I called this a relevance statement in Putting Stories to Work.

Some people call it a hook.

I prefer to think of it now as the lead-in.

A good lead-in tells people why the story matters and gives them a reason to listen.

Often, it works best when it sounds like an insight the teller has earned.

Not a slogan.

Not a grand claim.

Something they learned from what happened.

You might begin:

One thing I’ve learned is…

This experience taught me that…

I’ve come to believe that…

What surprised me was…

These openings feel natural because they sound like someone sharing experience, not delivering a headline.

Read more

But a large story shouldn’t deliver a tiny one.

The classic example is the six-word story fragment often attributed to Ernest Hemingway:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Six words.

Yet they suggest an entire world of loss.

Bob Iger tells this small story with a substantial point.

His former boss, Dan Burke, once handed him a note that began:

Avoid getting into the business of manufacturing trombone oil.

The note explained that you might become the world’s greatest manufacturer of trombone oil, but the world would still consume only a few quarts a year.

Iger kept the note in his drawer for years.

It gave him a vivid reminder not to commit significant time and resources to an opportunity whose potential would always be limited.

A small story.

A big strategic insight.

There’s no rule that says an important point needs a long story.

The problem arises when the proportions run the other way.

Read more

Trying to find a story for a predetermined point is like opening a toolbox looking for the perfect tool before you’ve even seen the job.

You can do it.

But it’s slow, frustrating and mostly guesswork.

In everyday conversation, we often start telling a story without knowing exactly what it means.

Sometimes the point emerges as we tell it. We reach the end and say, “So what that means is…”

Other times, the meaning arrives later. We’re filling the car with petrol, walking the dog or doing something else entirely, and suddenly we see the point of an experience from days before.

That’s fine. It’s often how we make sense of what happens to us.

But business audiences are less patient. Before we tell the story, we need to know why we’re telling it.

Read more

They start searching for a famous example.

They look for something from a book, a podcast or a TED talk.

Or they try to build a story from a structure.

Sometimes that works.

But the best place to start is usually much closer.

Start with your own experience.

A while ago, I reconnected with a group of people a few weeks after they had attended one of my storytelling programs.

They told me they liked the ideas, but some were struggling to use them at work.

Their problem was time, they said.

They would have a presentation coming up, realise they needed a story, and then try to build one from scratch. They would reach for a story pattern, think about the structure and try to craft something worthwhile.

It felt like too much work.

So I asked them a different question.

“Have you recently seen someone in your team do something you would like others to do as well?”

They all said yes.

Then I asked one of them to tell me what happened.

She did.

In less than 90 seconds.

No structure was needed. No drafting. No searching.

She already knew the story because she had lived it.

Your own stories are usually the easiest to tell.

You remember where you were.

You know who was there.

You can see what happened.

You remember what surprised you, what frustrated you and what you said next.

You don’t need to memorise the details because the experience is already in you.

But there’s a catch.

It can be surprisingly difficult to conjure the right experience when you need it.

You might be preparing for an important presentation and ask yourself, “When have I seen this happen?”

Nothing comes to mind.

Then, three days later, while walking the dog, the perfect example suddenly pops to mind.

It can help to use questions that take you back to a specific moment.

My business partner, Mark Schenk, and I wrote an e-book called Character Trumps Credentials, which contains 170 questions designed to help leaders find stories from their own experience.

Questions such as:

• When did you first realise this mattered?

• When have you seen someone handle this well?

• When did things nearly go wrong?

• Who taught you an important lesson about this?

• When did you change your mind?

The questions work because they point you towards moments rather than opinions.

Even with good questions, though, it is much easier to find your stories if you have already noticed and captured them.

When something happens that feels story-worthy, jot it down.

It might be something that surprises you.

Something that frustrates you.

Something that gives you goosebumps.

Something you see another person do that grabbed your attention.

You don’t need to write the whole story. Just capture enough to bring the moment back later.

Over time, those fragments become your story bank.

Then, when you need a story about leadership, customer service, courage, innovation or poor judgement, you have somewhere to look.

Your own stories are also more natural to tell.

You are not trying to reproduce someone else’s words or remember facts from a book. You can tell the story in the language you normally use.

And because you were there, you can adapt it.

You can make it shorter.

You can add a detail if the audience looks confused.

You can answer questions.

There is also a question of trust.

When you tell a story from your own experience, the audience knows where it came from.

You witnessed it.

It happened to you.

Of course, your stories are not the only ones worth telling.

You can retell an experience a colleague shared.

You can use a story from a book, podcast or documentary.

You can build a story using a reliable pattern such as a clarity story or a connection story (more on them later).

