S3E2: Improve Your Storytelling With Jess Gardner

Jess Gardner is a Storytelling and Communication Coach who specializes in helping professionals tell their stories more effectively. Many people struggle to find their voices and speak with confidence. She uses her expertise in communication and teaching to empower everyone to level up their careers through better communication and storytelling. 

Jess started her private coaching business in 2017 and has worked with clients from Google, Uber, and Yelp. She has given workshops on storytelling for organizations such as AIGA, Women Talk Design, and Design Buddies. You can find her on LinkedIn or read more about her work at jessgardnercoaching.com.

Links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessgardnercoaching/

https://jessgardnercoaching.com/

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When does storytelling matter?

• Presentations
• Public speaking
• Meetings
• Inspiring others through engagement and connection

Your audience

• Prepare for them
• Who is your audience, specifically?
• What’s your goal? 
• What are their questions/concerns?
• What do you want to make them feel?
• Where do you want to lead them?

Grab the audience’s attention by hooking them early

• Do something unexpected
• Engage their curiosity
• Have them do something

Trying something new takes courage

• Watch Ted Talks and strong presenters
• Set your own goals for storytelling
• Be willing to try something and take quick feedback
• Practice on someone in your circle

Non-linear storytelling

• Just because something happened chronologically doesn’t mean that’s the only way to present it
• Lead with an unexpected result
• Tease up front with the most interesting thing
• Have a structure, use transitions, or guideposts
• You don't have to tell every detail!

Imagery in storytelling

• Often we’re too formal
• Use action verbs instead of passive voice
• Think about words that evoke emotion so the audience can relate
• Use analogies that people can envision

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Leadership Voyage
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Transcript

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Jason Wick: Alright! Welcome back everybody to another episode of leadership voyage. I am lucky to be joined today by Jess Gardner, of Jess Gardner coaching Jess, it's really nice to meet you today.

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Jessica Gardner: Thanks. It's lovely to be here.

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Jason Wick: Yeah, thanks for joining. And you're one of the earliest guests we've had in this this season. 3. And you're going to bring a really interesting topic to us all. And we're gonna get to that in a second. It's something that I think we've never really talked about on the show to be honest. So I'm excited for it. But before we do that, I I was reading some information about you on your website, and it said that you have been to 14 different countries.

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Jessica Gardner: Yes.

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Jason Wick: I have got to hear about maybe one of the favorite places that you you have been. Do you have any anything.

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Jessica Gardner: Well, I loved them all, but the place I stayed the longest was Macau. I lived and taught there for a year after grad school.

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Jessica Gardner: So I was there about 10 months, you know, an academic year, and it was such an amazing experience. You know. I met so many wonderful people and got to visit a lot of different areas nearby. You know, Hong Kong and Cambodia and mainland China.

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Jessica Gardner: But Macau itself was. It's just such an interesting

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Jessica Gardner: combination of cultures, you know, with Portuguese and Chinese culture mixing the food was incredible. I've been ruined, you know, my Chinese food expectations are very high. So, yeah, it was wonderful.

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Jason Wick: No thanks for sharing that. I yeah, I've I've never been anywhere close to there yet. I have been to Europe. But but not that far. That's that sounds like a really interesting experience, and thanks for sharing that with us.

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Jessica Gardner: Yeah.

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Jason Wick: So today, we're gonna talk a little bit about what you do professionally, how you help other people on their professional journeys. And and one of the angles here that'll be really interesting is storytelling.

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Jason Wick: And before we start to get into storytelling and how it can apply to folks,

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Jason Wick: could you maybe just give us a little quick, a briefing on what it is you're up to, and you know, kind of what are you passionate, passionate about?

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Jessica Gardner: Yeah, definitely. Well, I kind of

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Jessica Gardner: took a circuitous route to get to where I am now, as many of us do. My original background was in art and design.

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Jessica Gardner: and I tried doing that for a while. And it just wasn't, you know, wasn't turning into a full-time career. And so I did admin work for a while, and then I decided to go back to grad school.

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Jessica Gardner: got a degree in teaching English as a second language which I love, and I'm very passionate about. I've always

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Jessica Gardner: felt really strongly about good communication and the value of good communication.

