comes to effective narratives, slides and speech play equally important roles.   That means that your slides should not play second fiddle. They must be structured and designed in a way that complements your speech.   In this section, we’ll go into the essential storytelling elements with an example to illustrate our point.  

Like all good tales, telling a story means having a structure that includes a beginning, middle, and end. Here’s what each of them should encompass. 

Right off the bat, present a complication. This piques your audience’s interests and engages them because it keeps them hooked as they wait to hear possible solutions.   In this example of a pitch deck for a dating app , the first thing we've done is introduce a problem: the human quest for love (because no one wants to be alone!). 

The human brain is tailored to solve problems. By establishing a challenge, you propel your audience to work their minds and stick with you.  Above all, it sets the stage for the next section: the solution. 

(We’ll go into details about visual aspects a little later. But have you noticed the contrast in mood as represented by the different illustrations on the “problem” and “solution” slides?)  Presenting the problem and solution ties in with one of the best storytelling methods: Tease the promised land.   Dubbed by Andy Raskin, a specialist in strategic narratives, this method calls for speakers to provide a contrast between the current situation (and its problem) and the happy ending.   The solution is what you need to bridge this gap. To do that, you need a strategy, which brings us to the next section. 

As expert Hollywood screenwriter Robert McKee puts it, “What attracts human attention is change.”  The middle part of a story is the perfect place to present opportunities. It’s where you’d go into detail about the solution being offered.  In our example, this is done in the form of a “them vs us” analysis that compares your competitors with yourself. 

Comparisons are great for storytelling because they highlight differences and portray both sides of the change.  This, in turn, helps your audience to understand market opportunities, which acts as the perfect segway to showcase your product. 

All narratives end with a reflection, and your presentation should be no exception.   This can come in the form of a quote, which can serve as social proof, to inspire, or as support for your idea. Our template for a quote includes an illustration of a proposal, which is in line with the narration and represents a happy ending. 

The conclusion is also where your main takeaway should lie. In our example, we’ve done that with this slide on investment. That is, after all, the main purpose of this pitch deck template. Plus, the use of a heart is also a visual metaphor of investing in love.    

You could also flip the order around and end with the quote, especially if it’s an inspiring and powerful one. 

The visual aspect of storytelling is extremely important. This is where we take a page out of children’s books.  They are much easier to follow than adults’ books because of their visual nature—minimal text and massive illustrations. So keep your slides as simple and as text-free as possible. Nothing kills like text overload.  

Effective slides require a good balance of images, graphics, illustrations, etc. When selecting visual aids, use those that support your narrative. Since our template is about a dating app, we’ve chosen the color pink and red as base colors and have dotted the presentation with hearts and flowers. 

When representing data and concepts, these are generally better explained with a visual aid than text. Take for example the next image on “predicted growth”. 

Having text represent numbers is torture on your audience’s vision. Using graphics such as bars and charts, on the other hand, tells the entire story in a much cleaner and digestible manner.  Explaining all this in words would be way too chunky. 

“We expect growth to reach 10 percent in the first year, and increase to 20 percent in the following two years…” 

Urgh.   Varying the type of visual aid to cater to the type of concept or data you’re presenting also aids with comprehension.  In this next slide, we’ve used a timeline to depict a schedule.   

Although we’ve used a pitch deck template for a dating app as our example, its structure can be easily adapted to everything from case reports and lesson plans to thesis proposals, and more.  Creating a presentation with a storytelling element takes time and effort and everything has to go according to plan. That said, it’s important to have the resources you need to tell your story. If you’re feeling inspired, why not start customizing one of our templates to speed things up?   Browse through our range of free presentation templates that are fully customizable on Google Slides and PowerPoint. 

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In the age of information, showing data has become as important as collecting it. Those who are able to turn big amounts of data into easy-to-understand ideas, are the ones pushing the game forward.At the end of the day, plain data fails to motivate decisions as much as clear insights do. That’s where powerful visual tools such as word clouds step in. We’re here to tell you all about them.

How to Use Stories in a Presentation: 6 Tips

by Rob Biesenbach | Presentation/Speech Tips , Storytelling

Worst of all, his talk was nothing but data — endless columns of it, packed onto dense, ugly slides. There was no narrative holding his points together and, in fact, no stories of any kind.

Stories are the centerpiece of any successful presentation. You should begin with story, end with story, and have stories in the middle.

Here’s how to use stories in a presentation. But first, let’s review why storytelling is so important to presenting.

Why Use Stories in a Presentation?

Multiple studies confirm that storytelling is the most powerful form of communication at our disposal:

• Researcher Paul Zak found that stories cause the brain to produce oxytocin, a chemical related to feelings of empathy and a desire to cooperate. Stories essentially soften up an audience, making them more amenable to you and your ideas.
• In a popular TED Talk , storyteller Nancy Duarte describes the many ways stories sweep us up and carry us away, not just intellectually and emotionally, but physically. Listening to a story is an experience, not just a passive exercise.
• And in the seminal book on persuasion Made to Stick , the authors did a study showing that after a presentation, 63 percent of audience members remembered the stories they heard, while just 5 percent could recall the statistics presented.

The bottom line: stories captivate us and stay with us in a way that ordinary information just doesn’t do.

1. Start Your Presentation With a Story

Far too many presenters squander that all-important first minute of their presentation. This is your chance to grab the audience’s attention and make them want to know more.

Here are common ways speakers kick off their presentations, and why they don’t work:

• Delivering a long list of thank yous. It’s boring when we see Oscar winners do it, and it’s boring when everyday speakers do it.
• Walking us through your credentials. Sorry, but a presentation is not about YOU, it’s about your audience and their needs.
• Outlining the agenda — the old “tell them what you’re going to tell them” approach. Nobody cares about what you have to say until you give them a reason to care.

How do you make them care? By telling a compelling story that brings to life a problem they should be concerned about. So think carefully about your audience’s needs, desires and fears, and tell a story that will resonate with them. Here’s quick primer on crafting an effective story.

2. Be Disciplined About Your Storytelling

Some of my clients are uncomfortable starting with a story right out of the gate. They feel they need to welcome the group, acknowledge VIPs in the audience, set expectations, etc.

But that just dilutes the power of your story. So save all that housekeeping business for later and jump right into your story.

It’s far more compelling when your first words are, “I never thought it would happen to me …” or “It was the scariest moment of my life …”

Presentation expert and Hall of Fame speaker Patricia Fripp offers 27 ways to open your speech with a bang. They make great story starters.

(Also, resist the urge to tee things up by saying, “Let me share a story …” or “I’m going to tell you a story about …” Just jump right in!)

3. Make It a Personal Story

Though it’s tempting to use stories about major figures like Winston Churchill or Steve Jobs, audiences have heard those stories thousands of time.

So don’t go “googling for stories.” And avoid timeworn tales like the “ rocks in the jar ” or the truck stuck under the bridge .

It’s much better to use stories that you yourself have actually experienced. In addition to being original, a personal story means you’re going to be more connected to it, making it far more likely that your audience will connect with you.

4. Be Sure Your Story is On Point

Don’t tell stories purely for entertainment’s sake. You’re not there to entertain; you’re there to inform and persuade — to change people’s minds and get them to take action.

So make sure your story is on-message. If your talk is about teamwork, make your opening story about teamwork. Don’t waste an opportunity to reinforce your main point.

5. Include Stories in the Middle (But Not Too Many!)

To sustain attention, you should weave stories throughout your presentation.

How many stories should you use? There is no magic formula. Much of it depends on the length of your speech and the length of your stories.

Let’s say you have five parts to your presentation: intro, conclusion and three sections in the main body. That might call for five stories. Might . It all depends. Five 2-minute stories in a 15-minute talk is probably too many.

Which brings up the issue of story overload . I had a client whose presentation was almost entirely stories. After a while it felt like his stories were a cover for a lack of substance. I kept thinking, “Where’s the beef?”

So be sure your stories are accompanied by evidence, data, examples and your own assertions.

6. Return to Story

Just as you should open with a story, you should close with a story. In fact, one of the most effective techniques is to return to an earlier story by adding a postscript, revealing a surprising twist or telling it from another character’s point of view.

It’s like the callback that standup comics use. The ring of the familiar triggers an “aha” moment and brings the audience full circle on the journey they’ve taken together.

For instance, in the story I told about the worst presentation I ever saw, what if I told you that speaker was a professional marketer? Someone whose whole business is premised on reading an audience and delivering on their needs with stories that sell.

On that day, he utterly failed. Which is an important lesson. Even professional communicators sometimes neglect the fundamental principles of persuasion — and that includes storytelling.

[This post originally ran in Communication World Magazine ]

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Every Great Presentation Needs a Story—Here’s How You Tell One

July 7, 2020

Looking to create your next presentation that can leave a lasting impression? Key to this is understanding the role of stories and how different story structures can be applied depending on your purpose.

In this blog post, we’ll be covering:

• The importance of stories
• Why stories are key to a great presentation
• 5 story structures, when to use them and examples that show them in action

What’s the importance of stories?

Stories turn information into a narrative and narratives get people to act. 

Think of it this way—if information were represented as dots on a page, then the story is the string that connects them together. Without a story, you have puzzle pieces, but you haven’t formed a picture yet. Ever been handed a set of jigsaw puzzles without knowing the full image to work towards? 

Well, delivering a presentation without a story sort of feels like that. It leaves you feeling lost.

The thing is, stories have been around for as long as we’ve lived. On a large scale, it’s how culture gets passed down and how knowledge gets shared. Think family traditions, presidential speeches, and TED Talks. Also, think...what’s the one thing they all have in common? They’re memorable. 

Humans enjoy narratives because the very process of identifying with a narrative means we are showing empathy and emotion towards it. In fact, Uri Hassan (a fantastic neuroscientist) discovered that a great storyteller literally causes the neurons of an audience to closely sync with the storyteller’s brain. That’s basically the equivalent of “getting on someone’s level”.

Why should I think about storytelling when designing a presentation?

