Speaker 1  0:00  
Hello, and welcome to today's webinars storytelling for impact presented by Autumn. My name is Sandy Spiegel, one of autumns professional development managers and I will be your staff host for today. All lines have been muted to ensure high quality audio and today's session is being recorded. If you have a question for our presenters, please use the q&a feature on your zoom toolbar throughout the recording the presentation and we will get to those questions at the end of the session. If you have a technical question or a comment, please feel free to use the chat. Throughout the presentation. Our presenters may also ask you to be participating in the chat so please have that open and handy when they're asking you to contribute to the conversation. If you need closed captioning during today's session, Zoom live transcript feature is turned on and available on your toolbar. Before we begin, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge and thank autumns online professional development sponsor Marshall Gerstein IP, we appreciate your ongoing support. I'd now like to welcome today's panelists. Mark Bayer, President Bayer of strategic consulting helps research universities, institutes and companies get funding demonstrate the positive real world impact of their work and effectively build and manage stakeholder relationships. Mark specializes in science communication, science policy and the art and science of persuasion. He's appeared in science Forbes, The New Yorker, Barron's and other publications. Mark serves as a guest lecturer in the science policy bootcamp course at Cornell University's main School of Biomedical Engineering and since 2018, he has hosted a weekly podcast when science speaks, where he explores science, communications and career opportunities for scientists outside of academia. Mark is a graduate of Cornell University, and earned his master's in Public Policy at Harvard University's Kevin Kennedy School of Government. RK Mariana is senior director of business development and technology transfer at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, RK has a great time building relationships with the amazing scientists at his institution partnering with industry and investors, making deals with long term view. RK is an experienced tech transfer professional with over 20 years of experience in the life science research, including postdoctoral research in neuroscience and oncology at MIT and MGH and over 10 years of licensing experience. Prior to joining Cold Springs, RK was a technology manager at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, where he obtained his MBA. RK also holds a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Arizona. We are so excited to learn from you both today. Thank you both for being here. And RK, I will toss it over to you to set the stage for today's session.

Speaker 2  2:39  
Thank you very much, Sammy. Hello. Good afternoon, everybody. Good morning for other people. So Mark, and I are Bostonians. I just found out recently, so I tell a little story about how we got into this webinar idea. So it all started with last year at work on the 22 Autumn annual meeting in New Orleans. There was a fantastic plenary session titled perspectives from the far side of the moon, they had five Rockstar women on the panel and at the end, Kirsten looter was asked, What's the bottom line what what he wants to talk about, she said, IP should not be a priority, you should be focusing on other priorities. So that started me on this course of storytelling idea what should be a priority, I had autumn session in Boston, Autumn Eastern, and then follow on the andalo this year in Austin. And that's where I met Mark was Mark was in the audience. And he was asking the first question and came up with this idea about storytelling for impact. And then that's how we got here. So great to have you, Mark. So let's start learning.

Speaker 3  4:00  
Thanks so much. Okay. Actually, Sammy, I want to make sure that we're that folks are seeing this correctly.

Speaker 1  4:06  
Yeah. So I see your presenter mode slide with the current slide and next slide view if you think there should be a way to swap the screen next to that little X button up at the top, right. Oh yeah, it was the button next to it.

Unknown Speaker  4:27  
Okay. Let's see here.

Speaker 2  4:40  
Yeah, okay. Oh, so that's, again, we are swamped, but next to that. Yeah.