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Jessica Gardner: and how to help people, you know, talk about themselves and their work, and tell their own stories.

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Jessica Gardner: that all just kind of evolved down that path. And then, in 2,017, I got the opportunity to move away from the Bay Area for a couple of years, and decided, Hey, this is the perfect time to try my own business, to do my own thing. And so I decided to start teaching and coaching online. And

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Jessica Gardner: through that experience I've kind of shifted

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Jessica Gardner: the work that I do, probably because of the pandemic, because

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Jessica Gardner: during that time, you know, everybody was like trying to figure out what to do. And there were a lot of organizations looking for online speakers. And so I was like, why not? I'm gonna give it a try. And so I offered a design organization, a workshop kind of focused on how to talk about your work. And I was focused more on portfolio. But really, what came out of it is, I realized it's about storytelling. Really, that's the help people are looking for, because

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Jessica Gardner: telling your own story can be very intimidating even for people who do that kind of work professionally. And

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Jessica Gardner: sometimes people just need a little more hand holding or guidance, or, you know, direction

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Jessica Gardner: to think about like, okay, what makes my story unique? How can I

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Jessica Gardner: leverage it to give myself as many opportunities as possible. So that's kind of how my work has evolved over the years, and you know I never get tired about tired of talking about storytelling. It's such an interesting topic, and it's something everybody can relate to, and everybody wants to get better at. So it's just been really fun for me to help people

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Jessica Gardner: take more control of the stories they tell about themselves and their work.

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Jason Wick: That's wonderful. And I think we're gonna have a good discussion anytime. I guess as I I never get tired of talking about fill in the blank. That's that's great right. That's that's really good news. I would say one thing that stood out to me. There is. You're talking about, you know some of your history teaching English as a second language. And you said, on your website you talk about.

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Jason Wick: you know, something like you're not like the the big industry insider who's gonna tell you about all these particular things. But I'm going to teach you. And I wrote down in my notes teaching versus telling. Would you be willing to expound on that a little bit.

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Jessica Gardner: Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I think

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Jessica Gardner: part of the value I bring that's different from sort of the standard

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Jessica Gardner: coaching programs, at least in the design industry is. Yeah, I don't have that insider knowledge of Google or Meta. But I'm I'm a trained teacher. I have a Master's degree, I know. And I teach people with a different language background. So

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Jessica Gardner: you really have to be able to break things down into a way that's easy to understand. That's not intimidating that helps people feel comfortable with the learning process and taking the risks necessary to grow and improve. And that's what coaching is all about. And so it's just kind of a shift in the method and the audience. But really, all the skills that I've learned in my teaching career, I apply every day in my coaching.

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Jason Wick: Yeah, interesting.

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Jason Wick: And so when we talk about storytelling and and you talked about oh, it started with a workshop with some designers, and we're helping them talk about their portfolios. But let's step back a little bit. Let's zoom out a little bit and talk about, you know, storytelling here, and

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Jason Wick: what are the different contexts, contexts that listeners could be applying the storytelling principles that we're going to discuss today? How could they use them in their lives like, how could they envision this? Do you think.

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Jessica Gardner: Umhm. Well, presentations

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Jessica Gardner: is a big one, you know. A lot of people

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Jessica Gardner: despise public speaking. I hear about this all the time how much people, you know, dread it, or feel anxious about it, or

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Jessica Gardner: don't feel confident about their public speaking opportunities.

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Jessica Gardner: whether that's like

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Jessica Gardner: contributing to weekly meetings or giving, you know, talks at conferences. Whatever it is, it's something a lot of people

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Jessica Gardner: don't feel great about doing. And we've all been to terrible presentations. You know it's it's not fun. It's not fun to listen to. It's not fun to be.

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Jason Wick: No, it's not.

