Hey there and welcome back to lead the team.

It's just me today, no interview, but I'm going to be sharing with you some tips and strategies and a quick framework for mastering storytelling fast.

That's right.

So you can narrate, captivate, and dominate in your communication.

And listen, I've been doing this over 350 episodes.

Just don't leave the team alone.

Plus, you added other shows.

We produce over a dozen podcasts, profitable podcasts for organizations, and there are certain ways for telling stories that captivates an audience.

And this is so huge for your career as a leader.

And let me tell you, there are a couple benefits to this that I think are really important to consider for yourself.

Number one, you're going to be spending your effort, time and energy in a podcast interview communicating to your teams.

Don't you want your message to be remembered?

Yeah.

If you're going to put the energy into it, don't you want to be remembered?

And this goes back to impact.

That's right.

They're going to be remembering it for.

For potentially days out, hours, days, months, years, maybe even a lifetime.

And a lot of times, it's not the message specifically, it's the story around the message.

He's great.

Stories keep people remembering and people.

When I'm.

When a story really resonates, it makes the message come alive and more people are much more willing to share it and to replay it and to share that story with others.

So as you can see, it's.

It's really important stuff as a leader.

And if you think about it from a historical standpoint, before we had the written word, we had pictures, like, I guess, hieroglyphics, pictographs.

And before that, we didn't have that.

We just sat around the campfire as humans and shared our wisdom that way.

And if you think about it, too, that's where this whole idea of storytelling, storytelling back then, had to be so detailed and so captivating that people would remember it for generations.

And when it comes to doing interviews, again, that's.

That's kind of my forte right now.

And also working with leaders who want to communicate a message to their customers, to their clients, to their employees.

We also work with them with the framework.

And so I wanted to give to you today a very quick play by play for you to do this to yourself.

Okay.

Or do the for yourself.

Number one, the first step is to brainstorm a list of potential stories.

That's right.

And this should only take 10 minutes.

And when I say brainstorm, I mean get a Get a pen out.

Get Excel out.

Get a word doc.

Set your timer for 10 minutes and use this framework.

Complete this.

The first time I felt.

So go ahead and write that down.

The first time I felt.

And you're going to think about all the first times.

The first time you you felt taken care of.

The first time you felt like someone was loyal to you, or you felt loyal to someone else.

Or the first time you felt loved.

First time you felt trusted.

The first time you felt truly responsible and accountable for your own actions.

Or the first time you realized the power of your leadership.

These are all ways that you can tee up ideas to come up with great stories for your own career and your messages.

You can also think about the first time you were promoted or you achieved a big milestone, or when you were hired, or when you were fired.

Or maybe that big moment that you missed a deadline and you had to make up for it, or a project stalled and you had to step in and do something about it.

All of these things are great ways for 10 minutes to think about the situations and the great stories of your life, those that you can tell.

And when it comes to a podcast interview, it helps to spend these 10 minutes to think about what your favorite stories are and how you can tee those up.

All right, now once you've gone through there, you're going to also go back and sometimes it helps to think about to assign an emotion.

So for example, the first time you felt betrayed.

So like a really dark one, right?

You might have the emotions of anger, disgust, you know, things of that nature, these really strong emotions.

Or the first time you a big project stalled or missed a deadline, you might have felt anxiety, you might have felt worried.

Just digging into those highly emotional stories can also help trigger other ones.

And the more time you spend on this, the the more you'll really start to develop a library of potential stories.

Now what?

Don't get overwhelmed, right?

No reason for this to trigger overwhelmed for you.

At this point, all you want to do is just get these down and then you want to circle probably two or three that generates excitement for you.

Or ones that like.

You know what, I really like to tell that story.

Once you've narrowed it down, you go to step two.

And there are a lot of ways to do step two.

I like to scratch it off, write it down really quick on the back of an envelope or a post it note, and I simply write down the page 1, 2 and 3.

Okay?

And by the way, you can do this in a Word document or excel too, but 12 and 3.

