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Storytelling is an art and a skill, and just like any other skill, it can be taught, learned and practiced. Storytelling today is no longer confined to the boundaries of artistic settings, novels, theater, cinemas, but rather it has found its way into our day to day tasks and can be a powerful tool for our day-to-day tasks, whether it is trying to find your first job, find your dream job, convince your board or other stakeholders of the value that you're providing,

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inspiring your team and the organization, creating value and growing your businesses, creating customer experience and customer journey and more. It's a powerful tool that today can be used in almost any setting and in any new role, whether you are an engineer, a leader, a speaker, or a job seeker, especially in a fast growing tech and cybersecurity industries where emotions and associations have become the most important and valuable assets.

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So what are some of the key elements of the art of storytelling that can help you hack your career, lead to personal growth and leadership? Or some of the elements that could help you take the story of ME to the story of WE, I'll be sharing with you in today's video.

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What's up, guys? Welcome back to my YouTube channel, Monica Talks Cyber. On this very channel, I share with you both my personal and professional learnings, talk about hacking your career, personal growth and leadership. So if you wish to learn, grow and be a part of this journey, hit the subscribe button and leave a comment that you subscribed.

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I promise you will personally reply to your comment. So let's hop right into the episode and let's get groing. Number one, knowing your audience. For a story to be compelling, it must hit home with the audience. For a good storytelling, the first and the most important thing is having clarity on for your audiences. The key elements and the take of the story must do three things.

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a) Resonate with the audience, b) Be relevant to them And c) elicit emotions. To ensure that can be done, understanding your audience is the key. Number two, motivations and emotions. Stories have consequences. And good storytelling elicits emotions within the audience causing them to take certain actions or change. So it's important to understand what is the motivation behind the storytelling?

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What purpose does it serve? What kind of emotions do you wish to elicit with the audience? How do you wish your audience to feel. The motivation behind your storytelling and the emotions that you wish to elicit in your audience can take your story from story of me to the story of we. Number three, the message. Good storytelling has one key message not two, not three, one.

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And the message must be simple, clear, concise to the point and elicit intended feeling and emotions within the audience as well as resonate with them. How you convey that message through your storytelling is imperative and how well-rounded your storytelling is. So it's important that you understand very clearly what that one key message is that you wish to convey to your audience, and it must fit with the overall narrative.

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Number four, start with the hook. So how do you go about storytelling? So far we've discussed the why, that is knowing your audience, the motivations, the purpose and so on, and the what, that is that one key message. But what about the how of storytelling, especially the how of good storytelling. There are various elements that can help with the powerful how of a good storytelling,

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and one of the first elements is the hook. Form a strong emotional connection with the audience by opening with a strong and a powerful hook. It can be something that basically engages them either through an empathetic or a bold statement or makes them curious, makes them think, engages them through a question, also, a strong anecdotal and famous quote, makes them relate to the situation, scares them, shocks them, empathizes with them, and so on.

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Whether you are working in musicals, writing engaging content, talking about tech, presenting cybersecurity to your board, etc., a hook is what grabs your audience's attention and thereby a very important and critical element in how to of a good storytelling. Number five, keep the attention. Once you've grabbed the attention of your audience with a hook, now the challenging task is to keep the attention throughout the entire storytelling until closing.

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A good story is relatable, personalized, supported with the data and facts when needed, can be inspired by other stories or other people. But is original and not plainly copied. A story must be authentic in itself, and to keep the audience's attention throughout the entire storytelling, on one hand, you need to have clarity in communication, the message and its form.

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And on the other hand, it's important that the story continues to engage and elicit emotions within the audience. In storytelling, every word matters. If a word has no role in that particular story, consider chucking it out. Good storytelling is the art that consumes only the words and the time that it precisely needs. Everything else is just redundant and noise, remove it.

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Number six, make it memorable. We talked a bit about how good storytelling always elicits certain emotions, but how to ensure that storytelling drives change through these emotions, by making it memorable. Through piquing your audience's interest and capturing and keeping their attention. Good storytelling leaves a memorable remark long after it's been experienced. Number seven, driving change and action. An audience of good storytelling goes through all four main stages of the experience cycle:

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Number one, their thoughts are provoked. Number two, they experience certain feelings. Number three, they choose actions. And number four, it then creates results. It is through this powerful cycle that good storytelling drives, change and action. At the heart of it, a good storytelling always keeps the main focus on what kind of thoughts, feelings, actions and results that you were hoping for and you're hoping to create.

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While you cannot dictate it entirely, you can definitely steer them in the right direction through good and powerful storytelling, and always keep the focus on and help them go through these four stages of their experience cycle. Number eight, a powerful ending. Though there are different types of endings to a powerful and strong storytelling, based on the final emotions that you wish to elicit in the audience,

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the ending must wrap the entire story and come full circle. For a powerful ending, you can consider asking yourself the following questions. Does it empathize with them? Does it make them think? Does it educate them? Doesn't make them consider an action? Does it compel them to drive change? Or maybe does it challenge them to draw their own conclusions?

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At the end, a powerful story can be narrated in 30 seconds or 30 minutes or 30 days, or even 30 years. Once we understand the purpose, the motivation and the impact of good storytelling, it can help you grow personally and professionally in various settings. So in which all day to day tasks or different roles, do you believe you can use the power of good storytelling?

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Share your thoughts in the comments section below, I'd love to hear from you. This is Monica, signing off.