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Jessica Gardner: The bad presentation giver, so

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Jessica Gardner: trying to help people find better ways to do that. I think

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Jessica Gardner: you know, that can apply to pretty much any industry and at any level. Really, I mean, it's very important, obviously, for leaders to be able to inspire

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Jessica Gardner: the people that they're talking to. You don't want to just

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Jessica Gardner: present, as like, well, I'm the leader of this organization. So you have to do what I say, you know, like, Okay, sure. But that's not the best way to get engagement or buy in from your audience, you know, if you can inspire them and engage with them and connect with them. It's obviously you're gonna be a lot more effective.

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Jason Wick: I think you said a really important word to me trying to think about this topic through different kind of scenarios for different people. And the word you said was, audience, okay.

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Jessica Gardner: On!

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Jason Wick: So

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Jason Wick: how do we kind of look at our audience and kind of identify? Maybe what it is they might be thinking about wondering about what's important to them. Right? And how do we kind of cater, whatever it is we might be doing to this particular group of people.

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Jessica Gardner: Yeah.

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Jessica Gardner: well, I think there are different ways, and I always encourage people

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Jessica Gardner: who are preparing to do some kind of storytelling, whether it's

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Jessica Gardner: presentation or an interview, or whatever it might be. You know you want to do some research you want to prepare.

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Jessica Gardner: You want to really sit down and think about. Okay, who specifically is my audience, because

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Jessica Gardner: a lot of us tend to speak to kind of, we try to speak to everybody instead of narrowing down and being specific and thinking about. Okay, really, who is my audience.

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Jessica Gardner: you know, if this is your own team or your own, you know people you work with every day. That makes a little easier, because probably you already have a relationship with them. Hopefully, you probably know what their goals are. You probably know what their concerns are. You probably can observe the types of things that motivate them or frustrate them.

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Jessica Gardner: And so, taking the time to really think about

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Jessica Gardner: those motivations or those concerns

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Jessica Gardner: will help you think about. Okay, so what do they need from me? What is it that I'm trying to accomplish? What's my goal in telling this story.

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Jessica Gardner: and once you kind of identify those things like your own goal, the goal of your audience, what questions they might have or concerns they might have about the story you're telling.

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Jessica Gardner: then that can help direct you in terms of okay. So how can I accomplish this goal? How do I want to make them feel when they're listening to me.

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Jessica Gardner: How do I want to motivate them? How do I want to, you know, lead them through the process of whatever I'm explaining it to make sure it's clear.

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Jessica Gardner: and people aren't just going to tune out by giving them a big info dump. You know there are a lot of things you can do to prepare and be thoughtful, so that you get that connection with your audience.

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Jason Wick: Thanks. That's a lot of information, I think. Just to think through. Jess. No, that that's really good, because.

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Jason Wick: you know, you kind of started off. You're talking about, maybe just in the broad sense, you know. Of course, we need to prepare. And then we need to really identify who it is we're talking to. And I mean, like you're saying in the example of your own team, it's it's kind of a a forehead slapper. I suppose you're like, well, yeah, of course. Okay, I know these folks

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Jason Wick: that could be any any group of people. And then I like this. So now we're narrowing down, narrowing in on. You know, what's our goal in in having this this presentation or this discussion? Actually, I gotta say, I I kinda like that in the in general, because it makes me go like, why am I having this meeting, you know, like period? Actually, is there a purpose to this meeting? So I like that.

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Jason Wick: What are their questions? What are their concerns trying to anticipate these things? And then I really like this at the end. You know. What is it I'm trying to to have them feel? How do I wanna lead them through this so that they're engaged? So I think that really sets the stage really nicely for us to kind of get into a few. I have a handful of questions here, and we'll just go until I run out of time, I guess, but about like techniques. Right? Hopefully, we can all take the backdrop of your answer right there

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Jason Wick: and then start talking about some, some specific things. So the first question I was thinking about.

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Jason Wick: we're going to go kind of chronologically, maybe through a story telling. Okay,

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Jason Wick: what are some creative ways that you can grab your audience's attention right from the beginning of your story.

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Jessica Gardner: Yes, that's a that's an important one, cause you gotta hook them early. If you wanna keep people engaged because and because we've all sat through terrible meetings, terrible presentations. We think we know what's gonna happen. Or maybe we're expecting it to be bad.