You might be saying, well, what are these 1, 2, and 3?

Well, this is the framework I like to use, something called Fields Paradigm, that's used in screenplays.

And I know you're not writing a screenplay, but this framework really simplifies it down an awful lot.

And you could use a framework like the Hero's Journey from Joseph Campbell.

And this is one that fits really nicely with big epic stories like the Odyssey or Star wars or Shawshank Redemption and these big movies.

And if you're going to take the time to use the Hero's Journey framework, I commend you on it.

But most people don't have time or want to make that kind of time to really dive into the details of the story.

So I offer you Fields Paradigm.

So, number one, remember, you got one, two, and three, and those are acts.

So I'll often think about Act 1, Act 2, Act 3.

Now, Act 1 is the setup.

And you can write down setup.

And this is exactly what it is.

This sets up the story.

And by the way, I'm going to plug in a story here for a second as an example.

But I'll give you the framework first.

Number one is the setup, okay?

And people spend way too long writing out the.

Writing out the setup.

You want the setup to be a quick introduction about what your story is about.

You're going to set up the situation.

A lot of times in interviews, we'll hear people sort of, you know, kind of draw this part out.

And then when we create a highlight clip around it, we're looking to really shorten that down for them.

So for yourself, if you're going to write the story, just keep in mind you want to set this thing up pretty quickly.

Then step two is the confrontation, okay?

Or act two is the confrontation or the tension.

You're going to spend most of your storytelling right there.

That's what people care about, right?

This is when the difficulty begins.

This is the conflict.

This is where you really want to put salt in the wound and the pain of the story.

And this is what gets us on the edge of our seats.

And then Act 3 is the resolution.

This is where you wrap it up.

And again, you want to speak pretty quick here, okay?

Resolution.

And sometimes this leads into a call to action that I'll get to in a minute, but that's.

That's a setup.

Okay?

So again, I'll quickly review this.

You're going to do a 3x store using fields Paradigm.

You want to clear beginning, middle, and end.

You're going to spend the most time in the middle, which is the, which is the tension.

And you're going to make the shortest parts on the setup and the resolution of the story.

Okay, examples of the middle, the H Vac, the air conditioner goes out in the middle of August and you've got 100 people working in your factory or your company runs out of money.

This is the middle.

This is where the action happens.

And you'll quickly come to resolution after that.

And so as an example, act one for me, a setup.

I founded a successful training and development company from organization and wrote a book about it, a best best selling book, and had a lot of other successes in that area.

Okay, that's the setup, right.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it because that's not the point of the story.

But I'm just setting it up.

Then act two is the confrontation detention.

So then I get into, well, everything was going well, but then the pandemic hit.

And by the way, that's a big tension point for a lot of leaders in their business.

Right?

You're going along, the organization's flowing.

The pandemic hits.

It strained my business, it strained my cash flow, it kept me up at night.

It generated a lot of worry and anxiety.

It created change for my clients.

And everyone around me seemed like they were suffering.

And my business was on the ropes as well as the business of a lot of my clients.

And then Act 3, the resolution is we decided to try a lot of different things.

One of those was a podcast.

And we tried the podcast.

We had this conversation one day with an executive who was at home.

Even though he's normally traveling during the pandemic, he wasn't.

Then we shared it on LinkedIn.

His employees absolutely loved the personal message he shared.

Some employees who left the company said, hey, if you'd have talked to me like that when I was there, I would have stuck around.

And one of the best parts too is a lot of the customers chimed in and appreciated it and really gave them a tighter connection with the customers.

And I knew at that point I had to go all in on podcasts.

Now we still do leadership development and training, but through this difficulty, we're able to launch a podcast that eventually we were asked to produce podcast, profitable podcast for other organizations through this.

So that is the three story act.

There's the resolution.

Now the final step after you did three acts is to decide on a call to action.

And there are a lot of ways you can do this, but it's really like what's the message you most want to for others to take away.

So for my story, it could have been that difficult times help help you dig deep and discover your resilience.

