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Lesson Info

Me, We, & Urgency

So what I want us to do for a second is put away the story structure. So that story structure, we're gonna come back to that. Now that we got it, we're gonna use that. What I wanna do is I wanna nest that story structure into something larger, which is our goal. So stories are extra powerful when they're linked to a larger goal of what we're trying to accomplish. What are we trying to influence around? What are we trying to make happen? So I wanna give you a model of thinking through how to structure influencing on a certain topic and then we're gonna take a story and put it inside of that to give it power. That'll make more sense as we go, but I just want you to leave story behind, but know we're gonna inject it in, okay? So kinda going up a level in structure. So the model I want to connect you to is something I call me, we, and urgency. So the way we're gonna do this is we're gonna think about when we're telling when we're sort of having an influencing topic. In fact, you know what ...

I'll do to start? Let's just start with this. I want everyone to write down something that they really care about influencing on. If it's leadership-based or work-based, think about do you want your team to stay together and support each other during a big re-org? Or do we want people to really get inspired around a branding change or a sort of change in focus of the company? What's the thing that you really care about influencing people on? What do you want to get across? If it's in your personal life or a little less personal, that's okay too. Think about what's important? What do you want to give someone or create? What's the impact you want? I want you to pick something right now that has meaning to you and charge. If it's professional, great. That's kind of what we're applying this to, but it doesn't have to be. And in the workbook there's sort of a section for that. And I think doing this first is gonna help us anchor. Just gonna give you about 10 more seconds to make sure you have your topic locked in. You online, please take the time to write this down. Just making that choice makes a huge impact, 'cause you've made a choice. There's momentum. You're going instead of like standing back and waiting. We've made a choice. Okay, will someone share what they're gonna wanna influence around? What we're gonna work with for the rest of the course? Yeah, Sam? I would ultimately like to inspire people to appreciate science and scientific research, and to approach the world with a sense of care and also curiosity. Awesome. That's so powerful. We can work with that. Let's hear one more. Yeah, Ruben? So, for me, I really wanna inspire my team to wanna develop and be promoted and get to that next level, and eventually be where I am. Beautiful, so instilling that personal connection and passion and ignition for personal development and career development. Wonderful. Okay. Any questions about the topic before we move on? This is an important place to be anchored in. Everyone feels good. You online, hope you feel good too. So the idea is me, we, and urgency, okay? So the way we're gonna structure our influencing approach, 'cause the goal is action. We want people to change what they're doing. So the way to do it that we're gonna talk about is to start introducing yourself. What that means is why am I here and why do I care? So if you're Sam and you're here to influence us to care about science, education, and to approach the world with care, why do you care about those things? Why is that your thing that you're focused on? Who am I? Ruben, for you, why do you care about personal development? Why is that a thing you really wanna give to people, yeah? So you're doing an introduction to yourself. It's not, "Hi, my name is." Which, that might be part of the way you do it, but it's more an introduction of why are you front of me? What about you has driven you to this place? People wanna meet you in that way, right? Then what we're gonna do is we're gonna take the part about you, you start with you, 'cause you want something to happen so you're coming forward. I'm stepping forward. Please listen to me. Please listen to me, and here's who I am. And now here's how who I am connects to you. So I've just told you who I am and why this is important to me. How does that relate to you? So people wanna know who you are, but then they wanna know how do I fit in? So we gotta make that link to them. We gotta connect with our audience. I am like you, or you could be like me, or we could be like each other potentially after we have this conversation. This is how you fit in. We wanna make that clear. Then we wanna have some urgency at the end. A call to action. What are you asking them to do? You gotta land that plane for everyone, right? We're having a talk, we're having a talk, we're having a talk. Okay, cool. I'm with you. What are we doing? Here's what I think we should do, or what you should do, or what I'm gonna do and what I think you should join me in. So I'm gonna go a little bit more into each. What I'd like is, as I explain, for you to think about anchor points. We talked about the strategic level, right? There's the theme. We kinda got to that theme level. What we're gonna talk about, yeah? Okay, so now we're gonna anchor as we go through. Just no more than three key things you wanna get across in each section, and as we talk I'll explain more. So introducing yourself. Why am I here? Why do I care? So take a moment and write down in your workbooks, or if you're online, jot down why are you here? Why do you care? They could just be keywords. Three keywords, or one keyword, or two keywords. It doesn't have to be like the one phrase. It could be an idea. It could be an experience. It's