Summary: In today’s Entrepreneur MBA podcast guest, Robert Kennedy from Kennetik Kommunications speaks with Stephen Halasnik from Financing Solutions about how storytelling helps business owners communicate. They talk about the format of a story and why storytelling has been important & will continue to be important. They also talk about communication and how important that is to storytelling because there is no storytelling without communication. Business owner communication is very important for storytelling so how good are business owners at telling stories?
Summary
Are good business owners great storytellers?
The majority of good business owners are not good storytellers. A few are automatically good storytellers or it is because of the way they were brought up. The way to c
The Format of a Story and Why it is important?
Business owner communication has been essential to the way we have been communicating for years. This was way before writing became an essential way of communicating. Information was shared orally through experiences that other people went through before the time when technology became so prominent in society.
There are four main areas when talking about business owner communication with organizations. The first area is the context which is the setting of the current experience or situation. The second piece of business owner communication is character, you have to have things, people, or beings that your audience can relate to. The third area is conflict, which is the opportunity that can be a problem that is existing that has to be resolved. The fourth area is the conclusion, this is the solution to the problem that is occurring.
Storytelling is just a reaction to what you experienced and what you are trying to communicate through words. No one actually remembers the format of a good story we all just create a good story through words. If you had great storytellers in your life, you listened to how they told that specific story and you apply what you learn to tell your own story.
Proper Techniques with Business Owner Communication
There is a technique that Robert uses as an interviewer that can be transferred to a facilitator. If the interviewee is going on longer than you have time, you can use a disruption mechanism. This is simply interrupting without seeming rude but also showing more interest by having them go deep into something they said that caught your eye and you found value in what they said. You just want to know a little bit more about something that you found interesting.
How Important is Business Owner Communication?
It is very important because it is a big part of business owner communication. Robert has a workshop on making messages move because of how important this aspect is. This is for leaders that want to ensure that when people leave a meeting they get something out of that meeting.
You have to find a way to make a big idea or catalyst that’ll make people remember one takeaway from the meeting that would require action. There are many workshops involving communication that you could take to learn how to communicate when the circumstances are different.
Meetings during the Pandemic
Because of the pandemic, many forms of business owner communication started happening online via zoom and this really changed the way we communicate on a daily basis. This causes people to not take zoom meetings as seriously just because it is virtual and not in person. People think they shouldn’t have to put extra work into zoom because they feel like they already know what they are doing. People have a misconception that the zoom meeting went well but in reality, it didn’t go as well as they think it did.
Business owner communication has problems with culture because of the fact that these virtual meetings are online instead of in person. Companies struggle with culture because everyone is in the comforts of their own home not caring about work after they get off the zoom meeting.
About Robert Kennedy from Kennetik Kommunications
Robert Kennedy III, RK3, didn’t know he liked to speak…yet he always found himself in the position to do so…at church (he’s a PK), at school (ended up being a teacher for a while), with music groups (formed, led and recorded) and in business (started several businesses). What he has ALWAYS loved is technology. He once took apart a radio just to see if he could put it back together. He got it back together but it was never the same. Oh well, he was just 11.
The technology, the speaking, and even the radio came together eventually as his background includes time as a news anchor, classroom teacher, and technology trainer. Now, he works with business leaders who need to connect with their teams, especially on video. He shows them how to connect using storytelling as a tool. When he’s not doing storytelling work, he’s probably dabbling with something in his home studio or hitting a ball of some sort.
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