Episode 23: Understanding the Wonder Wander Effect

Melissa Reaves:
Well, hello everyone, and welcome to the Storyteller's Mind Movie Makers, where we are going to study the science to the beautiful art form of storytelling. And especially use it in business. Because in business we should be telling stories all day long. We have vision stories, mission stories, customer success stories, failure stories. And some of these are professional moments in your life, and some of them are personal moments in your life, but you don't know when in

Where you're gonna need them, that's why I encourage everybody to think about your stories of leadership. And know that you could be using them on call at any point in time. So let's tell your stories, but I say let's tell them well. Okay, so today I want to talk about something that I'm very passionate about. I coined this phrase in my book, The Storyteller's Mind Movie. And

I call it the wonder wander effect. And it's very serious. This is what happens when you as the speaker

Or the presenter, because I when I say presenter, I'm thinking usually slides are involved. You do say or show something on your slides that the audience gets confused about. Okay? They're kind of like, huh? And they're listening to you. And an example could be you throw the first slide up and it has everything but the kitchen sink in it. It has sentences, you have a mouth, you can say these things. It has words, logos. there's a chart.

Gotta analyze that. What's that chart? Okay, so there's the X, there's the Y, those are the years. Okay, alright, I'm getting it. Alright, so they've had pretty good growth. All right. what is the sentence over here? And why is that person in the corner? Who's that? All that's happening. And meanwhile, you're still talking. And so what happens to the audience? They've been distracted. And they wonder, what are they supposed to do now? Are they supposed to keep listening to you or are they supposed to read? Because you basically were obedient people when we're out in an audience.

Melissa Reaves, Host (02:06.465)
If you throw the slide up and we speak the language the slide is in, it's kind of impossible for us not to read it. You wanted us to. But we can't listen to you at a hundred percent. And so we wonder and then we wander off our consciousness of listening to you. And that's a problem. Because now

It's sort of like reading a book. Have you ever like noticed like you're reading a book and then something might trigger a memory of your own life and you're thinking about that but your eyes are still growing across the page, but you're really not paying attention to what you're reading. And then all of a sudden you come to it and you're like, whoa, okay, wait, I missed that. I gotta go back. I'm gonna go read those two or three paragraphs again. That is not a luxury that we have when we're public speaking. Now, if your talk is being recorded,

That can solve the problem, but not a lot of people are willing to go back to see the recording. They r they really aren't. We're very busy people in our lives. So what do we do about this? Well, we need to learn like what is it specifically that can trigger the wonder wander and take your audience out of full listening. A few things that come to mind. First off, I do work with a lot of scientists. It could be the health scientists, biochem, computer science, etc.

And this is a field of people who are so trained in data and STEMs, you know, science, technology, engineering, math, that they live comfortably inside their neocortex part of their brain where analysis and rationality is done. But that part of our brain is not emotional. And people will make a decision on an emotional connection. So that's where the limbic system part of the brain comes in. And what we want to do is we want to look at that chart.

And realize that that chart's representing people, and those people are having the problem that you're solving for. So tell a story. Tell a story about a person having the problem you're solving for, and now you got a limbic system going. It's flying forward, okay? Everyone's listening, they're leaning in because now you have taken data and you've turned you've humanized it and you've made it more interesting. Yay. Good for you. People like that. And they'll remember that. They're still not gonna remember your pie

Melissa Reaves, Host (04:27.861)
chart They're not, but they'll remember the story that you tell. Okay? So if you're just showing the data, they're gonna wonder and wander them themselves away, most likely, or they're not gonna hear the brilliance that you have in your own analysis necessarily. Some will, some will, but many won't. And so that means you've lost the room a little bit. So

We wanna clean up our slides. The other things that I notice is that in the scientific world, the vernacular that you use oftentimes are words that only your people know. Okay. I became an investor in a company that is high tech, it's delves delves into drone technology. I know nothing about it. I was the fourth investor when I heard this heartfelt story from the founder. And that was enough for me to

to get on board with him and I never remember seeing a chart it was only his story that I needed which then I started Story Fruition and it changed my life. So here we are today because someone told a great story. Okay so be careful that if you're going to be speaking to a mixed room especially that you are courteous to the audience. All right that that when you say an acronym that you define it first and once you've defined it for them then you can use that acronym freely throughout

the rest of the presentation. Okay? They appreciate it. But if you don't and you've got people in the room, they're gonna be like, I don't know what that acronym means. Do you? I don't know what it means.

That was a very big word. I don't even know what that is. It sounded very scientific. Do you know? I don't know. And then next thing you know, they're they're out here wandering around trying to figure out what you're saying because you sparked the Wonder Wander You did. another thing, be careful of making celebrity

Melissa Reaves, Host (06:28.022)
New references or movies or anything like that. Because what you're going to do is you're gonna you're gonna ignite the Wonder Wander effect because people will be thinking about that celebrity. They're gonna think about their movies or their music. Excuse me, or or you know, the scandal that they're in right now. Like you don't know. And as soon as you bring that forward within your talk, you know, you are taking a risk. There are some movies, I'm gonna speak on behalf

of the United States and the culture that we've been brought up in, there are just a few movies that you could say everyone is probably

seen that's of a conscious mind. Obviously, you're not talking to toddlers, they're not gonna be paying attention to you. and I would say that, and this is funny, but I think Wizard of Oz, and there's a lot of spin-offs from Wizard of Oz, the Oz, and now you've got you know Wicked and all those stories. So we know those stories, we know those characters, we know the metaphors, we know all of that. And if you really think that you need to have the Yellow Brick Road as your metaphor in your story, then you need to pad for it, and you would want to prepare.

your audience. You're gonna be like, this reminds me of the yellow brick road from The Wizard of Oz.

