[MUSIC]
I'm going to try something a little different.
I'm going to tell you a story, but it's a different kind of story.
It's very short, it only has three sentences.
Are you ready?
>> Yes.
>> Thanks, Jake.
He went to the store.
Fred died.
Sharon went hungry and wept.
Now, in listening to this story,
what can you all tell me about maybe the relationship between Fred and Sharon?
Any ideas?
Does anybody think they were married?
Ted Ming, yeah.
>> [INAUDIBLE] >> So
did you think that Fred was the one who went to the grocery store?
And you also thought that the store that Fred was going to was a grocery
store, right?
So in looking at this story,
I didn't actually say any of that.
In these three simple sentences,
Ted interpreted some things that weren't necessarily there.
Now, our brains are actually hardwired to do this.
Now imagine that you're trying to convince someone of your side of an argument,
or trying to explain something, some concept to somebody.
People may be interpreting things that aren’t necessarily there.
So what’s going on here?
What can science tell us about how we’re interpreting this information, and
how can we use that information to tell better stories?
>> Our brains are pre-disposed to think in story terms and in story structures.
This impacts how we understand things, how we make sense of things, and
what we choose to remember and what we choose to forget.
These story terms and structures, they provide a sense of order
to information that's coming to us that's otherwise disorderly.
Now Kendall Haven and his team of researchers, who are the leading
researchers on this topic, they've done an extensive amount of work.
And they've found that this story-like structure that our brains are so
accustomed to, they're the result of over 100,000 years of evolution.
They've also found the specific part of our brain that's in charge
of applying this story-like structure, it's called the Neural Story Net.
And the neural story net has one very important goal.
It needs to satisfy the Make Sense Mandate of our brains.
So what is the Make Sense Mandate?
It's very simple, actually.
It just says that everything we see and
hear needs to make sense before we actually understand and learn it.
It's pretty simple, right?
Things just need to make sense before we learn it.
But what's more interesting to observe is how our neural story net
impacts the information that we're receiving if it's disorderly.
How does it manipulate information that's told to us in order to force it to
make sense?
Let's take Dillon's example.
He gave you three sentences, completely disjointed and disorganized.
Your neural story nets started making certain assumptions about those
three sentences in order to make it make sense to you.
He went to the store.
Fred died.
Sharon went hungry and wept.
You made the assumption that Fred and Sharon were married.
You made the assumption that the story was a grocery store.
Dillon didn't actually say any of that, but you assumed it.
That's your neural story net in action.
That's it working to try to bring some connection between these
disjointed sentences.
Now it can get worse than this.
If the story being told to you is so disjointed, if it's so disorganized,
your brain may have to work so hard that it just decides, hey, let's disengage.
Let's forget about what's being told to us right now.
It might tell your body to slouch back in your chair.
It might tell your hand to reach into your pocket, pull out your iPhone,
you just play around on it and forget about it, forget about class.
Now look, that's all well and good if we're the listeners in the audience.
If we're the listeners, sure, we can just store some information, we can make some
assumptions, can maybe just forget about things and play back on our iPhones.
But what if we're the communicators?
What if we're the ones who
need to send some very important message to the audience?
What if we have a crucial message and we can't let the audience disengage?
We can't let them distort our information.
If that's the case, then we need some sort of strategy.
We need to come up with something to be able to fit our message into
a story-like structure.
Because it's your job, as storytellers, to connect all the dots for your audience.
So Kendall Haven, in all his research, he's come up with four major concepts
which govern how well a message is delivered and whether that delivery
fits into the story-like structure that our brains are accustomed to.
So let's learn about those four major concepts.
>> The four concepts are rooted in one belief, and that is the listener's ability
to make sense of our story, directly impact our ability to influence them.
So the first step, engagement.
Now engagement does not necessarily guarantee influence automatically, but
it is certainly the first step to making it possible.
So what is engagement?
Engagement is our ability to physically show up.
It's our intentive focus on making sure that when we're connecting with our
listeners and we're physically being engaged with them.
No matter how complex and nuanced the story is,
to no matter how simple the story is, like Dylan's three-sentence story.
What we've learned in class is that there are a couple of different ways in which we
can actually, physically engage.
Through the Use of Pauses,
our Tone of Voice, our Hand Gesturing,
our Eye Contact, and our Posture.
Transportation, what
we learned from the neural story net is that listeners are constantly trying to
figure out what information we need to throw away and what information we need
to keep to actually make sense of a story being told to us.
What transportation enables us to do as storytellers,
what you as storytellers, is it helps a listener visualize and
contextualize the story and the plot line that they're being put into.
And that can happen in various formats.
In class, we learn through visual word plays as one example.
To even Mark Bezos physically, overtly, bringing us and
transporting us into his storyline as a firefighter in his TED talk.
Ultimately, transportation is aimed at building trust
between the story, the storyteller and the narrative being told.
So with engagement, with transportation,
Ash will speak a bit more about how to deliver content that is influencing.
>> So the third point in this is relevance.
It is self-explanatory.
As Judy says there's aim, understand your audience,
design your intent and narrate your message accordingly.
So your content has to be relevant to your audience
because our mind has a make sense mandate.
Our mind is constantly asking this question, what's in it for me?
How am I related to this story?
If there is no connection, the mind can outrightly reject your message,
and do something as Jeff said, play with the mobile phone or completely disconnect.
But if you can make sense with your audience,
if you can stay relevant to your audience, you can completely sell your idea.
The fourth is influence.
This is the whole purpose of your message.
This is what you're trying to do with your story.
You want to influence their behavior.
You want to make your audience do certain things in the way you want them to do.
But is it the only behavior that we want to address?
Probably not.
Behavior is only a manifestation.
We want to address their attitudes.
We want to address their beliefs, their knowledge.
We want to alter that.
We want to create a parallel stream of their beliefs.
Okay, what you're saying, what you're thinking is right, but
let us think it this way.
Do not try to correct that.
Do not try to say, no, what you're saying is wrong, what I'm saying is right.
That doesn't sell, no.
You have to alter it, you have to define a new balance tree.
In summary, we talked about three things today.
Our brain analyzes every message in story form.
If it cannot connect with a story, our message does not pass through.
Number one message.
Number two, based on if our idea makes sense,
based on the make sense mandate in our brain, our message can be accepted,
altered or completely rejected by our audience.
And third, we can craft good stories if we follow a structure.
If we can stay engaged,
if we can transport our audience to the place where we want to take them,
it stays relevant and influence their attitude, belief and knowledge.
We can craft excellent stories that can influence our audience.
Thank you.
[MUSIC]