Welcome to the Redefining High Performance Podcast. My name is Ty Bennett. I’m excited for today’s episode, because today is week 3 in a series on the power of storytelling. If you haven’t done so, go back and listen to the two previous episodes. They’re quick, they’re short, they’re to the point. But in week one, we talked about the mindset of storytelling.
In week two, we talked about the skill set of storytelling. I give you the formulas, how do you craft and deliver an influential story, and today, in week 3, we’re going to talk about the toolset of storytelling.
Now, these tools that I’m going to share with you are going to make stories more compelling, more dynamic, more memorable. They’re gonna bring stories to life. All of this is based off of my work. I wrote a book called The Power of Storytelling. You can check it out on my website, or Amazon, or wherever if you want to dive in deeper. But I truly believe that storytelling is one of the most influential tools that we have. I think it’s the most underrated skill in business, because if connection is a multiplier of high performance, then stories allow us to connect. It allows us to engage, they allow us to move people. And so, let’s take the stories that you have, and let’s bring them to life. I want to share 3 specific tools with you today.
The first is dialogue, the second is details, and the third is metaphors. If you were to grab a toolbox that’s full of all these different tools. The reality is, you don’t use every tool on every job and just like that, I don’t think you need every tool, like you’re not gonna use dialogue in every single story. You’re not gonna use a metaphor in every single story, but if you understand what that tool is and how to use it, then you can use it where it’s applicable.
So, let’s dive into the toolbox. One of the coolest tools that I think you have to use is dialogue. And here’s why. I think most stories are pretty boring because they’re told like a book report. It’s told in past tense. It’s like a narrator. He went here, then this happened, then this happened. I mentioned in a previous episode that the foundation of influential storytelling is you don’t retell a story, you relive a story. Well, to relive a story, we have to bring it into present tense, and one of the ways we can do that is to add dialogue into the story. Mark Twain had a great quote. He said don’t tell me that the lady screams. Bring her on stage and let her scream. When you give your characters a voice, you allow them to be heard. You allow them to bring emotion. You allow them to bring humor, like there’s lots of different things that we could do. Let me give you this example.
I’m gonna tell you the same story twice. The first time I’m going to use just narration, and the second time I’m going to add dialogue, and I just want you to hear the difference between the two. Now, I don’t mean to make light of any subject, I just think this is a good example.
So, I could say a friend of mine was just diagnosed with cancer. Now, with dialogue, I can say. You know, my friend called me yesterday. And she said, Ty, I have cancer. I have no idea what I’m gonna do.
Do you hear the difference between the two? You see dialogue allows me, as the storyteller, liberties to be able to bring emotion, to personify that character. It brings it to life. And so the question isn’t should you use dialogue, you should use dialogue, but the question is where and how? Why do you use dialogue? And dialogue has two expressed purposes, impact and humor. Now, if you want to study any great comedians – watch what they’re doing, and when they get a loud applause and they are using dialogue. In comedy, it’s called an act-out. They typically act it out with a little bit more exaggeration. So, you can study and learn how to use dialogue for impact for humor lines. More often than not, especially in a business setting, we’re telling stories that have impact and this is where the mentor tells you the key line. This is where your client and their client success story delivers you the feedback. What did they tell you? What did they say? What was their experience? Let them say it, because it’s more powerful. Dialogue is dynamic. And it brings it to life.
The second tool I want you to think about is details. Now, in the previous episode, I shared with you a rule. My number one rule with storytelling is this – if it’s not necessary to say, it becomes necessary not to say. That would sound like I’m saying don’t use details. And now I’m saying use details. The details that make something tangible, the details that make it come alive, that you can measure, that you can grab onto. Details like location, size, amount anything like that that allows you to take an intangible idea and make it something tangible. We want those details. Think about how they sell weight loss. You’ve never heard anybody go, some people lost some weight, right? Like, they give actual specific details. There’s a story that I’ve told before. And it’s a story of a guy named Mel Fisher. Mel Fisher’s the greatest treasure hunter the world has ever known.
He discovered the treasure of the Atocha off the Florida Keys, worth over $400 million. Now, before you quit your job and go searching for treasure, he searched the ocean floor literally every day for 18 years to be able to find that treasure. So, this is like the ultimate persistence pays-off story, right? Well, at the part of the story where he discovered the treasure, this is how I actually tell it. I say, one day, a magnometer indicated something down on the seabed. And two divers dove down to see what they had found, and they found they were sitting on an entire reef of silver bars. I mean, they’ve found it. They found the motherlode. As they brought this all up out of the ocean, what they actually found was 127 silver bars. It weighed 70 pounds apiece. Can you imagine? They found 2,500 emeralds, 3,500 other gems. They found hundreds of pounds of heavy gold bits disk and chain, hundreds of other artifacts, including cannons and other things from the ship.
Estimates put the total value at over $400 million. Or I could have said they found a really big treasure. You see how those details kind of bring it to life? They make it real, they make it compelling, dynamic, you can grab onto it, you can imagine the treasure in front of you, in your hands, like, what that felt like, what it looked like. So, details bring it to life.
Now, the third tool I want you to think about is metaphors. When I say metaphors, I’m not differentiating between metaphors, similes, I don’t care if you use like or as, I’m talking about comparisons. You need to compare something that is unknown to something that is known. When you’re communicating, I think great communicators take complex ideas and they make them simple. Some of the best tools we have to do that are stories and metaphors. And so, some stories are metaphor-based. If you’re gonna tell a story, and you’re gonna compare yourself to somebody else, you’re gonna compare this situation to something else – this is just like this. And often, when you are sharing a concept and people are like, what, how does that work? I don’t get it. That should be like a ding-ding-ding, I need a metaphor. I work with a lot of sales teams, and we talk about storytelling, and one of the things that I often coach them to do is. As much as possible, share the metaphors that work, share the analogies that they use. Share all of the things that are important for them to be able to do, right?
Because sometimes when you’re sharing, when you’re teaching a concept, or you’re selling a product you find, like, the right ways to explain it. You find the right stories that connect. And metaphors are an incredible tool in that process.
I hope that you will take these ideas around storytelling, and that you won’t just go, okay, that’s great, but you’ll actually take it and practice it like a skill. I hope that you will script out some stories, that you’ll role-play and practice those stories that you might actually even record yourself and go back and listen to it. Because I’ve found that with all of the industries that I’ve worked with, teaching the concepts of storytelling, I truly believe that whoever tells the best story wins. And all you have to do is dive in. It’s a skill that has to be practiced. It has to be finessed. It has to be something that you continue to work on, and you can get better at.
If you want to dive in deeper, get a copy of my book, The Power of Storytelling. But I think this is a high-performance skill. Great communicators are great storytellers. I think being able to communicate and connect using stories to move people is going to serve you extremely well.
I hope this has been helpful, this has been fun to have this 3-part series. If you want to dive in deeper, go back and listen to those, re-listen to those, listen to them in order. It’s gonna be pretty quick, because each of these are short episodes, but… I will continue to bring more content like this every single week. I appreciate you listening. Thank you for being here, please.
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