don’t lie but do tell stories This is the last of five thoughts dealing with professional presentations and public speaking. An Australian survey found that 70% of executives believe that good presentation skills are critical to professional advancement. Despite the widely acknowledged importance of presentation skills, this slightly arrogant but award-winning speaker finds that most […]

don’t lie but do tell stories This is the last of five thoughts dealing with professional presentations and public speaking. An Australian survey found that 70% of executives believe that good presentation skills are critical to professional advancement. Despite the widely acknowledged importance of presentation skills, this slightly arrogant but award-winning speaker finds that most executives present badly. There are two very good reasons to build your speeches and presentations around stories: Stories are easy to remember and fun to tell. Stories increase audience retention from 25-30% to 65-70% Many speakers stress over memorising a speech. It is, however, relatively easy to remember a series of stories. Stories are also fun to tell and help illustrate key points. Audiences tend to remember no more than 3 points from a speech, and much of what they do recall is lost shortly after the speech. Stories, on the other hand, stay with…