Thanks to social media, everyone's a storyteller now, whether you're guiding your work to the right audience, developing your personal brand, or keeping the public up to date on the COVID nineteen situation, your job is to tell a story. If people don't understand you or don't tune in, then everything else is for nothing. So how do you get better
at communicating? Norman Swann, a physician, journalist, broadcaster, and the host of ABC's Corona Cast podcast, has decades of experience, not just in storytelling itself, but in helping others develop their craft too, So how can we avoid the most common mistake that new writers make when it comes to communicating. My name is doctor Amantha Imbat. I'm an organizational psychologist and founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work a show about how to help you
do your best work. On today is my Favorite Tip episode, we go back to an interview from the past and I pick out my favorite tip from the interview. In today's show, I speak with Norman Swan, and something that I always find really impressive when I listen to Norman is how effective he is at communicating health information. I wanted to know how he came to be so good at communicating complex things in simple terms.
That's taking years to develop.
So one of the joys of doing what I do do is it's exactly what you say.
I really love it.
That's what I loved storytelling, and so that's what journalismsm is is discipline storytelling. And when you're telling a story, you've got to work out what the narrative is, how to engage people in that narrative, how to stop their minds lifting to something else so that they're always there. And I liken it to grabbing somebody by the neck, sitting them down, nothing else to think about now, And.
What's the ebb.
And flow of the energy of a communication piece as well as the content of that.
So when I first joined the ABC, that's what you know.
I already had that love of storytelling, and then you had to apply it to communicating complex information more complex information. And I had a colleague then, unfortunately, actor young Peter Hunt, who we worked closely together.
He was an environmental journalist. I was health and I was more health.
Side, and we used to work together and do that TESSK together. He had something that he wanted to communicate till he wanted to communicate. We workshop how we did it, and we'd read each other's scripts and give people and give each other feedback. And we did that for some years. And I think that once you've been doing that sort of thing for some years, you kind of get what
works and what doesn't work. And now one of the pleasures I get is actually working with young incoming broadcasters and working on their scripts and showing them ways of changing the story, how you might create a metaphor an image something to grab onto and get that rhythm right and pass that on.
But it's just years and years of doing it, practicing and getting feedback, and years and years of failure as well, and learning from your failures.
So when you are editing, say a less experienced person script, for example, what are some of the things that you're looking for or are some of the pieces of advice that you find yourself giving often?
Well, I think the mistake that some people make, and it's not just young kids coming in and learning, it's people. Something you're doing is that you feel you're on a mission to explain. And if you feel you're on a mission to explain, you're going to fail. Before you start. That's why I'm talking about storytelling.
Now.
Storytelling is episodic.
It has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but it also has episodes within it. And you don't tell the whole story up front. You've got to give people a reason to move on. So the common things that I find people do is they give away the story at the beginning. All you've got to do at the beginning is give people a reason to listen because it's going to be a payoff, and make sure they do get a payoff.
It's explaining too.
Much at one time rather than parsing out the information so that I'm going to give you a little bit, you get a little bit, No, consolidate that little bit of information. Then I'll take you to the next place. And I'm taking you by the hand through the story. And you've got to trust me that I will take you by the hand and i will not lose you during the story.
I just loved hearing Norman's insight into what goes on behind the scenes and in his head when he thinks about how best to communicate important information, which I just think he does so well. And if you're looking for more tips to improve the way that you work. I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three core things that I have discovered that help me work better. You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot co. That's how I Work dot co. How I Work is produced
by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios. And thank you to Martin Nimba who does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound much better than it would have otherwise. See you next time.