Media Training Worldwide

Don’t Leave Out the Details

When telling stories about yourself to make an important point to your audience, it is imperative that you give enough details so that the audience makes the right conclusions about you. It’s fine to tell self-deprecating stories. It’s even Ok to talk about your mistakes and your blunders. But you don’t want to tell a story in such a way that you make the audience hate you or write you off as a flake or an unstable person.

One of my clients who was a city police official once told a story in the middle of a presentation about how the mayor of his city came into his office and made some requests. My client was so offended that the mayor would ask him to do things that he told the mayor, “Get out of my office and if you don’t leave right now, I’ll arrest you and throw you in jail.”

When I heard this I though “Wow, this guy is power mad! He is crazy! Why would he over react in such a ridiculous way.”

Later, when I was able to ask him about the story, he revealed that the mayor had asked him to give police immunity to several wealthy families and campaign contributors in the community. The mayor was, in essence, asking the police officer to become corrupt.

Once I heard all of the facts, the story made sense. Now, my client was clearly the good guy standing up for the public good and his actions made sense. The mayor was now clearly the bad guy.

But in real speech situations, you never have the opportunity to go back and fill in more details needed by your audience to understand the big picture—you’ve go to spell it out correctly right from the start.

You don’t have to make yourself out to be the saint in every story you tell, but you don’t want to tell stories that make people question your sanity either. Don’t leave out essential details.