350-SYB-Storytelling.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Carol Cox:
What’s the difference between authentic and contrived storytelling? This is what we talk about on this episode of the Speaking Your Brand podcast. More and more women are making an impact by starting businesses, running for office and speaking up for what matters. With my background as a political analyst, entrepreneur and speaker, I interview and coach purpose driven women to shape their brands, grow their companies and become recognized as influencers in their field. This is speaking your brand, your place to learn how to persuasively communicate your message to your audience. Hi there and welcome to the Speaking Your Brand podcast. I’m your host, Carol Cox, joined today by our lead speaking coach, Diane Diaz. Hi, Diane.
Diane Diaz:
Hi, Carol happy to be here.
Carol Cox:
Great. Well, I’m so happy to have you here to talk today about storytelling because I know you’ve been doing some speaking engagements this year for some local groups all around storytelling. So we’ll get into that in just a little bit. But before that, I want to remind listeners that last week I talked about connecting your personal brand and your thought leadership because they are very much intertwined. I think of your thought leadership as why you do the work you do, and then your personal brand is the who and of course you’re the who, who, the face and the voice of the thought leadership that you’re putting out into the world. And your stories and your experiences and your journey are integral to both your personal brand and your thought leadership and your stories really connect you with your audience. So let me ask you this. How have you ever heard a speaker at a conference that you were at or a local group and they share a story and you have one of these two reactions. Maybe your reaction is, wow, I feel really connected to what this person is saying. And I really have a new perspective on my own situation. I haven’t had exactly their experience, but I can see what I can draw from it. Or have you had this experience when you’ve heard a speaker share a story where you’re thinking to yourself like, Why is this person telling me this story or telling the audience this story? I don’t get at all how this relates to the rest of their content or why I should care.
Carol Cox:
Or maybe even the story feels a little icky for lack of a better word. And you definitely don’t want to end up being the speaker who has the second reaction. For the people in the audience. You really want your stories to have purpose and meaning and to connect with the bigger message that you’re sharing. The topic for this episode came up because in one of our Thought Leader Academy calls earlier this year, we were talking about storytelling and about vulnerability. And a question that we often get asked is, is sharing my personal story self-indulgent or self-centered? So we get that a lot. Like, is it too much about me? And we there’s ways to to connect it to your message and we’ll talk about that but we got to also a question is is sharing a personal story manipulative like is it contrived vulnerability? And the answer is yes. It could very well could be. And that’s why we want to make sure that your storytelling is authentic and not contrived. So that’s where we’re going to talk about today. So we’ll be sharing our own experiences, sharing vulnerable stories, as well as how we’ve seen our clients successfully do that.
Carol Cox:
Now, if you would like to learn more about how to integrate better storytelling into your presentations and content marketing, we have a workshop coming up on November 16th. This is live on Zoom. It’s hands on for three hours. So you come to the workshop, we give you some training, but we also give you time to work on your stories, your key stories for your story bank. And then we give you personalized feedback as you’re working on them. We did this workshop earlier this year, and the women who participated absolutely loved it. Along with that, we’re doing a workshop in October all around personal branding and brand voice as well as one in December around using AI tools for speaking. So you can check out all three of those workshops and decide which ones you want to register for. Or you can register for all three and get the bundle price as speaking your brand.com/workshops. Again, that’s speaking your brand.com/workshops. And really the storytelling one is going to be is very much aligned with what we’re talking about today as well as the personal Brand workshop. All right. So Diane, let’s talk about this idea of authentic versus contrived. What I like to say is icky storytelling. Now, how would you how do you think about contrived storytelling or like icky storytelling and any experiences you’ve heard from speakers that where you’ve been in the audience?
Diane Diaz:
That’s a good question. I think a story that would feel contrived or icky to me would be when the speaker is either telling a story that is unrelated to the content. Sometimes stories can be unrelated to the content, but then it leads you down the path to to the content. So there there’s a connection, but maybe it’s not revealed yet, but if it’s just sort of a thrown in their story, they’re kind of off track with their talk and then it feels like, Wait, why? Like you said, why? Why am I hearing this story? How does that relate to what you’re talking about? And then it’s never revealed how it relates. So you’re kind of left thinking, huh, Like, what was I supposed to take away from that story? Or if the story is maybe a. A little too much and maybe goes over the line in some way to make the audience feel kind of uncomfortable or weird about having having known that information or learned that information or whatever it is. Those are two instances where I feel like it might kind of come across as icky and weird.