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Jessica Gardner: depending on the situation. It it's easy to kind of tune out and think about other stuff. But if you do something unexpected.

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Jessica Gardner: or do something that

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Jessica Gardner: brings out some curiosity in your audience right away, you know. Engage them somehow. Make them do something. Don't let them just sit there, you know.

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Jessica Gardner: Find a way to grab them right away, either. By you know, I mean. And if you think about some of the great stories we've all seen and heard, you know, even in a movie.

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Jessica Gardner: usually there's something exciting that happens right away to drag you in. You know, there's some action. There's a conflict. There's something

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Jessica Gardner: your presentation doesn't have to start with. Well, today, we're going to, you know. Don't do what everybody else does. Do something different, you know. Think about the best way to grab your audience and shoot for that don't shoot, for like this is how every single person starts a meeting, you know. You wanna of course you wanna like give an agenda. You wanna follow sort of norms, but

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Jessica Gardner: start with something exciting. You know Ted Talks are great examples of how to do this. You know.

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Jessica Gardner: Peak their curiosity, pull them in with something they don't expect. Share a conflict.

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Jessica Gardner: you know. Share a sort of action snippet of like. Here's what's going on, you know something to drag them in and make them care right away.

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Jason Wick: No great, thank you. And I mean, I think you've already listed just 4, 5, 6 things right here, where someone listening could say, Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and and try this.

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Jason Wick: How much

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Jason Wick: I don't know. If this is the right word, how much courage does it take for somebody to try what you're saying. If others are used to them

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Jason Wick: running a meeting or having a presentation a certain way.

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Jessica Gardner: Right. It does take courage absolutely, and I don't wanna make it seem like, Oh, this is so easy. Just go change everything, you know, and especially if you're in a a leadership position. And people are used to you doing things a certain way. You don't wanna like totally turn it on its head. But

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Jessica Gardner: what I often suggest is

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Jessica Gardner: a. You can observe people that you think are strong presenters, strong storytellers, and try to notice how do they do it. What are they doing? Are there things they are doing that I would feel comfortable, doing and just kind of observe and decide for yourself. First of all, kind of like, what are the bounds of, of what? What's available to me, or what I'm comfortable with, and then, just, you know, go incrementally, you know. Maybe set some goals for yourself.

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Jessica Gardner: because the goal of a meeting or a presentation shouldn't just be, you know, info dump, like I was saying, you, you want to

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Jessica Gardner: achieve something. You want to motivate people. Probably you want to solve a problem.

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Jessica Gardner: But you might also have personal goals. And I encourage this with my clients, you know, if

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Jessica Gardner: there's something in particular that you've struggled with, find some small thing you can do to improve that area

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Jessica Gardner: and see if you can do it. You don't want to try to do a hundred things at once. Of course you don't want to do something radical.

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Jessica Gardner: but set, identify some goals for yourself and say, Okay, you know, for this meeting I really wanna try something different with my introduction. I really wanna try something different with my hook. Just one small thing and see how it goes. See if people respond. And if people are like Whoa, now, you know, then, okay, try something else.

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Jessica Gardner: But if people seem engaged, then great, you know that's great feedback. It's very easy to see right away, you know, if people are responding positively. But you won't know if you don't take some small risks, and if that feels too scary.

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Jessica Gardner: try it out on somebody first, you know. Find somebody in your circle that you're comfortable with, and bounce off of them, you know. See what they think.

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Jason Wick: That's wonderful stuff, Jess. Thank you. And I love it because

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Jason Wick: you're also identifying maybe a personal goal, you know. Maybe I'm working on this particular part of of my speaking, or my facilitation, or or whatever it is that you're you're talking about here, and and how can I work on? Maybe in this particular instance, we're talking about how we're hooking, hooking our audience. How can I work on that? Something small? I mean, that's comfortable enough. Right? Any growth is uncomfortable, right? I mean. But but I think you're also giving us really nice graduated versions of kind of like, Hey, or progressive versions of

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Jason Wick: okay, we'll start here. Oh, that's too uncomfortable. Start here, I think that's great.