“Do I really need to tell a story when I’m creating a presentation to secure a brand partnership? What about for a sales report? To present quarterly earnings?”

Yes, yes, and yes. 

We get that some stories are bigger than others, but at the core of any presentation, you’re trying to explain something .

If graphs indicate that sales have been going down across the board, there’s going to be a story in there about why this is happening, what you plan to start or stop doing, and how things change. Without this narrative context, the data has no way of being interpreted.

On the other end of the scale, some stories are expansive and inspire collective change.

When BMO, a Canadian bank, decided to make massive technology and business transformations across their 900 branches, it needed a compelling reason to answer every employee’s question of, “why should I change what I’m doing?”

So BMO hired a communications agency that built them a 50 slide presentation, delivered by the transformation leader to all of its senior leadership team members. In this presentation, there was a story about time . That it was the right time to make a change. That if the business wanted to improve their customer’s experience, it needed change to respect their time more. That was how the presentation sold the idea to everyone in the room that day.

It’s also important to keep in mind that stories can be told both in spoken form and through visuals. While used for different purposes (words help elaborate on what visuals can quickly communicate), both forms work hand-in-hand to reinforce the same narrative.

5 different types of stories to structure your presentation

Depending on the purpose of your presentation, you may need to explore the use of different types of stories. To help you decide which to choose, here are 5 compelling story types and examples of when they might be most suitable:

1. Future Stories

This story technique focuses on a time when the problem at hand has already been solved and the rewards achieved. 

It places the audience in the mindset of thinking about future possibilities in a motivational way. The more realistic and grounded in reality the story of the future can be told, the more likely the audience will feel the tangible results. 

You can tell future stories in two ways: by focusing on the possibility of a great future and how it can be achieved, or by focusing on the possibility of a bad future and how it can be avoided.

When to use this

• At the start of an investor pitch, state the possibilities that can be achieved with your product/service upfront in order to get the audience hooked on the rest of your presentation.
• To move people into action with a sense of urgency created.

See it in action

Bill Gates begins his talk by describing an impending risk of a deadly global virus killing over 10 million in upcoming decades. Through this, he creates a sense of urgency that allows him to deliver the message of needing to plan and create preventive measures starting today.

2. Converging Ideas 

A presentation that uses converging ideas shows how different people’s thinking came together to form one product or idea. It shows the origin of that idea and the process for how it was formed.

The story starts with the first thought, which is then followed by the second, third, and however many others there are. Then, it ties all the thoughts together and illustrates how they unite and contribute to the final idea.

• To show the strength of a team/partnership.
• To show the idea was built on deliberate thinking and full considerations.
• When Introducing a new product/idea, or when selling it.

John Bohannon’s talk begins by explaining how the idea in his presentation came to him while speaking with a physicist friend of his. Uniting their thoughts together, he describes the power of using dancers to visualize complex ideas (though we know not everyone has a team of dancers ready to work with, we can still apply this idea in accessible ways by using music or visuals to simplify a complex message).

3. Hero’s Journey

Commonly used in folk stories, it follows a protagonist who sets out on a journey. Only after conquering obstacles along the way are they able to return home with new-found wisdom.

This story technique shows your audience how you came to gain the knowledge that’s in your presentation. It explains the process for them, from your perspective, and allows the message to come alive through human experiences involving trials and tribulations.

It’s a humanizing technique that creates a sense of relatability and builds trust.

• When you need to establish credibility with a new audience upfront.
• At the start of a workshop that aims to teach (to show you can “walk the talk”).
• To demonstrate the success of a product/service by featuring someone’s struggle before using the product/service vs. how they feel after.

Nicole Bishop kicks off her elevator pitch by speaking to her own health-related experiences before introducing her AI tool, Quartolio , that analyzes millions of articles, trials and patents that can be used by specialists. Through this, she shows herself as knowledgeable on the topic and intimately familiar with the space:

4. Petal Structure

This style leans on one central message that’s being reinforced by multiple ideas or speakers. For instance, It’s helpful in situations where an audience might need some convincing to believe or take action on what’s being presented. By being shown multiple points of view that support the same message, the audience can feel the importance or weight of it.

• When you have a group of speakers who are sharing the same message.
• To show that multiple people have agreed on something, therefore, it holds weight.

At the beginning of Dave Visan’s pitch for his app, Brightwheel , used to revolutionize early education, he shows how kids, parents, and teachers all struggle with the current system. Even more impressively, when showing how kids are struggling, he plays three clips of different children all saying they don’t know what they got out of school that day. Visan successfully uses the petal structure twice (once reinforced by visuals!) all within a minute to drive his point home.

5. Sparklines 

The name of this technique (which shares a name with small line charts, but used for a different purpose), alludes to the visual mapping of the feelings evoked from a presentation:

By fluctuating between hope and reality, this type of presentation identifies current day challenges and helps your audience envision a world where that challenge is defeated.

Rhythm is important here. Note that there is an up and down motion throughout. This is intended to not overwhelm the audience with too much of a future outlook so that it feels removed from reality.

The last step in this presentation technique is to (literally) end on a high note. To leave audiences with a sense that the future outlook is near and can be reached.

• For longer presentations when you have the time to build up momentum. 
• Long-form speeches that empower you to radically shift the audiences’ way of thinking.
• Large product releases feature a number of substantial changes.

See it in action:

When Steve Jobs introduces the world to the iPod for the first time, he compares a number of features (such as storage space, device size, and download speed) but does so in a way where he goes back and forth between two worlds—where we are (with CD players) and where we could be (with iPods). Only at the very end does he reveal the iPod in physical form, which is received by a delighted round of applause. ‍

Bringing it together: building your next presentation with a story

The next time you create a presentation, think about how the role of a story can elevate it that much more. 

Before you put these story structures into action, there are key things you should know first: 

• Who is your audience?
• What do they know?
• What do they care about?
• How do you want them to feel by the end of your presentation?

When you have these answers down, get creative and explore which story type works best for you. Also, don’t be afraid to combine different stories together (done authentically, this can be really powerful)!

presentation.design is a resource hub by Zacht Studios , The Presentation Design Agency.

Need help creating that presentation template or pitch deck for your company? Zacht Studios is a team of skilled creatives focused on company storytelling and fundraising.

We’ve crafted pitch decks, marketing materials, and unforgettable stories for some of your favorite companies like Adobe, Square, Etsy, and SpaceX. Plus, we’ve supported startups in raising more than $1.41B to date.

Curious to learn more? Reach us at: [email protected]

Made by Zacht Studios , The Presentation Design Agency | Listen to our creative interview podcast, Bézier

Home Blog Presentation Ideas The Power of Storytelling in Presentations: A Guide to Captivate Your Audience.

The Power of Storytelling in Presentations: A Guide to Captivate Your Audience.

Presentations happen daily in corporate meeting rooms, hybrid sessions, fully remote summits, seminars, and weekly check-ins. What was once referred to as “Death by PowerPoint” has become “This could have been an email.”

In a survey about the current work state, 91% of workers admitted that they daydream during meetings . They’re creating stories in their minds because they’re not concentrating on the meeting or the presentation on their screen. 

Nobody wants meetings that go nowhere; aim for efficiency and less time wasted. Mindful communication and some good old storytelling techniques are the best ways to reach that goal. On the other hand, stories present a different point of view on how to tell a story to an audience and disclose large chunks of data without losing the audience’s interest.

Research by the Journal of Neuroscience (2019) discusses the importance of using storytelling in business presentations to disclose information to the public in a more accessible format. Our brains are wired to process stories more effectively than raw data or facts. When we hear a story, our brains release oxytocin, a hormone associated with empathy and trust, which helps us connect emotionally with the speaker and the content. Hence, the importance of curating the script to deliver your story to the audience as stories have the power to inspire, worry, heal, and even to attract a negative impact, as suggested by the American Psychological Association .

You can harness this phenomenon in your presentations regardless of their scope. In this guide, we share storytelling techniques you might not have thought of and reinforce the classics with new ideas. This article is for weekly report presenters, sales agents presenting to clients daily, and anyone looking to improve their PowerPoint storytelling training skills. 

Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

Benefits of Using Storytelling in Presentations

Understanding the audience and tailoring the story to their interests and needs, data storytelling, storytelling structures for crafting a compelling story for a corporate presentation, practical techniques to improve storytelling in presentations, how storytelling enhances the effectiveness of the presentation.

• The Power of Visual Metaphors and your Stories

Strategies For Overcoming Storytelling Challenges in a Corporate Setting

The power of storytelling.

Communication through storytelling is the intersection between informing, connecting, and persuading. Stories have been the foundation of human connection since the beginning of human history. Before the advent of written language, history was shared through spoken storytelling. Then came books, plays, movies, and storytelling modalities that united people through communication.

Findings demonstrate that storytelling is essential for presenting innovative ideas and gaining interest and support from others. In any scenario, from academic to corporate, when people are engaged with a story, they are more likely to pay attention, ask questions, and participate in the presentation. This engagement can lead to better outcomes for the presenter and the audience.

Storytelling breaks the ice through empathy and relatability. Short, rapid-fire associations help overcome communication obstacles and connect the speaker to the audience, especially when the presenter doesn’t know the audience personally. 

Imagine that you’re about to present to a college audience of students, scholars, and teachers. Tap into what they can all relate to: the room you’re in, the event you’re all attending, the weather, and create a quick story or comment about it. If you’re a visual storytelling master, tie it into your presentation’s intro.

Stories motivate. It’s what they’re most appreciated for. Stories help people understand complex ideas or data by providing context, relatability, and a structure familiar to the human brain.

Using stories improves the memorability and strength of the message while creating a connection between the speaker and the audience. Practicing storytelling in presentations increases confidence in the speaker and, therefore, the audience. 

Research by Stanford University suggests that people remember stories better than simple facts, and incorporating stories into presentations can lead to better retention. A story also has the potential to turn a presentation into a conversation, opening up the possibilities of communication even further. 