Speaker 3  4:47  
How's that? And there we go. Okay. Great. All right. I thanks. Okay. Thanks to me for that. And I'm really excited to be here with everyone. We've got some great things to talk about. It's going to be interactive. It's not a lecture and and just excited to have this opportunity to talk with, with folks here, it was great being in Austin, and learning from everyone, their big theme that seemed to be emerging and recurring during the entire conference was really storytelling, for impact. And so RK have this great session. And that's how he explained we sort of got from there to to here. And so what I wanted to start with is very briefly is just sort of talking about, okay, so we've got storytelling folks are, you know, we're going to get dive deeply into that. But you know, why, why is that important compared to like a non narrative presentation, which could be, you know, in something that looks a lot more like, you know, like this, which is information that's in a fact sheet, a spreadsheet, you know, really just data heavy, right. And, of course, there is a place for that. And we're going to talk about how to really weave this data into your storytelling so that it really reaches your listener in a variety of different frequencies, I would call it right to, to make an impact on the people that you're presenting to, to your stakeholders, people who you have to report to, or have some impact on, or influence, I should say, over your operations. And so when we talk about narratives, though, the first thing that we noticed, you know, in the in the research is that narratives are more persuasive than just straight data, right, they can influence the way people think, maybe their behavior potentially change their attitudes much more easily than just, you know, cells on the spreadsheet. They're easier for the brain to process, right. And a key point here that I want to underline is, they're easier to remember, right. So if you're thinking about your decision makers, your stakeholders, you want them to make some sort of decision, hopefully, that's in line with what you're presenting or your viewpoint. Well, they have to be able to remember, right, your presentation and your main points for them to use that as they then factor that into their decision making process. And stories are much easier to remember than just disparate pieces of information. Of course, the other thing is our brains are wired to understand things in stories much more easily than different pieces of information that may not seem to be related, we have a lot, it takes a lot more processing power for our brains to really make sense of that. And we don't want our listeners to have to exert that effort, because the brain is always looking to be efficient in the processing of information. So by presenting something in a story that has some emotion has some specificity, we're actually allowing the brain to receive and process information in the way that it likes right? To operate. So this really just recaps in one sentence, really, emotions are essential to memory and decisions. Right. So the whole idea of interacting with your stakeholders and demonstrating impact with your stakeholders is that you want them to actually take an action or feel a certain way make a decision that's aligned with your viewpoint. And stories are a really effective way to do that much more than just straight information about the features of a technology, for example, you know, the process steps that it took to develop that technology. So if you think about it this way, narrative or stories, right, they enable us to convey information, but also emotion. And emotion helps with memory, where much more because we're meant if you think about it, you start to feel a certain way, right, you're processing, you're getting the information, you're feeling something as well. So you have another aspect of that information being presented to you another reaction, right? That really reinforces the information itself, because you're feeling a certain way. And that memory and that feeling informs the decision making much better than just like I said, you know, spreadsheets, just bullet points of information, data percentages, things like that, that it takes the brain more energy to actually process. Okay, so what are we why are we here? What are we going to learn? So we're really focused on impact, how do you demonstrate your impacts your most important stakeholders, and then avoiding some traps that people tend to fall into? I've been talking about storytelling and teaching and working with researchers and institutes and companies for a while now. And one thing that people sort of forget sometimes is they get so enamored of what their technology can do, right? That they start talking about all of those things. And they forget that this story is really not about the storyteller. It's about the story listener, right? It's all about them, because that's what you want to influence. And then something I call the Motown method because we sort of apply something that was used very successfully Motown Records. You know, Jackson, five, Stevie Wonder, Dinah Ross Supremes, all Motown artists, and there's a methodology that the founder of Motown Records used to really deal with dial up and and score all these number one hits on the charts, right, and we're going to show how that can be applicable to your presentations. Alright, so we're talking about storytelling for impact, right? We want to have some effect, some influence some impact in our stories. And so the first question that I have for everyone is, how do you define impact? How do you define impact in your world? Just put it right in the chat. How do you how do you define impact? Because impact is, you know, it's sort of a generic term like influence, I can say influence, but what influences your stakeholders? What makes your if which influenced your stakeholders stop and think? You know, something that stays with you? Yep. Some public benefit? Of course, yep. How does it help? The everyday person? Right. You know, it's interesting as I'm looking at this, so, I, before I started working with scientists, I was a chief of staff in the US Senate, and before that in the House of Representatives, during 20 years of work on Capitol Hill. So I was always working on things that would we aim to improve the human condition benefit society outside of academia. And so I really feel a kinship, I feel an empathy in some ways to because I feel I'm empathetic. Because it can be difficult sometimes to measure some of these things. Right? What makes us

Speaker 2  11:36  
look good. That's awesome. That's a way to do it. Right. So that's all right. Yeah. Right.

Speaker 3  11:42  
Right. Right licensee becomes interested in technology because of the story, Michael, thank you. Yep, absolutely. Sure. You know, what, what's a federal grant? What's the ROI that the federal government is getting on? Based on this research? All great things, right. Absolutely. positive outcomes. Okay, so these are all different things. Right? People are, you know, there's a lot there's a whole spectrum of ways to define impact. And when I started thinking about that, and some of the challenges that we have, when we want to demonstrate impact, I started thinking about this quote, you know, from this novel, actually, the origin of it's from this novel, that's, you know, over, you know, 150 years old or so, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And when I thought when I saw that, I started thinking, that impact is in the eye of the stakeholder, right? Because it, it varies, right? It can vary within a stakeholder organization. Different people care about different things, because maybe they're measured differently. And it can measure it can differ across your stakeholders, because you probably have more than one sort of category of stakeholder stakeholders inside your organization, stakeholders outside in a variety of different roles, that could have an influence over your success. So if you think about your most important stakeholders, the ones that you are really focused on much of the time. Think about which activities that you have, that you are engaged in your undertaking, demonstrate the greatest impact in their eyes. So for folks who put in the chat, you know, make the stakeholder look good, or demonstrate a public benefit, or some sort of ROI for the federal funding that enabled the research to What are you doing that really hit hit on those things? Right, because those are usually those are sort of the things that have the greatest impact from their perspective. So what are you doing that's aligned with that?

Speaker 2  14:00  
Think that's a technical problem. But others if you can just put that we can interact, Marcus and read out any of these check boxes.

