[MUSIC] Okay, so now you know how the narrative map works. Now let's look at a couple of examples that show how it really is the basis for a good communication. To start, read this quick email. The morning of Tuesday, May 5, John Smith, who is a working foreman in the Marketing organization in Alaska participated in a CPR class as part of the Work and Live Safe program. It's a good thing he paid attention. At midnight that night, John used those skills to save his wife's life. Jane had gotten out of bed to go to the bathroom. A couple minutes later, after hearing a concerning dull thud, John called her name. Silence. He leapt out of bed and found her on the floor- she wasn't breathing. While he was frantic and scared, the training he learned just 12 hours earlier kicked in and he started performing CPR. Jane began breathing again and ended up spending the next couple of days in the hospital. But thanks to John's quick thinking And the Alaska's team commitment to the Work and Live Safe Program, Jane is okay today. Pretty amazing story, right? Obviously this company is committed to safety and they want to communicate that to their employees. And there are a couple ways they could do that. One is they can kind of preach at them, but the other, which is what they chose to do, was to tell a personal story. So much more effective. So let's take that story and look at the underlying structure of it. And we'll use, as you guessed, we'll use a narrative map to do that. Okay, at the center of our map we have our headline. In this case a headline might be, CPR training pays off sooner than expected. It answers the question what, what is the story about? It's short and it's compelling, so I want to hear the rest of the story. Then if we move up to our background statement at the top, the background would be something like attended training, right? Because that's what he did, attended CPR training. Then we would move to our opportunity statement. In this case it's like the trigger that sets the whole story off. So his wife faints. Without that you don't really have any tension and there's no story. Then we would move on to kind of our how messages. How does the story develop? So he runs to the bathroom and he finds her on the floor. That's one. Then he administers CPR. That's two. And then she goes off to the hospital for a few days. So those are the three things that happened in the story. And that leads us to our payoff or our resolution of the story, which in this case is sort of a moral, right? The committment to safety pays off and saves lives. That's the whole point of the communication in the first place. Make sense? Okay, let's take a look at one more example. This is a presentation where somebody tells a personal story. It's super impactful, check it out. This is such a great story. So let's map it out together. At the center of our map we have our headline. In this case, let's just take what he has on his website. Three things I learned while my plane crashed. That's a great headline. It tells me what the story's about, it makes me want to hear more, and it's nice and short. Then if we move up to the top of the map what's the background for this story? Well, his plane is going down, right? He's going to land in the Hudson. Moving along to our opportunities statement there's a key thing that happens. He realizes dying is sad because you see what you should have changed. And that introduces his three things, his three hows. So the first one is, don't postpone anything that you want to do. The second one is, eliminate negative energy from your life. And then the third one is, focusing on what you really want. In his case, he really just wanted to be a great dad. That was the most important thing. All of this leads to the payoff, the conclusion of the story. In this case, he gets a gift, right? He gets a chance to live differently. And now he's trying to pass that gift on to the listeners and the viewers to challenge them to do the same. What a cool story. So that's story structure. I hope this was helpful for you. Narrative mapping is a really simple tool, but it can be very powerful for you as a leader. I would encourage you to use it anytime you have something important to say and you really need people to hear it. It is going to make what you say more compelling, more effective, and ultimately it's going to move people to action. [MUSIC]
