CHAPTER 18

Using Story Structure to Influence

Nancy Duarte and Jeff Davenport

Human beings are “storytelling animals” (Gottschall 2012). Our brains are wired for stories. They are how we process the world around us, giving us a lens through which we interpret almost all of life. According to Statista, “Consumers around the world spend an average of 463 minutes or over 7.5 hours per day with media. American consumers tend to average more time than most” (Watson 2020). Our thoughts, emotions, and actions can all be powerfully altered by stories. And yet, too often, training experiences are created without story in mind.

Built for Story

Lack of story-mindedness while building training programs creates learning that is centered on content, rather than the learner. The result is unmoved learners and decision makers who are unable to see the value in the training. But, when you use stories to focus the training, learners and decision makers can be moved and persuaded.

At Duarte, our hope is for learning professionals everywhere to realize the power of story and use it to create more empathetic, moving, and inspiring training that doesn’t just teach—but transforms.

Story-mindedness will help:

•  You empathetically see learners more clearly, so you know how to help them transform

•  Your learners comprehend their own stories and apply frameworks to live better stories

•  Decision makers discern the value of your strategy by seeing the powerful impact it will have

Let’s begin by getting a better understanding of why story is so impactful on the mind of a learner.

Three Reasons Stories Matter

A significant amount of research has been conducted to gain a deeper understanding of how the human brain responds to stories. This research gives us insights into how the listener’s (or learner’s) brain is functioning when they hear information communicated to them in the form of a story. Let’s look at three conclusions we can draw from this trove of research.

Stories Are How Humans Interpret the World

In 1944, in an effort to better understand how individuals made judgments of others, psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel created a short, animated film. The crude, 90-second black-and-white piece showcased a large triangle, a small triangle, and a circle as they moved around the screen in and out of a rectangle shape (Kenjirou 2010; Figure 18-1).

Heider and Semmel showed their film to a group of test subjects. Afterward, they asked the respondents to describe what they saw. Almost every subject described the video in terms of a story, even though all they saw were shapes moving. Their stories varied, but the general idea remained the same: a “bully” (the large triangle) was mad at, or wanted something from, the “victim” (the circle). The smaller triangle stepped in and not only distracted the bully’s attention from the victim but also locked the bully inside the large rectangle. As the small triangle and circle escaped, the bully broke apart the rectangle, smashing it to pieces in a fit of rage.

Heider and Simmel concluded that humans view the world around them through the lens of story, perceiving simple moving shapes in the form of a narrative arc.

Humans unconsciously attach literal-minded things to narrative. If we’re in a meeting and an attendee arrives late, covered in mud splatters and grease, we don’t simply shrug and think, “Oh, they are here finally and covered in mud and grease.” Our brains form a narrative around what could have happened. We will create or inquire about the backstory to comprehend what we’re seeing.

As learning professionals, this means that even when you’re not explicitly communicating via story, our learners’ minds are trying to interpret the data and facts we’re sharing through the lens of story.

Stories Stick

For learners to grow and change, they must be able to recall what they’ve been taught. Striking facts and data points may jar learners in the moment they’re communicated, implying impact, but stories leave a much longer-lasting impression on learners.

In their book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip and Dan Heath cite a study where Stanford students were asked to listen to presentations and then later report on what they could recall. The presentations included two types of content: statistics and stories. When asked what they remembered, only 5 percent of the respondents remembered a single statistic, whereas 68 percent remembered at least one story.

Because of the way stories engage listeners’ brains, they stick in our memory longer than facts—even strong, powerful facts.

Think about the last three TED Talks you watched. The talks may have included a jarring statistic that, in the moment, made you sit up and take notice. But can you remember any with accuracy today? You may have a general impression of them, but did the numbers stick with you? Now, think about the stories those TED speakers told. Can you recall one of them? You may not be able to remember every beat, but can you remember the overall flow and point of the story? According to the Heath brothers, you’re much, much more likely to remember the stories than the statistics.

It’s the same with learners. The stories you tell while training will “stick” with learners much longer than the facts, data, or statements shared (Boris 2017).

Why does this matter? Because if learners can’t remember the key points they learned, they’ll be less likely to apply them in the moment. This in-the-moment application is the gold standard of training development—proof of long-lasting behavior change (Kay 2016).

