Filtering out the gold

How often do you practise telling your story or sharing a case study, and then feel it’s just not landing as it should?

Sometimes we blame ourselves for making the wrong choice, not being engaging enough as a speaker or just waffling on too long. All of those things could be true, but more often than not we’re filtering out the gold and then wondering why it doesn’t sparkle.

Filter out the details

One client came to me with an amazing business and many stories. When she took me through her talk I could immediately see what was missing – the detail. Because there was so much that she could talk about she summarised everything, which meant that the summary became a headline, and much of the connection was lost. We looked at how she could choose ONE story and take us into the moment. On the day her audience felt like they were with her in the story.

If I tell you there’s a lot of jewellery in a shop you get a picture, but when I tell you about a necklace, describe the jewels, how the diamonds shone, the craftsmanship, how it moved and caught the light – then you are there, looking at it with me. You feel the gold.

Filter out the person

A filter I often see is not so much reducing down to a summary or single headline, but laying the story out in a series of bullet points. We reduce our own journey down to a series of milestones – our childhood, the first job, the qualification, the disappointment, the epiphany and the now. And again, to keep to time, we strip out the emotion, we tell it as though we’re reporting an incident to our insurers and we don’t invite our audience in to take part.

The purpose of telling our story isn’t so that the audience can recite our complete timeline, it’s to introduce them to WHO we are and were. Who you were at the steps that mattered. Knowing who allows that human connection to build

Filter out the uncomfortable

What we filter out the most is what we find uncomfortable. I don’t want to encourage trauma dumping from the stage, but too often we filter out what’s uncomfortable or messy, just to be more acceptable. We filter out what we’d love to share with our ideal client simply because we are afraid of standing out from the crowd. We filter out our views and our values, while still hoping that somehow we’ll attract those who want to hear them.

In reality, all that filtering doesn’t just make us more palatable, it removes our power and we become bland. Having the conviction and skill to tell our stories without those filters is what brings the right people to us, creating impact that’s heard and understood.

Often we apply filters so automatically that we don’t notice we do them, which is why I always go deeper than surface level when working with clients. But I’d love to know if you’ve dropped your filters lately and what it’s done for you.

Storytelling masterclass

This October I’m running a storytelling masterclass for women in business. If you talk about your business, whether on the stage, at networking groups or online, then this is for you. I’ll be sharing my top tips on identifying the stories you have, how to chose the best for the occasion and how to tell them so that they land.

Register Free at https://softlyinspired.co.uk/storytelling-masterclass/

Session runs live on zoom on 8th October, 10:30am UK time

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