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Jason Wick: that's great stuff. I mean, I've already got like I I could just walk away here personally with 10 action items. So thanks, this is a good, I'm so happy. I have this podcast okay, so we talked a little bit about grabbing attention, right creative ways, and and also pragmatic approaches to trying to implement that. So thank you for that.

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Jason Wick: How about? I would say. Quite commonly, you know.

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Jason Wick: in the info dump scenario, maybe we're going chronologically. It's something people are comfortable with. We follow the beginning to the end of a story.

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Jason Wick: But you also mentioned earlier that you know it's important to engage and hold attention. What if we want to tell a story in kind of an an unconventional way or a nonlinear approach. Do you have any devices to suggest here about how we could try something like that, and still keep

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Jason Wick: people's attention and clarity.

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Jessica Gardner: Yeah, absolutely cause.

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Jessica Gardner: Just because something happened in a chronological way. And we're all used to that method of learning

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Jessica Gardner: doesn't mean that's the only way, of course, and it's probably not the most exciting way unless the thing that started you on the project is really exciting or really interesting. Or you know, maybe there's a conflict or a problem, then it might be appropriate. But maybe it was something really boring, and the most interesting part of the process came at like the 2 thirds, mark.

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Jessica Gardner: Well, you don't want to make everybody sit through 20 min before you get to the interesting part, right? I mean, I feel like a lot of

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Jessica Gardner: podcasts do this well, like, they'll grab the most interesting snippet of the podcast and put that first to get you to listen, because otherwise people are like, wait, what's this about? Oh, I don't know. I'm only 2 min in, but I'm giving up, you know, because I haven't figured it out yet.

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Jessica Gardner: Same thing, you know. Hook them with that right away, somehow. Take the most interesting thing and tease it

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Jessica Gardner: up front.

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Jessica Gardner: and that could be a a problem you're trying to solve. It could be some sort of a conflict or challenge. It could be something unexpected that happened that you know either a result that you got, or something. That

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Jessica Gardner: kind of maybe, is giving you a new direction or options, and it might connect to whatever the call to action is going to be like, you know, you could tie it to your goal. What is it that you want

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Jessica Gardner: your audience to do, or what is it that you want them to feel? And how can the way I begin this story

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Jessica Gardner: guide them to that?

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Jessica Gardner: So you know, being very strategic about it is great if you can do that.

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Jessica Gardner: So you know. And there again, if you think about some of the great stories, you know, movies, books, whatever you start with the action. You know every good James Bond movie starts with a fight, or you know, whatever it is to pull you in and make you care, and you can do the same thing.

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Jessica Gardner: just make sure you have a structure in place, because

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Jessica Gardner: the last thing you want to do is to make people feel confused or lost or like. Why are we talking about this? And now we're talking about this, you know, it can be overdone, certainly, but

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Jessica Gardner: most of us understand the convention of storytelling very well, you know. That's one of the beautiful things about it is, we all know a good story when we hear it, and we kind of know what to expect.

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Jessica Gardner: So as long as

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Jessica Gardner: your audience feels safe and knows what to expect.

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Jessica Gardner: you can play around with it. You know you can play around with the order or the way that you present things. You just have to give some

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Jessica Gardner: structure, and that can be

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Jessica Gardner: by saying, You know.

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Jessica Gardner: an interesting thing happened during this project. And I'm gonna tell you this part. And then I'm gonna tell you about how we got there, or, you know, give them a little bit of clarity. So people know. Oh, okay, I see what's happening here or use transitions, you know.

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Jessica Gardner: 3 weeks ago. XYZ. And then, you know, this is what happened after you know something like that. There are a lot of just little guide posts that you can give your audience to help them

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Jessica Gardner: feel comfortable, feel like they know what's going on, but still feel interested and engage, because it's something different.

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Jason Wick: Yeah.

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Jason Wick: thank you. I like that. The the guide posts at the end. That's really a good good point.

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Jason Wick: or the device of transitions to get from one place to the next. And and again, I like how you're tying this back to the the strong kind of hooking someone in in the beginning that it doesn't have to be truly chronological. It's almost as if you can take that action and lead with it, and maybe even use that as a teaser to hey, we're gonna get to this, you know, whatever that is. Cool. Yeah. I mean.