Stories Release Powerful Chemicals Within Listeners

Stories help listeners focus, remember, and act because of the way they alter the brain’s neurochemical processes. Studies show that when listeners are enthralled (or “transported,” as story researchers describe the phenomenon), the hormone cortisol is let loose inside their blood (Smith 2016). As they experience the story, their minds take in the drama and tension of the various characters, resulting in nervous or anxious feelings. This is why we grip the arm of our chair when a character in a scary movie walks into a spooky house or grimace as the guy bumbles his efforts to get the girl to fall in love with him. As we watch, we’re faintly experiencing the drama as if it were happening to us.

This release of cortisol (which normally gets a bad rap as the “stress hormone”) actually helps listeners pay attention. That’s why we focus more intently on stories with higher levels of drama. When we feel the tension, more cortisol is released, and our focus increases.

Stories also increase levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in listeners’ brains. Dopamine not only makes listeners feel good (which is one of the reasons we relax at the end of a taxing day by watching movies and television shows), but it also greatly increases memory (Shohamy and Adcock 2010). This is important because, as stated earlier, training programs can alter behavior only when the information they share is remembered.

Other chemicals are also released in a listener’s bloodstream. For example, when a listener hears an emotionally laden story, their levels of the hormone oxytocin spike. This effect was most powerfully exhibited in a study performed by neuroeconomist Paul Zak (2015). Participants were shown a short film about a father dealing with his son, who had been diagnosed with cancer. Based on blood taken from the viewers after watching the film, they experienced higher levels of both cortisol and oxytocin. Zak observed that oxytocin moved listeners to action, compelling them to donate more based on the story they’d experienced.

In another study, participants who learned about the problems of starvation in Africa from factual information donated less than half the amount that was given by participants who heard a story about a struggling African child (Small, Loewenstein, and Slovic 2007).

Cortisol increases focus, dopamine increases memory, and oxytocin increases likelihood to act. These biochemical responses within a listener’s brain all point to the power of story to not only engage listeners’ brains but also influence behavior.

With a stronger understanding of the power of story to engage learners, help content stick with them, and move them to action, we arrive at the question, “How can I leverage story to benefit my learners?”

When crafting a new learning experience, it’s a trap to start with the question, “What do we need to teach?” At first blush, this seems like a reasonable question because content often drives course creation and learning design. But what if you shifted your thinking? What if instead of starting with the content needing to be taught, you started by getting a better sense of the learners’ stories? To some, such learner-centric thinking isn’t new, but putting that philosophy into practice can prove challenging.

By considering learners heroes of a story, you can create more empathetic—and engaging—learning experiences that leave a longer-lasting impact on their journey of transformation.

The Seven Transformation Story Beats

The most powerful stories are stories of transformation. They describe a person (or group of people) who embark on an adventure, seeking something valuable, and, in the process, learning valuable lessons. They follow a similar three-act structure that includes a beginning, middle, and end. And they outline three ways to use stories: how you see your learners, how learners see themselves, and how decision makers see the value of your training.

After spending years analyzing dozens of story structure theories found in the works of Aristotle, Gustav Freytag, and Joseph Campbell (along with many other novelists, screenwriters, and playwrights), we at Duarte have identified the most important moments in any well-told story. We call them the Seven Transformation Story Beats. They provide the stepping-stones necessary to help story-minded people think through the critical stages of a powerful story.

We’ve created a worksheet based on the seven transformation story beats to help you guide your training development. It’s available on the handbook website, ATDHandbook3.org.

The seven beats are:

•  Introducing the hero: Who is the hero?

•  Looking toward the goal: What does the hero want?

•  Sizing up the obstacle: What is standing in the hero’s way?

•  Encountering the mentor: Who can help the hero overcome the obstacles?

•  Considering the tools: What does the mentor offer that will help the hero?

•  Deciding to receive: Does the hero accept or reject the tools the mentor offers?

•  Realizing the outcome: What happens as a result?

These can be grouped in terms of the set-up beats (the beginning), the drama beats (the middle), and the resolution beat (the end):

•  The Set-Up Beats:

  Introducing the hero is when the audience meets the hero and discovers who the hero is—their personality, their strengths, their flaws, their desires, and the world in which they live.

  Looking toward the goal is when the audience understands what the hero is chasing after. This is how the hero defines success. Every hero needs a goal, otherwise there is no story.

  Sizing up the obstacles describes the roadblocks standing between the hero and the goal. If there are no obstructions in the hero’s way, there is no drama or suspense and, thus (again), there is no story.

•  The Drama Beats:

  Encountering the mentor is the moment in the story when the hero meets a wise and experienced guide who can help them on their journey. The relationship with the mentor is valued because of what they offer.