Incorporating Storytelling into Corporate Presentations

The average corporate worker is involved in presentations at least twice a week. Incorporating storytelling into those presentations, no matter how small, improves efficiency and results. 

But simply telling a random joke isn’t going to cut it; your content has to be tailored to the audience, finding the right balance between story and data and incorporating structures for storytelling slides , and visual, textual, and auditory storytelling techniques. Storytelling techniques span from small touches like quotes, GIFs, or memes to a full-scale story spanning every presentation slide.

Corporate Storytelling is the branch by which we apply storytelling techniques to business environments, which can happen in the format of writing mission & vision statements, presentations, marketing, sales proposals , product design, etc. Its company-wide application ensures that communication is clear across all levels but also reflects on overcoming obstacles with real-life applications of what the corporation is producing. 

Audiences can be vertical or horizontal. Vertical audiences are people with more or less knowledge than you. Horizontal audiences have the same knowledge as you. This distinction matters because it directs your decision-making toward the terminology and story arc you incorporate into a presentation.

For example, the communication is horizontal in a small meeting with your peers where you present a roadmap for a project launch. You can use industry jargon freely because they’ll all understand. Here’s a possible storytelling technique for a roadmap presentation.

• Create avatars for each team member with a funny accessory or cool background. Place each avatar on their tasks and move them along every week when you have check-ins. Make it fun and build a story around it. Your plan succeeds if people are talking about it outside the meeting room.

In a hybrid orientation session with new employees and interns . There’s less room for jokes than in a horizontal team environment. Use storytelling to train and inspire 50+ people in a hybrid setting.

• Open the presentation with real success stories of employees who came into the company and thrived over time. Don’t just show this employee at work doing tasks; also show them in situations where they enjoy themselves and feel a sense of accomplishment. 
• Incorporate dialogue simulations into the presentation. Choose participants randomly and ask them to have a guided conversation about something they might encounter at work. 
• Separate the audience into break-out rooms and ask participants different “what if” questions. Afterward, have a group discussion and create possible user stories from the answers.
• Your storytelling plan succeeded if at least ¾ of the audience participated and there was some laughter and enjoyment during the session.

Presentations to large audiences, like keynote speeches and TED talks, are the easiest to add storytelling techniques to. Communication is typically a combination of vertical and horizontal in these cases. Here are some PowerPoint storytelling training ideas:

• Tell a story that happened to you that ties into the content you’re sharing. Use unifying and stringing techniques to bring the idea from the story to the content and vice versa. 
• Separate the presentation into parts and tell one story per section . Select tales that people can relate to, like overcoming obstacles, reaching goals, and surviving traumas. Everyone can relate to those.

Some scenarios present a particular challenge for presenters: how to implement storytelling if the presentation heavily relies on data? Certainly, text cannot replace factual information, not visual metaphors, so in such cases, we highly recommend you follow a methodology like the one exposed in our article about data storytelling .

A storytelling structure will always help create better presentations by captivating your audience’s attention and engaging them more deeply. Sequential steps build a sense of suspense, transforming mere information into a compelling narrative that resonates. By learning how to structure your presentation like a story , you can effectively convey your message and leave a lasting impact. Here are some of the most effective storytelling techniques tailored to their specific scopes:

SCQA – Situation, Complication, Question, Answer 

The SCQA framework is an essential tool for analytic storytelling in presentations. It’s a practical tool in business communication that audiences relate easily to. As it follows a logical flow to present a situation and the steps to its resolution, it is one of the easiest methodologies for implementing storytelling in presentations. In our detailed case study, we shall expose a step-by-step process for applying this framework.

These are the sections of SCQA:

• Complication

We introduce this case to quickly represent this model: A furniture exporter has found customer complaints regarding the parcel delivery system. Using the SCQA, they can pinpoint the story behind the situation: some third-party vendors don’t use the platform-approved parcel delivery service, which implies an extra charge for the vendors, and opt instead for their own systems. In turn, some orders get lost, and customers cannot retrieve information on the shipping status until it’s delivered.

SCQA offers the advantage of helping presenters to structure complex concepts in a story format, which benefits situations like technical or scientific presentations as jargon can be reduced to easy-to-relate life situations.

Story Mountain

The story mountain or story arch is a literary structure for telling stories. It also works for medium size business presentations. It is a visual metaphor that illustrates the path to transit a mountain, from one point to the other end, and lists key points along the road, as well as the differences in the pace for each stage.

These are the stops in a story mountain:

• Opening: Start by introducing the main characters, the setting, and the context of your story, which, in terms of business situations, reflects the company, product, or service, then the problem your organization intends to address.
• Build-Up: This is the core problem to resolve. It should be disclosed in a manner that builds expectations and drives interest from the audience on which solutions are proposed and how they will work.
• Climax: The Climax can also be interpreted as an inflection point by which a direction change is introduced after an action is taken. This can be represented in the form of speaking about a strategic management shift that led your company into a successful path or an innovative solution later presented as a product or service that solves the core problem.
• Resolution: In this section, we illustrate how the core problem is solved due to the selected solution that arose from the Climax stage. Using testimonials is a great method to validate your authority on the topic and break the barrier between theoretical models and actual solutions. Other alternatives can come from case studies or introducing fact-based data.
• Ending: We conclude the story mountain structure by summarizing the key takeaways on the path to the mountain and highlighting how the organization solved the problem. Implement CTAs in this section, as it is where you should encourage prospective buyers to acquire your product/service. In the case of academic/scientific presentations, list down your contact information for possible collaboration projects.

We can showcase this model with a case like this: A manufacturing company producing paint cans is looking to implement production monitoring software on its shop floor. The aim is to increase efficiency, track real-time production, and better understand error codes.

• Opening: The company acknowledged its production needed more efficient, identifying hidden gems in their production process. They decided it was time to implement production monitoring software to take its production rates to new levels.
• Build-Up: As the company looks for different technology solutions, it can categorize the options offered by factors such as cost, features, and ease of implementation. They also ran an audit to get insights on which technology suits their production line the best.
• Climax: After a careful evaluation, the company chose a production monitoring software solution within its needs and budget. They opted to run a pilot on a limited number of machines, comparing the output results after 3 months. The implementation phase is handled by the software provided in terms of software, access points, and hardware required.
• Resolution: Over the first three weeks, the company observed significant improvements in its production process. They could locate bottlenecks that hindered the throughput rate, making the required changes to address them. This led to increased efficiency and brought cost-saving benefits to the company.
• Ending: The production monitoring software became an integral part of the company’s daily operations, influencing when maintenance tasks should be scheduled, providing insights about hidden production potential, and helping operators understand the consequences of each action taken more clearly. Due to the quick implementation process and the reports on cost-savings, especially from the scrap count reduction and energy-saving perspective, the company opted to install this production monitoring solution across all machines on the shop floor.

The Hero’s Journey 

The Hero’s Journey is a storytelling technique that fits neatly into a long-form presentation or keynote speech. This framework became popularized by Joseph Cambell’s book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces ,” it’s longer than the previous examples and can get quite elaborate. We can identify these sections in the Hero’s Journey:

• The Call to Adventure: The challenge/opportunity that initiates the path to the journey.
• Resisting the Call: The hero’s inner struggle to embark on the journey out of fear of failure or inadequacy.
• Meeting the Mentor: The encounter between the hero and a wise figure who provides advice on the journey.
• Crossing the Threshold: Moving from the comfort zone into the “Unknown,” walking into danger or uncertainty.
• Quests, Allies, and Enemies: The hero must transit obstacles and interactions to gather experience to face the key challenge of its journey.
• Approaching the Cave: In this stage, the hero faces the story’s main conflict.
• The Abyss: Where the hero experiences an internal crisis, inducing a transformation as it faces its deepest fear or a life-or-death choice.
• The Reward: After emerging victorious from The Abyss, our hero gains a valuable element (tangible or not) relevant to transit the rest of the quest.
• The Road Home: This stage represents the path back to their daily life, but finds new obstacles or challenges.
• The Rebirth: A final challenge emerges, where the hero is confronted with its greatest fear and must put all the knowledge to the test. This point showcases how much the hero has truly changed throughout the journey.
• Return: The hero is now back in its ordinary life, with the gained knowledge and a better understanding of the world. Now, that newfound knowledge is applied to benefit others.

That is a basic outline of the steps to cover in this road. If you wish to know more about this storytelling technique, we recommend you check our guide on The Hero’s Journey and its application.

Some presentations encompass various styles, functions, and objectives, each catering to specific communication goals. Internal and external presentations serve distinct purposes, requiring tailored approaches to effectively convey information. To enhance your storytelling prowess within presentations, here are some ideas that incorporate PowerPoint storytelling examples :

On Presenting Projects, Plans, Reports, etc.

Suppose you regularly present plans, project roadmaps , and reports to higher management. In that case, you can tap into what you intend to produce from the project and craft a success story, presenting the winning moments and obstacles your organization had to transit. Say, for example, a laptop manufacturer is presenting their newest model release plan. One of the main points to highlight in the marketing strategy is why this model is a flagship for the company. Well, since the product is due to be released in Q3 2023 and there were major differences in previous laptop designs by this company, the marketing team can build a narrative on how the Pandemic affected the initial design they had in mind due to the microchip shortage, the restrictions to work in shopfloor, and how they were presented with a new paradigm in terms of work. Those learnings were applied after noticing what customers needed regarding power and portability to work from anywhere in the world, not just a shared office. And that’s the background why this new laptop model is the solution for digital nomads and a brand new concept in the company’s strategy.

Introducing an Ideal Persona

For OKR sessions with newer employees , tell stories to inspire team members to feel invested in their objectives and key results. You can create one “ideal employee” model and craft a narrative around it to present common challenges, what objectives to aim for, and the benchmarks by which the company shall measure the new employees’ success rate. Express how this “ideal employee” came to the company fresh out of university, heading for a trainee role. How asking the mentors for advice helped the employee better understand their strengths and weaknesses and how to adapt them to perform at a greater level. Then, you can use this same narrative to cultivate the constant-learning mindset, as the “ideal employee” joined for extra-hours workshops that coach how to work with new frameworks, a well-paid sacrifice as it helped the employee to land an in-company promotion in less than 1 year. Use examples of other teams in the company and expose how they overcame new challenges or set new success metrics by collaborating as a team while staying true to your company’s mission & vision.