Unknown Speaker  14:09  
Yeah. And

Speaker 1  14:11  
I just updated the settings. So now you should be able to chat and have everyone as who you send it to. So you should all be able to see each other's replies now, thanks for calling that out, Katherine. Thanks, Sammy.

Speaker 3  14:24  
Because we talked about impact, what is impact in the eyes of your stakeholders? Right. And you had different answers to that question, because you have different types of stakeholders, stakeholders with different interests and priorities, and out sort of like what are you doing within those realms that your stakeholders view as most impactful? Yeah. Francis is telling our technologies can benefit potential licensees? Yep, for sure. So the point here is your stakeholders have your stakeholders have important priorities right? We talked about those, what are the how do you demonstrate impact, right? And so you think about your stakeholders highest priorities. And you think about your activities that you're doing. Right? And then the impact zone that I call I, I've, I refer to it as the impact zone, is that overlap. In this Venn diagram? It's where do your activities overlap with the most important priorities of your stakeholders? Right. And that's really, when we talk about storyteller stories are storytelling for impact. Stories that your stakeholders view as most impactful are shining this light on the impact zone, what you're doing that is most important to their priorities. Now, you say, Well, okay, how do I, you know, what, you know, when should I use these? When should I use storytelling in my, in my day to day, and so these sorts of you know, and this reflects a lot of what was in the comments to use storytelling for impact when you're pitching your your idea, coaching researchers on a pitch, for example, marketing, somebody had put in the chat about how storytelling gets a potential licensee interested in the technology. Absolutely. Right, because they start to feel it and see it and understand it in ways that they can process and appreciate. relatable, it's accessible to them. Negotiating potential licensing agreements, and managing your key stakeholders, which of course, we've been focusing on. Okay. So if you want to demonstrate your greatest impact and value with the story, think about this intersection. It's the intersection of your stakeholders highest priorities, and your initiatives, or innovations where that where there is that overlap. It's sort of at the corner of your initiatives and stakeholder priorities. That's where you want to get to in the neighborhood and the environment in the ecosystem, right, that intersection your initiative where it intersects with your stakeholders priorities. And that's what you want to tell stories about. And so we have a specific example Arcade is going to share an example that is from the Technology Transfer space. Right,

Speaker 2  17:20  
thanks, Mark, I want to talk about one particular commenters stimulate the interest of a big donor, something in a large gift. I like that. That's too we also try to do here because we are not for profit, publica Institute, which is not a university, so we have to rely on donor money a lot. So I'm going to tell a story within a story. So this story started about 10 days ago at a dinner. So of course, we have our has this annual dinner, or during the symposia. So this dinner is organized by lots of neighbor, neighbors around the lab who invite Cold Spring Harbor guests and also invited speakers from all around the world. So I was at a dinner and one of the guests asked me, he's a retired hematologist from MSK. He asked me this question, I thought bowspring Harbor is basic research institution. Why do you need to do technology transfer? So I told them a story about Adrian Craner. So Adrian Trainor came to come Spring Harbor in the 80s as CSHL Hello fellows are like, right. After PhDs, they get an independent position. He was our first Cold Spring Harbor fellow. So he started working on RNA splicing, which was a Nobel Prize winning and discovery that happened at Cold Spring Harbor and elsewhere. And so it in Painter was doing that for about 15 years. And then one day he listened to her talk about spinal muscular atrophy. Really bad disease. Children with this disease die by the age of two. So the problem with in spinal muscular atrophy or SMA is that they have survival of motor neurons are having a problem in this disease. There is a mutation in a gene called SMM one, which produces no protein and that's how the motor neurons die and they're not able to walk and they die in about two years. So what Adrian Reiner found in his lab was that there is a way to coax that silent GSM into with RNA splicing to produce enough protein so he collaborated with this company called I honest, it used to be called ISIS until ISIS became really a bad name. So they changed the Ayana so collaborated ins the Cold Spring Harbor technology transfer really helped I'm in getting that collaboration going very well. So that led to clinical trials supported by big pharma Biogen. And in 2016, after the success of the clinical trials, FDA approved the drug. And now kids with this disease are able to walk survived to adulthood, and have good a normal life. So that's a great public benefit resulting from basic research. So what the end was that the host of this dinner has been doing this for 2030 years, that is the first time I heard this story in a way that really gets me understand the basic research how that can help a public benefit. So that's, I thought, was impactful.