like this is why I'm the one talking about this to you right now. And these are just rough sketches right now. You don't have to put a lot of detail in 'em. We're gonna add a story that's gonna help illustrate these points, but you're picking like your themes for this section, okay? Making a choice. Now, the next one is connect with your audience. Think about what you just wrote about why you're here. How could that relate to my audience? Just think about that for a second. If you were on the other end and someone just told me, okay, that's why I'm here, why would they maybe care about that? How's that relate to them? Why should they care? Why should they invest themselves? So if it's the environment, maybe it's like, hey, I care about the environment because I grew up going outdoors all the time. I've lived my life outdoors. And you should care too, because we all share the same nature. Even if you're not as big into it, maybe your kid will, or maybe one day you will want to be part of it. You'll discover a love for it, and you'll want it to be waiting there for you. That'd be an example. Or maybe, and this is a trick people are doing to save the Amazon, places like that, there are so many species of plants, fungus, animals that hold cures to things that are non-drug related that can heal us that we haven't even discovered yet. And if we destroy the rainforests, we may be killing ourselves in the process. So even if you never care about going to the rainforests, you might have a disease or a loved one might have a disease that could be cured. Their cancer, their diabetes, whatever, could be cured by something from nature, right? So that could be why they care. Lots of different ways you can connect. It's really a choice there. So this is the urgency piece. Call to action. What do you want them to do? Bring us together with a focus. So if you're Sam, are you trying to get people to donate money? To share your video on their Facebook? To tell a friend? Read a book that you think would really ignite them? Watch a documentary? What is the call to action? And why is it critical to act now? So what do you want them to do, but why is now the time? You gotta make that link. Why don't we just defer it? There's probably a good reason, but you gotta make it. You gotta make that good reason. So what I'd like, then, is for someone to tell us their flow. You don't have to do it in the form of a story. I want you to just talk through. Here's my topic, here's why it relates to me, here's how it connects to my audience, and then here's what I want them to do. It doesn't have to flow together. You can just kind of talk through it by section. Who will talk through theirs for us? So I start with... Sorry, take me through the exercise. So you're gonna tell us your topic. Okay. And you kinda already did, so you can tell us the abbreviated version. Okay. I'll remind them. So what's your influencing topic? Yeah, so my topic is I would like to inspire people to appreciate science and to approach the world with a scientific curiosity and a sense of care. Beautiful. So why are you the one talking about this? What are you doing here? Why do you care? So I've personally seen how engaging scientific curiosity can be. I don't know if it was in this course or the previous one where I give the example Mr. Ventura, the handstand skateboarding physics teacher in high school, but I've seen firsthand how interesting and engaging it can be, and science isn't always exciting or accessible or entertaining, but it always can be. And great, and so, one thing I'd say there in that section is, what has being curious about science given you in your life? How has it benefited you? It's given me a sense of wonder when I see something happening, like crazy chemical reactions where stuff explodes, or like, pouring two liquids into a jar and then it turns into this crazy foam snake that then lights on fire. It seems magical almost, so a sense of wonder is what it's given me. Yeah. Wonder. Curiosity. Great. I think we wanna add that in there, 'cause there's some benefit to science curiosity that you want people to feel. Sam, you care so much about curiosity and science and approaching that with care, but it's given you so much. That's the point where you wanna tell them what's the one or two things it's given you that you think are gonna really resonate? That are most powerful for you? Make sense? Yeah. Okay, so why should they care? I also wrote down this anecdote, to use an earlier tool that we learned, from Stranger Things, if anyone remembers watching that. I think season one or something, the science teacher, who's my favorite character. you can see why, is talking to Hopper, the police officer, and he says, the police officer says, you know, I didn't really care for science. I was never really good at it, and the science teacher says, oh, you just didn't have a good teacher. It's not that science is hard or science is boring or science is dry or useless, it's that people just don't have good teachers. So maybe that's part of the reason you care so much, is that you feel like it's really possible for everyone to have a sense about the reality around them if they just have the right teacher. So that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to connect them to that. Okay, so why should they care? So I think I could probably workshop this a little bit more but what I have so far is that you being my audience don't have to be a scientist in order to think like a scientist and in order to support scientific research and discoveries in whatever form that takes. Whether that's, like, reading articles or contributing financially, or just generally showing your support. Yeah, and so, going a step further, what has science given them that they should care about? Literally