Strategies for Sales Meetings

Your best storytelling tactic for those presenting during external meetings like sales and proposals is the trusty “get to know your audience” technique . If it’s a big group, study the average person in attendance and direct your stories toward them. For smaller groups, research the client and mention things they’re interested in. Tie it into your presentation with stories, analogies, and metaphors. As an example of this tactic, let’s place ourselves in a sales professional’s shoes, presenting robotic vacuums to a group of investors and guaranteeing higher profits than they would make if investing in competitor brands like iRobot. The sales professional must gather information about the audience’s background, their individual investing profile, which projects similar to this product caught their interest, their expected ROI, and their threshold for risk. Then, the sales professional has to craft a narrative that attends to the needs of the average member in the meeting, with juicy details to spike the interest of the best 3 potential investors in the room. You can ask then what happens if there’s a conflict of interest in contrasting expectations. Step 1 is to stay true to your facts: do not present information your product or service cannot produce. Step 2 is to debate which position is more favorable to your interests and who is your ideal investor candidate. Step 3 is to calmly expose the facts that may drive the interest away from one/several investors and how your proposal aims to solve the problem in a different format than they expected. If, by chance, no consensus is reached, move towards Step 4, which is thanking the investors for their time and wishing that you can reach a business deal in another project.

Repurposing Customer Testimonials

In some cases, users crave tangible results from an innovative product. Talk to the customer satisfaction team at the company and ask them to tell you stories from the customers they talk to. Take notes of those experiences, remembering to write down the name in case you opt to cite a customer and need to ask for permission. 

By working with your customers’ testimonials, your organization can learn about flaws your product or service may present. Such information can later be repurposed as the ground research of a new product line and even be used in the product presentation as a punch line when to introduce “Why did we create this product?” – it is a powerful resource to count with, and automatically validates your efforts by working on suggestions made from real-life customers on what they expect from a product or service.

This approach is also used in the format of surveys held by the customer satisfaction team, as we count on valid insights to work from.

Creating a Dialogue

Turn the presentation into a conversation . Incorporating storytelling into a conversation can feel more manageable than in a speech. This process can be done by following these steps:

• Simplify the language: Avoid any unrequired jargon when transforming the presentation into a conversational format. If you must use industry-exclusive terms, introduce them in the context and with an explanation as if speaking with a colleague. Overly format language should be discarded as the aim is for a conventional business conversation, as it would happen in a coffee break during an event.
• Structure the narrative: Make it a back-and-forth conversation where questions and comments can be added by any of the two interlocutors (the presenter and, in this case, the audience). Write down any aspect of the conversation that you feel might be left out if you don’t follow a strict outline.
• Use examples: As you would in any normal conversation, have some references at bay. Working with your case study in the presentation as an example can help in most cases, as you are already familiar with the ins and outs of that example. If not, opt for an example that is relevant and easy to structure for your talk.
• Be adaptable: It is not a presentation format but a more relaxed take on delivering a topic. With this, we imply unexpected changes can emerge like a member of the audience raising a series of consecutive questions or making it a lengthy monologue to express an idea. Go with the flow and only return to your speech if you divert too much from your intent.
• Highlight key points: Don’t dwell too much on specific details that may consume much time. Instead, push the key points into the conversation early on so you can reference them later as the conversation goes on.

Case Study of Storytelling in a Corporate Presentation

A software provider for the retail industry, TechEase, seeks to win a large contract from a potential client, a major retail chain, to implement a new inventory management system. The client, MoreIsLess, has expressed interest in TechEase’s software but has yet to make a final decision. 

TechEase knows they are competing against several other software providers and must make a compelling sales presentation to set them apart.

First, the TeachEase team concretizes the client’s pain points to use them as a basis for a compelling story. TechEase must show how its software will meet the requirements to ease the client’s unique pain points.

• MoreIsLess needs an inventory management software solutionthat is more effective than the one they use now. 
• The current software is unstable and is constantly making employees frustrated. 
• It has also created issues with inventory data, making the company lose clients from its e-commerce platform due to undelivered orders and product sorting and packaging mistakes.
• MoreIsLess managers have previously had a negative experience with a software implementation project and are hesitant to take on another project that could potentially disrupt their operations.
• The client is concerned about the software’s complexity and whether it would be easy for their employees to use. 

To address these challenges, TechEase’s sales team develops a sales story that will resonate with the client. One easy way to understand this problem is by implementing a metaphor. In this case, TechEase interprets the inefficiency in the system used by MoreIsLess as a bottleneck problem, given that new orders are added to the queue. However, unresolved/failed orders still hang there, altering the inventory data. In graphical terms, it resembles a car jam on a high-traffic road, where at a certain point, all elements get stuck.

Using the SCQA framework, the team sets up a structure for their sales presentation with the client company. They’ll build a compelling story with this as the foundation. The slides follow this outline and the structure for a sales presentation. Our SCQA Slides Template for PowerPoint is used to illustrate this case.

• Situation = MoreIsLess needs an inventory management software solution that will be more effective than now.

• Complication = Their current system creates bottlenecks in the supply chain, causing behavioral and financial problems. MoreIsLess managers are worried about disrupting operations to implement new management software. They are also worried about the software’s complexity.

• Question = How will TeachEase offer an inventory management solution that will solve the bottleneck issue quickly and efficiently without disrupting operations? How will they ensure timely employee training?

• Answer = TechEase offers to implement the new software over one weekend and train all involved employees within a week. Bottlenecks will ease within two weeks with a full-scale fix at three weeks max. The TechEase team also works with the customer success team to inform customers of the changes when necessary. They will offer a discount code to clients as an incentive if they have any issues in those two weeks.

The story uses a visual metaphor, the bottleneck. In this case, a long-term inventory bottleneck with mistaken shipments and unsent orders is caused by the current software.

Ineffective inventory management software = a traffic bottleneck on a highway intersection

Everyone hates it when traffic becomes a bottleneck that makes drivers change routes, get lost, arrive late to their destination, etc. TechEase’s software solves the problem by creating more efficient inventory systems that relieve bottlenecks by “creating different lanes and making some of them wider.” 

TechEase uses the bottleneck visual metaphor in the presentation slides by turning an inventory flowchart into a traffic bottleneck. In the following slides, the bottleneck eases up, and the presenter explains how the software solves that problem. During the conversation, they use analogies and metaphors that tie back to the idea of the traffic bottleneck.

Storytelling can be a powerful tool for persuasion. A well-crafted story can help the audience relate to the presenter’s point of view and see the value in a proposed solution, idea, or product. Using the bottleneck visual metaphor, TechEase connects with the audience in a plane beyond what they’re immediately discussing. 

Finally, the TechEase team mentions a previous client with a similar issue. In a quick story, they explain how the software eased its bottlenecks without affecting daily productivity.

Tying the metaphoric story with a real story brings the idea home, from fiction to reality.

Resulting in MoreIsLess closing the deal and implementing TechEase’s software.

The Power of Visual Metaphors and Your Stories

Data and storytelling have many ways of working together to incentivize creative communication. One particular technique we’re fond of is visual metaphors and associations.

Relevant visual metaphors help you add storytelling to data without confusing the audience. It tends to do the opposite. Say you intend to represent what’s missing from a process to satisfy the customer’s needs. We can represent this situation as the following case study: a language learning application intends to compete on the same tier as top-industry solutions like Duolingo. They found out that users struggle to improve their pronunciation levels in some languages due to their way of pronouncing vocals and consonants in their native language. Take a look at this slide for a gap analysis. The broken road over a crevasse is the visual metaphor for the gap. It’s simple, it makes sense, and it’s effective. Using the gap analysis, the company can represent how the current state of their app is not helping users overcome pronunciation mistakes, as there’s no system to evaluate that in the app.

In another example, a company faces communication issues due to workers creating immense email threads due to the “Reply All” function. Instead of replying to the team members who should be aware of the answer, workers keep replying to all, creating email chains of over 20 emails that may not be relevant to the members listed in the initial email, as the current messages include specific instructions for one team. Instead, a wiser solution would be to reply only to those who find that communication pertinent or create a new email thread with the members interacting. Using the 3D square peg metaphor, we can represent how the “Reply All” option is forced into the organization rather than opting for individual email threads per topic or testing communication solutions like Microsoft Teams or Slack. This slide has an adaptable visual metaphor for explaining that something isn’t working as it should and that you’re forcing a solution where it isn’t fit to work.

The funnel is a classic and highly effective storytelling technique in marketing and business. We can drive the attention from hard-to-understand data into visual cues. Instead of using numbers to express how a media channel brings users to our company and turns them into prospective buyers, we can represent the funnel and categorize from contacts through the next filtered stage of qualified leads, then to prospects, and finally, opportunities. And we can also filter out the users who partially meet the criteria, reformulating solutions to their needs. Make yours unique by using colored dots, icons, and a legend to pinpoint where your team needs to work harder and what areas are strong.

As we’ve seen, there are multiple methods to implement metaphors to tell a story . The problem lies in pairing the aesthetic of your visual slides with the rest of the content you are delivering; otherwise, it feels disconnected. A tool like the SlideModel AI Presentation Maker help to bridge the gap by creating an entire slide deck based on a pre-selected design style and theme.

