 Welcome to this session. This session is part of a global week of trainings. There will be a lot more sessions running throughout the week and you can see those different sessions and sign up for them on our website. And I'm just going to pass on to Maes, who's an incredible trainer, who's going to take us through this storytelling workshop now. So thanks and thanks everyone for being here today and Maes, the floor is yours. Thank you Lisa. Hello everybody. So happy to be in this space with all of you. I'm going to start sharing screen to introduce for you storytelling public narrative. And before we go there, I thought maybe it's good to just get to know each other a little bit. So my question to you is what gives you hope? So I saw some of you already checking in where you're calling from. So I want you to think what gives you hope in life and chat it in or just unmute and speak up. We'd love to hear some voices. My session is usually very interactive. So I depend a lot on your active participation. So I'll go ahead if it's okay. So for me, it's yeah, all of you being around here from around the world. Let's give me hope that it's not just me and my colleagues, but yeah, so many people. Yeah, that's one thing. That's lovely. Thank you, Mariana for sharing. And I see in the chat the collective power of people around me, the people I work with, it seems a lot of people get their energy and hope from other people. Other thoughts, please keep them coming because as we unpack narrative, hope is a very important element of stories and storytelling and why do we tell stories? And always finding our sources of hope is something that is inspirational, not only for ourselves, but for others and for other organizers who we work with. I would like to share with you a little bit about myself. I know people are calling here from different parts of the world. So I'll just show you my map for you to see where I come from. So I come from Amman, Jordan. I don't know if anyone been in the Middle East. That's me when I was a child. I'll stop sharing and just tell you my story. So I remember very vividly a November cold afternoon in my home where my father comes back home holding a big plate of knafe. Knafe is an Arabic dessert known for celebrating big events. And he said, today we celebrate that Mace is a human and she also fails. I smiled in an afternoon. I spent crying out loud and being very desperate because I got my first failure grade in math. I got four out of ten and being a very studious middle child. That was like a big disaster in my life. But that moment was like very memorable for me. And fast forward a few months afterwards, I was in the drama club, very enthusiastic about getting into the auditions of the school annual play. I wanted so much to be the gazelle in that play. I wanted that role so much. So I was in front of my mirror for a week before the auditions trying to fix my Arabic pronunciation on the mirror and make sure that I practiced well for it. And the next day I went to school and went into the audition with my heart beating and feeling a lot of suspense around it. Left feeling that I probably did well, but I kept waiting for my drama teacher to come out. She came out and she said, well, she handed me the script. And she said the first rehearsal will start on Sunday. And she said, make sure to be on time and you're going to be the school tree. So of course I was devastated. It wasn't what I wanted or expected. And slept that night very frustrated again, like crying so much that like my throat started hurting. And woke up the next morning. So the script next to my bed and I thought, well, it might as well be a very special tree. So I went back to my mirror and then started practicing the very few lines I got for the play. And that experience was a mesmerizing experience for me into like working with a team and having fun with my colleagues and like experiencing what is it to make theater together with other girls in my school. And I did so well in that role that my drama teacher kept increasing my lines. And she also nominated me for the, what did we call the Jeresh Festival, which is like a national festival of theater that artists and musicians and like small kids go to like do theater there. So I was like having this bus ride of 40 minutes from my man to Jeresh every day to go do the rehearsals and like sing all the way on the road. And I remember that I was the owl and the lion was always forgetting his lines. And I was always like, you know, making sounds for him to remember what he should say, like to just make it work out for the play to work. And fast forward, I started getting engaged more with youth and on learning informal learning setups. I was running this organization that gives travel grants for youth to travel between one country to another for learning. And that's when I wanted to really work with these alumni of this program, which was called Safar, which means travel in Arabic. I wanted to work with these alumni to make them sustain the concept of lifelong learning. And I didn't know what to do. And a friend of mine told me what you're trying to do is called Community Organizing. Google someone called Marshall Ganz, and I did and I found that he was running for the second year an online course called Leadership Organizing and Action, where he teaches organizing online for activists across the globe. So I subscribed for that course. And that was a true shift for me in 2011. I took this course, and it was like eyeopening for a lot of change that I was trying to do on different levels that I was struggling with. And I didn't really know why do people not commit or why these teams work well, but other teams don't work well. Why are we like making actions but not creating the change strategically in the work we're doing? So there was a lot of answers that I received from this knowledge that made me start my own organization called Ahel in the Arab world, where we'd coach and train campaigns on community organizing. We celebrated 10 years last year. And throughout that journey, I met my current husband. It was hard for us to live in Jordan or Lebanon where we met, because he's a stateless person. So he moved to Sweden for asylum, and then I followed him. And I've been living here in Sweden for six years now. I organize more on climate union work. And of course, when I first came, I organized a lot around the question of integration and refugees. And currently I lead the leading change network, which is basically Marshall Ganz's network organization that brings all these practitioners who are using this framework across the globe together to learn from each other and to cross-pollinate things in different countries. So that's about me. And I'm gonna just because for you to know what the framework is about, I need to introduce Marshall a little bit as well. So Marshall, that's him. He's our mentor. And he's the founder of the leading change network, which I run now. So Marshall was studying at Harvard in 1960. And that's when the civil rights movement started afterwards. And the Freedom Summit project asked for volunteers in the summer of 1964. So he left school and he went to volunteer in the summer project. And from there, he got stuck on organizing from that. He went to organize in California with Cesar Chavez on the workers' rights. And then he received the letter from Harvard asking him to come for the reunion, for the school reunion, for the class he never really graduated. But he decided to go to the reunion anyway. So he went back. And there he was, you know, encouraged to come complete his degree, his bachelor and document what he has learned from the civil rights movement and from the organizing with Cesar Chavez. And that's what he actually did. So he was like kind of an interesting graduate of 1960-1992. And he documented the practices, which I'm going to talk to you about today, one of them being the storytelling public narrative practice. And he was the architect of the Obama presidential campaign in 2008. So the most important thing that I want to make sure that it comes across is that this framework or practices are practices that came from the ground and were documented into theory, into universities. But then they are practiced again in several campaigns around the world. And this communication between and dialogue between the ground and the theory is an ongoing process of learning for us to develop this framework further. So, so even when we teach it, we like, you will see, like, I will try to do some theory, but then we always use models to actually debrief them. When we run this, this is like a very short, like two hour session, but when we run the actual workshop of public narrative storytelling, it's usually a full day workshop. There's a lot of practice. So you will have the time to, like, write your story, say it, you know, get coaching on it, and like, you know, debrief that. So practice is the bulk of the work. So usually in any workshop, like, 70% of the time would be actual practice of the work for you to get the framework. And then, of course, debriefing and reflecting on what we studied. So with that, I want to say that I would like to introduce organizing a narrative. We will take a break and then we will dive deeper a little bit more into the story of self, which is the first part of the public narrative. But to be able to do that collaboratively, I want to see, like, what are some norms that would be helpful to facilitate your learning and to facilitate you being here in this space? So if anyone has something to propose around how we will work with each other, what are things that we need to honor or respect for us to work collaboratively during these coming hour and 45 minutes? Rami, you have, like, a message of slowdown. Is that intentional? Do you want to, like, unmute, speak up, tell us what you need? Let me maybe be more specific on questions. So I've planned an agenda with a five minutes break. We have two hours together. Is five minutes break sufficient or anyone feels they need, like, they need it to be 10 minutes? Any thoughts around that? Frank is giving me thumbs up. Thank you, Frank. I appreciate that. Okay, I want to say, okay, then I'm like, I'm going to, I'm going to ask something else, like, I'm usually in my workshops, I like to do some worm calling, like, I, I open the space for people to step up. But then sometimes I just call names that I see around to make sure that I actually get some responses. Anyone has a problem with being called, like, if I call your name to answer a question or to engage with me in a conversation? Anyone has a problem with that? Okay, so I got some messages to clarify for me who's open for that. Okay, Victoria, since you, you said, yes, I'm going to be calling you now to see if you have other norms that you would like to bring up. Thank you, Aleve and Irina. Hello. I guess maybe giving what if we have a discussion of some sort giving some people a maximum amount of time to speak so that the discussion and well as many people can participate in the discussion. There's no other for some activities like two minutes, three minutes might be a good amount of time and obviously just principles like giving people or respecting the ideas that are quite different to us. Yeah, thank you Victoria for bringing out respect. And I wonder, like, what are some practices sometimes when we say norms, it's like a little bit vague, but like, what are things that we can do that shows that we have been listening or that we are actually respecting the different views. If someone has a specific suggestion on how we can actually practice respect for each other, please chat them in or speak up. This is Phyllis. We can acknowledge like with a plus in the chat or clapping emoji from the reactions below that we shake that. Yeah, thank you. So creating using the space, the technological space for tools to make us acknowledge each other. Thank you, I appreciate that. Other thoughts? Maybe to respect each other, we should raise our hand when the discussion starts. So we will know who will be first, second and so on and so on. Okay, okay. And I just want to say, I mean, now I'm happy that people are like becoming more active and participating. I really hope we have a problem of participation and like engagement. But that's good. That's a good problem to have. Having more voices to hear and more faces to see would be helpful. So these are our initial norms. Norms are working values and cultures that we create and we can always add to it. So if throughout the session, someone wanted to raise something, please do. And I think I want to like also raise the like a good norm to have in such a session, which is like step up, step down. If you feel you've been silent for a lot of time, maybe it's time to speak. So speak up. If you feel you've been talking a lot, maybe it's time to step down to like allow others to speak. So I think this helps us like really hear more voices and get all your opinions and thoughts here. Okay, so and even those who are saying like they are in the office or for different circumstances, they can't speak up. I really hope we can like hear you in the chat and listen to your opinions. So moving on, I would like to like before going into storytelling and public narrative, because we considered it one of the five practices, I would like to give you a big picture around organizing before we go there. So in organizing, we start with in this framework of organizing, we start with the question of who are our people? And then we say, okay, these people that we have who are our people, what's what resources do they have? What power do they have to create the change that they would like to see and seek? I know there's a lot of there's a lot of organizations or a lot of other disciplines in organizing where you start with the issue. But in this framework, we start with the people and these people from their stories, from what they've experienced, we figure out what are the priorities, what are the and they lead the change that they want to see using their own resources. So that's the essence of this framework. And we define organizing as leadership that enables people to turn the resources they have into the power they need to make the change they want. So it all starts from the premise of believing that people are capable and they have the power. It's just a matter of organizing the resources in a way that can make the power shift, and for them to become the ones capable of creating the change. And because we use the term leadership a lot, it's good to define it. And I know I'm going to explain some types of leadership. And if you've ever seen that kind of leadership, maybe you can like either raise a virtual hand or the real hand, just to see if you're familiar with these types of leadership. So there is the leader who is very busy, always has his phone or her phone ringing. Everyone needs them to approve things or give them the okay on things. So they're very busy, everything is kind of coming back to them. If you've experienced that kind of leader or you've been one or you are one, just raise a hand just to get a sense of we're familiar with that type. There's the other kind of leaders with a group of like-minded people are all working towards a goal together. And they're like aligned, they know where they're going, and they probably mobilize so many others to move with them or to like take action. And that leadership is also probably works for a short time, but like if not the leadership we're looking for, organizing. And then you have the third, which I think is pretty familiar, the hierarchical bottom down approach, which is like, there's a manager who has like department managers or whatever, usually common in like maybe universities or structures of organizations where people report to the manager and the manager sends work downward kind of in that status. It's also an interesting model, but it's not a model that works for organizing. Westick, yes. Is this the hand raised for intervention? No, sorry, it was, as you said, if you guys see yours, it's the hand raised for leadership, it was for that. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no. Good, okay. So I'm glad, yeah. So yeah, so I think all of us have like in a way or another experienced one or all of these. And in organizing, we define leadership as accepting responsibility for enabling others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty. It's a bit packed as a definition. So I will leave it on the screen for a minute, and I want you to chat in what words are standing out for you in this definition of leadership. Millie's saying enabling others, Gina's saying uncertainty, Afifa also enabling others, Licky, uncertainty, responsibility, Cavita, enabling others. Thank you. Yeah, keep them going. So I just want to like, I want one of you to speak up like on like, why is that word in the definition like sticking out for you? Like what are you thinking? So whoever from the like participated in the chat or would just like to unmute and speak up would love to hear a voice. This is Phyllis. I put enabling others because you're not going to have a movement if you don't enable others, no matter how talented and hardworking you are, you cannot do the work that many more people will do once you've enabled them. Fantastic. Yeah, thank you, Philly. That's a very strong point. Yeah. And Gina is chatting around, it's because during uncertainty there we need most leadership, but most managers don't necessarily consider the importance of managing that for their teams. Yeah. I think like recently with the like past few years with COVID people like kind of, you know, kind of realized uncertainty in its biggest boom. But but I think in general people who are actual organizers who are trying to create change on the ground, they know that certain uncertainty is given. Like it's like things never go as planned. Like you create a strategy and then the opposition makes something else. And like you always need to be like kind of ready for things to happen that are unexpected. And that's part of the leadership that we actually need. People who are comfortable with like having a shared purpose and moving even with this part uncertainty that will happen. So in organizing the structure that we are looking for looks more like that. We call it a snowflake structure because like under a microscope, it looks like how a snowflake would look like. And that's basically what we call like interdependent leadership where it's leadership rich. Like you can think of these dots as humans or as teams. So you can think of this as a core team that's recruited like regional teams and each team recruited even more teams. And everyone is enabling others to actually work on that movement and work collaboratively on that process. And it's not like maybe some people can argue that this model or that model is easier to manage. But these are not sustainable. And they are what we call leadership pool. Because at the end of the day, this is a dot in the middle. Like this is just one person. And if that person is exhausted, things are over. And the same way for this group. If this group, no matter how, you know, how like-minded they are, if you zoom out, it is a dot in the middle again. And it is an isolation of leadership. And you're not building more leaders to work with you. So our aim is to build a snowflake structure. Our aim is not only to make people actually win campaigns, but also learn how to work collaboratively with each other. So there is always an ongoing cycle of recruiting people, of identifying them, the leaders, recruiting them and developing them and identifying them on the same definition that we talked about as leaders are people who enable others. So thinking from that premise of like, I want to look for people who are open for learning, who are open for enabling others, who look for opportunities to empower each other. So in organizing, our ultimate objective is to achieve these three goals. We want a change to happen in the society. So if it is, if you're trying to reduce it to emissions, if you're trying to change a policy around something, whatever change you want to create is also what organizing tries to do. But in addition to that, we have two more objectives that are very integral. One that is the capacity of teamwork, our capacity to work together, just like what Kavita is writing in the chat. We can't really create change unless we really work in a team. So in organizing, we work intentionally in making, in creating groups that know how to work democratically, that set their norms of working together and that set their roles of working together. And then the individual is an important pillar. So how much the person is knowing and growing and learning throughout that process is something that needs to be very intentional. Because when people learn and grow, they get more committed, they get more motivated to actually participate in this work. So these are the three outcomes we want to create. Because at the end of the day, like whether you're working on climate or on gender or whatever issue is at hand now, unfortunately, there are so many problems. So the issue doesn't need only one campaign. It probably needs multiple campaigns, multiple movements. So that's why we don't just want to win now on this level, on the level of the society. We want to create an infrastructure to win again and again for people after that movement to reorganize themselves again when they see another injustice, when they see another thing. So we need the capacity to organize to actually grow. And that's an important thing. I'm going to stop here and just see your lovely faces and names and see if you have any questions. Any thoughts, questions, reflections? Okay, you know, some people said like, you know, I subscribe first storytelling, but that's coming. Just give me a minute. I just want to make sure that you get the full picture of things to not give you like a dissected information. So if there's no questions, I'm moving on. And so I want to like, again, something that we probably all experienced. So I'm going to explain this organization, which is the challenge that some of us pass through when we're organizing, when we're trying to create change. This organization suffers from passiveness. You call people for a meeting and they don't show up. It suffers from division. It's not like people have different opinions because different opinions is very important. It's good to have diversity. It's good to have different opinions. But it's more like these people like are good relation with each other. And these are good, but like not everyone is kind of united together. And that's a problem that you don't see the cohesiveness of the team or the group. You see someone working very hard. And they're like, very clear that they want to reach point A. That's our goal. And you see someone else in the same office working very hard as well, but they're trying to reach point B. So they're not really aligned on like, where are we? What exactly are we working towards? What would it look like to have success? What is the success we're trying to seek? So that drift situation is also very common. And then you see reactiveness, which is also unfortunately very common, that we just like wait for a murder to happen for us to step up and come up with a voice and be reactive around it instead of just having our own initiative, our own strategy. And again, a lot of this disorganization suffers from a lot of talk and little work. So you see people meeting and meeting and meeting, but not necessarily doing the work. Any of these challenges familiar? Anyone been part of some or all of it? Yeah. Okay, so we all been part of it. And when I came across organizing, that was like a big aha moment when I like heard about this disorganization. So what we really want is people who are active, who are motivated, we need people who are united, who know what is the shared purpose they're going towards, who take initiative and not just wait to react. We want people to do the work and not just talk about it. So that's what we aim for. And that's where the five practices of organizing comes across. So shared story, the public narrative, which I'm going to talk more on in a bit, is what makes us motivated and create our action, relational commitments, building relations across teams, doing one to one meetings, house meetings, these tools seed in us more united purpose around like our values, what we care about our interests and resources, which is very important. Having a clear structure and thinking about how to build actually a good structure that has that is respectful of people that has a clear purpose norms and roles, as well as a well coordination between these different teams in the snowflake is something that is important. And of course, strategizing, having a creative strategy, as well as designing effective action, action that can translate the strategy into tactics, into creative actions that can actually make us do the work. So these five practices are the practices of organizing that leading change network teachers, and that we hold dearly in terms of our research and development. And for all of these five practices to make us reach our strategic goal, some of them are like building power, we call them you build your power storytelling is seen as a building power practice, because when you know your story, and you know, you know how to communicate, you're building your internal power. And then there are practices like strategy and action where you're using your power towards your opponent or whatever goal you're trying to reach. And we have a six practice that is coaching that we consider an umbrella practice because leadership is enabling others. And for you to enable people whether in the craft of storytelling or the craft of one to one meetings or the craft of strategizing coaching is always ongoing. It's always alive for you to keep coaching people and asking the right questions for us to reach to uncover the challenges we have. Yeah, thank you for the chat. I haven't been. Yeah. Yeah, I think in many countries, unfortunately, we have these challenges. Yeah. So moving, so I'm going to zoom in more into public narrative. I call it public narrative or storytelling is like both are the same thing. Rappi Hillal said these quotes and I want to see if does anyone mind reading out loud for us so that we hear a nicer voice for a while. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? When I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when? Rappi Hillal, first century Jerusalem sage. Thank you. Can you say how you pronounce your name? Amuqi or? Yeah, Amuqi. Thank you so much. Lovely voice. So out of these words of wisdom, I want to go through public narrative. So to unpack these words and to think about them in more detail. So sorry. So in general, like it's really about asking yourself, who are you? What are you? Like really, what are you? What's your calling? Why are you doing the work you're doing? But not just that, but also like if I am not only for myself, what am I? So who are you working with? You know, who are the other people you're working with? And then the last part being, if not now, when? And so I'm just going to share with you like the three components of public narrative that we, so public narrative as a practice is divided into these three elements, the story of self, the story of us, and the story of now. So oftentimes, and we are very specific around when you tell your story, it's not enough that you tell the story of self. Your story of self is good. It tells me your values. It tells me why you're doing what you're doing. But it's very important for me to also hear who are the group with you? What's your story of us? Who are they? What do they care about? What's their priorities? And it's also important for me, after being motivated by your story of self and your story of us, to know what shall I do? What's the urgency? And what's the price of not acting? And if you want me to act, what do you want me to do exactly? And that's where the story of now comes in, to actually ask people to take action. So in this framework, in the overall organizing framework, we say that we are trying to move people into action. And for people to move into action, usually they need the conviction of their heart, which is their values, for them to know why is this important, for them to find the reference with their heart, with their values. But they also need the conviction with their brain. There's always two ways to see the word, right, like from the brain or from the heart. And for us to take action, we need both, we need strong strategy. But there's oftentimes a very strong strategy that just stayed on the shelf. Why is that is because we didn't get the motivation of the people, we didn't hear the stories, we didn't get them to be motivated around it from values perspective, people didn't get to analyze their, their why they're doing that work, or be in relation with other people and create a community to be able to create a change. So in, in all the work that I will be explaining, it's all the aim of getting people to take action, of course, take meaningful action towards justice towards change to the positive. And the way to do that is actually to facilitate it, the why and the how. And public narrative is more in the why. So it's a heart exercise of working on the heart. But again, when we go into the story of now, we shift a little bit and we start talking about how and what should we do? We call people to action. And what I'm talking about seems theoretical, but now when we hear an example, you will get more clear on it. Okay. Okay. So given that definition, we work through thinking of knowing ourselves, knowing the others and then creating the story of now. And anyone, I just want to ask a question here, anyone ever been watching a movie and they found themselves crying on it? Happens? Yeah, really is the raising hand. Yeah, it's common, right? We get our emotions sometimes when we, when we watch a movie on where we hear a story. And, and that's because emotions are a reflection that something deep within us, there's a value that was touched. And sometimes it's this period of life where I'm like watching this movie around family. And like, there's something about my family now that this is like sensitive. So I get emotional about it. So emotions are always tied to our values. And these values are tied to experiences that we've experienced, either now, or like in our history. So something is valuable for us because of experience we've experienced. They made this research in my clinic, they brought in two groups of people, one group who has a problem in their brain in the amygdala, which is the area in charge of emotions. And another group who are like healthy. And they made each group make choices. So for example, would you two, two good choices, like would you rather say the truth or, or I don't know, read a book, you know, like if you had this option. And people who had no problem at all, they were easily choosing between two good things or two bad things to do. Because for them, it was like, okay, like, you know, maybe honesty is more important. And that is more important. But for people who had problems in their emotions, it was very hard for them to choose between two good things or two bad things. Because that didn't click to a relation with a memory in their brain on an experience they've had or something they've cared about. So they couldn't really value what do they care more about. So emotions are very, very important in us making choices about things and taking action towards things. And, and like, it's like, not by coincidence that the word emotion actually has the word motion in it. Because we actually take motion, we take action from emotions, emotions are triggering us to take action. And it's very important to say that when I talk about storytelling or public narrative, I'm not talking about communication or propaganda or fake stories, I'm talking about using real genuine stories and like real emotions. But even though we do like our own personal story, it's good for us to know what are the emotions that actually activate action versus the emotions that inhibits action. So, so for example, if I say a story and I have fear, that's what we call an action inhibitor. The story of fear doesn't make you want to join me doesn't make you want to be a part of it. And story of isolation or self doubt are also like action inhibitors, inertia, apathy. So these are emotions on the left side corner of this slide that are that actually inhibit us from taking action. On the contrary, emotion like urgency makes us take action. Emotion like anger. Anger is a very good emotion. We're not talking about rage, but we're talking about anger. Have you ever acted because you got angry about something being unjust? We probably do, right? Like, I mean, I've had incidents where like being angry at something that is really not working in the world or really affecting injustice to someone or something around me that made me actually take action. Hope is a very positive emotion in terms of making us take action. Again, it's also the same with solidarity and you make you can make a difference. And for for leaders of movements, it's very important that when you see the emotion of fear or apathy or isolation, that you actually counter that emotion with the emotion on the opposite side. So if you see an emotion of fear, which happens when organizers take risk of their lives or their jobs or whatever to like take action, you need to bring it bring them a narrative of hope to counterpart that negative emotion that is inhibiting action. And it's very important for you as a leader in campaigns to actually think what what is the emotion I'm transmitting in the story I'm telling in the work I'm doing and how I'm motivating my people to make sure that you can bring more action motivators towards your voice in the right time to bring people to take action. I'm going to stop sharing and see if anyone has thoughts, reflections. I think I have never thought of like how to counter it. Like I've always seen like advertisements and sort of calls to action that appeal to certain emotions like anger and fear. And they don't really work so well, but I've never known how exactly you can counter that but seeing like the chat of you know apathy with anger, I kind of get a sense of how you can organize people around ideas that oppose that, which is really cool. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And I want to say that like many of these emotions of like isolation and self-doubt and all of that also emerged during the COVID period. And I saw very strong narratives of municipality leaders standing up and bringing a narrative of you can make a difference, narrative of hope, a narrative of urgency because there was all these emotions, it's just that instead of like bringing a narrative of isolation and fear, just bring the opposite for your people. And that made a true difference for people to actually take action and be responsible during the situation. So it's just important for us to remember that at the end of the day we are humans and emotions are important and our choice of which emotions are we transmitting is also very important. Any other thoughts or questions? Okay, so I'll move on. Let me share sound. Okay. So in general, any story, I'm sure like you probably read stories, watched movies, any story has this, these components, challenge, choice, outcome. These are the three elements of any story. And it's very important not to miss any one of them. So if I'm telling my story of self, I need to have a challenge because if I don't have a challenge in my story, I will appear like a hero. And people don't want heroes. If I tell a story without an outcome, I only tell you my challenges, I will appear as a victim. And people don't like victims. People want leaders who have made choices in their lives, who have chosen a path that they are on now. So you need to make sure that when you tell your story, you have these three areas, the challenge, the choice and the outcome. Because we're not doing storytelling for media, we're doing storytelling as a process of agency, as a process of building power. So it is also on the same pathway of leadership development. I want to enable you, so I quote your story, because you actualizing your story, you realizing, why are you doing the work you're doing now? What's your story? What's your values? What happened in your childhood? What made you care about XYZ is an important part of building your own agency. So that's really important. So and of course, there's always a character and in the story of self, you are the character. A very common mistake is that people come and tell a story about their sister or brother. We want you to be the one having that challenge and what was your choice and your outcome. So you need to think of a story which you were the hero of. What was it? What happened to you and what choice have you made? And of course, there's always the plot, the details. The more you bring vivid imagery into the story, the more it is memorable for people. And if it's memorable, then they got it, then they receive the emotion that you have. So we always say you need to show your story, not tell it. So visualize it in vivid images as much as you can. And of course, out of every story, there is this moral. What are we taking away from it? So now to just take this theory into practice, I want to show a video. And I want to say like I just want to do this trigger warning that this is a video of someone called James Croft. He was a student at Harvard Kennedy School. And he did this video as part of like studying with Marshall doing this public narrative work. It's a complete narrative that has self us now. But it has a description of suicide relevant to LGBTQ groups. But so just to be like aware, if anyone feels they are not ready to listen to it for any circumstances, you can just put the voice down. It's going to be five minutes. So I'm going to put this on for five minutes, and then we will debrief it and then go on a break. So I just want to like before I play it. So this is a complete narrative self us now, but it's not ordered in this order, like starting with self then us then now like he does it in a very artistic way, mixing them. I want you to listen carefully. And then I will ask you around to debrief it around where did you hear his story of self? Where who is the us? What about the us? Did you know? And what's the story of now? What's the urgency he's asking us to do? So now I'm going to play it and just give me thumbs up if you hear it. Another man was streamed live on the internet by his college roommate, just one of a very long list of young people who have taken their lives because of anti-LGBT bullying in the past few weeks. Now I never experienced anything like what Tyler went through when I was at school, but I was bullied for being gay. You see, when I was a kid, I was a ballet dancer. And every week I squeezed into a leotard and blue shiny hot pants, it was quite an outfit. And I spent an evening practicing demi-pies and pirouettes. And I loved it. I loved the discipline, the music played on the old piano, the feel of the work beneath my feet. I even secretly quite liked the outfit. But my schoolmates and some of my teachers didn't like ballet as much as I did. And one of my teachers, a PE teacher, used to make fun of me. He used to say how girly I was, how dancing is not something that boys should do. I remember the sneer on his face as I walked past. And I remember that he was the first person to call me a fag, which at seven years old, I didn't really understand. I remember in high school how gay was only ever used as a term of abuse. And I remember one cold morning sitting in assembly while the principal intoned homosexuals deserve our pity and our prayers. And I sat among hundreds of other boys thinking I was all alone in the world, and that I was the only one who had this problem. Now not everyone may have experienced something like that, but we all know I think what it means to feel alone, to feel like there's no one on our side. Perhaps you were too tall and the short kids made fun of you. Or perhaps you were too short and you got it from the taller ones. Or perhaps you were too smart or too dumb or from the wrong side of town or the wrong race. We all know, I think, even if just for a moment what it feels like to think that there's no one on your side, to think that no one has your back. And all of us, if there are young people in our lives that we care about, can agree that we don't want this to happen to them. Imagine if you can what it must be like to come home and see a strange shape hanging from a tree in your backyard, twisting in the wind, the creek of the branches it bends beneath the weight, and that feeling in your gut as you get closer and you realize what it is hanging there, who it is, who it was. Because that was Seth Walsh, 13 who hung himself from a tree in his backyard, who was Billy Lucas who hung himself at his grandmother's house, and it was Ray McChase who hung himself in his door. And it could have been your brother, your sister, your son, your daughter, or your friend. It could have been one of us. So I know, I only came out in March this year, after 10 years, 10 years after I first told my parents that I thought I was gay. And in those 10 years I lost a lot of opportunities to make a difference. I was a high school teacher and every day I wasn't out was the day I deprived the gay student of a positive role model. And I'm not willing to waste any more time. I have to act now. We have to act now because it isn't enough to let these things happen and then mourn them afterwards. We need to catch these kids before they jump. And there is something we can do to help as a start. Joe Listan Savage has started a campaign, the It Gets Better campaign to send messages of hope to teenagers who are being bullied because they're gay or for whatever reason that they should have hope for their future, that they do have something to live for. And I think that if we made such a video as Harvard students with glittering careers ahead of us and sparkling degrees, then we could make a difference. So we need people to hold a camera, to share their stories, to do editing and sound, to stand in a big group and say it gets better. No contribution is too small. And if you want to get involved and you're an undergraduate, talk to Tevin here if you mind waving. And he'll tell you how to get involved. And if you're a graduate student or if you just want to come along from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Elliott Lyman Room in Longfellow Hall at the Education Schools campus, stand up and say, we're standing with these kids. We've got your back. Let's catch them before they jump. Thank you. Thank you all for listening. Yeah, I left saying I count a narrative of hope to counter fear. And that's true. There is hope. Where did you find hope? What was the sources of hope in this narrative? It wasn't about this. This just made me weepy, very moving. I wrote there a narrative. When you mentioned that we need a narrative of hope to counter fear, I found that very precious. So I just thought about James Croft's thing. In the end, when he said, let's keep their backs of the word he used. Let's catch them before they fall. The one before that he said in the sentence, let's, let's, let's, that was so moving. Yeah. Yeah, let's catch them before they fall and the sentence before that. Yeah. Yeah. Let's have their backs or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's be the ones who have their backs. Yeah. Yeah, that was definitely hope. Definitely. Yeah. Frank, you had your hand up. Yeah, yeah, I think one of the almost similar things that the hopeful part was that he said we can stop them before they fall. You know, this is not, this is not destined to happen. If we speak out, if we organize, we are Harvard graduates, or we become Harvard graduates, or people listen to us. So that was sort of hopeful. It was a desperate situation, but it was, it was possible to change it. Yeah, it is possible to change it. So you, and that's where you feel the hope, and that's where like, there is hope in the story. And I want to ask, do you remember where he begins? Does he begin on the story of self, us or now? Do you remember how he started his narrative? He started with, I think with describing all the, all the bullying and the examples of kids that took their lives when they were bullied. Yeah. I think he moved to himself. We have to do that. So that's like describing people who are getting, who are having, who are committing suicide. Is that in your opinion, Frank, story of self, us or now? In the beginning, it wasn't maybe super clear that it was a story of us. You're sort of assumed it was, it was him where he was part of that. He would be part of the LGBT community, but I'm not sure if he sat that in the first sentences. So in a sense, story of now, like this is happening in the world. This is what we see all around us. This is something where we should respond. Definitely. So he started with the now, and I see that also in the chat. He started with the now of creating urgency. Now is creating urgency. Now is giving us the image. And then when he moved to himself, what kind of story did he, like, what did you know about him? He was really into the ballot. And he was bullied because of it. It's cool, even by teachers, that it is too girly and that boys shouldn't do something like this. But he was really into it. He was like, what did you think he really liked in his life? What did that feel for you? Like, what did you know about him, about his values? I think that it is a person who doesn't really care about someone's opinion, and that he is making everything which can be good for him, for his mental health, something like this, and that he is trying to help others to also do things like him. Yeah. Very good. And I see Aleph also talking about the challenge he faced. So we saw a challenge choice outcome in his story of self. So the story of self has challenge choice outcome. The us has the same and the now is basically the challenge in the world, the choices we have in the world and the us. So these are the elements of the three components. And a good story usually has a balance between the hope and the challenge. And that's what we saw. Like when he talks about the ballet dance, there's something fun about how he says it. And there's something human about that discipline of the piano and how he loved music and how he loved art and all of that. So there's something that is human that makes us also balance the challenge of him being called a bag and bullied with an emotion of happiness, of humanity, of something that makes us also relate, because we relate to humanity, we relate to happiness, we relate to you know, having a source of motivation as a child. So we could picture him because he went into the details. Anyone remembers very vivid details in the imagery he tried to create because he was very strong in showing not telling any one image that you remember from. Yeah, Aleph is saying blue leotards, anything else you remembered about his story or the story of now that was vivid. Yeah, the creaking of the piano. Good. Yeah, yeah, the field beneath his foot. Yeah, he was so specific. And that was what made you now remember it. If he just told you, I was in, I was studying ballet without any details, we would never have remembered it at this point. Okay, after watching five minutes. But the fact that he showed us his story didn't tell it, it makes us still remember the details of it. So I want to ask, what was the story of us? What's the us he's like, so the us is basically the people you're talking to. So was he talking to LGBT community? What's the us he was talking to? Who are the people he was talking to addressing in his narrative? Okay, Frank, and I need after Frank, someone new to step up. Frank, go ahead. I'm going to step down after this. I really like your concept. I assumed he was going to speak maybe to the local LGBT community among students and then I realized his audience was a bit wider. So it was basically everyone and he said, everyone can be bullied. We all know what it means that you can be bullied. And we all want this to stop. And that includes basically everyone, every well thinking human being should want this to stop. And then it can happen to all of us and then it sort of goes to we can also also all act. So he includes a very wide group of people, but we says going to act because of their role as as Harvard students. Fantastic. And, and he like, and even he didn't like narrow it down to if you were bullied, because maybe not everyone has been bullied. He went to even more universal feeling and he said, have you ever felt alone? Has anyone here in this room felt alone? Like that's something that any human in the word has ever felt it like so he widened the scope of who could join him to be anyone in the world who've ever felt alone. And he like, like you're saying in the chat, he said, like, we could be the shorter person or like coming from another town or the longest person or like, you know, so like he made a different categorization that can fit us all. Right. So that's how he brought in an us that is diverse and open. And that's very smart because usually the us you bring is the us you will recruit. So if I am a group of if I'm a woman and I stand up and I tell a narrative that only talks about mothers and women, I will only recruit mothers and women. But if I say that there's a man with us or there's a guy or then I bring more diversity to whoever will join us. So thinking about how you describe the us will bring you the us you need. So you need to be mindful of what kind of us you create. And so I want to go to the now a little bit. You all started saying that he started with the now he talked about the suicide. I want to know what else like what is the ask he asked us to do. Anyone remembers how he ended up his narrative? Gulsum, if you if you don't mind sharing your thoughts. So he ended up his narrative with kind of an invitation the others to join raise awareness and to you know as you said to prevent them from falling. Yeah, what exactly did he ask us to do? Like how can we join? What should we do? I might have missed that part. Anyone remembers what was the request? He said there's a campaign going on. It's called the it gets better campaign. And if you are an undergraduate that you come and join this way and if you're a graduate student you can come and meet them in the evenings between five to seven. Yeah, very good. So for some group it was like come to this meeting to like see how you can contribute and like Westick is saying in the chat to make a video. So he said like no contribution is too small. Make a video edit stand in groups or stand alone. Tell them it gets better. Okay, so that was the request. It's very important as an organizer to seize the opportunity of getting people engaged with you having their emotions in with you to actually make an ask because otherwise you're losing the opportunity and losing a resource of people's emotions to take action. So you really need to make an ask and a good ask is specific, is time bound, is only one ask to not confuse people and it's doable and it's the first step. So I can't tell you come join the campaign for one year volunteer. That's a lot for the first one. The first one needs to be a first step. Just give me one step you know towards yeah and tell them it gets better that's right. I'm gonna share screen just to make a refresher. So on the story of self, so if we zoom in in the first element of the public narrative which is story of self, the three elements are challenge choice outcome and just a refresher to remind you we when we tell our story we want to show not tell. In a bit we will go into some practice in breakout rooms to experience doing your own story because that's going to be a good exercise for you to thinking to think through your story. Usually developing your story takes so many iterations so it's not expected from you today to come up with like you're really well made of story but just to start thinking about it is a good is an important story. So we need to show people not to tell them and we need to make sure not to miss on the outcome of the story because that will make us a victim and no one wants to join victims. We don't want to miss the challenge because that will make us a hero and no one wants to be with heroes. People want to be with people who they can relate to people who they feel are humans. So the question is what's your story of self and I just want to see if anyone is open for me to help them solicit their story like in the group here like in the big room like if someone is open for me to ask them questions and try to find out about their story about their upbringing about of why they're doing the work they're doing now. Anyone open for us to have this like five to ten minute conversation in front of everyone for everyone to learn how the story is actually emerging. Okay Sagar you're okay let's let's clap for Sagar for the courage of stepping up to get his story coached. Okay so Sagar my question to you is what are you doing now? Okay so currently I'm doing many things I'm a student right now back back I'm student again right now I'm working at the job and I'm again I'm planning for a to establish a sustainable the to establish a sustainable company as well. So a student an employee and the founder of upcoming companies as well. Okay and like you being at 350 and coming to these trainings like why did you join them? So during the pandemic I realized I need to continue my education and I've been into a segment of a digital marketing area during the pandemic I actually lost my job and my father is retired and right now he's almost 60 but he's still pursuing his PhD into his favorite subject which is Buddhism and that actually gave me the courage to pursue my education. I'm a physicist by the way but I chose my career into digital marketing and I've been actually planning to pursue my MBA as well but instead of MBA during the pandemic I saw many things about the climate about the social justice movement and about the society in general and that's why I decided to pursue my education into a law. Okay so so why did you choose law? Is law the what you're studying? Yes. Okay so like tell me more like why like where did that come from? Before the pandemic I've been running a media agency in my city Mumbai and I've been working for a lot many small-scale businesses. I had many dreams about to become an entrepreneur and to become a millionaire and to have my Ferrari and Rolls-Royce but when I actually work with a small-scale business that actually sparked my mind out and that actually gave me the dynamics of the society of how the businesses are getting established about the labor law, about the working conditions, about the business so that actually gave me the whole dynamics about the businesses and that actually stopped me to become the greedy, the money oriented person and that's the story actually that led me to choose the law and to understand the law to help others. Okay but then Sagar I'm just curious because like many people probably passed through like you know are now studying law or like want to study law but I want to like I want you to take us back into more into your life to tell us like so first like what's your like that's mind shift so I like I feel what you're trying to tell me is that there was like a mind shift for you to like that made you now study law right like to move out from thinking business into thinking that I want to study law but what is it that you like why is that important for you? My father was a government officer I raised in a government quarters all of my other friends and their family was all into a government sector so that actually nurtured my mind into a established society but when I try to escape from that when I decided to not to become a government employee and to pursue my career into a private job that actually gave me the goods and the bags of not having a government or a sustainable job but by doing that I figure out that the people who continue the government they are getting good good plan for a living a better housing system a healthcare system a transportation facilities and I'm from India so the government job actually occupies only 2% of the population so when I actually realized that 90% 90 or more than a 90% people don't have government job and they are on their own way and they are not getting these benefits of education healthcare and the food security and about the about the climate justice or a social justice thing that actually made me think that I'm a privileged guy and my family is privileged and there are many people who are not privileged so let's make something or let's let's give back to the society and that actually the beginning to pursue my education okay yeah so I'm gonna go a little bit earlier can you tell me how like where did you grow up I grew up in Mumbai city and how many things do you have I do have five sisters and I'm the only younger brother to that okay interesting and what did that mean like for your upbringing and your childhood it was it was quite good and my father was a he was an officer and my mother was a housewife so I feel that my childhood nurtured very well just like an average kid only yeah and but do you remember so like I mean what I try to get into in my probing is that I'm trying to get into a moment and a defining moment or like an important moment in your childhood so maybe if you reflect back on your life like especially between the age of like five to 15 was there any moment where you had to step up or do something differently or take leadership in what you were doing if I if I continue to explain more maybe you guys are not from India so that so if you consider about the racism for example so there is a thing in India called caste system yeah of course I know about this yeah so my family or the the origin of my family are from not that privilege or a privileged background and that actually I sense during my childhood that this is something I didn't knew that that was the class or a caste but that factor actually affected me during my childhood and as I as I told you that I grew up with the similar kind of a class people so the class was not the issue but the caste was yeah and how was it like can you say an incident specific moment what happened exactly it was not brutal to be frank it was not brutal but when we friends come around and we talk or we share the things about our culture and such things so I actually felt that there is something that they are not happy with my history or my culture so that actually separated me during the childhood yeah so and so community or so and so background so I felt that separation part during the childhood but to be frank as I was doing good in the studies and I consider though my family is with this I consider myself an atheist and I was the one who actually grasping the scientific knowledge and the and the more progressive knowledge so I was actually considering myself a very much privileged and very much intellectual instead of my other people so that actually gave me the courage that whatever I'm the path on to I'm doing great great and greater than others so that I agree so Sagar I just want to say that when we try to reflect on our story like the fact that you now remember this caste challenge means that it was real at that point even if you're over it now and you know like you've overcome that or whatever has happened but for us to actually hear it in a story we need a moment and incident but now there's no time for it but like just think about it if you reflect back on that moment and if you try to describe it to us just like how like the example of James Croft or any other story where people bring in a specific moment of challenge so that it you make it real for us on what exactly was it like what did you feel as a child in that moment and what choice have you made so again remember the three elements the challenge the choice and the outcome and sometimes the outcome of a challenge is not so bad like it's like we overcome it we get over it we are in a good place now which is good it's also a good story to tell but just like think about these three elements