Margot Leitman, Grand Slam winner at The Moth — see her winning performance above — got started in oral-pertormance storytelling because she was bored with standup comedy, she said in her session at Reinvention Summit 2.

She started by just telling one story, but discovered the reception to her work was so much better with story than it had been with standup.

Explaining the distinction between standup and storytelling, Margot noted that stories don’t have a setup or a punchline. Standup can be story like when it’s autobiographical (e.g., Kathy Griffin), but not so much when it’s observational (Jerry Seinfeld). With storytelling, you’re bound to the truth, Margot said, while that may not be the case with standup. “Audience knows when you’re lying,” she said.

Here are 11 tips Margot offered for finding and delivering stories as part of presentations and other activities:

1. Everyone has up to 6 insane moments in their lives, but what it takes to be a good storyteller is to tell about an everyday moment.
2. To find a story in the mundane, you have to care about what you’re telling the story about. It’s best if you feel passionate no matter how mundane the story.
3. Having a strong negative reaction to something can be very funny.
4. To be conversational instead of seeming like you’re performing, tell the story as though your are telling to close friend. (Here, attendee Tyler added: “Audiences love conversational storytelling. And it’s harder to do than most people would think, mostly because it’s very intimate.”)
5. Start your story with “so,” so you’re mid-conversation.
6. Start with a script, but gravitate to bullet points (and then, of course, no notes at all).
7. Avoid too much exposition. Story is one incident, not a list.
8. In your story, show what’s at stake.
9. Know that “yourself” is enough.
10. If something about you, say an aspect of your appearance (e.g., cast on arm or leg), might distract your audience from your story, name it, own it, get it out of the way.
11. The only person whose story you have the right to tell is your own. “Tell stories with a clear conscience,” Margot said. “You can’t tell a story about what a [jerk] someone is.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

In a thoughtful and thought-provoking blog post, Storytelling: Community through… Competition?, Katie Knutson talks about how, even in competitive settings, storytellers generate a strong sense of community.

Knutson recalls that despite the “fiercely competitive” storytelling category in her high-school forensics contests, a sense of community persisted in that category as with no other in the forensics competition:

… the storytellers talked, complimented each other on stories, shared ideas, laughed, and celebrated the successes of our competitors. After all, the better our competition was, the better we had to be.

She raises a question that everyone in the story world might ask: “Was there something special about storytelling that created community among competitors? Was it the act of sharing stories or the people who created the sense of belonging?”

As an adult oral-performance storyteller, Knutson notes that she is still in competition with other storytellers — for gigs, grant money, and more. Yet …

Despite this competition, the community persists. We come together to share our stories, best practices, and skills. We welcome newcomers and encourage others to join us — not because there is so much work that we cannot do it all, but because we have a passion. We get to use our gifts to make a difference, and have a wonderful time doing it.

One thing that has struck me more than just about anything else in the eight years I’ve been in the applied-storytelling realm is that exact same kind of community and mutual support. In theory, many story practitioners are competing for clients, for readers, for buyers, and more. Yet the same spirit of community and mutual support Knutson observes is evident in the applied world. We help each other out, give shootouts and pats on the back, and support each others’ endeavors.

I’d go a step further and cite the incredible spirit of generosity in the story world; storytellers and practitioners are constantly offering freebies — ebooks, white papers, tools, and more — to their constituencies and the general public.

I do think this sense of community and generosity is unique to the story world. I see it in the other major sector I travel in — job search and careers — but to a much lesser extent.

Thus, Knutson’s question is appropriate. Is it the act of sharing stories that creates community?

It just may be. I’ve been revisiting The Spirituality of Imperfection for an upcoming Toastmasters speech. The book, subtitled, “Storytelling and the Search for Meaning,” emphasizes the connectedness people feel when they share stories.

And that’s the key, I think, that we professionals who “compete” in the story world are connected by the stories we share.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Two TED Talks came to my attention in the last couple of days — one that embodies an affecting story (as many TED Talks do) and another that casts a critical and suspicious eye on stories themselves.

