Visual communication is a hot topic in presentation skills training, with more and more professionals looking for tips and tricks. Use this 6-point cheat sheet to get ahead.

Anyone can become immediately better at visual storytelling, when armed with a short checklist. Knowing what to do as well as common pitfalls to avoid helps new presenters tell visual stories in style.

Use visual storytelling to generate ideas, build ideas, develop story flow, connect with teams, and present to audiences. While there is much to learn about producing images that truly connect with your audience, use these simple tips to get started.

1. Generate Ideas
You’ve captured ideas, doodling on the back of an envelope. Now, do the same thing as you invent. Use this method to build a robust collection of ideas. Go even further and do this with a group or team.

2. Explain A Concept
A lot of concepts, processes and systems are complicated. That’s why your visual story must be simple.

3. Present With Impact
Show and tell your solution. Show a picture…tell a story. Draw an example, add details on the spot. Adjust your visual diagram with input from your clients. See, this is the fast way to build real-time interaction.

4. Organize In A Snap
Tracking information and flow of discussion can be awkward-especially if you are relying exclusively on words.

But with pictures, diagrams and icons, a whole new world opens up. Strengthen your visual storytelling muscle by listening to talks, presentations, and conversations-organizing information in buckets.

5. Collaborate Creatively
More and more teams enjoy using visual storytelling to solve problems, trouble shoot, and invent solutions. Whether you are part of a project team, sales team, or senior leadership team, make use of visual storytelling to build a powerful creative interactions.

6. Sequence Strategically
Thinking strategically in business requires focus, creativity and logic. One of the skills that makes this possible is the ability to sequence information. Working visually makes it much easier to experiment with the order, progression and flow of ideas.

This is very valuable for project planning, strategic planning, and business development.

If you’ve been noticing the trend towards visual storytelling, now you understand why. It is the perfect solution to discover ideas, explore solutions and work with outrageous productivity across teams.

Much of the discussion about visual communication gets focused on tools. What’s the perfect tool for the job? Is it built for individual and team use? Is it built for network ease and sharing?

While many tools exist and new ones are being developed, I have one personal favorite. You’re going to laugh. It’s a marker. I guess there’s just something so easy, familiar and down-to-earth about a plain black marker.

It’s convenient. It’s cost effective. It works on paper. There are similar models for whiteboards, dry erase boards and flip charts. Just about everyone has one or can get a hold of one.

I know. Call me old fashioned. I just like the way it writes. I like the way drawings look. And I have a strong preference for the fact that it’s not slick, fancy or special.

The point here is: there are very exciting trends in technology. And these enable distance teams to work together with increasing ease. But even if you don’t have access to a high-tech tool, you can use visual storytelling in your business.

In my experience, often the simplest tools are best. When you pick up a pencil or marker and draw a sketch for an important client… a special moment happens. You’re not trying to impress him or her. You’re using an everyday tool to share an innovative idea.

That’s memorable. That’s different. That stands out as exceptional. You’ve just learned a hidden secret about presentation storytelling…simple tools are exceptional.

I failed recently as a coach. My assignment was to coach a group of public speakers
on storytelling.

I always try to coach by discovering the goals of the teller, then helping the teller
achieve them. With seven of the speakers in that group, I succeeded, sometimes
spectacularly. With the eighth, who I’ll call “Nathaniel,” I did not.

What happened between me and Nathaniel? I began, as usual, by listening to his
story, then offering him appreciations.

I went on to ask him what help he wanted. He said, “I feel confident with the rest of
my speech, but not with the story part. Tell me what I can do to make my stories
have a bigger impact on my audience.”

For the next twenty minutes, Nathaniel and I struggled. I noticed his overly slick
delivery, and tried some of my tried-and-true methods for helping him speak more
authentically. I asked him to describe what it felt like to deliver the parts of his
speeches he felt confident with. I explained some storytelling theory, gave him
exercises to try out on the spot, and offered him images to help align him toward
his listeners.

In the end, I had the feeling of someone who has just spent a day trying to tempt a
turtle out of its shell. Every glimmer of progress resulted in retreat. I felt frustrated,
and he just looked perplexed: what was I trying to get him to do? He just wanted
more impact in his telling!

After more than two decades of coaching, I rarely fail so completely. That night, as I
lay in bed, I pondered where I had gone wrong.

The next morning, I woke up with the answer: Nathaniel kept saying that he wanted
“impact” on his audience. What he was studiously avoiding was a relationship with
his listeners. And the storytelling portions of his speech were the most difficult to
do without entering into a relationship!

In other words, Nathaniel had bought into one of the great, destructive fallacies of
our times – the very one that makes storytelling more important, perhaps, than it
has ever been.

Treating Each Other As Objects

Our society too often treats objects in the way we should really be treating people.
And we tend to treat people the way we should be treating objects.

We think, for example, of our economy as being based on products and money,
because our society hides the relationships that are the basis of any economy. We
go to the supermarket and buy the raspberries in their plastic case and have no real
awareness of all the people who are part of that transaction.

We’re scarcely aware of the stock boy at the supermarket; we pay passing attention
to the cashier. But what about the trucker, the grower, the people working for the
grower? We have economic relationships with those people, but those relationships
are disguised. Made invisible.

Storytelling is valuable, in large measure, because it can’t be done well without overt
relationships. It tends to make relationships visible. That’s one of the reasons we
love it, and one of the reasons we need it.

Stories themselves are certainly crucial to the success of storytelling. But they are
not necessarily in short supply. We have enough stories to keep us busy for a
lifetime, through television, newspapers, books, the internet, and all the other
media. In spite of the presence of so many destructive stories amidst the growth-
promoting ones, it’s good that we have so many stories available. It’s good that we
can email a story to thousands of people at once.

But when we use those impersonal media, we don’t have the sense of hearing the
story from another human who is telling it to us in an act of relationship. That
personal relationship is healing in a world where relationships are eroded by strong
forces in our society.

The Constant Waves That Batter Us

Think of the endless commercial messages in our society. We can watch television,
go out on the street and see billboards, and open magazines and read ads. We are
constantly bombarded by enticements to consume. To buy. To own.

“Consume. Buy. Own.” Those aren’t the words that bring relationships. Those aren’t
the words that bring us close to people. Those words turn us into property owners
rather than friends.

The great tragedy of a consumer society is that we end up feeling more and more
alone.

(“Alone” and “lack of connection,” by the way, are different from solitude. Solitude is
a good thing that we all need in some measure. Connection is a good thing we all
need in some measure. Isolation is not something necessary.)

Relationships Are Us

We tell at our best when we don’t try to have “impact” but rather try to love our
listeners. We can love them by being playful or by being earnest, by being powerful
or humble, with humor or pathos. We can offer ourselves eagerly or coyly.

But whatever we do, we must not hide. We must fight the temptation to withdraw
into an “objective” stance toward our listeners.

I was just at the National Storytelling Festival, where many attendees were excited
by Kathryn Windham’s telling. What did they love? Her stories, of course. The way
she talks. But what they really loved was just HER. Her offer of her genuine self. The
stance she took toward us of independent, gentle, strong, tolerant wisdom.

To be communicated with from that place is a great treat. It’s a moment of healing
amidst the fractured, antagonistic, competitive, materialistic transactions that pass
for ordinary and normal in our society.

Offering Ourselves

Howard Gardner says that great leaders convey “stories” that large groups of people
can subscribe to. But there is more to it, he maintains. The effective leader’s life
must be consistent with the story. In other words, the leader must also live the
story.

I would put it this way: the leader needs to offer herself or himself as part of the
story. People decide to follow us because our story creates a relationship they can
trust and draw hope from. Because they feel an important connection with us.

In performing, entering into a respectful, loving relationship is the key to success. In
eliciting stories from others, too, our loving listening builds the needed relationship.
In creating stories, the best stories are conceived as part of a loving intention
toward imagined or actual listeners.

Equally, in spreading the word about storytelling – about our own services or about
the art in general – the most powerful and rewarding results grow out of carefully
nurtured relationships.

In other words, as storytellers, the critical part of our job is not creating, learning, or
performing stories. It’s employing storytelling as a vehicle for – and the result of –
respectful relationships.

We storytellers ARE in the relationship business. That’s the ultimate mark of our
success and the most powerful tool that we have. That’s what makes our work not
just enjoyable and useful at the moment, but necessary to the future of our society.

Looking for a new method to minister to your congregation or attendees? One that has withstood the test of time? One word: Storytelling. Jesus used storytelling to communicate deep spiritual content in a user friendly manner. Are you looking for a way for your ministry to inspire today’s culture with life changing spiritual truth in a relevant manner? Check out storytelling with sand animation or “Sand Art.”

Sand Story is a fresh and innovative storytelling approach to effectively communicate the gospel to others. Mixing sand and light, pictures are formed and reformed into ever changing shapes and images that tell visually powerful biblical stories. Set to music, these images inspire, challenge and minister in a compelling manner. Sand Art is performed live and projected on screens for a powerful life transformation experience. More than entertainment, Sand Story will leave your congregation and attendees with a deeper understanding of biblical truth.

Sand Story also reaches across a broad spectrum of venues from churches to conferences. Newsweek Magazine has also affirmed the versatility of Sand Art as a storytelling marketing strategy for business: “Part performance art, part visual art and part storytelling, the craft has been featured at Cirque du Soleil and Christian youth camps, and corporate events. Live shows enchant audiences not only because the visual effect is riveting, but because they tell a story, typically about love, war, or faith.”

Internationally known artist, author and master storyteller Joe Castillo has traveled to over fifteen countries Joe is an artist, author and storyteller with a passion for promoting a ministry using the visual arts as a way of touching the heart.

SandStory consists of sand art images created by Joe Castillo as he draws in sand with his hands on a light table. The performance is choreographed to live or recorded music, performed live on stage and video projected on a screen.