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Jessica Gardner: Yeah. One thing.

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Jason Wick: Yeah, of course.

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Jessica Gardner: I think the other thing, too, is that in addition to the chronological piece.

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Jessica Gardner: people feel like when they're telling about a project sometimes, or describing something that happened over time, that they have to tell every part of

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Jessica Gardner: the story, even if it's not interesting or important or relevant.

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Jessica Gardner: And that is not true. So being selective is also a big part of this, not only maybe changing the order, but

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Jessica Gardner: choosing to edit some stuff, so you can leave some stuff out if it's not actually helping you, and it's gonna lose, you know, if it's gonna bring the energy way down, or people are gonna get lost or bored or tune out. That's the last thing you want. If you've started with a strong opening, and you've built that momentum, you want to keep it.

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Jessica Gardner: and you got to be a little selective sometimes to make that happen.

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Jason Wick: I love it, and I think that goes back to what you were saying up top about really understanding your audience. You know. I mean some folks. Those details might be perfectly relevant for what they care about. And but but again, it's predicated on understanding what the what that audience wants, right.

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Jessica Gardner: And reading the room. I think, too.

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Jason Wick: Hmm! Reading the room, reading the room. So I do have to ask you

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Jason Wick: one thing I was working on personally in 2020 was working on the skill of global listening, or 3D listening right, which is listening to things beyond verbal and in an entire room. And then, of course, we went to all virtual

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Jason Wick: and and it was like, Okay, this is an entirely different thing.

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Jessica Gardner: Hard.

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Jason Wick: Reading the room virtually. Do you have any tips on that? I would love to hear them, and I'm sure folks can can identify with running virtual meetings and not having a clue. What others are thinking.

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Jessica Gardner: Yeah, that is really hard. It's true.

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Jessica Gardner: I mean, ideally, it's great to have, even if you can't look at everybody who's in the meeting. If there are some people with their camp willing to put their cameras on, you know, if you have some

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Jessica Gardner: allies, or you know, friends within your the group that you're talking to, that

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Jessica Gardner: you can use, because

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Jessica Gardner: even if it's just to build your own confidence, or yeah, to kind of see how things are landing, especially somebody friendly, you know, maybe have one friendly person and one person that's maybe more of a tough sell if you can, you know, like you don't. If you only have positive people, then you know, you might be, have a false sense of how it's going, but but just something to give you confidence, encourage cause. That's gonna be the main

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Jessica Gardner: thing that drives the experience, I think, you know, to make sure that you're putting out positive energy. And if you have

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Jessica Gardner: even just a couple people that you can look at and connect with.

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Jessica Gardner: it's going to be so much more

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Jessica Gardner: powerful and effective, I think. Then, yeah, if you're just looking at all black screens, it's so hard. And I feel that way, too. And you know this is what I do. And I I totally get it. So you know, even just being able to see you and chat right now is so much better than yeah. If I were just talking to, you know, when I've got my slides up or something, and it's just like nothing.

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Jessica Gardner: It's really tough. So yeah, I would just try to, you know, if if it's your decision, try to set it up so that you can see at least a handful of people. And if it's if someone else is facilitating, ask them. I guess if that's a possibility, you know, maybe you can at least even see the hosts. I recently gave a workshop, where I could only see the host, but there were 5 of them, so that was still like a great

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Jessica Gardner: mix of people enough to help me feel confident about reading the room.

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Jason Wick: I love it. No, I thank you for adding, adding that because

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Jason Wick: sometimes it it also just feels like, you know, maybe something's out of our control. But even this part that's in your control. You're you're calling out here is well, we could just even just ask, Hey, could some people be visible, or whatever that looks like. So I love it wonderful which which you're helping. You have a more odds of a successful storytelling experience which in turn will make it more positive for all the people in your audience. Right.

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Jessica Gardner: Exactly.

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Jason Wick: Love it.

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Jason Wick: It strikes me that that's

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Jason Wick: one particular thing. That makes a story effective is

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Jason Wick: if the listener or the audience is able to conjure some kind of imagery sometimes.

