Three ways to tell better stories at work

Tiffany Uman 

WHETHER you’re pitching an idea, motivating your team or communicating your vision, great stories make your messages memorable and impactful.

Ultimately, it's about connecting with others on a deeper level, evoking emotions and inspiring action. Effective communication is an essential skill if you want to reach higher levels of growth in your career. Within that, storytelling is a crucial tool for achieving your fullest potential.

Storytelling pitfalls

Workplace storytelling can be prone to a range of mistakes or missteps. One of the most common is overcomplicating the message. Packing too much into a story – extra details, side plots or unnecessary information – can confuse your audience and obscure your core message. Only include details that directly support your main points. 

Similarly, ignoring your audience by failing to tailor your story to their interests or needs risks losing their attention entirely. A great story for one group may fall flat with another. 

Finally, stories without emotion can miss the mark completely. It's not what you say, but how you make people feel that will garner you more support and buy-in. If your narrative doesn’t engage your audience’s feelings, it won’t leave a lasting impact.

Transformational skill

Storytelling is a career-transforming skill. Every story you share is a chance to engage, inspire and lead others towards action. 

By mastering the craft, you will enhance your communication, deepen connections and amplify your influence and impact.

Narrative arc

A strong narrative arc guides your audience through a story that is both engaging and impactful. It ensures your story has a clear beginning to set the stage, a middle part to present challenges or conflicts, and an end that resolves those conflicts and offers actionable insights or next steps. Here's how you can bring this to life:

• Start with context and curiosity - Lay a solid foundation by sharing the “why” behind your story, and frame it in a way that hooks your audience immediately.
• Make the stakes real - Use data and facts to highlight challenges or obstacles, but bring in emotion to humanise your story. 
• End with a lasting takeaway - Wrap up your story with a resolution and key insight. Make sure your audience walks away with a clear message or action step.

Emotional hook

Emotional engagement is the secret sauce that transforms good stories into unforgettable ones. Leaders who connect emotionally drive action, foster alignment and inspire change. Humanise your content and turn abstract data and objectives into relatable, impactful narratives.

• Align emotions with your message - Identify the core feeling you want to evoke, whether it’s confidence, resilience or excitement. Then share stories that embody these emotions. 
• Show the struggle and resolution - Bring your audience into the challenges and triumphs that make your story relatable. Highlight the human effort behind successes.
• Speak to your audience’s priorities - Tailor your narrative to what matters most to your listeners; whether that’s innovation, collaboration or impact.

Simplicity

Simplicity is the cornerstone of effective storytelling. When time is limited, delivering complex ideas in straightforward terms ensures your message is clear, memorable and actionable. Contrary to what many believe, simplicity doesn’t dilute your story. It actually amplifies its impact by focusing on what truly matters and clearing away distractions.

• Clarify your core message - Start by identifying the one key takeaway you would like your audience to remember. Cut out anything that doesn’t directly support it.
• Use plain, concise language - Avoid jargon and technical terms unless they’re essential. Translate your ideas into relatable language your audience can easily grasp.
• Incorporate visuals - Charts, infographics or simple diagrams can convey information faster than words alone. Use them to emphasise your key points and keep your audience engaged. It's also an easy way of not having text-heavy visual support so that the focus remains on you as the storyteller.

* Uman is a career strategy coach and workplace expert