An engaging story has three parts - the set-
up, the meat, and
the message. When building a story
we’re going to start at a place where you might not
expect - with the message. The message is where
you “land the learning”. When I say land the learning,
I’m describing a point where the key learning is
revealed to the participants - it’s like an AH HA
moment. I like to use “land the learning” so store it in
your memory.
3. The Message: Begin at
the end.Think about the teaching point that you
want to make through your story. This point will be
the core of your message. Once you know the core
message you can work backward to determine all the
important data points that are critical to creating
that message.
I was facilitating a sales workshop several years ago
where the module that particular afternoon dealt
with setting proper expectations when dealing with a
client. I wanted to tell a story that showed the
importance of setting proper expectations and
decided the best way to do this was to tell a story
where expectations weren’t properly set. The reason
that I chose a reverse story was that people are
more motivated to act when they are faced with
avoiding a negative situation rather than to create a
positive one. In this case the negative situation
would be making the client angry. The message or
punch line in the story would be -“So, you can see
what happens when you fail to set proper
expectations. What could I have done differently to
avoid this situation?” Here is where the Ah Ha!
moment occurs for the participants. Earlier I told
them why setting expectations was important and
now they’ve connected with that “why” through a
story. At this point in the workshop I have the
participants engaged in a brief discussion around one
of the learning points in the module. They are
teaching themselves!
1. The Set-up: Ok, now
you’ve seen my message.
Now we need to back up and create the set-up and
choose the data points. A short set-up might sound
like this ...