I often see storied presentations, and I often see written pieces on integrating story into presentations, but a wonderful post by John Zimmer analyzes in detail a storied presentation. Zimmer is a Toastmaster who blogs about public speaking and often integrates Toastmaster-specific content.

The presentation, embedded below, is by Alberto Cairo, who runs the orthopedic program operated by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Afghanistan.

I urge you to read Zimmer’s full analysis, which is enormously helpful to public speakers, but here’s my brief synthesis that applies the analysis to integrating story into presentations:

• Establish your credibility with humility, and do it briefly (One of the most striking things about Cairo’s presentation, in my view, is how humble he is throughout.)
• Foreshadow that you will delve into the past to reveal a story (which, in this case, had several sub-stories).
• Forego charts and graphs; just tell the story.
• If you use slides, make them striking photos/graphics that go with your story.
• Own your emotions. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable as you tell your story.
• Make your gestures natural.
• Paint descriptive pictures, but keep them simple.
• Use facial expressions appropriate to your story. (Here, I differ slightly from Zimmer’s analysis. Cairo tells a serious story, but he could have smiled occasionally. When he smiles at the end, you wish you’d seen that smile during the story.)
• Don’t be afraid of humor when presenting a serious subject. (The audience indeed laughs several times; these would have been good places for Cairo to smile.)
• Build drama with your physical presence.
• Provide relief to that drama with lighter moments.
• Don’t be afraid to inject pauses, even long ones.
• Think about what you want the audience to remember, and be sure to articulate that message (What’s the moral of the story?). If an audience member were describing the story/presentation to a friend in a restaurant two weeks later, how would you want him or her to express your message?
• When appropriate, become your characters.
• Bring the story full circle by describing a transformation.
• Provide a few supporting points that enhance the transformation’s impact.
• You’ve told the audience what you want them to remember, but take that a step further by describing the action you seek.

The Toastmasters tradition is to constructively evaluate speeches and offer suggestions for improvement, even for high-quality speeches in which it’s difficult to identify ways it could be better. Zimmer calls Cairo’s presentation “a fantastic talk on so many levels,” but he does suggest a few minor improvements. One slide isn’t the best choice for its part of the talk, Zimmer opines, and it stays on the screen too long. Cairo could have employed longer pauses. And Zimmer feels Cairo could have stood closer to the audience, although he suspects, as do I, that the TED folks had him stand in a certain spot for filming purposes. I would add that Cairo could have used more energy. His humility became a bit like an enveloping cloak that made him just a wee bit plodding. Again, a serious subject, but a bit more spark would have enhanced my engagement. He’s not a native-English-speaker, though (he’s Italian), so it’s possible he would speak more energetically in his native tongue. In Toastmasters, he would have been dinged for saying “um,” but I caught no more than two or three of those in a 19-minute talk.

The second TED Talk is a two-year-old deep critique of stories themselves by economist Tyler Cowen (thanks to Stephanie West Allen for alerting me to it). Cowen is suspicious of stories because they (a) are too simple, (b) end up serving dual and conflicting functions, and (c) are often the wrong stories, as served up by marketers and politicians. This third point is the popular manipulation argument often leveled at storytelling.

Throughout the speech, I found myself thinking: What’s the alternative? We have no choice but to think in story form. While he acknowledges that it is impossible for humans not to think in stories, Cowen wants to see more messiness, ambiguity. He wants us to scrutinize stories more critically and suspiciously before buying into them. It’s a provocative talk, and I’d be interested in what story folks think of it.

Interestingly, I was just as engaged in Cowen’s talk as I was in Cairo’s even though Cowen tells few stories — possibly because I had my defensive story hackles up and wanted to understand what he sees as the problems with stories.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Well, I did it.

I got through the 10 Toastmasters speeches that comprise the organization’s initial manual. That qualifies me as a “Competent Communicator.”

It’s the point at which I initially envisioned that I might end my Toastmasters experience. Apparently a large percentage of members do quit after reaching that milestone.

I didn’t count on being in a group of incredibly supportive and caring folks. I didn’t count on improving my skills so much. I didn’t count on having so much fun.

