The Story That Makes You Cringe

I am not a fan of the advice “Tell a story!”

Weird, right?

You’d think I’d be all over that suggestion.

I don’t like it because it implies that everyone is a great storyteller and just by telling a story, you will win your audience over.

There is a big gap between telling a story and telling a great story that engages your audience.

The difference involves a storytelling framework, attributes and practice.

I believe you can become a great storyteller, but most don’t start there.

Isabella was facilitating a workshop on bias.

The workshop involved a lot of personal reflection and tricky discussions.

She knew she needed the participant’s trust before they would feel comfortable to participate openly in the activities.

She decided to follow the “Tell a story!” advice.

Wanting to be vulnerable, Isabella started with a story where she realized her own bias.

She described a road trip where she kept getting caught behind this car with a terrible driver.

Every time Isabella tried to get around the car, it would get her in way.

She started muttering under her breath how incompetent the driver was.

She even leaned into stereotypes, guessing the driver’s gender and ethnicity.

Judgement oozed out her pores as her frustration simmered.

She finally was able to pass the driver and glanced over.

She scoffed “Ha, exactly like I thought!” confirming her stereotypes were right and drove off.

As Isabella told the story, she expected to see people nodding and thinking about times they were stuck behind a bad driver.

Her intent was for the group to recognize that each person carries bias, even when they don’t realize it.

Instead, no one would meet her eyes.

She could feel them silently judging her.  

She didn’t understand what went wrong – she told a story!

She was vulnerable! Why did it not work?

Isabella recounted that experience when coming to me to work on becoming a great storyteller and building a toolkit of stories.

I helped her deconstruct what happened and the three reasons that story didn’t work.

The first problem was the story listed events, but missed answering one of the three questions a great story should answer: What is the context and why should I care? The way she told the story, the audience had no reason to care. Small tweaks could have pulled in the audience, so they were with her in the driver’s seat. Having them feel the frustration as she kept trying to get around the driver, realizing she was going to arrive late at her destination. Help them feel the shame wash over themselves when they realized the biased stereotypes they made.

The second problem was her description of her thoughts and behaviors made you cringe. Isabella became unlikable in the story. Instead of identifying with her, you felt judgement and embarrassment for her. She didn’t need to be the hero of the story (I don’t believe stories need heroes – that is a whole other post). She needed to bring people into her thoughts and behaviors and identify with them.

To get people to be open to explore their bias, you have to demonstrate that likable people have bias too. This makes it ok for the listener to admit their own and be open to the discussion. Instead, they judged her and the starting line for the conversation was backed up more than if she hadn’t told the story.  

The third problem was not everything in the story earned its place. You should be moving the plot forward, engaging the listeners senses or emotions or landing a point. The pieces Isabella’s story failed to move it forward and it fell flat.

We restructured Isabella’s story, reworking the spots where people cringed.

I helped her find the right balance of helping the audience identify with her thoughts and recognize their own bias.

Each piece of the story was worked to earn a place and contribute to the listener's experience and understanding.

With a little work and practice, Isabella’s story went from one that made people cringe to one that made people gulp with their own realizations.

Through the new story, Isabella not only had the audience’s trust and attention at  the start, conversations and results went much deeper in each workshop.

Tell a story.  Only after you have done the work to make it a great one.

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