Overcoming Challenges in Storytelling for Corporate Presentations

There are always challenges and obstacles when using storytelling in corporate presentations. They’re the reason why so many presentations could have been emails. And also why deals aren’t closing, sales aren’t being made, and internal meeting presentations are unproductive. These are some of the most common:

• The company doesn’t have a brand story, no corporate storytelling strategy, nor does its communication culture have any stories to tell. This foments a culture of basic communication that doesn’t inspire action and growth.
• Everyone just keeps doing “what works.” When faced with something new, they say, “We’ve always been doing it this way.” If a new idea for a presentation comes up, they say, “We’ve used this report presentation template for the past year. Why change now?”
• It takes time to craft relevant stories and practice them. Many presentations must be finished fast and then presented at a meeting nobody wants to attend.
• Sometimes, a story used means nothing, and the effort is wasted .

The number one strategy to overcome storytelling challenges is to understand and share that storytelling is worth the time it takes to implement.  

Here are some strategies for overcoming storytelling challenges in a corporate setting.

• Hire a brand storyteller to build a story from which the entire company can build more stories.
• Build detailed user personas and create stories around them.
• Hire a creative director to lead important presentation projects and client communication.
• Challenge your employees to get creative when building presentations and think of other ideas to implement instead of reusing the same report template every Friday. If your company has a brand story, share it with them. Involve the Learning and Development department and offer storytelling workshops for everyone to build their skills.
• Don’t create a story for each presentation. Keep a folder of potential stories to use in the future and reference it regularly. 
• Make the stories mean something. Stories that don’t relate to your audience are as good as nothing. 

Be ready for every situation; you never know when your in-person presentation will turn into a hybrid session at the last minute. If you practiced a presentation for a stage, with some walking around and eye contact, you’ll have to bring it all in and adapt it for the camera. 

In a few steps, you can adapt the storytelling from an in-person meeting into a hybrid session. 

• Set up a camera to record the front of the room where the presenters will be.
• Connect it to the webinar or meeting software and test it.
• Send attendees a digital copy of the presentation slides.
• When the session starts, don’t just show the front of the room to the virtual attendees; change views and show the slides fullscreen, especially those with the visual metaphor.
• During the session, have someone in charge of the chat box and motivate attendees to participate in the discussion.

The power of storytelling is undisputed. It differentiates between a presentation considered “this could have been an email” and a presentation that positively impacts the audience. 

Stories in a corporate setting are the glue that humanizes business meetings, making them more entertaining, effective, compelling, memorable, and successful. 

In this guide, we shared some storytelling techniques you can incorporate at different levels of your organization. Try them out and see what works better. Part of getting to know your audience is trying out stories with them and seeing how they react. Check out our storytelling templates for PowerPoint to create your next presentation.

Here’s to much better presentations in your future.

Zacks, J. M., Speer, N. K., & Reynolds, J. R. (2009). Segmentation in reading and film comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 138(2), 307–327. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015305

Source: Zak, P. J. (2014). Why inspiring stories make us react: The neuroscience of narrative. Cerebrum: The Dana Forum on Brain Science, 2014, 2. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4445577/

Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701–721. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.701

Hinyard, L. J., & Kreuter, M. W. (2007). Using narrative communication as a tool for health behavior change: A conceptual, theoretical, and empirical overview. Health Education & Behavior, 34(5), 777–792. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198106291963

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Captivate Your Audience With The Art Of Presentation Storytelling

Table of contents.

One of the best forms of communicating is through storytelling.

Storytelling has been part of our ancestral past and is now i ngrained in the fibers our very being . It is how we communicate new ideas, lessons and above all us, emotions. Without storytelling, we truly are isolated to live life through our own experiences and interpretations of our “ordinary world”. Storytelling provides us with the social capabilities of finding common ground in our lives as we all go through existence independently. Storytelling gives us the ability to bring the tiny moments in our life that shape us into who we are to the foreground in a more monumental way and find common ground amongst one another.

The ability to tell a story that can influence people is an art form and a skill that will take you far in life. If you are able to master the art of storytelling, you will be successful in almost all parts of life if you know how to apply the skill appropriately . The same goes for the mastery of presentations and presenting.

Great presentations incorporate storytelling techniques which make them so engaging and have the ability to influence audiences. Stories engage audiences no matter what walk of life they come from because most great stories all hinge on simple, small moments most people can relate to.

What Is Storytelling?

For most people, storytelling might just seem like a linear recount of events, but it’s more than that.

Storytelling is not a linear recalling of events. It can not be reduced to the common formula of, “First ‘A’ happened, then ‘B’ and then ‘C’ is how it all ended.”. No – as mentioned earlier, storytelling really only hinges on about 5 seconds of a moment – a realization. The 5 seconds is the climax or the change and character arc of a story.

It is how “A” became “B”.

This change, in most stories really only takes about 5 seconds in the real-world but you help make that 5 second moment more impactful by sharing the setting, the build-up and the follow-up of that moment.

Storytelling happens in all walks of life. From the casual conversations held between family members in the kitchen to world-class presentation seminars. The art of storytelling spans across cultures and generations. For this, it is probably one of the greatest tools and techniques to ever be developed and one that will continue to shape and influence our lives.

The Best Story Structure For Different Presentations

Depending on the objective of your presentation, there are a few story structures you can use to help bring your point across. Below we’ve outlined some of the expected outcomes you may want out of your presentation. Depending on your desired outcome, we will share with you the best story structure to follow.

If you want to take your audience on a journey - Hero's Journey

This is the most common storytelling structure commonly found in myths, children’s stories and in movies. Like Star Wars or the Lion King, the Hero’s journey is about the protagonist leaving the comfort of their home in search of newfound wisdom or growth. Often accompanied by a sage or someone with experience, the protagonist grows and learns from their journey to return home as a new person. By the end of the story arc, the audience has seen first-hand the growth and development of the main character.

This is a perfect example of a great story formula unlike the common, misconception formula. This story shows the progression and change from “A” to “B”.

An added tip is not to overthink what these changing moments are. You do not need a grand change in character for a story to be good. The change can simply be a realization of truth. For example, when you pull away all the embellishments of the movie “Click” by Adam Sandler, it’s not a movie about time traveling and wondrous magical remotes. It’s a movie about how a father learns to appreciate every moment with their family – the good and the bad.

If you want to build tension - The Mountain

The second story technique is “The Mountain”. The Mountain technique is another common storytelling technique in which the storyteller highlights the growth in tension as the story progresses. Each step of the way, more tension builds till the climactic conclusion.

If you want to explain a central concept - Nested Loops

A “Nested Loops” storytelling structure allows you to highlight a core story by layering tertiary stories around the main idea. You put the most important part or message at the center and build around it.

Picture it like degrees of separation from the main idea. At the center is the moral of the story. The next layer might be from a perspective who lived the story first-hand. The second layer might be from the perspective of someone else. However, all of the stories relate back to the core theme.

If you want your audience to gain hope and take action - Sparklines

Using the Sparklines structure allows you to elevate people’s hope to create change. You tell a story, give them aspirations and juxtapose the hopefulness with the stark reality of the world we are living in now. This structure is great for eliciting motivation out of your audience by playing on their emotions of hope. By weaving in and out of the potential hope and the dismal reality, you create motivation for change.

If you want to grab your audience's attention from the start - In Media Res

What better way to get audience engagement than by placing them right in the middle of the action from the very beginning. Rather than building up to the action, you drop the audience right at the climax of the action. But note, just because you drop them in the middle of the action, does not mean you are dropping them in at the climax. The climax of the story is the 5 second moment when your character changes from “A” to “B”. The action however can lead up to the 5 second moment.

If you want to illustrate mutual relationship forming - Converging Ideas

One of the greatest ways of bridging people through storytelling is by using the “Converging Ideas” story structure. The “Converging Ideas”story outline can help illustrate how different ideas are similar to one another that lead to a similar outcome. This is especially useful in the business world of presentations that can help demonstrate to your audience that everyone wants the same end goal even if we have different means of getting to that end goal. This will allow you to show your audience that you are sympathetic and you understand them.

If you want to disrupt audience expectations - The False Start

Another great storytelling outline to use, especially if you are speaking to a veteran or seasoned audience is “The False Start”. After hearing so many stories, so many pitches that all follow the same structure, a false start leads your audience on a predictable path which turns out to be completely wrong. It’s an especially good way to tell about new and innovative ideas you’ve tried out. Rather than speaking to a conventional way of figuring something out, you can share new insights in an engaging way.

If you want to talk around a central concept through several ideas - Petal Structure

The last story structure is “The Petal Structure”. The Petal Structure is used when you want to focus more on the core message rather than the story. This structure typically uses more than one story either from one speaker or multiple speakers that all surround the core theme.

Why You Should Be Telling Stories In Your Presentation

No matter how different people’s thinking is, telling stories is an effective technique to get your central message across. Storytelling is an incredibly effective technique since it is ingrained in our DNA as humans. We are social creatures that thrive on the connection stories make. By being able to tell stories in your presentations, you will be able to influence more people. Here are some reasons why you should incorporate storytelling techniques in your presentations.

1 - Stories will make your business more human and relatable

Businesses are not human and humans want to do business with other humans. In order to have your business be successful, you need to be able to humanize it. Humanizing a business is often done through branding which is another form of storytelling. If you are giving a presentation on behalf of your business, you need to be able to make your business seem relatable and human. If you can master the art of storytelling in business presentations, you will be able to beat any sales team or marketing team.

2 - Stories will help you sell

Speaking of sales, storytelling in presentations will also help you sell. This goes hand-in-hand with how stories make businesses more human. If you are able to tell stories in your presentations, you will be able to sell. You will be able to sell better because you can connect your product or service as the golden ticket to the 5 second moment people are trying to achieve. As mentioned earlier, stories are really just 5 second moments of change when someone goes from “A” to “B”. Your product or service can be the catalyst to change what people are seeking and if you are able to present that with your story, you will be able to sell a lot more effectively.

3 - Stories can let you share knowledge

You may have a conference presentation in which you are trying to share knowledge and position yourself as an industry thought-leader. A great way to share knowledge and connect with your audience is by telling a story. A great way to share knowledge is by sharing the events you went through, how you overcame challenges of a difficult journey and have new found wisdom. Similar to the structure of a “Hero’s Journey”, you can make yourself the main character and demonstrate how you overcome challenges. By being able to talk about these personal experiences and give more detail of your own accounts, you are positioning yourself as an industry thought-leader.