  Considering the tools is the mentor’s extension of aid. The tools are the “just right” items the hero needs to continue on their journey, overcome the obstacles, and achieve their goals.

  Deciding to receive is the hero’s choice. Will the hero accept the tools the mentor has offered and use them? Or will they reject them? This decision point is the fulcrum of this simple story form.

•  The Resolution Beat:

  Realizing the outcome is the result of the decisions the hero makes. If the hero trusts the mentor and chooses to receive and use the tools, their outcome is positive. A positive outcome occurs when the hero uses the tools to overcome obstacles and reach the goal. If the hero said no to the mentor’s offer and rejected the tools (or received them, but did not use them), then the outcome is negative.

All great stories include some form of this sequence of moments. Table 18-1 shows how the Disney version of Pinocchio aligns to the Transformation Story Beats.

The Learner Is the Hero on a Transformative Journey and You Are the Mentor

Now, imagine you’re creating a training program to teach certain knowledge or skills to your learners. Let’s look at how these Seven Transformation Story Beats can map to your learners’ transformation journey.

The Set-Up Beats

The introduction of the hero. The Hero is a single learner or group of learners. What are your learners like? In general, how would you describe them? What are their personalities? Strengths? Flaws? Deep desires? What keeps them up at night? What excites them? What is their world?

The articulation of the goal. Your learners want—or need—to achieve something. Otherwise, there would be no need to create a learning journey for them. What is their goal? Is it to rise in their career? Is it to influence their boss, a customer, or their team? Is it to communicate more effectively? Manage change? Work better with teams? Serve customers better? Consider this broad set of goals for your learners and try to avoid thinking of the goal as “learning something.” What they will learn isn’t the goal. As we’ll see, it’s the tool.

Understanding the obstacles. Again, if there are no obstacles standing between the hero and their goal, then there is no story. What’s keeping your learners from achieving their goals? As you drill into this question, you’ll uncover obstacles around lack of time and fixed mindset. That’s good! That’s why you’re the one answering these questions on behalf of your learners.

You won’t be able to help transform your learners if you don’t truly understand their current state before creating or delivering a learning experience.

The Drama Beats

The encounter with the mentor. This is where you come in. Who is the mentor in a learning journey? You. You and your team are, in sum, the mentor archetype. You are the one offering the guidance and tools to help them get unstuck at the right moment so they reach their goals. You are the trusted guide. Ask yourself why learners should trust you and your team. Is it because you have experience reaching similar goals? Is it because you truly understand how to help others overcome obstacles like theirs? Is it because you have keen insights into what’s to come for those learners and the new challenges they’ll face as they try to apply what they’ve learned to their work?

You have to see yourself as valuable to your learners because they’re going to rely on you to understand how best to navigate their future as they grow and transform. You’ll also get a better sense of the value L&D brings to the organization and how it supports the larger corporate strategy.

Offering of the tools. This is the moment in your learners’ story when you show them how to wield the tools they’ll need to overcome their obstacles and reach their goals. These tools will likely come in the form of expert content, immersive training experiences, memorable job aids, or some other tool. The medium isn’t what is important, however. What’s important is how you articulate the tool’s power so your learners choose to add it to their tool belt.

What are you offering learners that helps them overcome challenges? Is it a skill? Is it a mindset? Is it a more productive way of doing their job? Is it a more effective way of interacting with others? How will these tools help employees support the organization’s overall mission? Think carefully about what these tools provide and how you would describe them in a single sentence. They become the bedrock of the learning experience. But, more than that, they’re a way of realizing the value you, the mentor, are offering to the hero.

A decision to be made. This is the moment (or series of moments) when your learners either decide to accept and apply the skills, insights, processes, or mindset shifts you’re offering them—or not. Crafting and designing experiences is all about making it easy for learners to say, “Yes, I believe these are the right tools for me to help me overcome my obstacles and reach my goals. Although it will cost me—leaving behind my old ways of doing things—these tools are clearly worth it.”

The Resolution Beat

The final outcome. This is how it all ends. How do you envision learners flourishing after you’ve trained them? Learners may rave about the experience, but the final outcome is directly tied to the goals the learners set and whether or not they achieve them. Although many factors go into whether or not the learners’ goals are achieved, it’s important to ask whether the tools offered help the learner get closer to those goals. In a larger sense, how does the outcome positively affect the organization? The experience you design qualifies as a success if learners accept and apply the tools you’ve offered, and, in turn, the tools help them achieve their goals. Likewise, a learning experience could be considered a failure if the tools go unaccepted and unapplied, and, because of that, the learners miss their goals.