The quality of the club has inspired me to get very involved. I do a lot because I want the club to always be as wonderful as it is now. The supportive, cheery atmosphere also has inspired me to aspire to the pinnacle, the Distinguished Toastmaster award — or maybe even the exclusive and hard-to-obtain Accredited Speaker designation. I’ve talked about my involvement and goals in a previous post.

In my ongoing effort to chronicle my Toastmasters experience, here are a few things I’m proud of in my 15-month journey to Competent Communicator:

• With one exception, I always tried to carefully tailor my speeches to the objectives of each project in the manual.
• For the most part, I knew way ahead of time what topic and approach I would take to each speech. My 10th speech is a good example. The object was to give a speech that inspires. I remembered a speech I’d crafted when I was speechwriter to Florida’s education commissioner, for which I’d won an award. I felt it was perfect for the inspiring speech and knew many months ahead of time that it would be the basis of my 10th speech. I adapted and updated it.
• I liked the fact that I always tried to dress professionally when giving a speech. For me, professional attire promotes confidence.
• I learned from mistakes. I wrote in a past post about learning to deal with distractions after a particularly ill-fated speech. In another, I talked about how overpreparation may be hurting my speeches. I learned a lesson from my 10th speech, too. Because the 10th speech is required to be 8-10 minutes long instead of the usual 5-7 minutes, I was sure I would need a memory crutch when presenting the speech. So I decided to use a teleprompter app (Prompster Pro) on my iPad as a backup. But during my (over?)preparation, I ended up memorizing the speech. I discovered that a teleprompter isn’t a good tool for a memorized speech. The combination of the teleprompter and overpreparation was probably responsible for one hiccup in the speech.
• I won a few Best Speaker awards along the way, including for the 10th speech.
• I learned to keep my speeches within time limits, primarily by writing them to be at or below the minimum length and understanding that no matter what length my rehearsals are, delivering the speech for real will always take more time.

Things I wish I’d done better:

• Made my speeches more storied. I was better at delivering storied speeches early on. Later speeches had story bits and fragments but few full stories.
• Had better eye contact. In videos of myself speaking, I’ve observed that I tend to stick my chin up, which accentuates sleepy-looking eyes. I also sometimes look in the direction of the audience, but not directly at them, sort of beyond them.
• Had better hand gestures. Sometimes I have gestures for the sake of gestures with no real point to them. For my 10th speech, I somehow developed a bizarre tendency to gesture with only one hand.
• Understood better how to connect with my audience. I felt I connected in most of my speeches, but I missed the mark in a couple of them. In my most crushing disappointment, an emotional speech I’d worked incredibly hard on failed to reach the audience. And even disregarding the distractions that marred my ninth speech, I didn’t feel I was connecting, and I’m not sure why.
• Smiled while speaking. When the content is appropriate, speakers can enormously enhance their speeches by smiling, as a couple of smiley members of our club have proven. I’m just not a natural smiler, and the most I can usually muster is a wan little smirk.

Onward and upward to the Toastmasters advanced manuals!

In case you’d like to experience my Toastmasters journey from my joining to the milestone 10th speech (I wrote more Toasties posts than I realized.)….

• My (Ongoing) Toastmasters Story
• My First Toastmasters Speech: Adrenaline Is a Wonderful Thing
• Toastmasters Update and Perspectives from Another Toastmaster
• The Power of Ancestor Stories
• The King’s Speech and Speech (Story?) Preparation
• Storytelling, Speech Contests, and Speech Techniques
• A Post to Bring a Smile. Or Not.
• Competition, Overpreparation, and Storied vs. Fact-Based Presentations
• Intuition Meets Storytelling Meets Pecha Kucha
• I Have Drunk the Toastmasters Kool-Aid!
• Public-Speaking Horror Stories Are Necessary

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

So there I was, cruising along toward the first major Toastmasters benchmark of 10 speeches. I gave my ninth speech this week.

