When I try to remember the last speech,presentation or sermon I attended, very few surface to the top of my memory. I do recall sitting through hundreds of boring hours of PowerPoint presentations given by various people — professors, classmates, and business colleagues.

And while PowerPoint can be a nifty tool, the lecturers whose lessons stuck with me and whom I admired the most, were those that told the best stories, both personal and workrelated, that I could connect with as a student and a person.

For instance, in my sophomore year I took Business Law taught by Professor Bredeson, one of the wittiest, most dynamic lecturers at the school I attended. He shared with us his embarrassing moments in law school, his insatiable geek-like thirst for knowledge, and his passion and idealism for law. We respected him for sharing the person within. We liked him for being a nerdy bookworm. We admired him for his courageous decisions. He used vivid word pictures and funny voices to impersonate characters in his stories. He even performed the entire text of Edgar Allen Poe’s, “The Raven” from memory as a reward because the entire class scored 80 or above on the final.

Jim Comer, a celebrated writer, speech coach and consultant for Fortune 500 Companies said about story telling, “The secret to making your points memorable is to wrap them in stories, anecdotes and word pictures.” Instead of telling our own stories and sharing our ups and downs, too many of us rely on mind-numbing PowerPoints, canned jokes or hand-me-down examples that will never help us bond with our audience.

Audiences connect with us when we reveal ourselves. They want to know how we handle our difficulties and how we work to overcome them. They are more interested in our struggles than our triumphs. And they love it when we kid ourselves and share our own shortcomings. In telling stories, tell the truth. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. And never be afraid to kid yourself.”

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