By thinking in terms of the Seven Transformation Story Beats, you can focus on more outcome-driven experiences with the unwavering aim of helping learners get past their roadblocks and achieve what they want (as well as your organization’s needs). Beats help you create more empathetic, learner-focused training programs, rather than content-first experiences.

It’s important to note that using this process doesn’t just highlight how training can drive observable actions and behaviors. The beats also help point to a deeper, inner transformation they’re experiencing as well.

Case in point, recall a memorable film or novel. More than likely, the protagonist experienced some sort of practical, physical journey, like getting the girl, saving the day, winning the battle, solving the crime, or stopping the bad guy. Those are all physical things—an outer journey. But if that story has endured for you in a deeper way, it’s likely the main character also experienced an internal transformation—an inner journey. The shy, standoffish woman not only found romantic love, but also found a way to love herself. The headstrong detective solved the mystery, but also gained humility as he understood he didn’t always see things clearly. The self-centered mogul who’d always done the right thing for the wrong reasons discovers that if they work for the common good, they gain an even greater reward.

Powerful learning experiences immerse learners in an outer journey of understanding material, gaining skills, or adopting new systems or processes. And the ones learners remember years later also lead them on an inner journey. This inner journey transforms them into more a confident, humble, brave, wise, team-oriented, vision-minded, strategic, and focused person. When creating and designing experiences with the outer journey and the inner journey in mind, learners don’t just change, they transform, growing into a better worker, team member, or human being.

Table 18-2 presents an example of how we applied the Seven Transformation Story Beats when creating Captivate, Duarte’s public-speaking workshop. (Note: We did a number of these to focus on a variety of learners, but this shows how we zeroed in on one type of learner.)

Try using the story beats to see the true value of the tools you’re offering and how your training will help learners adopt them and, ultimately, achieve their goals. You can also use this structure to frame the broader learning trajectory as learners grow and transform.

Motivating and Warning Stories Help Learners Commit to a Journey

As we’ve established, stories are an effective means of helping you see your learners; yet story can also help your learners see themselves better, which inspires them to continue along their path of transformation.

Many learners struggle to see how the training will help them get what they want. Your role is to help them decide to receive the tools. Telling the right story will help them see the value and inspire learners to apply them. Two types of stories can achieve this: a motivating story or a warning story.

•  Motivating stories are success stories. They feature other learners (heroes) with similar goals and obstacles as your learners. They describe how those learners heard the mentor out, considered the tools, and ultimately decided to receive and use them. This resulted in a positive outcome—them reaching their goals. Learners see themselves in the story and ultimately say to themselves, “I want to be like that learner, so I’ll do what that learner did.”

•  Warning stories are the opposite. They are cautionary tales designed to redirect learners from possible failure. Warning stories describe learners who heard the mentor’s offer but rejected the tools. This resulted in them missing their goals. Warning stories help learners see the peril in what could happen if they reject the tools. You want the learners to say to themselves, “I don’t want to be like that learner. Because of that, I’m not going to do what they did.”

In our presentation development workshop, Resonate, our facilitators often use both motivating stories and warning stories to help attendees better understand what’s at stake and to inspire them to receive and apply the information. For example, they might share about a previous attendee who used the workshop content to build a presentation that not only got their ideas noticed but also got them promoted! Or how one attendee closed a $500 million deal. Or how a learner was able to motivate a team that was previously unable to get an initiative to move forward. They also share stories of clients who resisted adopting our methodology and, thus, ended up with less-than-compelling ratings on their keynote presentation, didn’t close the deal, or failed to get the budget funding they needed.

These stories aren’t told to brag about the value of the training. They’re included to help learners see themselves in the stories of others and inspire them to emulate the positive stories and avoid the negative stories.

These motivating and warning stories can be told at any point during training. When told at the beginning they can give learners a lens through which to view the value of the tools. Stories can also be told at key points during the training in which you, as the facilitator or designer, anticipate resistance. They can help get participants over the hump of pushback and see how valuable these tools are. Tell stories at the end so learners leave feeling energized, inspired, and excited to apply what they’ve learned. We try to end all our workshops with a motivating story of how previous participants went on to great success so participants can see how they too can experience that same level of transformation.

Ask yourself these questions:

•  When would stories help learners better understand their own experiences?

•  When are motivating stories an appropriate means of helping them transform?

•  When would a warning story be more apropos?

Carefully consider the moment to tell a story, and which one to tell.

