Transform your business communication
3:59 on a Thursday afternoon. While most of the office stared zombie-like at spreadsheets, Marcus closed his laptop with a decisive click. Three weeks of preparation, and the board had just killed his proposal with polite nods and a collective ‘we’ll consider it.’ Same story, different meeting.
Across the table, Ellie caught his eye and gave an almost imperceptible shrug. She’d warned him this would happen, hadn’t she? ‘Numbers don’t move people, Marcus. Stories do.’
Most business communication fails spectacularly at the one thing it’s designed to do—connect. We drown our audiences in data, charts, and logical arguments, then wonder why they check their phones or stare blankly when we finish. As Jill R. Stevens writes in ‘The Magnetic Storytelling Method,’ ‘Facts tell, stories sell.’
I’ve seen this play out at boardroom tables from Collins Street to North Terrace. The Stanford research showing stories are twenty-two times more memorable than bare facts isn’t just academic wank—it’s the difference between influence and irrelevance.
When we communicate without narrative, we’re essentially talking to ourselves. The human brain is wired for story, not spreadsheets. Simple as that.
The solution isn’t complicated, but it requires us to think differently about how we communicate. Here’s how:
‘Why’ comes first—always.
Before you open your mouth in a meeting or type the first word of a report, ask yourself: Why should these people give a single damn about what I’m saying?
Stevens puts it plainly: ‘When you know your why, you continue to chop wood, carry water through the rejection letters, the hard critique, the editorial writeups.’
Next time you prepare a communication, write the emotional ‘why’ before anything else. Not for the slide deck—for you. What makes this matter to the humans you’re addressing?
Put people at the centre of your story.
Nobody cares about your product. They care about people affected by your product. Massive difference.
I watched a pharmaceutical rep speak for twenty minutes about chemical compounds to a room of hospital administrators. Eyelids drooped. Then she mentioned Jennifer, a fifty-year-old patient who could return to work after taking their medication. Suddenly, everyone was listening.
Characters make your business story real. They don’t need to be perfect—in fact, they shouldn’t be. As Stevens says, ‘Real people are never perfect.’
Show, don’t bloody tell.
‘Our solution increases efficiency by 40%.’ Boring.
‘When Metro Hospital implemented our system, nurses like Sam finished documentation in fifteen minutes instead of twenty-five. “I can finally sit with my patients long enough to actually hear them,” he told me. “That’s why I became a nurse in the first place.”‘ Now you’re talking.
The hook matters more than you think.
The first few seconds determine whether anyone listens to the rest. It’s brutal but true.
Begin with something unexpected. A question that challenges assumptions. A statistic that sounds wrong but isn’t. A brief story that epitomises the problem you’re solving.
One of my clients started her pitch with: ‘Our industry has been lying to customers for decades. I’m here to tell you why—and what we’re doing about it.’ You could’ve heard a pin drop.
Dance between push and space.
Know when to drive your narrative forward and when to shut up and let people absorb what you’ve said.
After a complex point or emotional moment, pause. Let it breathe. Ask a question: ‘How might this change things for your team?’ Then wait for an actual answer.
When Marcus walked into the boardroom a month later, he didn’t bring updated spreadsheets. Instead, he opened with a story about Alan, a client who’d nearly left them before their team stepped in with the very solution Marcus was proposing.
By the time he finished, the CFO—the same one who’d shot him down before—was asking how quickly they could implement the changes.
When you embrace storytelling in business, you’re not just communicating—you’re creating an experience that resonates at a human level. As Stevens puts it, ‘Writing is more a window to the soul than the eyes because the words, the style, the tone, the essence of what’s created comes from deep inside.’
For your next important communication, try these principles. The difference will be immediate—and possibly career-changing.