Carol Cox:
Yeah, like the TMI. Okay. That was a little too much information. And. Right, like there’s you want to share details of your story because details is what makes it come alive, what makes it real to the audience. But of course, there are certain details that just may feel inappropriate for that setting or if it’s an experience you’ve had that you haven’t fully processed yourself like it’s an open wound for you. Still, it’s okay to still feel emotional about a story that you’re sharing That’s actually a good thing, that you’re still feeling it, but you don’t want to feel it so much that either you can’t get through the story or you’re using your audience as therapy. Right? Right. To help you process what you’ve gone through. Probably not a good plan. Yeah, right, exactly. And because I like to think about your storytelling needs to be in service of the audience. It’s not in service to you. And I think, like, if there’s nothing else you take away from this episode, it’s that your stories are in service of your audience, not of you. Here are some other things that I have seen from speakers over the years. Diana Maybe you have too, is that sometimes it’s it’s an intensely emotional story and a lot of and they’ll use over-the-top language. And I have like my little you know, like spidey senses and red flags go off around over-the-top language, especially because it’s been used so much in political language over over the recent years. But the No. One has ever experienced what I went through or I wouldn’t want anyone to ever have to do anything that I like, you know, that type of over-the-top language. And that, to me feels manipulative. It doesn’t feel like it’s in service to the audience.
Diane Diaz:
Yes. It feels disingenuous to it feels you can detect it very easily and very quickly. And I think it also then sets the stage for you not wanting to hear more stories from that speaker or not, you know, feeling like I don’t really want to connect with them because now I’m not trusting what’s going on here.
Carol Cox:
Oh, yes, Yeah, exactly. The lack of lack of trust that that would generate. And then kind of related to this is speakers who use their story to sell something. And I see this as the rags, rags to riches narratives. They’re very formulaic. This was all the rage online about ten years ago. Everyone’s website, you would see these rags to riches narratives that they would put out there. And, you know, they were using it to sell something. Now, of course, we can go out speaking and we can use speaking for brand building and lead generation to to attract clients. But you’re not setting up a story specifically for that purpose because I feel like then again, it’s in service to you. It’s not in service to the audience.
Diane Diaz:
Yes, I totally agree with that. And those rags to riches is used so much now we see it all over Instagram. We see it a little bit on LinkedIn now, too. And it feels that salesy.
Carol Cox:
Yeah. And that’s the thing that we definitely we obviously want to feel comfortable asking for the sale in the appropriate environment and making sure that we’re planting sales seeds in our presentations, but again, not doing it in a manipulative way. The other things that I see are speakers who use their story to shame their audience or to shame someone that they’re talking about in the story. And I always like to say that it’s your story. You’re welcome to share your own story, but not another person’s story who may be involved in it. Unless, of course, you’re doing it in a very sensitive and appropriate way. And as far as shaming the audience, it’s you know, again, unfortunately, I see this a lot where the speakers and on Instagram, but also just speaking and whether it’s conferences or podcasts or what have you, it’s the story is almost like, well, I was able to do this and if you haven’t or if you can’t, then there’s there’s something wrong with you. And we see this a lot in marketing messaging as well. And this again, that makes me feel very icky.
Diane Diaz:
Yes, it’s almost like that. Well, you’re just not trying hard enough or you’re just not working hard enough or you’re just not, you know, doing all the right things. You can do this. Why aren’t you doing this?
Carol Cox:
Exactly. Yeah. So have your spidey senses out for any language like that that you hear from speakers. But also and I know if you’re listening to this podcast and you like what we do with speaking your brand, I know that’s not what you want to do, but sometimes we see everyone else doing it or we think everyone else is doing it. So we kind of try to mimic those types of narratives and we’re saying that there’s a better way to do that. And so again, remember, it’s in service to your audience, not to you. And the other thing that I also this comes up a lot in our thought Leader Academy calls with our clients is that they’re a little bit afraid to put too much vulnerability in their storytelling because they’re afraid it’s going to not necessarily make them look bad. But not put them in the best light. So they they want to smooth down the edges to make themselves look better. And I totally get that. But I feel like back to your point, Diane, about being genuine, it takes away the authenticity from that when you’re smoothing down the edges because the audience either consciously or subconsciously, can kind of tell. I think there’s a little bit more to the story than what what this person is sharing.