Speaker 3  20:50  
Absolutely, that's a great story. And you know, as I hear that, okay, you think about what why was that? so impactful? Right, Cold Spring Harbor lab doing a lot of different initiatives from the, you know, from the the other person's perspective, it's basic research, which I guess they view as really distant from practical applications, meaning practice, you know, distant from, like, their priorities, their everyday life, things that affect them. That's what we really care about things that affect us and people that we care about. And so it wasn't really resonating. The word close friend wasn't really resonating. However, when you highlighted again, one of your initiatives that actually overlapped with stakeholder priority interest or and understanding meaning you told this story talked about children, you talked about a disease that was, you know, a name, that was actually shortening the lifespan to about two years for these children. And then you talked about how this research was being and was going to enable basically curing the disease enabling this the child to thrive and live a lot longer than to all these things are very relevant and relatable people, if they don't have their own children, they've seen, you know, children, it's part of their everyday experience. So that was the overlap with this particular initiative that Cold Spring Harbor does overlapped with his stakeholder priority understanding, everyday experience. And that's why it resonated. So when you're thinking about, you know, where like, where's my focus on storytelling? It's a lot of talk about you should use storytelling, but it's like, well, how and which story to tell, right? And when you're thinking about which story to tell, that's when you zero in on the interest priority of your stakeholders, for example, and we're going to, we're going to drill down on that right now. So thank you for, for illuminating that. So important. Okay, so great. So we talked about, you know, you want to tell a story at the intersection of your activities and your stakeholders priorities. Sounds easy. But how do you get there? Right? How do I tell a story about this, at this juncture, right, or within these boundaries, if you will? Well, I sort of break it down, for our purposes today into three categories, research, mindset, and mechanics, right? The research here, this is sort of something that I'd like you to remember, think about it, research, before you even reach out and, and interact, contact your stakeholders, you really know, you need to know what their priorities are, right? what their interests are, what their, what keeps them up at night, you know, what their agenda is, what their focus is, because you want to tell a story, we're gonna remember that at that, that targets those things, because you are doing a lot of different things. And you're doing a lot of different things. And you want to figure out well, if I think about the subset of things that I'm doing, or the set of things that I'm doing, what is the subset of those things that overlap with the priorities of my stakeholders, or the stakeholder that I'm going to be talking to, to pitch to, to market to, to negotiate with, right, and that requires research, and I'm sure you're familiar with the different types of research you can do to figure that out, you know, looking at websites, and even SEC filings can be really interesting. I used to do that when I was on the Hill sometimes look at companies, public filings, publicly traded companies. One thing that I recommend as part of research that might not necessarily occur immediately, right, is if you think about what does my stakeholder care about? Think about what is your stakeholders stakeholder care about? Right? And so now you're like one degree of separation. And that can point you towards what your stakeholder cares about. So for example, if I'm pitching to protect a particular VC, right, well, who are the VT who are the stakeholders that VC right could be investors in that company? Right, and what do those people care about? because your immediate stakeholder is going to want to please its stakeholders, which means that those things that please its stakeholders, if you will, that that it stakeholders value are consequently things it values. Right? And so it's like, what do I, what does my person in front of me care about? Well, one of the things the person in front of you cares about, or the organization that you're contacting cares about is how its performance is assessed by its own universe of stakeholders. Right? And so once you think about that, you sort of go one degree from your individual stakeholder, it can point towards what you should really focus in on when you are trying to deliver a story for impact. Right? Okay. So the first part research, you know, different places to go for that. But this is more of a, an approach that I wanted you to think about, because it can be really helpful. For example, when I worked on Capitol Hill, the stakeholders from my boss, the senator, were constituents of the state of Massachusetts, which is where I grew up, and also where I was fortunate to work with him. And, and so what did those voters care about? Well, they cared about a number of things, but high level, one thing they cared about, was that the their representative in the US Congress, their senator, one of their two senators, was working for them and delivering results, you know, that they viewed as important, right. And so anything we could do as a staff person, right, that would help the boss demonstrate that he was delivering for Massachusetts, as you often heard about it, were things that the boss was going to care about, right. And so that helped me, you know, as, as a senior person in the office, kind of orient our offices work, and, and in focus, our offices work on things that my stakeholder, the boss's stakeholders, the voters they cared about, because that's what the boss cared about to demonstrating that he was working hard and delivering results. Okay, so that's the research part of this. Now, the Motown method that I alluded to earlier, okay. And this is something that can happen, you know, is is a natural way of thinking typically, where, you know, we often, you know, just want to start at the beginning, have a story. And then at some point down the line, we're going to say something that really grabs the attention of our audience, you know, it's like a job, it's a setup, and then you do the punch line. The problem though, is you're dealing with busy people who have a lot in their mind doing a lot of different things. And if you tell a story in that manner, you're never going to get to the punchline, you're not going to get to the result that the audience cares about the listener cares about, that their reader cares about. Because you're going to just, they're just going to tune out, as you do this setup. A lot of times people use a process step, you know, we did this. And we did that. And we tried this other thing. And then we made this discovery. And it turns out that we get some sort of result that may be relevant to you what you care about, the problem is that all those process steps that you went through internally, are the features, right? All these different features of technology, that don't really impact what the stakeholder cares about, are our high risk for stakeholder attention flight, right? Where they just, you know, there's so many competing opportunities for stakeholders to look at their phone to remember they need to check that email, or what's the meeting that they're going to do after this meeting? Right? And when you start with these kind of irrelevant things, even though you think, Well, I gotta lead up to it. Right? I gotta give them the information from sort of beginning to end. If you've been if you've encountered that, either. You've heard presentations like that, or you've been tempted to fall into that trap, and just put it in the chat. Like, yeah, I Yes, I've seen that. I've seen that sort of dynamic. And it's a total normal way of presenting in a way because it's logical. But if you've, if you're familiar with that kind of mindset or behavior, just put it in the chat. So the Motown method is actually reverse. Right? You've got to hook them in the first 10 seconds. So Barry Gordy, was he still alive? legendary founder of Motown Records, producer, writer, lots of hits, all that stuff. And he's asked him, you know, how are you able to do so many number one hits and the pop charts. And he said, You got to hook them in the first 10 seconds, you've actually got to start at the finish line. And the finish line is the thing that is most important to your listener or your reader. You've got to lead with that to instantly grab your and it's so normal. Thank you, Catherine. And Francis. It's so normal and we want to do that part of it is because we're invested in those steps. We had to go through those steps are we Appreciate what our research has had to go through. And those steps, right? The problem is they're irrelevant. To your listener, you need to remember this isn't about us. It's not about you, it's about your listener, it's this the hero of the story is the story listener, right? So, blog