A crisis can bring hardship, but it can also bring opportunity or creativity comes from sometimes the biggest challenges.

And there could be something about innovation.

There are a lot of different messages.

So when I tell a story, I think about my audience, the message that I most want to reach, and what I like to communicate.

And that's where the messaging comes in.

But usually I work through the stories first and then I consider and they're different call to actions and I find the one that most resonates.

Now, some leaders like to do it in reverse.

They like to think about the message they most want to communicate.

Then they mind their background and experience, right for the story.

And then it all feeds in together.

It's okay to go that way.

I often like to brainstorm a few different calls to action for the story.

And so when I need it, I can sort of direct it in that direction.

Now, a few other FAQs for you.

One, how long should a story be?

Well, it should not be that long.

It should max.

Should probably be 2 minutes, 3 minutes max.

And the longer the story, the more important attention and the call to action.

Like, the bigger the call to action is, if it's a 30 to 45 second story, it doesn't necessarily need a major at the end of it.

But if you're going to take people through that story, it's longer.

You want to make sure you, you've got a big idea that was really helpful to you and to others in that number.

Next question is, well, how do I get good at telling stories?

Well, first off, you practice and you practice the framework that I just gave you.

You can use other frameworks, but the key is practicing the framework.

A lot of people just say, well, hey, I'm a great storyteller.

I've got a lot of charisma.

Yes, yes, yes.

But people, you know, you know, I'll tell you, people with great charisma, great personality don't always tell the best stories because they don't have a framework.

And sometimes, you know, I, I've had one CEO that had a significant stutter during the interview.

And it's one of the best interviews we've actually had.

And he had a very tight framework.

He told multiple stories very quickly, very effectively.

And I've had CEOs that are sort of low energy and quiet, but they have a great framework and they tell such great stories and communicate powerful messages and really draw people in.

So use the framework.

Use the.

Use it to practice you can.

Ways you can practice number one is you can use the Voice Memo on your phone.

Open the Voice Memo app and just talk into your phone.

That'll be one way you can practice like when you're driving or you're on your bike or walking outside.

You can also open Zoom or teams and have like a solo meeting with yourself and record it and just practice it.

You can also use the mirror or use the use the video recorder on your phone to practice.

Those are all ways to do it.

And how do you get really, really good at it?

Well, tell it different ways using the same framework, but maybe decide one way I'm going to tell the story.

Really amped up, really energetic.

I'll be using my hands and talking really fast.

And then the next time I want to tell the story very slowly and very low energy and play with the energy.

Tell it from different perspectives.

Not perspectives, but tell it from.

In, in different energy levels.

And you'll notice how after you tell it a few times from different energy levels, you'll start to settle in on maybe one that's the best for you.

And then sometimes I get asked, well, what resources?

Well, this is one resource that you can use.

But also one of the best storytelling books I've ever seen is Resonate by Nancy Duarte.

It's been out a while.

It's a beautiful book.

I recommend ordering the book.

I've used it a lot in my storytelling and in fact, that's where I first learned about Fields Paradigm, the three act story framework.

She also goes into Joseph Campbell's framework and she talks about great storytellers.

She talks about Ronald Reagan, one of his famous stories he talked about.

They talk about something that GE did.

So talk about companies, leaders, Martin Luther King's I have a Dream speech.

She analyzes it and breaks it down in terms of what makes it great.

And these are all things, by the way, that you can do right now.

So I recommend listening to this, maybe slowly on a slower speed, going through the three acts and preparing.

And just try it one time.

Just try it one time.

The whole process should probably take 30 minutes.

Okay, so remember, the first one is to spend 10 minutes brain dumping, brainstorming your emotional stories using that framework that I gave you.

Then use another 15 minutes to apply the three acts that I share with you.

And then about 10 minutes, just kind of wrapping up and considering your call to action.

And then set up maybe another 10 minutes later in the day to practice a few times and give it a shot.

Let me know.

And I'd love to have you reach out to us.

If you'd like to be on lead the team and share your story sometime.

Go get them.