Start Your Event with a Story

I’ve attended several events recently that began in exactly the same way.

Someone walks to the front of the room, welcomes everyone and says something like:

“Before we get started, just a few housekeeping items…”

And we’re off.

The bathrooms are down the hall and to the left. Coffee is available in the lobby. Lunch will be served at noon. Please silence your cell phones. Here’s the Wi-Fi password.

Ugh.

You’ve gathered a room full of people. For perhaps the only time that day, you have everyone’s attention. They’re curious. They’re wondering what’s going to happen. They’re deciding – consciously or not – whether this event is going to be worth their time.

And you start out by telling them how to find the bathrooms?

Start with a story.

Tell us about the person who inspired this gathering.

Tell us about something that happened six months ago that made you realize this conversation needed to take place.

Tell us about a customer, student, employee, patient, member, neighbor – or complete stranger – who helped you understand why the work we’re about to do matters.

It doesn’t have to be an epic. You don’t need dragons. You don’t need a hero’s journey. You don’t even need five minutes.

You need a human being who wanted something, something that happened, and a reason we should care.

Stories Get Us in the Room

There is fascinating research about what happens when human beings listen to stories together. Stories don’t simply transmit information. They focus attention. They engage emotion. They can create measurable alignment between a storyteller and listeners – and even forms of physiological synchrony among people sharing an experience.

That’s part of what makes storytelling so useful at the beginning of a gathering.

Before the story, we’re simply a collection of individuals who happen to be sitting in the same room.

A good story gives us something to experience together.

It can engage us.

It can enlighten us.

It can inspire us.

And, perhaps most importantly, it can begin to put us in sync.

That’s a pretty useful thing to accomplish in the first few minutes of an event.

Story First. Logistics Second.

I’m not suggesting that logistics don’t matter.

People do, eventually, need to know where the bathrooms are.

But there is a difference between what is necessary and what is important.

If I’m opening an event, I want the first few minutes to answer questions bigger than Where can I refill my coffee?

Why are we here?

Why does this matter?

Why should I care?

What might become possible because these particular people have gathered in this particular place at this particular moment?

A story can answer those questions in a way that a bulleted PowerPoint slide probably can’t.

Then tell me where the bathrooms are.

I’ll be listening.

And if you’d like some coaching on how to make your story as powerful as possible, reach out to me at [email protected].