4 - Stories can let you influence emotions

Lastly, one of the greatest abilities of skillful storytelling is the ability to influence emotions. We as humans are irrational beings and our emotions often dictate how we act in the world. If you have the ability to master the storytelling technique of influencing other people’s emotions, you can have them act in almost any way you desire.

How You Can Incorporate Stories In Different Presentations

Now that we know why you should incorporate stories in your presentations, let’s dive into how we can incorporate stories in different presentations. Now don’t forget, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. This is simply some thought-starters to get you thinking of how you can incorporate your own stories in your presentations. Depending on the presentation you are about to give, you may want to consider how you will angle your story to elevate your presentation.

Business Presentations

Throughout this article, we’ve heavily focused on the idea of presentation storytelling as it relates to business presentations . This is mainly due to the fact that most presentations you will encounter in your professional life are business presentations. You will often have to engage in these presentations whether they are internal meetings or client pitch presentations .

You can use storytelling in business presentations in order to relate and show understanding with your client. There is a famous quote in business which is, “People buy when they feel understood, not when they understand you.” Don’t make the presentation or the story about you. Make it about the client and how you understand them.

Research Presentations

In the world of academics, you will often be faced with research presentations . They might seem monotonous but how can you get an audience eager about the big and small challenges you’ve overcome throughout your research? With a story!

You can use storytelling in research presentations by taking the audience on a journey that centers around the one idea of your presentation, the thesis. This may be an unconventional way of presenting research findings and goes against the status quo, but it’s definitely a tactic not seen often which will surely engage your audience with your data and findings.

Interactive Presentations

As we move into a more digital-focused world, we will start to see more interactive presentations which allow the audience to get more engaged with the content you’re presenting. Interactive presentations allow the presenter to really connect with their audience to help get their messaging across. Interactive presentations also help keep the audience engaged and provide a robust learning experience for all. As the presenter, you’ll be able to get presentation feedback first-hand and in real-time from your audience by facilitating an interactive presentation. But, how can you take your interactive presentation from a good presentation to a great presentation? The answer is with storytelling!

If you’re going for an interactive presentation, you can incorporate storytelling by combining everyone’s voice. Although everyone probably won’t have the same level of skill when it comes to storytelling as you do, they can still share their own experiences. You as the presenter with storytelling techniques can help facilitate and combine the stories together into one cohesive story. The benefit of doing this is the audience will feel heard.

By using an interactive presentation format, especially by incorporating storytelling, you’re allowing the audience to bring their own truths and personal experiences into the discussion. When the audience has more of themselves invested in the presentation, the more likely they are going to remember what you have to say. There is no need for them to get into the storyteller’s brain and try and understand when they are the storyteller. They already have lived through their own experiences and they know the characters in their own story. This reduces barriers for communication.

Final Thoughts On Presentation Storytelling

As we wrap-up writing this article on presentation storytelling and the importance of this skill, we are going to summarize the key takeaways and what you should really remember going forward when it comes to your next presentation.

Now that you understand the value of storytelling skills as it relates to business communications, we hope you will implement these best practices and techniques in your own presentations. Developing your first story may seem daunting and it takes some time, but once you get in your rhythm for story development, you will be able to find the tiny moments in life that make for great stories.

Need Help With An Awesome Design?

Luckily, this is a skill we’ve mastered at PresentationGeeks. We want to help you take unconnected stories and make a great presentation out of it and we believe everyone has a good story to share. We can help you create a well-rounded narrative that will engage your audience with the human side of your business rather than bombarding them with fact heavy presentations. Instead, we help you take the audience on a journey by incorporating storytelling in presentations.

We have in-house expertise that worked with multiple speakers to help tell their stories. We are presentation consultants that work collaboratively with you. Let’s connect to learn more about your business’s big idea and how we can craft an engaging story.

Author:  Content Team

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How to choose a story arc for your presentation.

“Our startup could be profitable in three years. Our main obstacle is hiring, but I’ve got a plan to help us staff up in time.”

Let’s try that again: “We’ve got a big challenge ahead of us with hiring. Here’s some data to prove it. But I’ve got a plan to help us. And if we succeed, we could be profitable in three years.”

Or, how about this: “I’ve got a great plan to help us double our workforce, which is what we’ll have to do if we want to be profitable in three years. If we can’t hire up we may go out of business.”

There are so many ways to tell a story. In a business context, it’s just as important as in film or entertainment to think about the way you structure your story and select the right pieces of information for maximum impact. 

Ann Kim , Senior Portfolio Director at IDEO and instructor in our course Impactful Presentations , uses her decade long experience as a filmmaker, journalist, and designer (she served as the Chief Design Officer for the U.S. Surgeon General) to craft interviews, data, and observations into stories that inspire. In this Creative Confidence Podcast episode, she walks through the elements of a story, different story arcs, why and how to experiment with your story arcs, and shares examples from her work in the healthcare and entertainment worlds.

The elements of a story

The first thing Ann does when working on a project is to pull out the beats of her story, or rather the key elements she wants to convey. There are two approaches she uses: 1) Pour over all the data and “turn over every stone" or 2) Tap into your intuition, relax your mind, and ask yourself what the three to five things are that you remember most.

People tend to default to the turn-over-every-stone method, Ann says, but the best approach is a combination of the two. As you’re choosing your story beats, keep your audience in mind. What questions or presumptions are they coming with? How can you address those in your presentation? 

The main elements of a story are often context, conflict, climax, and closure. In the business world, context might mean research and data, conflict could be the challenge you’re facing, climax is the solution you’re recommending, and closure is the vision you have for the future.

“There's a ton of storytelling that's done collaboratively. And that's where it gets really fun.” Ann Kim

Asking “So what?” to surface impact

Before you begin pulling out story beats, ask yourself what impact you want to have. What do you want people to do or think after your presentation? 

An exercise you can use to clarify your impact is the “so what” test, one of the tools used in our Impactful Presentations course . Find a friend or colleague who is comfortable pushing back on you a bit. Give them a quick overview of your presentation and have them ask back, “So what?” Explain why you’re giving this presentation, and continue iterating your answer as they ask “So what?” a few more times. Continue until you get to an answer that embodies the impact you want to have on your audience and what they’ll get out of it. 

Ann likes using the so what test because it’s a way to put into words the stakes of your presentation. It forces you to articulate what you’re trying to convey to your audience and allows you to play around with different wording. “Oftentimes there’s too much to say and people feel compelled to stuff all the words into their story,” she says. How would you summarize the “so what?” of your presentation in just a few words?

Choosing a story arc your audience will connect with

There is no one right way to tell a story . But the way you choose to organize your information can be the deciding factor in getting your audience to take the action you desire ...or not. “The beats are the blocks of the story and the arc is how you pull those things together,” Ann explains. 

The arc is the choreography of your story—how it plays across time and in terms of emotion and how your audience is experiencing your story. “Creating empathy is a huge part of storytelling,” Ann affirms. As humans, we’re very attuned to story arcs. They can create anticipation and engagement, which leads to better retention and understanding. 

Going back to the elements of a story—context, conflict, climax, closure—organized in this order, they are a classic story arc called the 4 C’s. This arc works well if your presentation has a clear problem and solution.

There are several classic story arcs that can be seen across hundreds of years of literature and storytelling. In our Impactful Presentations course , you’ll see more graphics and examples to bring these arcs to life.

Lovesick is a documentary film Ann created about matchmaking for HIV+ singles in India. She used a classic linear story arc with a beginning, middle and end for the film. Chapterizing with title cards established context around the “rules of marriage.” She loved seeing the audience’s reactions to her film. When people in India watched it, the chapters with each marriage rule came across as relatable and humorous—putting into words unspoken rules that everyone knew about. In America, they were more educational, as people didn’t know as much about Indian culture. Keeping her varied audience in mind helped her decide on this story approach.

In a project for the Department of Mental Health for the State of Massachusetts, Ann’s team at IDEO created an illustrated video to help visitors to the site understand their purpose. The video shows what it’s like to be a parent trying to understand what help your child might need. It tells the story through the details of people’s lived experiences, using snippets of audio from real parents as the beats of the story. In this context, building empathy and emotion was critical to getting people to take the desired action—seeking medical help for a loved one.

Combining data and emotion to spark action

For the mental health video, Ann intentionally didn’t lead with lots of data points around wait times in hospitals or the number of children who suffer with mental illness, for example. A good story moves people to action, and data often fails to do this alone. 

“Part of what storytelling allows you to do is get to the why behind the data and provide what it means experientially for people,” Ann says. Data can help set context, but it’s important to show your audience what it means for them, for your end client or customer, and what the ramifications will be from the business side, too. Those takeaways are the beats of your story—not the numbers. 

If you’re presenting to a group of people who expect lots of data, as Ann is familiar with in her work in the healthcare industry, include it, but be selective. What kinds of stories and evidence will move people in the direction you want them to go? Acknowledge during your presentation that quantitative data is what might feel most like evidence to them. 

Experiment with your story to get it right

“You have to abandon the idea of your first draft being your last draft,” Ann warns. “It’s not about getting it perfectly right from the beginning. It’s about going through the motions of trying it.”

People often default to the linear timeline-style story arc—first this happened, then this, lastly that. Just recognize that bias, Ann says, and try out a few other ways of structuring your story before landing on one that feels good.

