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Comment by kemiller2002 | Hacker News Reader

kemiller2002

I'm not an amazing presenter, but I think I'm ok. People ask me how do I approach giving a talk, etc. I tell them, "It's a performance. You are telling a story. There is emotion involved, both with you and them." People always look at me in bewilderment and never seem to get the fact that a great presentation is really not about the information. No one ever said, "You know what would take this presentation to the next level? Another product shot of Gmail."

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Back in college, I was in the the Toastmasters club. For recruitment, we'd bring in a ringer from another club. This gentleman was an absolutely amazing "speaker". I put speaker in quotes because he transcended speaking. It was closer to a dramatic performance.

There are many tactical techniques that can get you to being a good speaker. To truly transcend, you have to treat your "speech" as a one-man play, with all the associated aspects: playwriting and acting.

One person who does that tremendously well is Trevor Noah. The man is talented as heck. If you watch his stand-up (not his Daily Show), you'll see all the elements of good storytelling.

He's essentially acting out the story, with his voice impressions and physical movements. Pauses inserted in the right places, suspenseful narrative arcs, conversational bits with the audience, etc.

I've always been a fan of Eddie Izzard's performances as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKQzqwn-jIM

Are you serious? Trevor Noah is widely considered to be the least funny host on television. Google "trevor noah not funny" and the list is endless. He's so, so, so bad. His jokes are pandering to 12 year olds, and he reads the jokes off the teleprompter like it's the first time he's reading the lines. It's so cringy. I have no idea how People manage to watch an entire episode because every joke is just not funny.

https://youtu.be/FwqT-FSJj6E

Are you Trevor Noah? Because I really don't see how anyone can defend the dude, especially compared to John Stewart

> If you watch his stand-up (not his Daily Show)

(I have no knowledge of how funny his stand-up is, but you’re arguing against a point the comment didn’t make.)

Are you serious? X is true. Google "X is true" and the list is endless. X is true.

This is practically the definition of confirmation bias.

Storytelling is very under appreciated in business generally. Storytelling is what allows teams to make decisions without running every single one by their manager.

Storytelling makes things relatable. Without it, it's as boring as reading a new tech gadget's spec sheet. (Though some would very much like doing that...)

I heard this on Lex Fridman's podcast a while ago. This is Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott on “storytelling”:

Lex Fridman: Microsoft has 50-60 thousand engineers. What does it take to lead such a large group of brilliant people?

Kevin Scott: … (snipped)... One central idea in Yuval Harari’s book Sapiens is that “storytelling” is the quintessential thing for coordinating the activities of large groups of people once you get past Dunbar’s number. I’ve really seen that, just managing engineering teams. You can brute-force things with small teams, but past that things start to fail catastrophically if you don’t have some set of shared goals. Even though this is sort of touchy feely, and technical people balk at the idea that you need to have a clear mission, it’s very important.

Lex Fridman: Stories are sort of the fabric that connects all of us, and that works for companies too.

Kevin Scott: It works for everything. If you sort of think about it, our currency is a story. Our constitution is a story. Our laws are a story. We believe very strongly in them, and thank God we do, but they’re just abstract things, they’re just words. If we don’t believe in them, they’re nothing.

Lex Fridman: In some sense, those stories are platforms.

I recently started to listen to Lex Fridman and really love his show. Makes long walks in the snow with the dog go by much faster. I want to go on just to have a meaningful conversation with someone.

I like to think of stories as data in actionable form. Just knowing the facts doesn't tell you what to do. Those facts need to be embedded in some larger framework of meaning that enables you to make correct choices based on it. That's what a narrative is.

But you have to make your story believable. I worked for a company where the CEO loved to tell 'inspiring' stories about the companies future riches glory. The problem was that his stories felt so outlandish ("We'll be bigger than Microsoft" etc.) that everybody basically wrote him off a delusional and ignored everything he said.

That's arguably part of the craft, though. People will believe all sorts of outlandish things if the story is told well enough. The story not being "believable" could be a function of crappy storytelling as much as a function of fact.

To directly connect this to the article: Jobs’ famous “reality distortion field.”

Are there any resources/books etc that helps in improving ones storytelling skills?.

I took an in-person class at Second City Chicago. It was 3 hours per week for 8 weeks, and the class had to put on a paid show at Second City at the end of term -- pretty hectic, and very hands on. It teaches a genre of storytelling called "personal storytelling" (not the same as business storytelling, but the principles are similar) that is popular at events like The Moth.

https://www.secondcity.com/classes/chicago/storytelling-leve...

Storytelling is also seeing a resurgence as a community activity -- if you google "live storytelling" events in your area, you'll probably find some (there are tons in Chicago) though during COVID they are all online so it doesn't matter where you are. These are essentially open-mics -- you can YouTube "The Moth" to see what they are like.

Storytelling is one of those things where you gotta learn by doing -- reading a book can only help so much. That said, there's also a book called Long Story Short (Margot Leitman), which I found helpful. (again only for the genre of personal storytelling)

https://bookshop.org/books/long-story-short-the-only-storyte...

If you're interested in business storytelling, I've heard that "Building a Story Brand" (Donald Miller) is a good primer.

https://bookshop.org/books/building-a-storybrand-clarify-you...

If anybody is looking for a book, I'm half way through The Leader's Guide to Storytelling by Stephen Denning. It focuses on business use, explores different use cases, and provides actionable advice. It is somewhat lacking in scientific foundations despite a long bibliography and gives rather anecdotal evidence. Still a good broad overview targeted at corporate use.

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