Article – Engage your audience with stories

As a speaker, when you introduce a story, you have instant engagement. People stop to listen to stories. People are drawn to stories and take the time to tell their own. This works in conversation … and it will do the same in your speeches. Mention a story and people’s attention snaps on and they are immediately engaged.

Studies have shown that when people listen to stories, their heartbeat slows, their eyes glaze and the brain releases chemicals that make them relax. Their brains switch from a factual processing of information to the storytelling mode. This is sometimes called the Listening Trance or the Storytelling Trance. It activates different centres of the brain and the result is to reduce disagreement, and to activate the search for the moral of the story – turning on focused engagement.
This is the response that stories evoke, and why the brain is so predisposed to record, so easily, the stories it hears and the points the storyteller associates with them. And it is what makes stories such a powerful tool in engaging your audience.

Stories are also a great way to change the direction and pace of the speech. They give the audience time to relax, as people do when listening to stories, and to absorb the points that have just been made. At the same time you can be creating another point, or reinforcing points you made earlier.

People participate in our stories. They take ownership of the story. Stories that are well crafted let the audience anticipate where you are going. Giving just enough information about the characters and the setting also allow your audience to fill in the details for themselves, thus creating their own version of the story and continuing that participation …. and engagement.

And finally, if we choose them well, our stories can elicit their own stories from our audience members. Look for examples and points that your audience also will have a story about. Your story will elicit their own stories- a further engagement level.

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