In every speaker’s career comes a speech, or perhaps more than one, that he or she beats himself or herself up over. In his blog, Manner of Speaking, Toastmaster John Zimmer summarizes some of the things that can go wrong:

• Did you ever forget what you wanted to say?
• Did you ever get lost, or stuck in traffic en route, and arrive too late?
• Did you ever have trouble speaking because you were so nervous?
• Did the equipment ever stop working and leave you in the lurch?
• Did the audience ever ask questions you couldn’t answer?
• Did you ever lose a speech contest?
• Did you ever get negative feedback?
• Did you ever get laughed at?
• Did you ever miss out on a sale or business opportunity or contract or job because of a bad presentation?
• Did you ever think that you were not cut out to be a public speaker?

I had practiced my ninth speech to the same excessive extent as usual, rehearsing in 10 times the morning of the speech. I knew it cold.

But during the speech, several distracting things happened to totally make me lose my mojo. Our Toastmasters banner fell off the lectern. I may have knocked if off; I couldn’t tell you because I was in that speaker’s zone where you’re not that aware of your surroundings. Then a guest’s cellphone emitted a loud, obnoxious ringtone; he didn’t know to turn it off for the meeting.

Both interruptions threw me off my game. In two spots in the speech, I blanked out on the next line and had to peek at my cheatsheet.

But perhaps worse than the distractions and forgotten lines, I felt I was just not connecting with the audience. I could tell by their facial expressions. I’m not sure why I didn’t connect.

I know I was not as committed to this speech as I have been to others. I had planned for a long time that this topic — steps to success for young women — would be the subject of my ninth speech, but as I worked on it, I became less and less in love with it.

It had no stories. I of all people should know that a speech is always better with stories.

Despite my personal disappointment with my performance, I know that if I didn’t have any setbacks as a speaker, I probably wouldn’t grow or learn anything. My ninth speech was no triumph, but it may have taught me to pick topics about which I have more conviction, to include stories in my speeches, and to become less unnerved by distractions.

Rolling with the punches is the point of Zimmer’s post:

Every time we stand up in front of others, we are taking a risk. Things can, and do, go wrong. We can get hurt in the process. Sometimes a little, sometimes more than a little. It’s part of the deal; it’s part of the process; it’s part of the price of admission.

If you’ve never had a bad public speaking experience, chances are you haven’t done much public speaking. If you want to improve, there is only one real way and that is to speak. And if you speak, you will certainly have setbacks. You can’t avoid them forever.

Public speaking is a risk. Just like life. But if you persevere, the rewards are tremendous.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

One of my periodic updates of my Toastmasters experience.

Ten months into my Toastmasters experience, I am more than halfway toward achieving the first level of Toastmasters accomplishment, the Competent Communicator designation, which requires delivering 10 speeches. I’ve made a few interesting discoveries about myself by this time:

I am much more competitive than I realized. Toastmasters awards prizes at each meeting for Best Speaker, Best Table Topics (impromptu presentations), and Best Evaluator. I’m not sure of the rationale because winning these awards contributes nothing toward the various levels of Toastmaster designations, but I think the awards keep meetings interesting and motivate members to do their best. They are voted by the other members in attendance. I’ve found that it really, really means a lot to me to win these prizes, which surprised me. I’ve “legitimately” won three Best Speaker awards and three Best Evaluator prizes. I’ve won a couple of others by default — having no competition or having someone disqualified for exceeding the time limit. I’ve never won Table Topics; I’m not all that great at impromptu speaking. We were asked this week if we’d be willing to recycle our ribbons, so I figured, sure, but I took a photo of mine first.

Maybe certain groups prefer fact-based presentations to story-based. I’ve made it a point to develop speeches that, if not one big story, contain smaller stories or anecdotes. My fourth speech was one big story. I probably worked harder on that speech than any other and desperately wanted to win Best Speaker. The story was very personal and meant a lot to me; it was the story of my sister who died before I was born. I was stunned and devastated when I didn’t win Best Speaker. The speech that won was an entertaining, energetic how-to, but it wasn’t storied. It’s also possible my speech lost because of its downbeat subject matter. At this week’s meeting, we had a “grab bag,” meaning we didn’t know till the night of the meeting when we drew roles out of a grab bag what we’d be doing. I ended up as one of the speakers and delivered the only speech I’ve given in Toastmasters that has not contained a single story or anecdote; it was pure, didactic information. To my shock, I won Best Speaker. My competitor, whose speech, in my opinion, was much better than mine, took a much more anecdotal approach. Perhaps our group prefers informative speeches they can learn something from.