And maybe some pausing before you move on to the next point so that everyone can process and they can see, you know, that Glinda's floating down and the red shoes and there's no place like home. They're all gonna do that. Everyone's gonna replay the movie. their favorite parts, their scary parts, all of that because you brought it up. All right. So just be very careful if you're gonna do it. I would I would vote mostly to avoid that. Okay?

Melissa Reaves, Host (08:08.68)
another thing is too many details. have you ever had anyone do this? And it's usually like worthless details too. I don't mean to sound negative, but it's true. Someone will say something like

it was November of 2018. Was it November? Maybe it was October. Well, it was October. You know what? No, I'm pretty sure it was November. It was around Thanksgiving. See what I'm doing? You've seen people do this. And right away, what's going on in your mind? I don't care. Just tell the story. That's what the audience is doing. That our attention span is on loan for you. Okay? So don't waste it. You know, it doesn't matter if it was October or November.

No, that's why I want you to work on your own story library, because if this is a story that you like to tell because it shows something that's important about the way you see the world, pick the month and let's go with it. Okay? That's what you want to do. You want to make bold choices. if there are people that were in the story technically, but they didn't do anything to add anything to the story, you don't have to include them.

You have the artistic liberty on behalf of your audiences who are listening to this story to stay on the train tracks of communication with you. So don't you don't have to include people that don't do anything. Ask my sister. There was a beautiful moment between my father, his mother, who was on her deathbed, and me. Now technically, we're having this beautiful moment.

Beautiful moment. And my sister Sheila is sitting across and she's just watching it. She's just enjoying it. You know, or feeling it, right? But she never said a word. She never she never really did anything other than got to witness it.

Melissa Reaves, Host (10:04.534)
I cut her out of the story because I know that my audience is going to be imagining my 93-year-old grandmother in a in a hospice care bed with pillows all around her, and her only child, her only son, Ben, is at the foot of the of the bed and he's weeping. And I'm standing there, sitting well, I'm sitting next to him, and I decide this is a great time for a confession.

You know? And it ended up being kind of this funny scene. But my sister didn't add to it.

So I took her out in order to keep the audience attention. Okay, so that's very important. Another thing I've seen people do is sort of the same thing with the month and time. They'll do too many locations that really don't matter. I saw a storyteller once say, Well, I was born in Chicago, and then we moved to Arizona. And then before that, I went and then I went to LA because I just wanted to see if I want to go into acting. Then I went back to Arizona because I thought, well, maybe I like the desert. And then, anyways, I got back to Chicago, which is where I was when I was 16, and I'm gonna talk.

About this on ramp that I had a fear of. Oof, do you even care to hear anymore? And what

Did you see as I was rambling about all the different places? Personally, what I see is a giant map with a bunch of Google red pins being dropped in every time a city is mentioned. And then I'm feeling a little shortchanged that the cities that I had to listen to have absolutely no relevance to the true story. The whole story takes place in Chicago. Stay there. Pick your location. That's what I call in my book weed whacking.

Melissa Reaves, Host (11:49.006)
It's like we want to see your garden. We don't need to see all the weeds. So just go ahead and pluck out the things that are not going to serve the story or

Or create the Wonder Wander effect. So those are some of the things that I think are just super important. And I know that like when I'm working with clients, I'm I'm me and my coaches, we're like the Wonder Wander police force. Like as soon as we notice that we're taken off into a different direction, we bring it up. We bring it up. And so you're gonna need to do that too. If you're not gonna work with a coach, then record yourself, but tell it to

Someone and ask them, was I clear? Did you follow it? Did you follow the arc? Did you understand where I was at the beginning and then where I ended at the end? And the three people that showed up along the way. And if they're like, yeah, I didn't really know I the third person was there, cut them. Just cut them. Okay, because your story has so much wisdom to it that we don't want to pollute it with things that are not that important. So you have artistic liberty. And that is well all I have to say today about the Wonder

Wander effect, and I really hope you listen to this because this is a game changer. And for presentations, big time. You know, look at those slides. Are they crowded? Should that one slide really be three because you've got three different ideas on there? That happens too. gotta keep it clean. You want to clause slide control while you're in the presentation, not dump everything out at once, because as soon as you put up your six or your five or six tips,

They're gonna start reading your five or six tips and they're not gonna listen to you. But if you roll out tip one and you explain it, then you roll out tip two and you explain it, and then three, four, and five all join, and at the end the slide is now all five points. That was slide control. That was keeping your audience on the train tracks of communication with you. So good job. Okay. Well.

Melissa Reaves, Host (13:49.622)
Let's have another episode very soon. it's great to have you, but I would love to hear if you find other things that you find frustrating when you're talking to people and they're telling stories. what else will take you out into the Wonder Wander? Okay? Put them in the comments. This is a learning podcast. So let's hear from you. Okay? Thanks.