Storytelling for Speakers

Information alone will never move people. Learn to craft human-centered presentations by surfacing what matters to your audience and delivering your story in a way that resonates and inspires action. Go beyond presenting just the facts and figures; tell compelling stories that are meaningful and memorable. Gain storytelling tools and techniques that will help you develop and deliver presentations that have the power to shift the way people think, feel, and behave.

Course Outcomes
  • Deliver presentations that spark a shift in beliefs, behaviors, and mindsets.
  • Sequence and convey your information in a storytelling way that will create a meaningful journey for your audience.
  • Open hearts and minds by developing a trusted relationship with your audience.
  • Apply storytelling techniques to help people pay attention and remember the information you share.
  • Practice with unique storytelling methods in order to create an engaging experience for your audience.

What You’ll Learn

Week 1: Introduction – Move Your Audience

Understand how information and emotion work together to create story presentations that have the power to spark change and inspire new mindsets and behaviors.
2 VIDEO LESSONS
  • Stories That Spark Change—It’s not what you say, but how you say it
  • Mentor Moment—Try something new
1 ASSIGNMENT
  • Choose Your Story Presentation—Choose the 10-15 minute Story presentation you will be workshopping throughout the course and gather any existing content you have. Identify your audience and your starting assumptions for what you must do or include in this story presentation.

Week 2: Plan the Journey

Create a compelling story arc through the information by combining your goals with audience needs.
4 VIDEO LESSONS
  • What’s the Point?—Identify the goal of your story presentation
  • It’s Not About You—Empathize with your audience
  • Shape Your Story—Build emotional appeal and interest
  • Mentor Moment—Start with emotion
1 ASSIGNMENT
  • Crafting Story Arcs—Identify the beats of your presentation. Choose a story arc to experiment with and align your beats to the arc, then map the accompanying emotional journey of the audience. Iterate and adjust your story arc to have more impact. Use your learnings from creating story arcs to revisit and hone your Big Idea and the shift you want to create in the audience.

Week 3: Become the Guide

Develop a trusted connection with your audience that opens their hearts and minds to your story.
3 VIDEO LESSONS
  • Create a Connection—Bridge the divide between you and the audience
  • Establish Your Credibility—Inspire trust and belief
  • Keep It Human—Present as your authentic self
1 ASSIGNMENT
  • Design for Connection, Credibility, and Authenticity—Select different options for building a connection, establishing credibility, and presenting authenticity and brainstorm how you might bring them to life. Choose one to explore fully by building a prototype. Use learnings from this experimentation to revisit and hone your Big Idea and the shift you want to create in the audience.

Week 4: Make it Memorable

Design your story presentation to align with the way the brain focuses on and remembers information.
4 VIDEO LESSONS
  • Best Intentions; Bad Presentations—Avoid common presentation mistakes
  • Make Patterns—Encourage understanding and retention
  • Break Patterns—Shake things up to capture their attention
  • Mentor Moment—Find the medium that fits your message
2 ASSIGNMENTS
  • Create Pattern Breaks—Brainstorm ways to break patterns using space, the senses, and interactivity. Choose one idea to explore fully by building a prototype. Hone your Big Idea and the shift you want to create in your audience based on what you have learned through your experimentation.
  • Build a First Draft—Gather all of the feedback you have received, insights from experimentation, and favorite methods from the first three lessons. Consider the holistic audience journey and design hooks to keep your audience engaged. Bring it all together into a full first draft of your presentation. Use learnings from this experimentation to revisit and hone your Big Idea and the shift you want to create in the audience.

Week 5: Conclusion – Look Ahead

The end of one story presentation is the beginning of another. Learn how to end story presentations in a way that gives the ideas within them room to grow and evolve.
3 VIDEO LESSONS
  • Bringing It All Together—A Story Presentation Case Study
  • Mentor Moment—Encouragement to explore
  • The End Is The Beginning—Evolve your story and yourself
1 ASSIGNMENT
  • Story Presentation Finale—Design a meaningful finale for your story presentation. Using insights from the feedback you have received, iterate your presentation into a new draft. Reflect back on your experience over these five weeks to understand the storytelling skills and techniques you have gained and areas for you to continue growing.

About Peter de Kuster

Peter de Kuster is the founder of The Heroine’s Journey & Hero’s Journey project,  a storytelling firm which helps creative professionals to create careers and lives based on whatever story is most integral to their lifes and careers (values, traits, skills and experiences). Peter’s approach combines in-depth storytelling and marketing expertise, and for over 20 years clients have found it effective with a wide range of creative business issues.

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Peter is writer of the series The Heroine’s Journey and Hero’s Journey books, he has an MBA in Marketing,  MBA in Financial Economics and graduated at university in Sociology and Communication Sciences.