Maybe I’m overpreparing. Back in March, I wrote about my embarrassingly over-the-top, intensive preparation process for speeches. I had followed that process for every speech before this week. I’ve also added a new twist. I downloaded a teleprompter app for my iPad, Prompster, which enables me to do initial rehearsals of my speech as though referring to a teleprompter. Before I’ve totally learned the material, I do teleprompter run-throughs with both the full-text speech and the outline I use consisting of the beginning of each sentence. I can also time the speech with Prompster, although a delivered speech is always longer than a read speech. Now the kicker: For my grab-bag speech, I barely prepared at all. I did one run-through just to gauge the timing. But I delivered the speech with complete ease. Now, it was based on a lecture I used to give to my students, consisting of material I knew well, but I hadn’t delivered that lecture in at least four years. I’m wondering if I need to prepare quite as much, though. Maybe if I didn’t, I’d smile more and be more relaxed.

We’ll just see if I have the courage to back off my prep regimen for my seventh speech next Tuesday …

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A couple of weeks ago, in writing about commencement speeches, storied an unstoried, I noted that Terrence Gargiulo, who delivered a commencement speech recently, was “considering doing a meta analysis of how [he] worked with the craft of story making to research, design, and deliver this talk.”

Well, he’s done it, and the resulting white paper is a wonderful primer on bringing story into the communication of any kind of influential message, including speeches and presentations. The talk that forms the framework of the white paper is the commencement speech Terrence delivered at Santa Catalina School recently.

Terrence puts graduation speeches into the same category as keynotes, and I agree. Both are meant to set the tone for the future. In the case of the keynote, it’s the future of the conference or event at which the keynote is presented. Both are meant to be lofty, uplifting, and motivational. And both are presented to audiences that are not necessarily receptive to hearing a speech. As I mentioned two weeks ago, graduating students tend to want to just get on with it rather than listen to a speech. And while keynote audiences may be inspired by the keynote’s message, they are often eager to move on to the actual content of the conference or event that the keynote kicks off.

Terrence says he sets “the value of keynoting high, ensuring that only the most serious clients engage me in this way.” He also almost always insists on being given other opportunities to work with some of the members of the audience in a different setting other than the plenary address.

First step is some basic research. Terrence researches through his audience’s stories:

Whether or not my clients realize it or not I probe client engagement requirements and stakeholder perspectives with the natural power of story. I elicit stories. Call me wedded to my storied ways, but I don’t know any other way to quickly infer patterns in complex systems.

Once he had done his story research, Terrence found that three themes emerged for his speech. He then developed a story architecture or structure for those themes. He suggests that white-paper readers watch the video of his commencement address while (or before) following along with his outline of the speech’s structure.

In a “Lessons Learned” section, Terrence talks about how he chooses stories for the speech and what kinds of stories he looks for.

One of my favorite parts of white paper is the list of types of stories he included in his speech. This list is a terrific guideline for anyone planning a speech and can be adapted to virtually any kind of presentation:

• Personal History
• Student Anecdotes: Simply translate this one to “audience anecdotes” to adapt to any speech.
• Personal anecdote that ties into speech themes.
• Movie stories from popular archetypal movies.
• Story from a book.
• Historical Story of Major Personality.
• Life Story of Contemporary Young Personality: Again, adapt “young personality” to your own audience.
• Scenario Stories, which Terrence describes as “rhetorical questions that paint a scene” tied to the speech’s themes, starting with the personal, then moving back to the audience.
• Story as Music: Terrence is a good singer and sang to add some humor to the speech. Not for everyone.
• Story as metaphor and image: Set up an image that encompasses the speech’s themes as they relate to the audience; start with quotes; end with vivid word picture.