Diane Diaz:
Yeah. And I think, you know, it’s natural for us to want to whatever we do for a living to seem like, oh, we’ve always been so good at this. But that’s not true. Right. We’ve all we’ve all gone through some journey and some learning process to get where we’re at. So showing the audience and telling the story of, you know, the before and how you got there or what happened to you and what brought you to this place is genuine. And I think people like you said, they can detect when it’s not quite genuine and it’s not you’re maybe leaving some things out and it’s okay to be real. Like we’re all we’re all human and we’re all real. And so these sort of imperfect stories, that is what makes us human. And I think that’s actually helps the audience connect to you more.
Carol Cox:
And know we have some recent clients examples that we’re going to share here in just a moment. But I’m thinking about some of my own stories and ones that I’ve told where I don’t necessarily think they make me look great. No, but again, in service of the audience, I have shared them back, way back on this podcast episode 92, I talked about a Ted Talk I delivered in October 2016 around why we’re uncomfortable with women in power. This, of course, was when Hillary Clinton was running for president and all the craziness that was going on in the 2016 campaign cycle. And I talked about delivering this talk and completely bombing because I got so in my head about being the speaking coach and wanting to make a great, great impression. So in that podcast episode, I shared the talk itself, the ten minute talk, the the content. But then I talked about this experience having not done the great job that I had that I had wanted to do. But again, it makes me makes listeners know like I am definitely not perfect. We all have had our share of speaking experiences that haven’t gone the way that we had wanted to. And I always say that if you put enough reps in speaking wise, you’re going to have some times where things do not go great, whether it’s technology or your nerves get the best of you or you forget your content halfway through. And again, that’s but it shows to people that you’re not perfect, that you’re relatable, and that that way your audience or your clients understand that you get them, that they’re not going to be perfect either.
Diane Diaz:
Totally agree. I know early in my speaking career, when I was speaking a lot about personal branding, I shared a story of when I was, you know, freshly out of college and one of my first professional jobs. And I actually got laid off. And the reason was because they they said I didn’t have a good phone voice or didn’t I didn’t have a good phone manner. And I was really, like appalled to hear that about myself. And of course, that doesn’t make me look good, right? That makes me look like, well, why doesn’t she have a good phone manner? And then people might be thinking in the audience, Oh my gosh, she talks about personal branding when she doesn’t have a good phone manner. But then I go on to tell the story of how that was a learning experience for me about how is my personal brand coming across to other people. So that is what we’re trying to do, is help through telling these stories, help the audience understand the concept that you’re sharing, and then something around that that you’re going to help them with.
Carol Cox:
Exactly the overall lesson in that and that you can understand that maybe they’ve had job experiences too, that where they got some feedback that wasn’t necessarily positive. And then how do they think about that for their own personal brand? And like my speaking example, it goes to show to clients that I can understand the nerves that they may experience or I can understand where they have this incredible opportunity and they really want to do a great job. And so how to set them up to do that from the own lessons that I’ve experienced, from having had it not go the way that I wanted it to go. All right. So then so that so we talked about kind of this contrived or icky form of storytelling. So now let’s go through what it looks like to be authentic in your storytelling, to have that genuineness come through and really, like Diane said earlier, to build trust with your audience. So you obviously want the story you’re sharing to connect to the overall message that you’re sharing, because it does help because then the audience is like, okay, now I understand why this person is sharing the story and you want to be have processed whatever that experience is. So you’re on the other side of it and really think a lot of it comes down to maturity is having the emotional maturity to understand that I had this experience.