Speaker 2  30:18  
interview with Lisa mula here, because you talk about something else as well in an interview. So Mark had an interview with Lisa Miller, in autumn on the air last week. So it was about how to communicate your work to your stakeholders, exactly what Mark is talking about. But he also talks about some science behind how much the brain can store as well. Like it can only hold about 10% of the information and receive, so whatever you want the impact that plus 10. Second, also, it should be pretty strong to stay in that 10% memory. So yeah,

Speaker 3  30:53  
right. Absolutely. So people often don't talk about sequencing. And so, you know, the sequencing matters a lot. Your messaging, of course, matters, the the sequence, the order in which you deliver your message matters a lot. And the most important thing that should be front of the line is that thing that's your, your listener or your readers top priority. Gotta hook them in the first 10 seconds. The unsung hero trap, we talked a little bit about, you know, again, this, this tendency to fall into is that, you know, you're telling this story, and either researchers, the hero, or you're focused on what they've done, what you've done, what the technology can do, but you're losing track of, or you're losing sight of the fact that the listener is the hero of your story, right? It's your listeners, interests and priorities and feelings, and values and beliefs. Those are the things that drive, how you tell the story, what you include in the story, what you're focused on, as you construct the story, the listener is the hero of the story. Okay, now, it's sort of for the last sort of piece of, of this mindset, as far as how do you get to the corner of, of your initiatives and stakeholder priority, which is really that impact zone, how do you get to the impact zone is you want to reward your reader. And this was a great interview I had with Bill Berger, who writes for Harvard Business Review is in Psychology Today, he's got a new book out, really insightful stuff. But he dug deep into sort of the neuroscience of attention, and how we can work with and present information that's consistent with that reflects the neuroscience in our in our brains, right? That reflects our neurological features that have been evolutionarily favored, for example, and rewarding your reader, you know, what he's talking about there is you want to trigger your brain's reward the brain's reward system. And when the brain's reward systems, different parts of the brain is triggered, then dopamine is released, and you're familiar with dopamine, you know, the pleasure hormone makes us feel good. It has a lot of important properties and effects a lot of things in our day to day and our movement and recollection and memory and all that sort of stuff. It's a very positive neurotransmitter produced in the brain. And so if you can trigger the brain's reward system, those circuits for example, switch on those circuits that release dopamine, you get a very positive reaction from your listener, right. And so the question is, well, how do you do that, and we're about to go there. But it's all about rewarding your reader in a sense, meaning presenting information in a way that your brain light that the brain likes. Right? And I'll tell you about that in a little bit. In in just a moment or two,

Speaker 2  33:56  
Mark Bradley in the chat has a link to all the Nature article. Seven Deadly Sins. So he talks about selling your science story instead of your market story, something like what you're talking about. Yes, exactly means losing your audience. Yeah,