Terrence ends with additional tips that provoked me to remark: Easy for you to say! Terrence does a lot of speaking, so when he said he delivered the Santa Catalina speech with no practice and no notes, I knew that advice wouldn’t work for everyone. When he says …

Delivery matters but not as much as you think. If you get caught up in the groundswell of stories you are sharing and your audience, you’ll be surprised at how an effective tone, color, and character emerges.

… I thought, well, yes, but you are a practiced professional at delivery, and most people will need rehearsal.

I was intrigued by this advice about stories. It’s important for your stories to fit together to illustrate your themes:

Think in terms of collages of stories. Avoid single stories. There’s a place for them and I am not recommending you abandon great stories with visible arcs, surprises, and tensions. Lots of stories orbiting your talk pull people into the gravity of your message.

The bottom line is this, crucial advice for communicating any influential message: Work to make stories in all their forms a central part of how you understand your message, craft your message and deliver your message.

Terrence has generously given me permission to offer the white paper to you via download: An Analysis of a Storied Approach to Crafting Influential Messages

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I have a special place in my heart for graduation/commencement speeches. I’ve written a few as a speechwriter and delivered one as student speaker at my undergrad commencement.

Commencement speeches are strange animals because the main intended audience, the graduating class, isn’t really much interested in hearing a speech; the grads just want to get on with it.

Most commencement speeches, sad to say, are not memorable. They are long and full of platitudes.

I admired and still admire the late Shirley Chisholm, who inspired me in 1972 as the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. I was excited when I learned she would be the commencement speaker at the university at which I was teaching (she lived nearby). But what a disappointing, platitudes-laden speech she gave, with no stories of her fascinating career or run for president.

The best commencement speeches …

• Show evidence that the speaker (or his/her speechwriter) went to the effort to research the school its students, its faculty, its traditions, and so forth to personalize the speech.
• Of course, contain stories.
• Offer a nice balance of humor, pathos, and uplifting messages.
• Are short.

This last one happens rarely. US Senator Bill Nelson of Florida delivered one of the best commencement speeches I ever heard because it was just five minutes long. He understood that graduates do not want to hear a long-winded speech on this special day.

Arguably the best-known and revered commencement speech of recent years was Steve Jobs’s talk at Stanford in 2005. Jobs not only told stories (three stories from his life), but launched into his stories immediately. The speech contained little beyond the stories but conveyed powerful messages. Jobs veered away from any traditional speechwriting structure, but, boy, did his unusual formula work. You can both read the transcript and watch the speech.

My dear friend Terrence Gargiulo asked me to comment on the video (embedded below) of a commencement address he gave at Santa Catalina School, to, I believe, middle-schoolers. Terrence wrote, “Story operates on a lot of different levels in the talk. I am considering doing a meta analysis of how worked with the craft of story making to research, design, and deliver this talk.” With the exception of length, Terrence’s speech met all the criteria I listed above. He did an especially phenomenal job of researching the school and students to make the speech personal.

I told Terrence the speech was too long, especially for that age group. He noted, however, that he had held the students’ attention — and that’s really all that matters, right?

Celebrities, known for their ability to entertain and inspire, can get away with longer speeches.

The Huffington Post recently ran its picks for the Best Commencement Speeches of 2011. Because they are in fact long, ranging from 15 minutes for Amy Poehler to 26 minutes for Michelle Obama, I didn’t watch all of them, but picked out a few to see what kind of role storytelling played.

The best storyteller I saw was Michelle Obama, who deployed stories of Spelman College, site of the speech, and its students to convey her messages.

The least storied speech (given technically not at a graduation but a Harvard event called Class Day) was Amy Poehler’s, but it’s still a very funny speech and well worth watching.

Three other speeches I watched were at least somewhat storied. Denzel Washington told stories of failure and how he benefited from those failures. The fruits of failure was also the theme for Conan O’Brien (not actually one of the Huffington Post 10), who, after 16 minutes of one-liners, talked about the story of losing “The Tonight Show.”

My favorite speech was delivered by Tom Hanks. Mind you, I think Tom Hanks is a god. Any acceptance speech he has ever given for an award has been eloquent and poignant. I try never to miss him on talk shows because he’s a superb storyteller. Hanks did have a good story — more like a joke — about 13 minutes into his speech, but his speech was largely unstoried. Still, he speaks so beautifully and uses words so well that he never fails to draw me in and uplift me.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Another bit I read in David Eagleman’s Incognito (see this post) is that people who read material while holding a pencil in their teeth think the material is funny “because the interpretation is influenced by the smile on [their] face.”