and try to go back to that specific moment instead of telling me I had a problem that has to do with caste just tell me the problem like just describe it what happened where were you what happened exactly how did you feel etc okay but so that's what I'm trying to probe into but now what we will do is so in five minutes we will go into breakout rooms and in these five minutes I want you to just sit down and try to reflect on your story on paper or on like whatever way you want you find useful you can just draw it because basically you want to tell people your story as if you're looking at a photo album and you're telling a story about your origin story like what was your parents doing what you you know what is it about you the challenge as an image think of it as a photo album and you're trying to give me that image what was it what's the context the choice think of it as an image what was that point where were you the outcome so sometimes even drawing these z4 pictures that you want to tell me about is easier than writing them down for the sake of the exercise and now the exercise is only on the story of self so the exercise is for you to try to start on thinking of the story of self at 1635 we will open the breakout rooms and you will be in teams of three or four to work through this exercise I'm gonna make a slideshow you will go into 15 minutes in the rooms and in these 15 minutes or maybe 20 based on the rooms if we can put people in the groups of three we will make it a 15 minutes breakout and each person will tell their story for two minutes and for three minutes the rest of the team will share what resonated with them be careful people are putting their stories out they're putting their hearts out so you need to first put your ears out but also to be genuine and to be not judgmental on whatever the person did in their lives the only thing you can respond with is what resonated with me oh that moment that you said the vivid image try to pick the vivid image from whatever story they told so that you bring it back to them when they repeat their story they should say it okay and if you just have any feedback around challenge choice outcome like if you feel one of these three elements is weaker than the other maybe you can just give feedback on your choice could have been better or like you know you can maybe tell us more about the choice maybe you can tell us more about the outcome like if you felt one of these three elements is still missing a little bit and I'm going to put it in the chat and now we're going to like put on five minutes on the clock for you to try to reflect on your on your story of self welcome back everyone is getting back I want you to share a reaction so on zoom at the bottom you see something called reactions share a reaction that shows us how you feel after this 15 minutes break out room okay hearts wow someone went into the heart area that's good that's good I'm loving that okay some funny stories it seems okay cool cool cool okay love it that's lovely okay so I want to hear some so what I usually do at the end of every session is do a quick evaluation so I want us so what we're going to do we're going to do a quick evaluation and then we're going to go into some learning so I want to hear your learning what have you learned today with me in these two hours but before we go into the evaluate into the learning I want to hear some evaluation so what worked well in this session so what facilitated your learning what worked well I'm going to hear a few voices and then move into what could become better and please because we are like tight on time just unmute and speak up or write in the chat I love your story about the salad what is it called never oh it was beautiful my story yeah yeah yeah it's called nafe yeah the the dessert yeah celebrating a loss that was really cute and got to the heart thank you so much and what else interaction interaction it was very well done okay good the the session that we just had was excellent we we it was quick but it was meaningful and and I learned a lot and just making me think through that I came up with a story I never had before ah fantastic that's what I wanted to hear like of coming up with stories and what else and I'm loving that you're all speaking up now okay I hear on the chat video was inspiring analyzing it a clear structure clear pictures to illustrate cool clear explanation okay let's go into what can be better what can we improve for this session I wish you did this what do you wish I'd have done yeah we could do a whole day yes this workshop is is done on the full day workshop it's done on four months workshop as well there is the extended version of it and I hope you can join me on one of those other thoughts any tips to improve I wish everyone like turned on their videos and we had more voices heard that would have been helpful other thoughts maybe more sort of interaction at the beginning as well to get everyone to yeah more engaged and ready to listen yeah so I told you that I'm actually working for one project which is more close to environment and I've been doing this since the pandemic and I realized that whatever you've been explaining is I've been actually practicing before and that actually gave me a the exact route of where should I actually improve myself so insights for thank you thank you okay that's great to hear so now I want to hear some learning so if you can reflect for like a few seconds on what is your main takeaway like you're leaving this room hopefully learning something new what is your biggest take away and I want everyone to chat it in but I want to hear at least two voices to speak it up and for those who asked what's the course there's this course now at Harvard but then at leading change network we run a lot of courses for public narrative and for organizing all the time so if you subscribe to us you will get to see what's what are we offering but I want to hear like what's what's your biggest takeaway leaky do you want to speak up tell us what's your like what are you leaving the room with I think that each story should at least have a challenge a choice and an outcome fantastic challenge choice outcome the elements of story great take away what else and mercy do you want to tell us what's your takeaway I love the definition of leadership I think for for the longest time we've had leadership as just the pooping at the forefront getting all the glory but this thing about you know accepting responsibility and having a shared vision that all can work towards and weathering uncertainty that I think is a kind of leadership that we need and that needs to become the norm other than this other thing yeah I love it thank you mercy for bringing the leadership definition lovely something else someone has a like a different space of learning we can have one more voice Victoria do you want to speak up I guess I was quite inspired by the sort of structure that we were given to help our stories feel more engaging engaging to our audience and the fact that it's so universal and we can all it sort of reminds me of the fact that we all have shared experiences no matter how diverse our backgrounds are and that was very powerful thank you with that I want to say thank you for all of you for like really joining me today and please I have like the LCN link join if you want to like become a member or subscribe to the newsletter to know what's happening and with that I will pass it on to Lisa to close us off you are muted Lisa yes I am thank you so much for such an inspiring session so the recording and the slides will be made available to all of you will be sending those resources in the coming week if you have any other question or anything you need regarding this training or any other training that you might attend this week you can reach out to me I'm putting my email in the chat box and we also have put together feedback form so that we can hear from you on what you thought of this session and also if you would like a certificate of attending this training we can make that happen for you and the last thing I wanted to share is yeah a reminder that this is actually only the second training of a whole program that we're running this week so if you want to see what else you might be able to attend in the in the coming days you can see it on our website just there and yeah just wanted to say thanks again to all of you for attending thank you Dave for the support with tech and a huge thank you to Maes for running this training for us it was really exciting and inspiring to work with you and yeah maybe suggesting that we all unmute in a chaotic goodbye with our real voices bye thank you