Story Power: Using Narrative to Build Relationships and Influence by Mr. Garry Riley Mills
Mr. Garry Riley is an award-winning writer and producer, as well as a co-founder of Pinnacle Performance Company. During the session with United Leaders Global under the Women Leaders Fellows 2025 Cohort, Mr. Garry shared with us the tricks and sparks of unbeatable storytelling.
Jumping right in, he shared the pinnacle method. This comprises three steps: Analyse, Identify, and Modify.
Analyse: Involves understanding the quality and backgrounds of your audience. What does your audience need to hear from your story? Are they philanthropists, investors, grantors, venture capitalists, or simply well-wishers? Understanding the audience presented to you will allow you to give a compelling story that resonates with their backgrounds, needs, hopes, aspirations, and desires, and so buy into your ideas.
Identify: In the story, present opportunity gaps that your audience can participate in to cause change, as per their capacity. Present the gaps of the reality, so what should be done, who should do it, and how they should do it is clear for maximum change triggers.
Modify: Change facial expressions, body gestures, and voice tones to suit the flow of the story while you tell it. If the story starts sad, invoke those emotions through voice changes and facial changes, and then as you present how the situation could be changed, begin to have more appealing, joyous expressions to reveal hope and opportunities for change. For example, do not maintain the slow, sad tone when showing the philanthropists an opportunity gap where, if money is injected, countless numbers of hungry children could be saved. As you present the opportunity, be more joyful and energetic in your voice.
Secondly, he shared several kinds of stories that can be told:
- The origin story: This encompasses an original composition. It could be a fantasy, a life experience, or a biography.
- The crucible story: One shared about a difficult time they overcame and how they navigated the challenges.
- The leadership story: Stories on leadership experiences.
- The value story: These comprise stories on one’s beliefs, values, principles, and virtues.
- The pie-in-the-face story: Here, people share stories on past mistakes, how they navigated the consequences, what they learned, and how we can learn from their experiences.
Overall, the takeaway from Mr. Garry emphasized that the story must fulfill two aspects: Intention and objective. With Intention, your audience must understand what information you are conveying, what emotions you are evoking, and what you intend to show the audience.
With Objective, what do you want the audience to take away from the story, and what should they do about the situation presented to them?
Thank you.
OREEN NINSIIMA