Carol Cox:
How can I how can sharing this experience help the people in my audience? What lessons can I draw from it that have been helpful to me and that that will be helpful to you? As we talked about earlier, it’s actually good to still have an emotional connection to the story. I remember a keynote that I gave a couple of years ago and. Sharing about my experience in local politics and how it you know, I ended up getting bullied and everything that happened. And as I was sharing it, even though that experience had happened, I think almost 15 years earlier. So I had definitely processed it. But I still feel it like it still hurts, you know, to think back to that time. And it’s okay to still feel it as you’re delivering the story. Now, I’m not breaking down in sobs, right? Or like or shaming people or anything like that, but I am still feeling it as I’m relating it to the audience. And then the other thing is also to think about is, as we talked about, not necessarily smoothing down the edges to make yourself look good, but really digging in to what are those deepest truths that you want to share.
Carol Cox:
And that one about my experience in local politics and then ended up not running for re-election for Chairperson because I just wanted to just kind of just literally I just wanted to run away from those people. I didn’t want to have to deal with them. I didn’t want to have to stand up to them. And I say in the keynote that I deliver around this that I liked to have thought of myself as this confident, empowered woman. But I wasn’t in that moment. I just decided to just put my head down, just just leave local politics and just go do something else instead. And I, you know, thinking back, part of me wishes I had stood up to them and stood my ground and done what I wanted to do for the bigger mission that I had. But I also recognize that that was the place that I was in at the time. And so, you know, it’s okay, but that is my deepest truth. It doesn’t make me necessarily look good to myself or to other people, but it is the truth. And I feel like as long as you’re digging into those deepest truths in your storytelling, your audience will appreciate that.
Diane Diaz:
And I think it’s also not only is it your truth, but it’s also what brought you here to be able to share a story and a lesson through that. So had everything gone a different way, maybe there no lesson there for everybody else. So I think not that it’s good that that happened, but there is there is good that can come from that. Right. So I think that’s if we can focus on that, then that does help the audience that is in service of the audience.
Carol Cox:
Oh, that also brings up something else, Diane. Is that sharing your story in that way where it is your deepest truth yet you’ve already processed it is actually really liberating to you as the person sharing the story. It it’s like there’s a different form of healing that goes on. It’s different than the healing you would have done to close that open wound that would have happened at that experience. But it’s another level of healing because I feel like that putting it out into the world, it’s almost like you’re letting like getting it out of yourself and like letting it flow out there. I don’t know how to describe that, but that’s how it feels.
Diane Diaz:
No, it’s true. Because I. I often feel like when I share personal stories like that in talks or anywhere to other people, you the the benefit that they’re going to get from it helps me. So it gives it helps me know that it’s like, okay, what I went through is okay because now they’re learning from it. So then there is good that comes of it. And I think that’s what is like that cathartic feeling.
Carol Cox:
Oh, that’s a great word. Cathartic. Yes. Yes, absolutely. So it reminds me of two of our recent Thought Leader Academy clients who were on this podcast earlier this year during the summer. One of them is Karen Keene. She was on an episode 337, which was called Sharing Your Story as a Catalyst for Transformation. And I actually saw Karen deliver her keynote that we worked on together in the VIP day as part of the Thought Leader Academy. She delivered it at a conference in September here in Orlando, and she did an incredible job. And that was really the first time she delivered her story in that way to an audience as large as that was. And her story is only three years old. It happened to her back in March of 2020. It was very traumatic, something that you would not want anyone to go through. And she definitely still feels it naturally. She still feels it. But she’s also done a lot of work, a lot of healing and processing work. And she genuinely wants to help others, which is why she is willing to share that story. So if you haven’t yet listened to episode 337, highly recommend listening to it because Karen talks about her story, but also talks about how she’s integrating it into the larger message that she wants to to bring to others. And then the other episode that comes to mind, Diane, is the interview you did with Judy Carlson episode 341, where you talked with Judy about how she had a story that back to this idea of smoothing down the edges, that she felt like if she shared the story of what had happened to her and she’s a financial planner, that her potential clients would look at her negatively, as in, well, how can you help me? Because you yourself didn’t have a perfect, you know, financial life for for your entire career. And so what did you learn from from Judy?