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Jason Wick: And so I'm wondering, do you have techniques you could share? Maybe how people can

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Jason Wick: select solid word choice or something in this area to help create

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Jason Wick: vivid imagery for their audiences.

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Jessica Gardner: Definitely. Yeah. And it's really important. This one in particular, I think, is important. You know, if you're talking to, if you're leading a meeting, or you know, if you're talking to a group, you want people to see your vision, of course, but it's also important in telling your own story. So you know, a lot of the folks that I work with in my coaching business

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Jessica Gardner: are job hunters, you know, or they're trying to. You know, they're trying to level up their careers somehow.

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Jessica Gardner: you know, get promoted, whatever it is. And part of that is exactly what you said, helping people to imagine

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Jessica Gardner: what you're doing. You know how you bring value. And

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Jessica Gardner: the way that you approach that there's a few ways. Part of it's the words that you choose. So

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Jessica Gardner: people tend to when they're talking about themselves. Especially, I think it's think it's because we're trying to seem professional. Or maybe it's intimidating. People tend to get really formal in the way that they write and the way they talk about themselves.

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Jessica Gardner: And that's not always the best, because it's harder to connect with your audience. If you're too formal and standoffish.

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Jessica Gardner: use action verbs, you know, people tend to use passive voice

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Jessica Gardner: in that situation like you know. Let me think of an example. Instead of saying, I did. XYZ. You might say, Oh, well, XYZ took place.

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Jessica Gardner: Passive voice.

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Jessica Gardner: you're totally gone from the story now, like there's no you you don't want that, you know. You want to show you want to take credit. You want to show what you did. Put yourself right in the center there. So

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Jessica Gardner: using active voice. And even if it's not your story, even if you're talking, you know about a project or something

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Jessica Gardner: anytime. You can use action words. It's so much easier to envision than passive. You know. We can all imagine what research looks like. We can all imagine what you know

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Jessica Gardner: working extra hours looks like, or you know, brainstorming or meeting with colleagues. You know, whatever it is using, action helps us envision that much more effectively.

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Jessica Gardner: Another thing you can do is because you're trying to elicit some type of feeling in your audience is, think about the words that evoke emotion.

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Jessica Gardner: So trying to, you know, trying to get people in the fields, as they say, trying to

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Jessica Gardner: think about, okay, how can my audience resonate with this? How can I talk about this in a way that helps them? Imagine what this feels like?

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Jessica Gardner: Use those words, you know, to talk about what you're passionate about, or why you're frustrated, or what kind of a scenario happened to your users, or whatever it might be.

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Jessica Gardner: so that we can relate and feel something and care more about the outcome, and maybe want to be motivated to want to do something.

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Jessica Gardner: So action, words, emotion, type, words.

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Jessica Gardner: and then also using analogies or

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Jessica Gardner: scenarios that people can easily see in their mind's eye, because, you know, if it's too abstract, or if it's just again sort of info dump like report style information that we don't care

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Jessica Gardner: really. So

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Jessica Gardner: try to show. Give a scenario show something that happened to a real person, or, you know, explain what's happening on your team

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Jessica Gardner: and describe it in a way that you can see in your mind's eye. And if that is too hard to do, try to think about whether there's an analogy. You know. One of the things that I use

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Jessica Gardner: in my social media sometimes is

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Jessica Gardner: adding storytelling as a spice, because people will often come to me and say, Oh, you know, I've got this presentation, or I've got this

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Jessica Gardner: case study, and it's really boring. And I want to add more storytelling. How can I add more storytelling? And I'm like.

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Jessica Gardner: it's very hard to add storytelling at the end, like it's some kind of a spice.

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Jessica Gardner: It is a main ingredient. You need to start with it from the beginning. If you want a good outcome, because

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Jessica Gardner: the whole story is built on these principles, and you can't just shake it on at the end. You know, that doesn't work, and that's a thing that a lot of people can relate to. If you know anything about cooking, you know that analogy makes sense. I think so.

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Jason Wick: Does.

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Jessica Gardner: Finding a way to help your audience

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Jessica Gardner: feel something, see the action, and then relate to it in some kind of tangible way that they can imagine.

