Are Stories Always Necessary? Exploring Communication Flaws at Tech Events

Greetings, I am writing this as I recently attended a Technology Event, where I heard many different leaders speaking on technical skills, challenges, and business.

Observations on Storytelling at Technology Events

When we attend such events, our only goal is to find out what the leader thinks on the topic. However, we also sell the concept of good communicators as good storytellers. Here are a few downsides that I observed:

• The storytelling made the topic vague. The crux was almost lost in places where techniques needed to be shared.

• Many of us looked unglued, as the stories were good yet predictable.

• Data was weaved to build an effective story. However, the absence of analysis killed the speech.

• Few technical questions that required the speakers to drill down were openly dodged. This, all the more, created a loss of interest.

I understand storytelling has its own merits. Unless content can connect with the audience, the speaker will fail to deliver. That's exactly my point—do we always need stories to connect? Or can data and analysis keep us engaged?

Looking forward to hearing from our communications experts.

I do agree that sometimes stories might fail. However, the speaker should select a story that sums up or relates the concept with the objective. If you carefully pay attention to great speakers in the corporate world, spiritual gurus, and political leaders, there is always a story that adds value to their content.

I have been attending many training programs as a trainer, and I have experienced both good stories and unrelated stories. In simple terms, there is nothing called a bad story; it is only an irrelevant story. Similarly, there is nothing called a bad storyteller; it is only an untrained storyteller.

Kind Regards.

Thank you, Narendra Kumar, you rightly pointed out how storytelling is important to build a connection and subjectivity. This is what we need to keep in mind while communicating. Situations that require analysis and technical data might need to be left as they are. However, deep tales connecting a larger mass of people will require intricate storytelling. Thank you for your insights. I wish you a lovely Sunday!

Thank you for sharing your experience. It is not just experience; you have also highlighted the downside of storytelling. What matters are presentation skills. "Storytelling" is one of the tools of presentation skills, but it is not the only tool for presentations.

"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail," is a famous quote by Abraham Maslow. The speakers at the seminar you attended seemed to be hammering stories onto the audience, missing the bigger picture.

I won't delve into political examples, but even someone as prominent as Shri Rahul Gandhi made a similar mistake in his recent speech at the CII meet in Delhi. His speech, covered extensively in print and electronic media, was incoherent and included misfit stories. The audience consisted of high-profile corporate figures. If a potential heir to the presidency of a major political party can make such a blunder, what about the ordinary folks at the technical seminar you attended?

Thank you once again for sharing your experience. I encourage other participants to share their own experiences as well.

Thanks,

Dinesh V Divekar

Thank you, Dinesh, for adding to this conversation. I echo the message and the example you shared. When a formula works, it is often sold too far and wide. Identifying where the skill wouldn't be required is the key. Panchatantra was good to send a message. A research analysis remains a message of its own.

Thank you, @Cite Contribution, for your observation. I think "storytelling" has become like a much-misused cliché! A perfectly good joke repeated every day does not elicit the same laughter.