Karen Dietz

Successful businesses have discovered the power of storytelling and its ability to affect the bottom line. A good way to start building your business stories is to use the time-honored storyboarding technique.There are usually a few ways to tell the same story — the one you choose may depend on the circumstances of the telling, the audience, your intent and goal in telling it, and other factors.

Telecommuting and working virtually across the country or even the globe are popular and often necessary today in many workplaces. You can use storytelling to reduce the distance among virtual team members. Story prompts and triggers can be useful in bringing out these stories. Here’s how: Get to know each other.

You and you alone have total control over using storied approaches in your daily interactions with others, whether at work or in other social interactions. Here are ten easy things you can do to incorporate them into your work, no matter what you do. Replace questions with story prompts When you desire more specific information than a yes/no response, transform the questions you were planning to ask into story prompts to gain richer context around an issue, problem, or need and to more deeply and quickly develop rapport.

Why should you care about the title for a story? For oral storytelling, it really doesn’t matter because the title is mainly a memory aid for you only. Probably most story titles are thought up solely for this purpose. On the other hand, if you’re a blogger, journalist, professional writer, small business owner, or a branding or marketing expert who’s responsible for placing stories into a story bank or into various media, what you use as the title for a story is very important.

Highly technical audiences like to know the science behind storytelling before accepting it as a core business practice. Sharing all kinds of data with them may be tempting, but would defeat your purpose of demonstrating how powerful stories can be. It’s not that you don’t want to share data — but you want to do it in a way that reinforces the fact that stories not only create understanding, they also create meaning and knowledge transfer.

If you want to develop and deliver a memorable story to your business audience — whether your listeners be employees, stockholders, or customers — you need to consider how to shape your storytelling. Here are some ways in which you might build your business story for maximum impact. Name Structure Comments “I’m Better Off” Main character gets in trouble, then gets out of trouble, and ends up better off for the experience.

Organizations use and tell lots of different types of stories, many of which are listed here. Each type is appropriate for various unique uses and applications. Story prompts are things you say to someone else in order to draw out the story. Name and Definition Possible Story Prompts or Steps to Craft These Stories “Your founding” stories: Moments in your life that made a huge difference in who you are today.

Storyboarding is a nonlinear way to craft and learn your business stories. Here are the steps to creating an effective one. If you’ve been crafting your stories in other ways, try this approach for variety. It may stimulate a more creative flow. Steps Instructions Comments Step 1 Grab a pad of Post-It notes, a stack of 3 × 5 cards, and something to write with.

Many situations in business call for the use of compelling stories: Training workshops. Talks at company or industry events. Presentations to prospective and current customers or clients. Keynotes at conferences. Stories are the secret sauce between good and great — and truly awesome speakers. Here are some tips that will help you with any storytelling opportunity you may have: Identify your signature stories Any personal hip pocket story can become a signature story.