Here are a few tips Ann has for experimenting with story arcs :

• Jot down notes of all your potential story beats on sticky notes or index cards. Ann leans toward physical paper notes, but you can use slides in a deck as well. Try labeling each slide with what needs to be said and the takeaway, then add in details later. 
• Don’t spend too much time making your first story prototype beautiful. It can be hard to change or critique a presentation you’ve already spent hours and hours making. 
• Organize your story beats into groups to find the hierarchy—the main elements that other pieces will ladder up to. 
• Name your story prototypes, ex. The Frankenstein or The Vision, to differentiate them.
• Reorganize your story beats on index cards into several different arcs. Try them in an order that feels off. 
• Try telling the story from your client or user’s perspective. What did they feel? 
• Force yourself to share your story. You’ll get helpful feedback on how it’s coming across. You may also discover there are certain beats you don’t need.
• Play with your story arc as you’re doing the work. Don’t wait until you’re completely done with a project to think about how to talk about your work. 

Often, a story is not one person’s to tell. “There's a ton of storytelling that's done collaboratively,” Ann says about her work at IDEO. “And that's where it gets really fun.”

If you’re working on a presentation with a group, Ann has a few ideas for ways to work together to find your story beats and the best arc for maximum impact:

• For distributed teams, use a tool that you feel comfortable with that allows multiple users in at the same time. Figma, Mural, Miro and Google docs all came up as favorites for our podcast listeners. 
• Plan for discussion as well as heads-down time to work individually.
• Do an activity where each team member gets to choose seven story beats. Come together to share and see what you can learn from how each person interprets the story differently.
• Assign team members to try out different story arcs with your agreed upon story beats. Present to each other and see what lands. 

Throughout the process of experimenting with your story, give yourself space to get it wrong a few times. “There’s this notion of people going solo into a corner, working it out and leaving the room with the story set,” Ann laments. “And that’s not the way it works.” Take the time to play around with your story now and you’ll have a much greater impact when it’s time to present.

Learn how to deliver presentations that spark a shift in beliefs, behaviors, and mindsets in our online course Impactful Presentations .

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The Power Of Storytelling In Presentations

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Telling stories never gets old. Our brains have an embedded need for narrative, whether it’s schemas, scripts, cognitive maps, mental models or metaphors. In many ways, stories are how we think and make sense of the world around us, and this extends to business concepts as well.

This hidden power of storytelling can influence how we make decisions and how we persuade others of our ideas.

In presentations, stories are the most effective way of organizing information. A powerful form of communication, they translate ideas and move people to action. Moreover, they turn the audience into viral advocates of the proposition , whether in life or in business, by paying the story—not just the information—forward.

Harnessing the power of storytelling for presentations

Humans are hardwired for storytelling. Neuroscientist Uri Hasson of Princeton University researched the effects of storytelling on the brain by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Hasson and his team scanned the brain activity of several participants while they listened to a story. Once the story began, the brain activity of the listeners synced up on a deep level, and “neural entrainment” spread across all brains in higher-order areas including the frontal cortex and the parietal cortex. He found that the storyteller’s brain activity synched with the listeners, while he was telling the story. Hasson’s research showed that an effective storyteller causes the neurons of an audience to closely sync with the storyteller’s brain, which has significant implications for presenters.

A key rule of telling stories is giving your audience an emotional experience. Purposeful stories that reach the listener’s hearts and minds are those that move them to action. Specialists say that the most effective and efficient way to do that is through the use of metaphor and analogy. These linguistic devices are key components of the way we think, building blocks of the very structure of knowledge. They can be used to evoke images and turn on memory, along with rich sensory and emotional associations, bringing the listener into the story, cognitively and emotionally, as an active participant.

We perceive and remember something based on how it fits with other things. One way the brain sorts things is by metaphors (…).

When you’re describing things in a story, you are creating visual imagery that engages you in multiple ways.

Pamela Rutledge, Psychologist  and Director of the Los Angeles-based Media Psychology Research Center via

Every story has to fit within the context of your presentation, or at least tie in with your surrounding remarks. Forced stories have the opposite effect, they disconnect the audience and make it harder for them to understand where you’re going with the presentation.

Stories have purpose. They have to be relevant to the experience and interests of your audience. Each story should have a point to it that your listeners can easily grasp and identify with. You want to use stories to put information into perspective, not replace it. Make your stories clear and relevant, to support the information in your presentation. That means keeping them fairly short and removing unnecessary details.

You want to use stories to put information into perspective, not replace it. (Click to tweet)

When you think of a story to accompany an idea in your presentation, think of it like painting a picture of your idea. Create an easy-to-visualize story where something happens in a specific time and place, played out by characters that your audience is likely to connect with. Don’t try to overdo it or use too many stories. If you’re not comfortable including a story, don’t do it. Otherwise it might seem forced and have a negative impact on your listeners.

If the type of presentation allows it, opt for a personal story. These are naturally embedded with emotion, making you vulnerable and connecting you to your audience. It will also make it easier for you to select how you want to tell the story, what details to include and what elements are most likely to strike a chord with the audience.

The power of stories also comes from scarcity. Don’t go overboard with stories; instead, use them sparingly and make sure that they are the right ones to stay with your audience even after the presentation is over.

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Storytelling structure in presentations

I’ve recently finished reading Christopher Booker’s book: The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. I think the book captures the essence of how and why all stories boil down to one of a few plot structures, and how they can act as outlines for effectively presenting all sorts of information.

Here’s an infographic I found detailing the seven plots that the book talks about, for you to try out in your presentations:

Another interesting way of structuring stories is the classical three-act formula , recommended by Nancy Duarte. You’re probably familiar with this format—the protagonist is identified as likable, then they go through all of these difficult times, and finally, they emerge transformed.

This is a type of structure that enables you to create a story arc to support the hero’s transformation. It’s a technique that builds tension within the audience and releases it, creating that emotional impact we talked about.

Storytelling in business presentations

It might seem counterintuitive but telling stories is actually key to many business presentations. Whether we’re talking about a pitch deck for an investment, a sales pitch for a new client or a product presentation, you should aim to sell a story, not list of numbers.

A great example is tech giant Cisco Systems. The company used to deliver fact-heavy presentations promoting their products. But when they stopped listing features and started telling stories, they became much more effective and successful. By telling the story of a small, struggling, local business owner who grew his company and managed it more effectively using Cisco, the company was able to humanize information about technology and make their benefits more relatable.

One storytelling technique useful in business presentations is using visual elements. Visual design is an universal language that can help you connect the dots between important data points and business conclusions that everyone sitting in that presentation can follow. In fact, in a survey conducted by TDWI, 74% of respondents believed data visualization to be responsible for a “very high” or “high” increase in business user insights. For example, you could organize data from a report in an infographic instead of a table. Or you could translate a strategy into a visual concept that you illustrate with an image.

Another effective technique is to create contrast, in a what is vs what could be scenario. For example, in a pitch deck , when describing the problem that you’re trying to solve with your product/service, it’s easier for investors to connect to it and relate if you explain the two scenarios: how your target market conducts life and business without a solution, and how their lives and businesses would be significantly improved if they had your product/service.

Storytelling isn’t just a way of entertaining audiences, it’s a way of presenting your ideas in a language that the human brain understands best. Used wisely, it’s a powerful device to keep listeners engaged in what you are saying, and it is a motivating factor for action.

As you practice your storytelling abilities, you’ll find that right mix between facts, ideas and stories that keep audiences attentive and move them to action.

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Sheboygan South High students to honor Hmong veterans, culture with community presentation

Hmong student organization leaders hope people who attend will learn about hmong veterans' contributions to us military and more about the culture..

SHEBOYGAN — The Hmong Student Organization at South High will host its first event to honor Hmong veterans and celebrate Hmong culture and history next week.  

The Hmong Veterans Day Presentation will be held on Hmong-Lao Veterans Day May 14, which Gov. Tony Evers designated in 2021 as a way to honor and recognize the Hmong veterans who contributed to the U.S. military efforts in the Secret War. The CIA recruited Hmong people in neighboring Laos to fight Communist forces during the Vietnam War.  

The presentation will not only honor Hmong veterans but explore other effects of the Secret War, like the impact on Hmong civilians who were displaced and separated from their families as they fled. Some estimates put the number of Hmong people who came to the U.S. from this conflict at the tens to hundreds of thousands.  

This will be the larger context of a play HSO wrote for the presentation, following two families as they flee to the U.S. and adjust to living in a new place.  

Though the play is fictional, HSO co-president and South senior Kelsie Vang said this is a story experienced by many Hmong families.  

Vang said Hmong families may wonder “what could’ve been" if they stayed with their families in Laos. “But they were separated and moved to America. It's such a true story," she said.

Autumn Lee, HSO co-president and South senior, said the play could give the older Hmong generation more visibility, too, by sharing a story that could resemble their own.  

Amanda Xiong, HSO public relations chairperson and South senior, said she wants students at South High to understand what Hmong people experienced during the Secret War.  

“That's not hugely covered in the social studies class,” Xiong said. “From this, I just want them to learn about Hmong culture and how Hmong people came to America, because even though there's a huge Hmong student (population) here, a lot of people still don't really know how they came to the United States and what they contributed to the war.” 

Sheboygan County has the fourth largest population of Hmong people in the state. Hmong people also account for more than 70% of the Asian American population in Sheboygan.  

“I really hope that the South High community and the community as a whole learns about Hmong culture because it is a fascinating culture,” HSO adviser and South special education teacher Randall McAdoo said. “I hope that we are able to continue this tradition.” 

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The presentation will feature a Hmong veteran guest speaker, play about the Secret War and more.

Images of Hmong people will be displayed as attendees arrive to the event, some depicting stages of them fleeing to the U.S.

The hour-long presentation will open with an introduction from McAdoo. The presentation guest speaker, Hmong Veteran Shua Yang, who was a First Sargeant in the U.S. Army’s military intelligence division, will follow.

After that, there will be an interactive Hmong language learning portion, a play called “Meet Me Under the Mango Tree” and a dance from the HSO Dance Team.  

Contact HSO adviser to reserve a seat for the Hmong Veteran Presentation.

The Hmong Veterans Day Presentation will be at in the auditorium at South High School, 1240 Washington Ave., from 10:45 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. It is open to the public and the South High community. A limited number of seats are available. Contact Randall McAdoo at [email protected] to reserve a seat.

