How To Have Better Conversations (3/3)
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How To Have Better Conversations (3/3)
The Art of The Story
Takeaway: Before you can master conversation threading or “tell me MORE” conversation tactics, you need to master the art of telling a good story. In this article I share a few tips to help sharpen your storytelling skills.
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The Art of The Story
In parts one and two of this series, you’ve learned some straight-forward strategies to improve the flow of your conversation. In this final piece, we’ll be discussing one of the most important skills you can develop: telling a good story.
Being able to tell a good story is a great way to connect on a deeper level.
Stories allow you to bypass generic small talk, share information about yourself, entertain your conversation partner, and potentially even lead to a moment of vulnerability.
Author Patrick King said this on the importance of storytelling,
"When people ask you generic questions like, 'How was your weekend?' they don't really care what your answer is. They just want you to say something interesting."
If you answer with, "Good, how about yours?" You've just killed the conversation.
Everyone has developed scripts of acceptable behavior in social situations. When someone holds the door for you the script is to say, "Thank you." When someone asks how you are, your automatic response is something like, "Good," and to follow it up with something superficial about the weather.
When you respond with one of these generic phrases you kickstart the other person's automatic response scripts.
We call these pre-determined scripts: small talk. And most people hate it.
Instead, by responding with a story you can override these scripts and warm your partner up to a better conversation.
Telling a good story takes practice.
It reminds me of the process comedians use to develop their material. Many famous comedians try new material on a smaller audience first. If it does well they'll include it during one of their bigger shows. If it does well there, then they will finally include it in one of their filmed specials.
If, at any point, the joke doesn't perform as well as they hoped, or if they think it could be made better, they recycle the material back to the writing stage and repeat the process. By the time you see the jokes in their special, they have carefully curated and practiced all the content.
By the time you’re watching that comedy special on television, every joke has been carefully crafted—from the words they use to the inflection in their voice at a particular part of the story.
Similarly, I recommend that you have a few stories ready to go that you've practiced and were well received in previous conversations.
This doesn't mean memorizing and regurgitating the same material to every person you talk to. It does mean being prepared so you have something interesting to share in a moment when it's crucial (and you may have very little else to go on).
The more you practice telling stories, the easier relevant stories will come to mind when you’re using conversation threading or the “tell me MORE” strategy.
Here are some good tips for telling a great story:
1) Tell lots of stories.
Practice, practice, practice.
2) Capture the emotion.
We connect with stories because of the emotion they convey. What is your story trying to convey? Excitement? Suspense? Sadness? Anxiousness?
Make stories exciting by changing the inflection in your voice, the rhythm of your speech, and the use of body language to heighten the drama. A well-timed dramatic pause is just… *chef’s kiss*
3) Practice writing.
Writing forces you to craft coherent stories. All stories need a beginning, middle, and end. Provide enough details that your listeners can follow along, but leave out unnecessary information that clouds the plot.
Information gaps are the death of storytelling. If your audience doesn't have the right information the story won't make sense. These potential gaps become incredibly noticeable in written word.
4) Participate in interesting experiences.
Telling a good story starts with good material. Participate in experiences that are obscure, different, or out of the realm of everyday experience. Having interesting experiences, and learning to tell those stories well, will make you the most popular person in the room.
One heuristic I apply when deciding how to spend my time between two activities is to ask myself, “which will make for a better story?”
Not only will sharpening your storytelling skills help you bypass generic social scripts, it will also improve your ability to utilize the conversation threading and "tell me MORE" strategies.
Mastering all of these conversational strategies will help you exude more confidence, connect with others more easily, and become a master conversationalist.