Storytelling Tips: How to Improve Your Hangar Talk and War Stories

All aviators have stories to tell. Pilots may talk about episodes of near fuel exhaustion while mechanics talk about fuel leaks or electric fuel pump wiring. Did you every wonder if your stories are good enough? How do your stories measure up with the excellent aviation tales that you have heard from others? Faced with the dubious task of teaching experienced Aviation Safety Speakers about storytelling, Johnson went to literature to gather tips for storytelling. He believes that he has improved his stories. He conveys selected tips here. Use the tips as a checklist to evaluate and improve your tales.

The Tough Task

In August of 2016 I had to teach FAA Aviation Safety Inspectors about storytelling. The event was a Human Factors Train-the-Trainer workshop (See September 2016 AMT Magazine for the workshop details). With 50 years as a pilot and almost as many as an AMT I have many stories that I have told and retold. But as I prepared to teach/refresh others I became introspective about my storytelling delivery and content. I asked myself questions like: Did my story keep the listeners’ interest? Did I use the words and gestures to help the listener visualize the story? If it was a “Dark and Stormy Night” did I describe it appropriately? Did the story have a take-away message? Would someone choose to retell my story? Did it have value to the listening audience? Questions like these rocked my confidence as a public speaker. The solution to my instructional development and storytelling challenge was in the literature. My learning process and subsequent book buying was a good day for Amazon book sellers.

Storytelling Guidance

Perhaps the very best way to improve and master your storytelling technique is to recall the best stories that you have heard or read. Those stories may have been told by a relative, a friend, a teacher, or a minister. Try and recall the reasons why you remember the story. Can you integrate that style into your existing or new story?

Another way to hear good stories is to watch famous speakers. During my July 2016 studies of storytelling I was fortunate to have two U.S. national political conventions on nightly television. Watching those speeches was a like a college course in storytelling. Most of the speakers had a catchy start, some good information along the way, and then a strong closing that tried to convince me to vote for their candidate. Agree with them or not, the best speeches helped reinforce the best traits of storytelling. Most of the speeches were short and designed to get across a single message. Of course, the nominated candidates’ speeches were long, by tradition, but highly choreographed (aka, Teleprompter).

These days the internet will let us visit all the great speeches. We can observe President Kennedy saying: “Ask not what your country … but what you can do for your country.” We can watch President Reagan, at the Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate telling the Soviet Union President “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The internet also permits us to watch the powerful Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) talks to tickle our intellect and emotion.

And there are books and magazines, a lot of them. I went to books about TED Talks (Ted Talks Storytelling, Akash Karia, 2015) to books by comedians like Margot Leitman (Long Story Short, 2015). The term “too many to list” applies here. Just “Google it (storytelling)”.

The Advice Challenge

There are many storytelling techniques that are generally agreed upon. There are many opinions regarding dos and don’ts. For example, “keep the story short” vs. “provide details”. Some say that standing up is likely the best way to deliver a story. Others suggest that you can sit down to tell a story.

Therefore, you must use a multitude of sources to learn about storytelling. Then, as a storyteller, you must decide what works for you and your audience.

The following checklist offers 11 tips for storytelling. There could have been five or 50 but 11 are enough. These tips come from a number of writers but I must acknowledge that Akash Karia is most followed here. I am convinced that the tips have improved my best stories. Try your story and see how many you apply.

Table 1. Checklist for Storytelling

1. Your enthusiasm is critical. If you are not enthused about your story then don’t expect the listeners to be. Your enthusiasm is transmitted from the moment you are seen by the listener. Your physical demeanor, before you open your mouth, is critical. Watching the political convention speeches made this very apparent. Know the audience. What you say to a small group of fellow mechanics is very different than speaking to a room full of regulators, or to your daughter's class. Talking to a group at an Inspection Authorization renewal is very different than talking to a group of organized labor AMTs. When you know the audience you can tell stories and about life experiences that they can relate to.

Eugene Cernan, the “Last Man on the Moon,” tells stories of an adventure that few will have. His story is great because he relates to the audience by describing growing up on a farm, working hard on the high school football team, studying to the best of his ability in school, deciding to join the U.S. military, and finally fingering his daughter’s initials on the face of the moon. Sure, he has a great story. But, he knows how to tell it.

2. Start strong. Most of the books agree that you win or lose the audience in the first minute. I think of the Nicolas Cage car stealing movie “Gone in Sixty Seconds.” That’s how fast you lose audience attention. You are unlikely to recover.

3. Not stand-up comedy. A story may have funny moments but don’t feel that a story must be stand-up comedy. Leave that to the professional comedians.

4. Stories should be true. False stories are lies. Saying it’s fictional may help.

5. Stories can be embellished but it is a slippery slope to a falsehood if not careful. In 2015 a prominent newsman, Brian Williams, was admonished for embellishing a story about a helicopter event while covering the war in Iraq. He never fully recovered his professional reputation.

Mark Twain is attributed with saying: “If you tell the truth you never have to remember anything.” Although some attribute Twain to the quote: “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” Of course, Twain (aka Samuel Adams) commented on the false report of his death, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

6. Tell positive stories. In the aviation business, especially event investigation, the stories can include high death counts with associated unpleasant visions. However, there are a lot of close call events that can make the same safety points. Talk about close calls where a mechanic discovered a leak or crack or when the pilot makes a safe emergency landing.

In August 2016, there were number of errors that led to the crash landing of an Emirates B777. Everyone escaped the burning aircraft. The explanation of wind shear, flight deck decision making, and following emergency flight deck procedures is the same as if the evacuation was unsuccessful. But the ending was good news.

Another example of a good news story is the 2001 Air Transat A330 over the mid-Atlantic Ocean, near the Azores. A mis-routed fuel line broke and then poor fuel management procedures resulted in total fuel exhaustion. All survived the long over-water glide and safe dead-stick landing.

7. Make the story a journey. Be sure you know what you are trying to achieve. Your tale should have an obvious beginning, middle, and end. Usually the story builds to an end that evokes emotion and learning. If you cannot achieve that, then consider another story.

8. Paint a picture. Akash Karia encourages the storyteller to try to create a mental movie. Provide enough detail for the listener to imagine the scene and the characters. When you describe a person or a place try and touch on as many of the five senses as possible. For example: The floor of the hangar was a bright sparkling white epoxy, so new that you could smell it. While there were mechanics working on various repairs, on the midsize corporate jets, the noise level was low because of the sound-absorbing walls. When I met the director of maintenance his firm hand shake and eye contact ensured me that they could help me with the avionics installation on my aircraft. In those few sentences we address four of the five human senses. The story is proceeding well.

9. Use props. Any AMT remembers the classes where you passed around worn parts, pistons with holes, fried wires, or frayed cables. It is good to use such props when possible. Today, the internet provides the props but 3-D props prevail. I recently told the story of a person that I met at a meeting. While I described him I held up his business card and read it. The card was a prop of sorts. It did make the character more real and it helped the story.

10. End strong. The ending should provide a solution to any of the challenges that you may have introduced to make the story interesting. Try to limit the number of take-away messages. Keep it simple so that listeners will remember it. If the story has a moral be sure that the story tells it and you can spare: “The moral of the story is ….”

11. Practice, practice, and then practice some more. You know your story. That’s why you are telling it. But, rehearsal is important. You may be able to decide when to change tone or volume. You can practice your gestures and adjust your body language in front of a mirror or your telephone video camera. Once you rehearse enough your actions and words become automatic. Rehearsal also helps get your timing right. If the planners give you 30 minutes they don’t want 15 or 45.

The Tips Work

I have found the tips and advice to be useful. The tips have not caused me to eliminate stories but it has improved the stories in my repertoire. That’s my story and I am sticking to it.