Storytelling is an ancient art, and it’s becoming increasingly important in a business world crammed with logical lists, scrambled statistics and painful pie charts. Using the four story types of tragedy, triumph, tension and transition, you can forge authentic emotional connections with audiences, engage your colleagues, motivate your team, sell your product and convey your personal or company values.
What you can do:
To find good stories, just look!
If you find yourself on the train to work one morning, convinced you don’t have any stories to tell, take a deep breath, look around you and let some reminders soak in. But really look. Do you see the man wearing the Hawaiian shirt? Perhaps it reminds you of the time you learned (or failed!) to surf. What about the crying child and your own experience with parenthood? Even a glance out the window to watch a plane taking off can trigger a story about a canceled flight. Now you can analyze the story – chances are there’s a transition and a triumph buried in there somewhere!