Tell Stories to Move Decision Makers

Leverage stories as a means of helping decision makers understand the value of training so they continue to fund and offer training, increase the offerings, or trust you with the resources necessary to create more training content.

Your decision makers could be external clients who purchase training from you or your organization, or they could be internal stakeholders who look to you for the development of themselves and their team. Every decision maker wants to know about the return on investment in training so they can get a sense of the value the organization will receive in return. Story helps the ROI come to life.

Yes, it’s helpful for decision makers to see the cold hard facts of the ROI—how it influences productivity, the bottom line, employee satisfaction, and so forth. But when you communicate the data points, along with a story describing real people who experience real transformations that result in achieving actual goals, the value of training sticks in their mind.

At Duarte, we organize our outcome stories so that it’s as easy as possible for anyone to find stories that their customers will find relatable. If a buyer has learners (heroes) who struggle because their slides are too busy, we have stories about learners who overcame that challenge after taking our VisualStory workshop. They learned how to simplify their slide contents and their proposal got approved. When talking to a customer whose learners need help calming their nerves when presenting, we have stories of Captivate attendees who found the confidence they needed to deliver well, resulting in them being noticed and advancing their career.

Final Thoughts

Remember, humans are storytelling animals who are moved by stories. And decision makers are humans, which means they are just as likely to be moved to action by stories (especially stories accompanied by facts and data), as the rest of us.

Ask yourself these questions:

•  How can you begin to leverage stories to communicate with your decision makers?

•  What’s your file of stories like?

•  Do you have stories about learners who achieved the goals they needed?

•  Are those stories organized in such a way that you can draw on them as each situation demands?

We’ve discovered that the more we center our training on a story mindset, the more we create empathetic, powerful, transformative programs. We hope the same for you. Challenge yourself to approach training with you as the mentor, who provides the right skills and information (tools) for your learners (the heroes).

Take every opportunity to tell stories about other learners who either achieved their goals or missed them because of accepting or rejecting your tools.

Consider also how you can tell stories to help decision makers see the training’s true ROI and how you don’t just teach, you transform.

By adopting a story mindset while building and delivering training, you’ll begin to see your learners differently and see yourself differently, too. You’ll identify as the wise, experienced mentor with a tremendous amount of knowledge to offer learners who cross your path.

How do you become that? By being a lifelong learner and seeker of wisdom yourself. Seeing yourself this way will increase your confidence as you understand the value of what you have to offer each learner. The very reason you went into this profession in the first place was to change lives and improve human flourishing. In the end, as you take on a story-first mindset, not only will your learners transform, but you and your culture will transform too.

About the Authors

Nancy Duarte is CEO of Duarte and the author of six bestselling books. Known as the Storyteller of the Valley, Nancy has worked with the highest-performing brands and executives in the world. She is a communication expert who has been featured in Fortune, Time Magazine, Forbes, Fast Company, Wired, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and the LA Times, as well as on CNN. As a persuasion expert, Nancy cracked the code for effectively incorporating story patterns into business communications. She has two grandsons and a grand-dogger.

Jeff Davenport is a content developer, executive speaker coach, and workshop designer at Duarte. He’s coached dozens of Fortune 500 executives to help them leverage the power of story in their keynotes and everyday communications, while also authoring Duarte’s Story Fundamentals Workshop and co-authoring the Captivate Public Speaking Workshop. An experienced public speaker and produced screenwriter, Jeff loves helping communicators everywhere experience the power of story. He lives in Colorado with his wife, Kristin, and their two daughters.

References

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Gottschall, J. 2012. The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Heath, C., and D. Heath. 2007. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. New York: Random House.

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Kay, D. 2016. “Learning Theories 101: Application to Everyday Teaching and Scholarship.” Advances in Physiology Education 40(1): 17–25.

Kenjirou. 2010. “Heider and Simmel (1944) animation.” YouTube. July 16, 2010. youtube.com/watch?v=VTNmLt7QX8E.

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Recommended Resources

Davenport, J. n.d. “These Screenwriting Principles Will Make Your Business Story More Engaging.” Duarte. duarte.com/presentation-skills-resources/these-screenwriting-principles-will-make-your-business-story-more-engaging.

Davenport, J. n.d. “3 Situations That Demand a Story.” Duarte. duarte.com/presentation-skills-resources/3-situations-that-demand-a-story.

Duarte, N. 2010. Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.

Duarte, N. 2012. HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.

Duarte, N., and P. Sanchez. 2016. Illuminate: Ignite Change Through Speeches, Stories, Ceremonies, and Symbols. New York: Portfolio/Penguin.