Have a story tip? Contact Alex Garner at 224-374-2332 or [email protected] . Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @alexx_garner .

Watch live: USA TODAY discusses highlights from May 7 Apple event, 'Let Loose'

Apple unveiled new devices and features Tuesday during its "Let Loose" event , headlined by a new line of iPads .

USA TODAY is providing live analysis of the tech giant's latest announcements, scheduled to begin at 12:30 p.m. ET. You can watch the embedded video live at the top of the page or on USA TODAY's YouTube channel .

For more information on what was announced, follow along to USA TODAY's full recap for updates on new products, features and more .

Sleeping through your alarm? iPhone users missing alarms may find a solution in their settings, Apple says

Watch full video of May 7 Apple event

What is apple announcing.

While Apple has not released any details about announcements that could be made on Tuesday, the event invitation and promotion feature illustrations and motion graphics of a hand holding what appears to be an Apple Pencil, suggesting the presentation may center on iPads and related accessories or features.

Tuesday's event is not when Apple normally unveils new features and updates for its operating systems and devices. Those are typically made at the  annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) , which is scheduled to be online June 10 to 14.

Junior Forum presents 26 debutantes

Wichita Falls is a community of longstanding traditions and continued to uphold this on May 4 with the 96th annual Junior Forum Debutante Presentation.

The Kemp at the Forum abounded with the pageantry and elegance of the tradition dating back over nine decades.

The Junior Forum was founded in 1927 as a junior department of the Woman’s Forum, according to a media release. The debutante class was established to promote community involvement and social grace. The first presentation was staged in the spring of 1928.

The 26 charming young ladies presented May 4 were:

Isabella Evelyn Amador , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Damian Anthony Amador. She will graduate from Wichita Falls High School and plans to attend Midwestern State University.

Katherine Irene Booker , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Steven Ross Booker. She will graduate from Burkburnett High School and plans to attend Embry Riddle Aeronautical University.

Ava Grace Bronaugh , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Barry James Bronaugh. She will graduate from Rider High School and plans to attend Midwestern State University. Her date for the evening was Jonah Matthew Fields.

Cianna Suzann Clampitt , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Monte Lee Clampitt. She will graduate from Burkburnett High School and plans to attend the University of Arkansas. Her date for the evening was Kaison Allan Yow.

Sophia Elizabeth Curry , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Perry Theodore Curry. She will graduate from Rider High School and plans to attend Texas Tech University. Her date for the evening was Beau Robert Gearld.

Mia Claire Gilmore , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Gregory James Gilmore. She will graduate from Rider High School and plans to attend Baylor University.

Aidan Elizabeth Herrera , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Juan Manuel Herrera. She will graduate from Wichita Falls High School and plans to attend Baylor University.

Avery Grace Herrera , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Juan Manuel Herrera. She will graduate from Wichita Falls High School and plans to attend Oral Roberts University.

Kelby Kaydee Jones , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Eric Lee Jones. She will graduate from Holliday High School and plans to attend Tarleton State University.

Emerson Claire Kosub , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Dobie Kosub. She will graduate from Rider High School and plans to attend Baylor University.

Kelsey Grace Kowing , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kristian Kowing. She will graduate from Burkburnett High School and plans to attend Baylor University.

Malayasia Siriana Larque , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Adam Delwayne Larque. She will graduate from Wichita Falls High School and plans to attend Bethel College.

Carson Grace Lipscomb , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Lee Lipscomb II. She will graduate from Wichita Falls High School and plans to attend the University of Oklahoma. Her date for the evening was Cayden Glen Woodard.

Lauren Carmella Lozipone , daughter of Mrs. Melaina Virdian Armstrong and Mr. Carmen Anthony Lozipone. She will graduate from Rider High School and plans to attend the University of Arkansas.

Presley Brooks Montz , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jakob Wade Montz. She will graduate from Rider High School and plans to attend Oklahoma State University.

Sydney Chae Seon Mulhare , daughter of retired Lt. Col. and Mrs. Anthony Blaine Mulhare. She will graduate from Burkburnett High School and plans to attend Texas A&M.

Presley Lynn Murray , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jay Brent Murray. She will graduate from Rider High School and plans to attend Vernon College.

Mari-Lee Grace Osborn , daughter of retired Master Sgt. and Mrs. Donald Dean Osborn. She will graduate from Burkburnett High School and plans to attend Tarleton State University.

Aryana Shirin Khosravi Parvari , daughter of Drs. Mohammad Khosravi Parvari and Amanda Marie Parvari. She will graduate from Wichita Falls High School and plans to attend San Diego State University.

Annabella-Marie Alexandra Pillow , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Kevin Lee Pillow. She will graduate from Rider High School and plans to attend Midwestern State University.

Jazz Katon Rusk , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Justin Keith Rusk. She will graduate from Iowa Park High School and plans to attend Texas Tech University. Her date for the evening was Landon Brockriede.

Jocelyn Ann Turner , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Scott Turner. She will graduate from Henrietta High School and plans to attend Abilene Christian University.

Aubrie Kate Wolfe , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Casey Wolfe. She will graduate from Holliday High School and plans to attend Texas Tech University.

Reese Olivia Wood , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Steven William Wood. She will graduate from Rider High School and plans to attend Vernon College. Her date for the evening was Tanner Scott Poirot.

Eva Angeline Yandell , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Travis Preston Yandell. She will graduate from Rider High School and plans to attend Texas Tech University. Her date for the evening was Kole Michael Skipper.

Reagan Mackenzie Young , daughter of Mrs. Holly Norwood Montes and Mr. Travis Wayne Young. She will graduate from Rider High School and plans to attend Texas Woman's University. Her date for the evening was Anthony Basilio.

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Army Football Show Off New Championship Rings After CIC Trophy Presentation

Joe londergan | may 7, 2024.

• Army West Point Black Knights

This week, the Army Black Knights football team were officially presented the Commander-In-Chief's Trophy by President Biden. The trophy is given annually to the service academy football program that wins the three-team series between Army, Navy, and Air Force.

As part of the celebration, West Point also revealed the design for the rings that Army players will receive to commemorate the win.

💍 2023 CIC 🏆 CHAMPS 💍 pic.twitter.com/23nEi3ErlA — Army Football (@ArmyWP_Football) May 7, 2024

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The rings will feature a plethora of details with nods to the accomplishments of Army's senior class, as well as other classes who claimed the CIC trophy for West Point. This includes the ten seasons that Army has won the CIC trophy outright along the outer sides of the ring. The six stars on one side also symbolize the wins of the Army senior class over Navy and Air Force over the last few years.

Army's 2023 win was the first time that the Black Knights won the trophy outright since 2020.

Army football will open up the 2024 season on August 30 when they host FCS foe Lehigh. The Black Knights will face Air Force on November 2 and Navy on December 14.

JOE LONDERGAN

Joe covers college sports from the Group of Five ranks and beyond. He has worked in the sports industry since 2008, earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Louisville, and a Master's degree from Seattle University.

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Gaston Library to host presentation about Caroline Shipp, here's three things to know

Those who have lived in Gaston County for any extended amount of time have probably heard the story of Caroline Shipp. 

Shipp was the last person to be legally hanged in the county after being accused and convicted of murdering her infant son. 

While many myths and ghost stories related to Shipp’s execution have been spun over the years, historians have tried to stick to the facts. 

From 11 a.m. to noon on May 11, the Gaston County Library will host a free public event at the library’s main branch on East Garrison Boulevard with local historians to dive into the facts of Shipp’s story. 

Here are three facts about the case of Caroline Shipp ahead of this month’s event.

1. The basics 

Caroline Shipp was publicly executed on Jan. 22, 1892. 

Shipp was between 18-21 years old at the time, according to past interviews with Jason Luker, the former Assistant Director of the Gaston County Museum. 

2. Accusations

Shipp was accused of murdering her infant child, which she denied even in her final moments. 

Shipp said her boyfriend Mack Farrar killed her child.

3. Facts and fiction

Over the years, rumors and ghost stories involving Shipp have circulated Gaston County. 

While there may not be merit to many of those rumors, the facts surrounding the case were well documented at the time with news articles in papers from The Gastonia Gazette to the Atlanta Journal. 

Visitors can get the facts straight at the library’s event, which will feature Michael Baxter, a Belmont Abbey College professor of history.

Jaguars stadium renovation deal will be announced Tuesday, City Council president says

The Jaguars and Mayor Donna Deegan have reached a deal for renovations of the stadium , City Council President Ron Salem announced Wednesday.

"The mayor reached out to me late yesterday afternoon to inform me that the executive branch and the Jaguars have reached an agreement on the stadium renovation," Salem said at the beginning of a joint meeting with the Duval County School Board Wednesday morning.

The mayor’s office and consultants have led the city’s negotiations since August and will present the proposed agreement to council at the next regular meeting on Tuesday.

“We have reached an agreement on the framework of a deal," Deegan said in a statement Wednesday. "The negotiating team is currently putting the final details on paper, and we will release that information as soon as it is available.”

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Salem did not comment on what share the city could carry of the potential $1.4 billion renovation. 

"I do not know the specifics of this particular deal but look forward to engaging the council during the month of June as we move forward to review it," Salem said.

City Council will have to approve the deal over the next few months. The Jaguars, according to previous Times-Union reporting , hope to have a deal finalized by early summer in order to take it to the NFL owners meeting in October. 

The city will host a series of public meetings to discuss the deal, much like the Jaguars “huddles” last year.  

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The current lease for the Jaguars to use city-owned EverBank Stadium goes through the 2029 season. A major piece of the stadium renovation involves negotiations for a new 30-year lease.

The talks also have involved whether the Jaguars would play home games away from Jacksonville during the 2026 and 2027 seasons or just the 2027 season because of the extensive construction.

Deegan has said a key area for her is what the “community benefit” portion of the agreement would be for the Jaguars to support neighborhood improvement programs, such as in the Eastside neighborhood that is located near the sports complex.