Speaker 3  34:16  
yeah. I'll just tell you very briefly a quick story on that. That reminded me of somebody in my online class who was a organic chemists PhD. And he was asked by the executives in his organization, this company, whether their company should partner with a competing company, because a competing company had some sort of chemistry some sort of patented technology that may have provided a benefit that maybe they should license or purchase. So they they asked this this person, smart guy, whether they should license this technology, and they call them in the boardroom and they're talking to him about, you know, how whether they should do it or not, and And he told me the PhD, organic chemists told me that he spent all this time talking about the features and the bonds of the chemistry and all these different aspects of the qualities and their chemistry, and then the qualities of the chemistry of the company. And he said, the temperature sort of in the room just kept getting hotter, and hotter and hotter, because he wasn't answering the question. He was delving so deeply into the details, without actually applying again, he was talking about all these different things that he does all these different. Priorities, exact, yes, yes, what his day to day. But remember, the stakeholder only cares about the overlap between what you're doing and what matters to them. So finally, as he's noticing, you know, they're still out there asking them the question, then they're asking him in a little slightly different way, they're trying to get him to actually be in that impact zone. So finally, he says, you know, our chemistry and their chemistry are similar. But they're different enough, that if we were to license their chemistry, then we'd either have to hire new people who were familiar with it, or we'd have to retrain some of our people, so that they would become adept at using it. And both of those things would cost money. And actually, the cost of that training or hiring outweighs the benefits of their chemistry. So he said, if everybody exhaled, you know, the temperature came back down to a manageable level, because he had finally answered the question, right? He had directly he was in the center of the bullseye of the impact. So, right. That's what their priority was. And he explained it, using some of you know, of course, he was applying his scientific knowledge. But it was all about what they really cared about. Exactly, though, right? So let's talk about, you know, five key principles as far as the mechanics go here, for high impact storytelling, relatability, surprise, nonlinear structure, curiosity. And using the present tense, I'm going to sort of get to that in a second. And then the usage of the you pronoun. If anyone, I'm going to talk about a couple of these, but if anyone has a comment or a question about any of these different principles for high impact storytelling, please put it in the chat. I'm going to just talk about two. And what I've touched upon earlier, which is the surprise nonlinear structure. So a strong story is not from A to Z, right? A strong story is starting at z at the finish line, it's the punch line of the joke. Right? You have to lead with that. And it feels kind of awkward, like, do they have enough information for me to tell them this? Well, part of the ideas? The answer to that is they don't, right. And that sort of kind of touches on number three, curiosity. The point is, they don't really have enough information. And they want more information. They're curious about this, because you haven't done the lead up. So you've touched upon something, they care about their number one priority, but you haven't really explained much about it. And so that is going to get them to tune in, right? Because they want to learn how does this how did he get there? How did you get there? How did they get there? Right? And so leading, it's not it cannot be a linear structure, you want to the structure of your storytelling, you want to start the finish line, you want to tell the punch line, and then the setup, right? It also creates curiosity, right. But that's a nonlinear structure that you're creating. The other thing is when you're telling a story, using the you pronoun, can be really powerful. Because what do we care about? As humans, we care about what affects us and the people that that are in our that we're close to, right? And so when you say imagine if you could,

Unknown Speaker  38:53  
making the listener the hero, exactly,

Speaker 3  38:56  
exactly. Now, I'm putting you in the middle of the story, like our kid is saying, You are the hero, right? Imagine is sort of our wake is a wake word for our brain. Right? So it's like, if I hear that my brain has like, already switched on, I'm thinking like, Okay, what am I supposed to think about? Or if I ask you a question, same kind of thing. Like it's awake, we're like, okay, let's focus on this. What is the person saying? And so I'm starting to think along with you, then you say, imagine you. So it's like, okay, this is about me. This is really I care about, you know, imagine if you could prevent premature deaths as a result of a horrible, debilitating painful disease, right? You've got my you've got my interest and then you start you know, then you start going into it, you know, from there, but using the you pronoun is a way to, from a mechanical standpoint, put make the listener make the reader the hero of the story and touching upon something again, I care about me, my interests, my priority. I only have a certain amount of time, I only have an ability to process certain amount of information, my brain is going to filter out things that are irrelevant. So by saying, imagine you immediately I'm plugged in, because that's my number one thing, what my priorities, my goals, my motivations. All right. rhetorical devices, some of these you may be very familiar with. If you're not, please put in the chat. But I think also RK you have a great example of a simile or metaphor that you used, during, you know, recently as you were explaining something

Speaker 2  40:36  
fantastic. Yeah. So this is something I learned from Principal Investigator at Cold Spring Harbor, he keeps me very busy, because he's very prolific in his invention. So it's, we it's good business for us. So what he does, so Mark talks about starting from A to Z, start with Z, like, start with a punch line. So the metaphor he uses in his life is talks about cancer therapeutics. He says, cancer is like a castle. And I have a therapeutic pathway that will turn this castle into bricks. So that's how he starts his presentation. So I have learned from that. So that's something that fits with what Mark is talking about as a rhetorical device to put that memory in place.

