Most Leaders Lose their Audience Here in Presentations (and How to Fix It)

After the Introduction, the first chapter I wrote for The Perfect Story was Chapter 16: Where do stories go wrong? After years of helping storytellers navigate mistakes and wading through my own, it was an easy place to focus. Without revealing spoilers, the chapter opens with a cringe-worthy story. It describes a bad decision a group made that is so noticeably amiss to everyone but themselves. Worse, it took them seven months to recognize their mistake. The story highlights an example of something so obviously wrong. Or so I thought.

 
I hired an editor to help me prepare the chapter for the book proposal that would be presented to publishing houses. He flagged the part of the story where I talk about the obvious mistake they made.

 
“Why was it a mistake? Who realized it first? Was there resistance to change? Connect us to why it is so obviously bad,” he noted in the margins.

 
When I first read his comment, I scowled and thought “Really? Isn’t it so obvious I don’t have to spend time explaining why?” Then I realized why he noted it. The characters in the story are unrelatable. The audience has no context for how they reached the obviously wrong decision...they just know they made it.  The reader thinks, “Well I would never do that!” and can’t appreciate how a group of people could wander so far down the path of an uncomfortably wrong decision.

 
I was incorrectly leaving it up to the audience to make assumptions. Instead, I could have helped them relate to the predicament the characters faced and how they were caught up in groupthink. I could make them feel like they were in the decision room and recognize how it was possible to make the mistake. The story stops working when the characters aren’t relatable. We need to understand why they are doing what they do, even if we wouldn’t make the same decision.

 
Characters don’t have to be likable, but they do need to be recognizable. The audience should be able to understand who they are or what the context is for the choices they make—even if they don’t agree with them.

 
What my editor correctly pointed out is that I jumped to the impact of this obviously poor decision. Instead, I needed a sentence or two on why it was bad. The readers didn't have to agree with the decision, but they needed to understand how it could have been reached. Without that, the outcome feels like a stretch...too far removed from plausibility and at risk of losing the audience.

 
When leaders use stories in presentations and they fall flat, it’s often because they didn’t make the situation or the characters relatable to the audience. Even a few sentences can help the audience better connect with the story.
 

Make Your Characters Relatable
You can’t always rely on the audience's assumptions. Take them on the journey. Let them experience the embarrassment of a decision or the confusion of not knowing what to do. Help them understand the circumstances. Include details so it isn't a stretch to understand how actions or choices are taken.

 
When the audience can understand the context behind the behavior and decisions, the more they will relate with the audience and be further engaged with the story. When you are telling a story about your personal experience, there is a greater risk of this. You’re describing things you’ve lived first-hand. It’s easy to forget the audience doesn’t have the benefit of your experiences, and you may gloss over details. Intentionally bring your audience into your thoughts, rationale, and emotions.
 

How Do You Know?
A great way to do this is to consider, “How do you know?” As you build out the events, plot points, and actions, ask yourself “How do you know?” for each major item.
 
The same rule applies when communicating information. The leader frequently loses the audience because they fail to make the message relatable to the audience. If the audience can’t relate to the message, they stop listening.
 
Don’t lose your audience because you leave it up to them to make assumptions about the message, the characters, or their actions. Include context so they know why the characters are doing what they are doing, even if it’s something the audience would never do.