Diane Diaz:
I love Judy’s story because it’s just first of all, it’s a very perfect example of this idea of telling your story. It’s cathartic for you, but it’s also in service of the. Audience. And so for Judy, it was just such a good illustration of how you can connect your personal story to the lesson that you want the audience to walk away with. And so and interestingly, Judy’s story also lent to the framework that she created, which was weave. So weave your financial tapestry. And then because Judy’s story obviously is what you could call messy in the beginning. Right? And then she’s working with people to help them plan their finances. And so that thought is, well, like and Judy’s concern was that how will someone trust me to plan their finances if I had financial struggles? So my whole conversation with her was around this idea of actually it’s going to build trust because they will feel like you’ve been there, you understand them. And so then this framework that she created and that she actually hands out these little mini tapestries to her audience because a tapestry, if you look at the top of it, it’s beautiful. But if you look underneath, it’s kind of a mess of fibers and crisscrossing of stitches and and that’s all of us, right. And so there was a bigger message there that through sharing her story, I don’t think that that lesson or message would come through as clearly had she not included her story. So that’s the lesson for me, is that your message will have more power if you connect it to a story that really resonates with the audience. And I think it makes the talk more meaningful for Judy as well.
Carol Cox:
Absolutely. I really feel like she feels liberated from her story. Yes. By us giving her the permission and the validation to to talk about it and to put it into her signature talk.
Diane Diaz:
Yes. And then you don’t feel like you have to hide anything, right, Because it’s just out there now. So if there’s ever a question like, oh, well, you struggle with this. Yes, I did. And here’s here’s what I learned from that. And here’s what you can learn from it, right? Absolutely. Yeah. It’s freeing.
Carol Cox:
It is. It is very freeing. And Diane, as I mentioned at the top, I know you’ve been doing some recent speaking engagements with some local groups this year all around storytelling, specifically around using storytelling in business and for brand building. What have you seen from the people in the audience who’ve attended those those engagements?
Diane Diaz:
Well, they love the concept and the topic of storytelling, I think. I think it’s because we’ve we’ve all been exposed to stories our whole lives in some way, shape or form. Right? And we still, even as adults, we go to the movies like we see stories and hear stories all the time. And so they resonate with us. So when I’m doing these talks on storytelling and then actually having the audience go through activities where they’re actually writing stories, they love it. And then when I ask a couple of people to share, the audience is just light up because they think they start to see the benefit of hearing other people’s stories and how meaningful that can be for their audience when they’re doing messaging for their company or networking or whatever they’re doing. They’re starting to see the power of it, but it also it touches them in a in a different place than just straight marketing messaging, right? And I think that’s what is connecting with them and resonating with them. They absolutely love this idea of storytelling and really want to figure out how they can incorporate it more into their messaging.
Carol Cox:
That’s such a great point about them. Then hearing someone else share a story and then they kind of realize, Oh, that’s why it’s important because they get it on a different level than thinking about having to share their own story.
Diane Diaz:
Yeah, I think when when they’re initially when I’m having them do the storytelling prompts and they’re trying to think of a story, sometimes they struggle and then once one person shares, they’re like, Oh, I get it. It’s a great example. And then it helps sort of unlock the ideas of how you can use storytelling in different ways in your business.
Carol Cox:
Absolutely. Well, that’s a great segway into our storytelling workshop. Again, that’s happening live Thursday, November 16th. So live on Zoom. So we’re together. We’re going to give you some instruction about how to tell great stories, and then we’re going to give you story prompts along with a workbook with 11 different key stories that you can work on for your presentations and your content marketing in general. So there’s different types of stories. So you may have stories for all 11, or maybe you have stories for 3 or 4 of them, So you decide which ones are the best and we give you lots of guidance. You get practice sharing your stories and we give you feedback on that because as you’ve heard today in this episode and from other episodes of the Speaking Your Brand podcast, storytelling is really one of the most powerful tools that you have to really build that trust and connection between you and your audience. So we hope you can join us. Join us at the storytelling workshop. Again, get all the details and you can sign up at speaking your brand.com/workshops. So that’s workshops plural speaking, your brand.com/workshops. And on that page you can see the three workshops we’re doing this fall and then you can register for the storytelling workshop there. Diane, thank you so much for coming on this episode of Speaking Your Brand podcast.
Diane Diaz:
Oh my pleasure. I love talking about storytelling.
Carol Cox:
Until next time, Thanks for listening.
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