Speaker 3  41:26  
Absolutely. You say Castle, immediately I'm envisioning a castle. Because attention is so important to spend implicit in all of this, how do you capture and keep your reader or listeners attention? Okay, yes, you focus on impact, what is impact, it's the intersection of what you're doing and what your audience cares about most. It's also things that directly impact them. And it's things that they can imagine in their minds, you want your listener to be thinking along with you while they're reading your material or that you're talking to them. Right. And they can only do that if they can envision in their minds a thing that you're talking about. So you say Castle, I, of course, I imagined something, everyone has a different picture. But it's a castle. And then when our case is we're gonna reduce it to bricks, like, you can kind of see it all crumbling down, right. And so it's very accessible, very relatable, and very powerful way to to begin a story. Okay. Now, I just want to make sure that you don't come away with this idea from this webinar, that it's all just about the best story that you can tell, right? And we've explained and talked about what the mechanics are, there are there to do it, the mindset to have you know, and also the research that underlies everything that really helps you like a GPS, focusing on that intersection of your activities and your stakeholders priority. But your data is important, too, of course. Right? It's a character in your story. But it's not the whole story. This was a great quote from Joe Hanson, who I heard at the AAA s conference back in 2018, coincidentally, in Austin as well, location of the last autumn national meeting. And he's done some great work. And he's a host and writer on on a variety of different platforms, including on YouTube. But it's about weaving that data and presenting that information in relatable, accessible, vivid, illustrative ways. Right. And so, you know, everything when I was on Capitol Hill, everything we did was rooted in evidence and data. And, you know, to the greatest extent that we could to demonstrate it had to be factual, right, we didn't just make things up, we included data and information. But we humanized it. We made it more accessible, we kind of breathed life into the data, right? By being specific and telling specific stories about that information in ways that rk is shared, you know, most recently shared during this webinar, as well. Okay, so you know, RK touched upon this thing, sometimes I say this in and that is that, you really can, you're gonna leave, you're gonna leave the webinar, you're gonna go about your return your work. And there have been studies that have been around for quite a while. And there's sort of a consensus around the theory that within 48 hours of this webinar, for example, you're gonna forget 90% of what we've said, Okay? And it's not because you weren't paying attention, or you are taking you know, you're taking calls or wherever you were distracted. It's just because that's the way the brain works. And RK alluded to this, there's only a certain amount of, of Yes, and narratives need numbers. Exactly. And so, either way, and so as a result, there's like 10%, right, you're gonna forget now 90% of what we say there's only about 10%, that you're going to be able to retain two days from now and beyond. And there's not a lot we can do to increase that percentage, maybe 10 to 12%. Perhaps, we can't really change that, though, however, we have total control over is what is that 10% going to be that you're going to remember. So when you leave, and when your stakeholder leaves when the company leaves after a presentation, you know, when the politician leaves after a meeting, when the VP of research, you know, leaves once you're done giving an update, right? What do you want that person to remember? What's the 10% takeaway, right. And one of them that, basically, that I'd like you to walk away from here is numbers need to narrative. Your numbers are key, they're essential, they're necessary, but not sufficient. And this narrative reflects how our brain processes information, right. And by breathing life into your numbers, by telling a story, and focusing that story in the impact zone, you really can have the biggest impact on your decision makers. And that's how you tell a story for impact. So recapping, okay, the impact zone, it's at the quarter of your stakeholders priorities and your initiatives, this is this is where I want to tell my stories at the intersection, at the corner of those two aspects. Don't fall into the unsung hero trap, sing about the hero, and the hero is the listener or the reader. And remember, the Motown method that start feels a little strange, feels a little unnatural, then you know, you're doing it right. Right, you're leading with the priority, the most important thing that's in on your listener or your readers mind, and then you are providing some context for it. Okay, I like to take, you know, questions, comments here, I'm just gonna put this up here. These are just free resources RK mentioned, the podcasts when science speaks, they started in 2018, talk a lot about these issues. And then started a newsletter about a year and a half ago, both both free resources that talk a lot about these kinds of things, how to tell stories, how to present in a way that has an impact, how to be persuasive with authenticity, and honesty, and all those sorts of things, how to manage stakeholders. So if you're interested in either those two resources, you can go to these websites, you can scan with your phone, whatever works best, and you can sign up and get the information that's provided here. Okay. Yeah. So

Speaker 2  47:56  
he's going to open the mics, if you're asking on the mic on the camera, but you can also ask the questions on the chat.

Speaker 1  48:05  
Yep. So for microphones, just use the raise hand feature on attendees on your toolbar, and we can open up your mic if you'd prefer to ask your question aloud instead of on the chat.

Speaker 2  48:20  
So Mark, I'll ask a question. So I really love a story, for example, and I would like to tell the same story, but how would I need to remember, how could I remember that my stakeholders are different? So I need to pitch it differently? What would be your advice to think of that? To remember, so that you change the story to the impact stakeholders? Priorities? Right,

Speaker 3  48:45  
right. That's a great question. And I'll just tell you this funny saying my old boss used to say there are no new stories, just new audiences. And so you, you may have a great story that works. And the good news is you have that structure, right. And once you know how the framework of that story works, and you've gotten a lot of good feedback on it, you can almost plug and play a little bit. You know, if some, you know, of course, you want to know, for example, if a potential licensee what's on their agenda, well, if oncology is really important to them, or if neurodegenerative diseases are really important to them. That's where I'm going to go looking for stories. Yes. And you know, now but how, you know, but but you can also bring with you of course, the the well, I know I need to lead with that. Right. So you've got kind of the the overall structure and you're just sort of plugging in a couple of things that really relate individually to that priority. Those primaries. Yeah, excellent question.

