The Structure of a Great Story – Visual Mind Mapping

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Leadership Communication for Maximum Impact: Storytelling

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Northwestern University

Leadership Communication for Maximum Impact: Storytelling

488 notes

Cours 2 sur 6 dans Specialization Organizational Leadership

Storytelling is an essential part of leadership. Effective leaders communicate to inspire talent to excel; to partner with investors and communities; to engage with customers and clients and to grow their impact in the world as part of a global community. Cultivating an authentic, trustworthy and compelling narrative is vital to a leader’s success. This course helps leaders find their own story through personal branding; develop storytelling success with all constituencies; initiate an effective voice for crisis; interact well through social and third party media; and communicate a vision for innovation.

À partir de la leçon

The Art of Leadership Storytelling Made Simple

In this module, you will learn about the art of storytelling made simple. You’ll learn to use storytelling as a powerful strategic communications tool to inform, engage, motivate and inspire those key audiences that are critical to your success. You will also be introduced to the concept of visual mind mapping as a way of helping you to effectively structure your story.

Introduction to Module 21:40

The Power of Storytelling5:12

It All Starts with the Audience7:30

The Structure of a Great Story – Visual Mind Mapping5:47

Visual Narrative Mapping Applied4:50

Rencontrer les enseignants

Tom Collinger
Executive Director Spiegel Research Center
Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications
Ernest Duplessis
Faculty
Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications
Hud Englehart
Faculty
Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications
Candy Lee
Professor
Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications

[MUSIC]

Hi, everyone, I'm Charley Thornton from The Sheffield Company from Chicago.

In my day job, I help leadership teams get aligned around the clear narrative, and

I help them tell that story in succinct and simple language so

other people can understand it.

I'm a huge believer in the power of stories.

In fact, I actually studied in theater here in Northwestern and

I'm a songwriter precisely because I'm fascinated by how stories move people,

and when you think about it, that's really the point of storytelling in business.

To help people understand and then move them to action.

Okay, let's get started.

Ernest just walked you through how to get inside the mind of your stakeholders,

which is really important.

Once you know who they are and what they're thinking about,

it becomes time to develop the right story that's going to resonate with them.

To do this you'll need a structure of that story, and

fortunately this is actually pretty simple.

If you think of all the millions of stories that have been told throughout

the ages, they all tend to follow a pretty consistent structures.

There are characters, there's some kind of setup or

conflict, there's a sequence of events which we call the Plot,

and then there's some kind of resolution at the end.

Sounds pretty obvious, right?

In fact, we probably use this structure all the time in conversations without even

thinking about it, but

here's the interesting thing, this structure also shapes how we listen.

See, when we tell a story,

people start to listen differently, their brain instinctively begin to look for

these different elements and wants to put them together in a structure.

A good story teller knows that.

And, they make it easy by putting the pieces together for you.

So, you can just focus on the meaning of the story, and

that's when stories become most powerful and most memorable.

That's why the structure matters.

Okay, enough theory.

Let's look at story structure.

When I'm preparing a narrative, whether it's for a client.

Or a call or presentation, maybe it's for

a paper, I like to use what we call a Narrative Map.

This is really nothing more than a visual outline,

it's a kind of mind map, to show you how it works, I'm going to use a narrative to

explain a new product idea that I actually stole from someone I work with.

So here it is.

Have you ever noticed that when you use a white board

A lot of the markers are out of ink.

I get burned by this pretty much every time I facilitate a session, but

why does it happen?

See, when most people use a marker and it doesn't work instead of throwing it out,

they put the lid back on it and they put it back in the tray.

It's like they have this moment of compassion, they're like it's okay,

maybe tomorrow will be better.

So here's my business idea.

Create a new kind of dry erase marker that will

always have ink in it when you pick it up.

It works like this, there's a sensor inside

that knows when the marker's really empty and that sensor triggers an indicator on

the marker to show a funny message like I'm toast, throw me away.

Finally, the marker comes with a canister that mounts right next to the whiteboard,

so you can just throw it in there and

recycle it without having to look around the room for a garbage can.

This is good for

people like me because I know the marker has ink in it when I pick it up,

and it's good for the manufacturer of the marker because inventory will turn faster.

Okay, so that's the narrative, so here's how we would map that out.

At the center of that map is our headline, this answers the question,

what is the story about?

In this case, the story is about a New Kind of Dry Erase Marker.

At the top of the map is the background or challenge statement, so

here we would too many markers that don't work.

Moving clockwise, our next message the opportunity message.

For every challenge there's gotta be an opportunity otherwise we're

just complaining.

Our opportunity here is a marker that will always work.

Now quick comment on the challenge in the opportunity messages before we move on

They're super important because they answer the critical question why.

Answering the question why creates context for the person who's listening and

they need that to understand what you're saying.

Hands down the biggest mistake I see people make when they're communicating

is skipping the question why.

Don't skip it.

Okay, moving on a long bottom of the map you have your messages.

This address the details or events that move the plot along.

In our case we three.

A sensor to know when the marker is dry, a funny message to help you throw it out and

finally a canister that makes it easy to recycle.

Now notice how there are three things here.

Don't try to squeeze too many messages in the how.

People will get lost easily, imagine if I told the joke that begin

with 17 guys walked in to a bar no body wants to hear that joke.

All right now we get to the most important message of all,

the payoff Where the resolution of the story.

In our case we have two pay offs, one for each stake holder.

Professionals like me will benefit because we know the mark of our work.

And the manufactures will sell more markers so it's a win-win.

Now, using this same structure I could tell this story in 30 seconds Or

in 30 minutes depending on who I'm talking to and what the situation calls for.

And it's the same story no matter what.

That's how you stand a message.

Mapping is a simple tool it doesn't take long but it will help you be much

compelling and effective when you use story telling to move people to action.

[MUSIC]

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