But these usually take more effort.

You need to understand them properly, check the details, remember the source and shape them for your audience.

Your own experience is still the best place to begin.

You just need to collect it before you need it.

Try it

For the next week, notice moments that might be useful later.

When something surprises, frustrates or moves you, jot down:

• where you were

• who was there

• what happened

• why it caught your attention

• how it made you feel

• the point it might help you make

Keep the note short.

You are not writing the story.

You are making it easier to remember later.

Related tips

• Notice what you feel

• Capture story fragments

• Keep a story bank

Next week, the full weekly series begins for paid subscribers. Free subscribers will still receive one complete tip each month, along with previews of the weekly tips. Paid subscribers will receive the complete practical tip every Tuesday.

Cheers,
Shawn

Subscribe now

Share

They start thinking about three-act structures, heroes, villains, turning points and dramatic endings.

That’s not how stories usually work in business.

For five years, I worked as a corporate anthropologist at IBM. My job involved helping organisations understand complex problems, especially around culture.

We collected workplace stories using anecdote circles. Sometimes we gathered hundreds at a time. Occasionally, more than a thousand.

And in all that material, we never found a hero’s journey.

We didn’t find elegant three-act structures either.

We found small stories. Anecdotes.

Someone described what happened in a meeting. A manager recalled a decision that surprised the team. An employee explained how a customer reacted. A technician recounted the moment they realised what was causing a fault.

These stories were usually short. Often less than a minute.

But they carried meaning.

They showed how things really worked, what people valued, what they feared and what they were prepared to do.

That’s the kind of story you need at work.

A small story might sound like this.

I once heard Alicia Keys describe what happened when she was learning piano as a child.

Whenever she made a mistake, she would stop and apologise.

Her teacher would tell her, “Don’t apologise. Don’t acknowledge the mistake. Just keep rolling.”

That tiny story makes a useful point for anyone learning to perform, present or tell stories. When you stumble, keep going.

It doesn’t need a complicated plot.

It doesn’t need a dramatic climax.

It just needs a clear moment, something that happens and a point worth making.

Small stories work well because they feel natural. They don’t sound like a speech. They sound like something one person might tell another over coffee.

They are also easier to remember and easier to fit into the flow of work.

You can tell one in a meeting without taking over the conversation. You can add one to a presentation without turning the whole thing into a performance. You can use one to explain a point, challenge an assumption or show what good looks like.

The story only needs enough detail for the audience to see what happened.

Then you stop.

The temptation is to think a business story needs to be important, dramatic or impressive.

It doesn’t.

It needs to be relevant and relatable.

A small story about one customer, one decision or one moment can be enough to change how people understand an issue.

Try it

Think about the next point you need to make at work.

Now look for one small moment that illustrates it.

It might be:

• something you saw

• something that happened to you

• something a colleague told you

• something a customer did

• a mistake, surprise or decision

Aim to tell it in 30 to 90 seconds.

Don’t build an epic.

Find the moment. Tell what happened. Help them see it. Make the point.

Try it this week. And if you find a small story that works, hit reply and tell me what happened.

Related tips in this series

• Start with your stories

• Know your point

• Keep the story the same size as the point

• Get to the action

Cheers,
Shawn

Subscribe now

But people often speak in generalisations.

They say things like:

“Communication was poor.”
“The project was difficult.”
“She’s a great leader.”
“I’ve seen good examples of integrity.”

Those statements might be true, but they don’t tell you much.

To get the story, ask:

“What happened?”

I was in Zambia helping Zambia Sugar embed its strategy.

The company employs about 7,000 people. Many speak different languages, and some have limited reading and writing skills. So instead of relying on a conventional strategy document, we worked with our partners at Thinkspiration to represent the strategy as a landscape narrative.

The result was a large illustrated poster we called the strategy map. It was designed to encourage conversation and storytelling.

During one of its first uses, Lisa from Thinkspiration pointed to the map and asked a participant, “Tell me about one of your values.”

He said, “I’ve seen some good examples of integrity since I joined.”

Lisa didn’t ask him to explain what he meant.

She simply said, “What happened?”

He told us that Zambia Sugar has pedestrian-sized boom gates at its road crossings. They’re there to make people stop, regain their focus and check for traffic before crossing.

But when people think no one’s watching, some walk around them.

Early one morning, this participant saw one of his people approaching a boom gate on a bicycle.

It was quiet.

No one else was around.

The man stopped, got off his bike, lifted it and walked it carefully through the boom gate.

“He behaved that way when no one was looking,” the participant said.

A vague statement about integrity had become a memorable example of what the value looked like in practice.

