This presentation focused on telling stories on the fly during training sessions. John McDermott from J-K International Ltd. shared his insights during this Association for Talent Development presentation.
McDermott showed how to create stories like a pro. The word PRO was an acronym that stood for pain, response, and outcome.
Throughout his presentation, he said that he learn these techniques from taking a writing class in college. He had learned stories have five parts:
- Setting the stage
- Pain – this is where you have the problem or conflict
- Response – this is what you do to resolve the pain
- Outcome – this is a result of what you’ve done.
- Debriefing or a review of the situation.
You may have multiple pain points, multiple responses, and multiple outcomes.
Things that you’re trying to do with the story is to create a mental image so that a picture is painted in the audience minds. When doing this, include information only if it matters to your story, otherwise, don’t mention it.
Story Types
For technical training here are some of the best story types:
- An example of how we did something
- What if – what if we did it differently
- Parable – a story designed to teach a lesson
We tell stories all the time. It should not be any different in our classrooms.
We use stories to build rapport or create trust. We can do this by making the stories very personal.
One final tip: when telling a story if you don’t need the PowerPoint presentation to be shown, set it to black.
