Welcome and Move Towards Obstacles
Once, while doing summer stock in a Vermont barn, a lovely but inexperienced actor said she simply couldn’t play the scene. The gun she needed to wield was hidden in a purse on the opposite side of the stage. How was she ever going to get it? It just couldn’t be done. End of play.
All the other actors were thrilled: A challenge! A creative pursuit! An obstacle!
“How about if you creep through the audience and back up on stage in the previous scene?”
“How about if I, in character, get a coughing attack, take the purse and start digging for cough drops and you have to run and grab it before I find the gun?”
“How about we tussle and bump into the table and as the purse drops, so you have to leap and catch it just before it hits the ground?”
In any kind of storytelling, speech, talk, keynote, creative pursuit, look for the obstacles. Therein lies the drama, the conflict, the action!
Obstacles give us the chance to be creative and develop resilience.
These can be obstacles we build into the story or the talk, they can be part of the set-up, like the gun above, they can be mishaps that bring some gold, or they are the real obstacles our company, family, or world faces. Go towards the obstacles.
OBSTACLES IN STORIES AND TALKS
Make sure that the arc of our story or talk has a challenge, a conflict, some sort of obstacle to overcome. Children’s stories are a great template.
I call it the 4C’s of storytelling:
Context (where we start, the set-up)
Conflict (immediately, a conflict appears)
Crisis (it all comes to a head)
Conclusion (it all wraps up beautifully)
In a talk it might be more subtle, but talks should all have an arc, a build, talk about a problem, and how to overcome it.
MISHAPS
We walk in to give a talk and realize there are no lights on the stage, only in the audience.
We’re scheduled to moderate a panel at 10:00 and introduce a speaker at 11:00 across the lobby…how can we do both?
Our mic’s battery fails mid-talk.
One of the scheduled speakers for a conference falls ill and we are asked to step in with no chance to prepare.
Our slides don’t work.
OBSTACLES AS PART OF THE GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES
Our company is re-organizing and there are lay-offs.
Our blended adult family is struggling over how to best care for an elderly parent.
A long-time client is thinking of replacing us.
We are about to negotiate a promotion and learn that in the past, only members of the CEO’s club have been promoted to the C-suite level.
This week, we welcome and go towards obstacles. We can use them to make our stories and talks more gripping; when they appear in a mishap, we can embrace them creatively, and if they are built-in to the given circumstances, ignoring them only gives them strength—go towards them in order to overcome them.