So, I wonder if I could train myself to smile more by going around with a pencil in my teeth. (See last week’s post on my smiling problem.)

Given that my biggest issue is smiling during presentations, the pencil idea seems impractical given that I could scarcely talk that way.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I attended my first Toastmasters speech contest last Friday. I was there to cheer on one of our members, who, because of previous Toastmasters experience, is at a higher level in the Toastmasters hierarchy than most of us in our new club.

Toastmasters International runs a spring contest featuring prepared speeches (the “International Speech Contest”) and evaluations (in which contestants are judged on how well they evaluate a “target speech”). In the fall, the organization runs “Table Topics” (impromptu speeches on a previously unknown topic) and humorous speech contests. Competitors start at their local club level and work their way up through a series of geographically defined levels.

Our club representative won first place in his portion of the contest — although he had no competition; the other Toastmaster who was scheduled to compete in his group didn’t show up. However, his first-place finish means he’ll go on to compete April 1 in the next level — the Division Contest.

Only three people, in fact, competed in the speech portion of the contest — our rep for his group and two others for another group.

My happy observation was that all four speeches given during the contest (the three competitors, plus the target speech for evaluators) prominently featured stories.

Our club speaker told a story about how, after being told by his father that his family didn’t have enough money for him to play basketball, he got a paper route and raised the money himself (you can see the speech as he delivered at our club). A woman who spoke about everyday heroes told the story of a woman she’d encountered in the Peace Corps in Nepal who helped her community. A competitor speaking about the notion that animals and humans share morality told the story of how complete strangers in Mexico reached out to help his family when they were in trouble. The “target speech” for evaluators was almost entirely a story (dubbed a “sea story” by the target speaker) about an encounter on Puget Sound between a ferry and a much larger vessel.

I am convinced that stories were integral to the success of these speeches. I’m also thinking about other rhetorical devices, especially because an upcoming Toastmasters speech assignment deals with “how to say it.” Bill Wren, a writer-editor, and social-media enthusiast, wrote earlier this year about a very short (less than two minutes) video presentation that deals with storytelling and offers several such rhetorical devices.

The presentation is part of the TEDify effort by Maria Popova, which attempts “to capture [the] common tangents between TED’s incredibly diverse speakers. To connect the dots in order to make the bigger social and cultural points. And, above all, to help the voice of TED echo through ever more inspired minds.” (TED, of course, being a superb series of talks and performances captured on video and made available to spread ideas).

The Evolution of Storytelling (embedded below) is the third TEDify installment, of which Popova says: “exploring the evolution of storytelling — [is] something I feel TED embodies on multiple levels.”

OK, so getting back to the rhetorical devices … Wren notes that the video contains “pairs and sequences of threes.”

Further:

In fact, the opening sentence begins with a sequence of three that concludes with a pair:

“There is a revolution …

1) in the way that we think,

2) in the way that we share,

3) and in the way that we express

3-1) our stories,

3-2) our evolution.”

These pairs and sequences occur throughout the video. (“Our story, our poetry, our romanticism,” and “How to live, and how to die.”) These patterns create the rhythm of storytelling because telling a story isn’t just about the story; it’s about how it’s told.

You’ll notice something else in the video: repetition. “People have been leaving behind footprints, footprints that are moments of self-expression.” This is another very common device, a mnemonic that emphasizes something and helps the audience to remember.

I’m not sure I agree with Wren that the “patterns create the rhythm of storytelling” because I don’t think the presentation itself is a story, but I do believe they create the rhythm of good speech-making.

The video is a feast for the eyes even though the visual portion consists almost entirely of animated typography. The audio is perhaps the most remarkable part because Popova has put together the rhythmic — almost poetic — soundtrack from snippets of voices from TED Talks.

Stories and rhythmic, patterned speech devices are essential tools for engaging presentations.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.