Speaker 2  49:48  
Tom has this question. What do you do when you think your listener may be drifting away?

Speaker 3  49:54  
So you know, what, if you think your listeners are going to be drifting away? There are a couple of different things, too, I think you kind of can switch into, you can switch into question mode a little bit, right? Because again, we want to, we want to use this the wake word, or we want to use something that's going to trigger them to start thinking along with me meaning following what I'm saying is, have you ever experienced anything like that? Is it something that you've heard about before? Or how does this overlap with your priorities? If you've been in a situation like this? So you want to ask kind of open ended questions, because nobody want you want to ask a question. But nobody wants to be put on the spot. Like, do you understand what I'm saying? People? Yeah, you know, no one wants a question like that? Or they just say yes, and of course they don't. But so asking you opening opening, an open ended question that's friendly is a good way to pull your, your, your listener, your reader back in?

Speaker 2  50:47  
Stuart asked this question, what is your recommended approach when you're shattering negative news or decision with third party?

Speaker 3  50:55  
Yeah, great question. And, you know, it's funny, there's, there's a good HBr Harvard Business Review study on this, that I that I use sometimes, which is like, you know, we have a tendency to shoot the messenger. Right? And is that something that is just the way our brains work and sort of take out on whoever we're listening? Whoever is telling us this, like this bad news, even if they had nothing to do with it. And really, what the study found was kind of a soft opening. Like, this is really difficult. News, this is really unfortunate information. This is unexpected, I'm really sorry to have to tell you this, I can understand how this is really upsetting because it's bothering me too. It really leads in with empathy. And it's, it's funny, because it's almost the opposite of what we're just talking about. Like, the punchline is okay, we lost the contract. And let me tell you how you could you could do it that way. And again, some of it is your knowledge of you know, who the person is that you're talking to who the other party is. Or you could do if it's verbal, you could do kind of a soft opening, you know, which kind of is like, you know, you're kind of getting the person ready for this kind of news, by expressing empathy and understanding. Look, you know, if you had to, if you had to fire someone, you know, for example, things like that, and kind of trying to signal to them that you understand that this is hard, unwelcome, unexpected

Speaker 2  52:25  
news. Right. So you put in this thing, persuasive communication, some type of storytelling the form of persuasive communication? Yes,

Speaker 3  52:39  
absolutely. And, you know, persuasion is using information that's fact based, it's using evidence, it's using real data. manipulation, is when you basically say anything to influence your listener, your reader. All right. And that's not the same as persuasion, just want to be clear persuasion and think about there's so many things you could say that are all accurate. But persuasion enables you, and it relates to what we're talking about, as far as Impact Zone persuasion, enables you to zero in on those things that are accurate, that are true, that your listener cares about the most. Right? And that's how your listener is going to be persuaded. Right? It's not like you're just going to make something up because it sounds sexy or something like that. No, it persuasion is all built on authenticity, and using real information. That's accurate to the best of your understanding of it. So for sure, yes.

Speaker 2  53:41  
That any questions from a live audience asking rating has to be good to have such but otherwise?

Speaker 3  53:52  
Yeah. Okay. I'm just going to ask the group, was there anything that was surprising, or that you hadn't quite thought of that way before? Anything that you think you'll sort of take away from this as you go about your your important work? You know, we talked about the 10% takeaway, but it doesn't have to be what I decide it's going to be. It could be something that, you know, struck you that you find valuable, starting with Z. Thank you, Francis. Yep. Yeah, here is listener. Yeah. Nonlinear. Yeah.

Speaker 1  54:34  
Yeah. Well, it looks like we've covered all of our questions for now. RK And, Mark, thank you both so much for such an informative session. I think that there's a high likelihood that more than 10% sticks around with all these great tidbits from takeaways. So thank you both for that and attendees. Thank you so much for your participation today. This was a great dynamic session to have everyone engaged and involved. So we appreciate it. As a reminder, a recording of this webinar will be available within a week and on the autumn Learning Center. And that is included in your registration so you can come back and remember the rest of those tidbits that don't stick around. And please don't forget to complete the webinar survey that will pop up when you close out of this session and you'll see it in a follow up email again tomorrow, that helps us serve your needs and the features. So again, thank you all so much for joining mark and RK. Thank you again so much for hosting with us today. And I hope that everyone has a great rest of their day.

Unknown Speaker  55:31  
Thank you, Sammy. Thanks,

Speaker 3  55:32  
everyone. Thanks, Sammy. Thank you. Okay. Have a good okay.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai