Have An Ending, Happy or Otherwise

When telling stories to your audience, it is critical to have a resolution. How does your anecdote end? How were the critical issues resolved? Too many speakers have a perfectly good beginning to a story, but then get lost. They become side-tracked. They forget to finish. They ramble.

It is not important that your stories have a happy ending. You are not trying to market-test a blockbuster movie with pre-fab "they-lived-happily-ever-after" endings to your stories.

What is important is that your audience can see how whatever conflict you describe with your #1 client or your difficult employee has now been resolved, and how something was learned in the end.

Too many speakers like to describe conflict or just whine about problem situations. These can be important parts of telling a story, but they don't serve the grander purpose of communicating your message unless you describe a clear-cut ending where the resolution results in illustrating an important concept.

Don't leave your audience hanging. Don't introduce clients, customers, colleagues and prospects in your speech unless you are willing to detail what happens to them (within the immediate context of your story). If your audience is wondering whatever happened to Mr. Smith in accounting because you discussed his problem 3 minutes ago, but you never resolved it, then they are less likely to be focused on what you are saying right now. They are still lost trying to figure out what happened earlier.

The less you distract your audience, the better. You want your audience focusing on exactly one thing at a time: namely, what you are saying at that moment. That is why you don't want to leave any holes or gaps in your logic or your narrative; hence, the need for an ending to each story.

It doesn't have to be a STRONG ending in a Hollywood sense, happy, or even poignant. It just has to end in a way that makes some sort of sense.

 

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Publisher: TJ Walker
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