everything. Everything in this room. Your body. Food. Yeah. It's everywhere. Yeah, exactly. So I would make that connection for them. Everything you love, there's a scientific component to it, and maybe even our modern scientists have made that thing better or advanced it, right? There was like these commercials like about (mumbling). Like, we don't make the stuff you love. We make the stuff you love better. You remember those old commercials? And that's kind of what you're saying about science too, is like, well, science doesn't necessarily make the things necessarily. Those are like particles from nature that existed. But we can kinda take things and make them better. Make your life better. That's the dream of science. That's the hope of science, right? So really connecting them to that. That might be a key point of why they should care, cool? And then why is now an important time that they should be... Actually, so let me ask you first, what do you want them to do? So what I have is an idea of what I want them to do is just show a scientific curiosity. Take a curious approach to the world. Ask questions. Try and find the answers for yourself. And if you can, you know, go through the process of discovery and show support for scientific progress and just human advancement in whatever way that takes. Like I said, whether that's donating or watching scientific shows like Cosmos, which there's a new version of Cosmos that's hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson now that came out recently, so, yeah, whatever form that takes, I guess. I don't have a (mumbling). So I would just pick one clear one. Yeah. Okay. At the end of this, if you could have them do one thing when they leave, what would it be? What do you think would be most impactful? Find out what makes them most curious about life. Like, what is it about just life, the universe, that you want to understand the most? Yeah, so maybe what you're asking is pick one thing that you're most curious about and learn more about it when you leave here. Learn some science behind that thing that you love. Yeah. Cool. That's a pretty good call of action. Now, so you're gonna ask them pick the thing you're really curious about and learn more about it. Now, why is now an important time to do that in time-space? Why now? I would argue that critical thinking and the ability to evaluate different sources of information and process them and kind of come to a conclusion is really important in today's just society in general. Pretty persuasive, right? With all the fake news or things like that. Yeah, I didn't want to go there, but yes, exactly. That's exactly what I mean, yeah. But that's what you're saying. It's like, there's a lot of misinformation, so if you know how to sort through information yourself, you can have a lot more power and independence of your thinking. That's a powerful urgency message. Fantastic. So you see how that got a little clearer as we went. So just as you're workshopping and just mixing notes on how you're gonna clean that up, and just be a little more streamlined. What is the part about you that's the most important? What should they connect to? What do you want them to do? And why does now matter? Good? Okay, let's do one more. Is someone willing to share one more? It was kind of hard for me to get past the connecting with your audience part. Like, why should people care? Because this is such an inherently interesting topic for me that I have a hard time understanding people's lack of excitement about it, and do you have any advice for approaching the why should you care part? Especially if you have an audience that might not actually care and you need to kind of draw that bridge. For you, I'd pick one thing that you really care about that you get out of it and connect to why that would matter to them, so I'll stay with wonder then. Okay? So it gives you a sense of wonder. Tell them what that's given you. What is living with wonder? How is that better than living without wonder in your life? And then connect it to their life. How them maybe not living with as much wonder is maybe negatively impacting them. They might not even know yet that they should care about wonder. Like, after hearing Sam talk, they came in going like, I didn't know I had a wonder deficiency, but now I have a wonder deficiency to reckon with. And that's okay if someone leaves kind of feeling a little, oh, wow, I really need to restructure some things. It might not be such an easy conversation, and so maybe I'll ask you now that you've had a chance to think about it for a second, or anyone in the room, what is bad about people not living with wonder? What's the negative consequences of that? Life is boring. Predictable. And you're missing out on a lot of great experiences or understanding about the world around you. Yeah, so great, so what I would coach you to if we were to keep workshopping this is how can we make that message as compelling as possible, right? It's a good message. So find a way, and maybe there's a piece of research or an anecdote, a personal story, that can help them understand what you've seen or someone that you know or someone in history or time that has lived without wonder and what the negative impacts were. So we can juice that up, but if that's why they should care, good, let's just try to tell a really compelling story about why they should really double down on wonder. Now you could tell the same science story 10 different ways. You're picking this has given me wonder, you should care about wonder, here's what I want you to do. The next time you could say it's given me a sense of curiosity. Here's what living with curiosity can do for you. Here's my request for you, right? So you can slice it in many different ways depending on what you want to accomplish.