All it took was one question:

What happened?

That question works because it takes people back to a specific moment.

They stop giving you the summary and start recounting events.

You begin to see where they were, who was involved, what people did and what changed.

Compare these two questions:

“Why was the project difficult?”

That will probably give you an explanation.

“What happened that made the project difficult?”

That’s more likely to give you a story.

Questions beginning with “why” often produce opinions, theories, justifications or excuses.

Questions about what happened, when it happened and where it happened take people back to experience.

Other useful questions include:

• When did you first notice it?

• Where were you?

• What happened next?

• Can you give me an example?

• When have you seen that done well?

The aim isn’t to interrogate people.

It’s to help them find the moment behind the statement.

And once they find the moment, the story often follows.

Try it

The next time someone gives you a general statement, don’t ask them to explain it.

Ask:

“What happened?”

Then stay quiet. And show genuine interest.

Listen for:

• when and where it happened

• who was involved

• what people did

• what changed

• why the moment mattered

You’ll often discover the story was there all along.

Related tips in this series

• Go where stories are told

• Tell a story to get a story

• Let silence do the work

• Be interested

• Capture story fragments

Cheers,
Shawn

Subscribe now

In a group of 20 business people, I might get two hands.

Even those hands usually come up halfway, as if their owners might withdraw the claim if challenged.

Most business people don’t think they’re storytellers.

They imagine a storyteller is someone who can hold court at a dinner party, entertain a room or perform a polished tale on stage. That’s not what I mean by business storytelling.

We all tell small stories every day.

We tell a colleague what happened in a meeting. We explain why a customer became frustrated. We describe something unusual we saw on the way to work. We recount what the boss said when the project went off track.

We just don’t call these things stories.

The anthropologist Robin Dunbar once sent his students out to listen to ordinary conversations in places such as cafes, bars, streets and workplaces. They found that much of what people talked about was who did what with whom.

In other words, people were constantly recounting small events involving other people.

They were telling stories.

That’s how we naturally make sense of our social world. We swap experiences. We compare what happened. We work out who can be trusted, what behaviour is acceptable and what might happen next.

Business people do this too.

They do it over coffee, in the corridor, after meetings and while travelling between offices. They tell stories about customers, projects, bosses, colleagues, suppliers and decisions.

But when they stand up to give a presentation, something changes.

The stories disappear.

They become formal. They reach for bullet points, frameworks and abstract language. They start sounding like a document instead of a person.

The skill hasn’t vanished. They have simply stopped using it.

So the first step is not to become a storyteller.

It is to recognise that you already are one.

Once you notice this, you can begin to use stories more deliberately. You can catch yourself recounting something that happened. You can notice when an example makes your point more clearly than an explanation. You can see when your audience leans in because they can picture what you’re describing.

You don’t need to become more theatrical.

You don’t need to learn the hero’s journey.

You don’t need to turn every presentation into a performance.

You just need to notice the small stories you already tell and bring more of them into your work.

Try it

Today, catch yourself telling one story.

Listen for a phrase such as:

“Yesterday…”

“Last week…”

“A few years ago…”

“The other day…”

Don’t try to improve the story. Don’t analyse it. Just notice that you told it.

And if you don’t notice one on the first day, keep listening for those small moments when you recount something that happened.

When you catch yourself telling one, say to yourself:

I am a storyteller.

Recognising that you already tell stories is the first step towards using them more deliberately.

Related tips in this series

• Spot stories

• Find and tell small stories

• Notice yourself talk

• Build your story habit

Cheers,
Shawn

Subscribe now

Twenty-eight people subscribed, including you.

And then I published nothing.

The truth is, I hadn’t worked out exactly what I wanted this publication to be. Now I have.

For more than 25 years, I’ve been helping leaders find, shape and tell better business stories. Over that time, I’ve collected the practical techniques that make the biggest difference.

I’m turning those ideas into a new book. The working title is 52 Business Storytelling Tips.

And I’m going to share them here, one tip at a time.

The promise is simple:

Every week, learn one practical way to find, shape and tell better business stories.

The tips will be useful for presentations, meetings, pitches, strategy conversations and everyday leadership. Each one will include a real story, a practical idea and something small you can try at work.

For the first four weeks, I’ll share a complete tip with everyone.

After that, free subscribers will receive one complete tip each month, along with shorter weekly ideas. Paid subscribers will receive one complete practical tip every week.

The first tip arrives tomorrow: You’re already a storyteller.

Thanks for subscribing before there was anything here to read.

It’s time I fixed that.

And I’d love to hear what you’d like to get better at as a business storyteller. Just reply to this email.

Cheers,
Shawn