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Jason Wick: What a great answer! I mean again, just like one of the earlier answers about how we can begin a story telling process with our audience. I mean, I think you're giving us, you know, so many things that we can try out here, Jess. So thank you for all of that. So action verbs evoking emotion analogies. And then at the end, they're talking about storytelling as a spice, not really working as effectively as billing into the process. I love it. No, I it's great. I mean

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Jason Wick: I I just. I've never spoken to someone about storytelling in this way. So you're you're obviously not. You obviously have given this so much thought and worked with so many people about it. It's it's wonderful to hear all of this roll right out.

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Jessica Gardner: Thank you.

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Jason Wick: I can't believe we're already coming up to almost a half hour of talking. So before we start to wrap this all up and let everybody hear about where they can reach out to you and engage with you. I ask everybody who comes on the show the same question, and it's what is something that you've learned recently.

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Jessica Gardner: Yeah, that is a good question. My, so my husband is also a trainer. He works in healthcare, but they're trying to get into more e-learnings at his job. And so he recently purchased articulate the e-learning. It's there's rise. And then there's also Storyline is what it's called.

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Jessica Gardner: and it's a way to create e-learning, educational materials, learning, learning and development type of materials.

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Jessica Gardner: And there are a lot of folks who offer online courses as a part of their coaching, and that's something that I've considered in the past. And so I recently started kind of playing around with his copy of Articulate Storyline to see if that's something that will be useful for me in my coaching business. But just as a as an educator, it's an amazing tool, and it's been really fun

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Jessica Gardner: to play with it, and kind of see the different ways that it can make the learning process more engaging and more, you know, gamified, you know, fun, because we've all sat through terrible, terrible boring e-learnings. And so, you know, there again an opportunity to make something fun and interesting and make the audience want to do it instead of forcing them to do it. You know, I feel like that's a great teaching tool. So I'm curious to see if there's any ways that I can use that in my business.

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Jason Wick: Yeah, thanks for sharing what you're learning about there. And then, also, maybe you can have a a, a positive system, ma, a systemic effect on e-learning. Maybe you could help us all out.

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Jessica Gardner: Terrible ones out there.

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Jason Wick: The modules, you know. It's just clicking, clicking. No, that's great. Thank you for sharing that.

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Jessica Gardner: Wow!

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Jason Wick: So we've talked a lot about storytelling today, and and for those who are listening, you know, they've got at least a dozen things. They could probably go ahead and try to stretch themselves and ultimately get better results by engaging their audiences. Whether it's interviewing for a job, working with their team, or giving a presentation, or or beyond that, I'm sure. But thank you for giving so many

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Jason Wick: specific ideas for people to go ahead and try on their own. I think people can get a lot out of this, Jess. So, for those who have been intrigued by this might be interested in working with you, learning more about what what it is you're up to these days. Where should we direct them?

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Jessica Gardner: Well, my website is Jess Gardnercoaching com pretty easy. Also, that's my linkedin handle. So you're welcome to follow me or message me there. I do have a newsletter with a little freebie on my website.

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Jessica Gardner: And I'm in the process, actually of kind of updating my site and tweaking my freebie and my packages a little bit right now. It should be all in place by the time your episode airs, so I don't want to give it away right this second. But there will be new exciting stuff there very soon.

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Jessica Gardner: But yeah, there's there's a freebie you can sign up to get my usually 2 times a month, Newsletter. And I offer just single one on one coaching sessions. But I'm trying to move more towards these new packages, because I feel like they create a better overall experience for people than just like a one off last minute thing. So yeah, feel free to reach out on Linkedin or check out my website. That would be great. I'd love to chat with somebody new.

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Jason Wick: Cool. That sounds great, and all of that will be in the in the episode notes so, and people just have the one click away.

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Jessica Gardner: Hey!

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Jason Wick: Jess Gardner, great to meet you today, and thanks for giving us so many actionable things with regard to storytelling. Have yourself a great rest of the day. It's nice to see you today.

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Jessica Gardner: Yes, thank you so much. It was really fun.