4(c) Persuading and inspiring
Figure 1. Persuading and inspiring multiplies your impact (TEDxHaarlem, CC BY-NC 2.0)
As you learned in Module 2(a), storytelling is one of the main ways that human beings understand their world. As a changemaker, you framed the problem or need you investigated with a story. To scale your project you also need stories to connect with other people who share your interests and can help you.
In this section, we will talk about a number of different types of stories. The stories you tell at the scaling stage need to be adapted to the audience and the purpose of the story. You will need several types of stories to reach different groups and achieve different aims. Just like your project, the design of your stories needs to be user-focused!
The informal story
There are many informal circumstances where you want to tell people about your project(s). Telling stories is one of the main ways we connect with other people. And talking about what you do and why you do it -- at community events, parties, on the street, at networking events -- involves storytelling. In these informal situations, it is a good idea to have a short story prepared about your project or activities.
YCombinator, one of the best-known startup accelerators, advises new companies to say what they do and why they do it in one sentence. You can do the same! This is great advice for those times when you want to easily and quickly tell someone what you are up to. That one sentence should be engaging enough to invite the other person to ask more about it. So you also need to have a few additional, engaging sentences that elaborate on your project(s). If you can tell your story in a few, interesting sentences with a light in your eye, you’ll be amazed at the connections you can make with others, especially when your interests are similar. You will learn more about networking with others to scale your project in Module 4(d).
Figure 2. Even informal conversations are opportunities for you to tell your story and multiply your impact (van der Sluijs, CC BY-SA 2.0)
If you struggle to come up with a compelling sentence, you can try out one with a standard format like this:
(“My company/project/group, _(insert name of company/project/group)_, is developing _(a defined offering)_ to help _(a defined audience)_ _(solve a problem)_ with _(secret sauce)_”).
Notice how the sentence above clearly articulates WHY you are doing what you do. This is critical. Telling people what drives you, your purpose, is a key part of sparking interest and inspiring others.
If you want to make it even simplier and focus only on the WHY, you can use author and motivational speaker Simon Sinek's framework for finding the purpose in your work:
"To __________, in order ___________."
For example, Simon Sinek's WHY statement is:
“To inspire people to do the things that inspire them so that, together, we can change our world."
Project Activity
Practice your one-sentence story with one, or several, people and see if they find it engaging. If you have a class of students, you can arrange for a kind of speed-dating game, where you say your one-sentence story and they give you a thumbs-up or thumbs-down and one piece of feedback for improvement.
The formal pitch
A pitch is a more formal way of telling your story, but its purpose is slightly different. It is useful to think of a pitch as a way to persuade. Pitches are used to:
persuade a group of funders to donate or invest money in a project
persuade an authority (like your school administration) to give permission to do something; or
persuade a group of people to join your project or cause.
Daniel Pink, author of Drive and To Sell is Human, explains that “the purpose of a pitch isn’t necessarily to move others to immediately to adopt your idea. The purpose is to offer something so compelling that it begins a conversation, brings in the other person as a participant, and eventually arrives at an outcome that appeals to the both of you” (Pink 158).
You may need different pitches for different audiences and purposes. For example, if you are making a pitch to a group of donors or investors to get funding, it is important to include financial information. If you pitch to an authority for permission for an action, you need to include information on the impact of the action and how you plan to deal with any problems. If you pitch to persuade a group of people to join your action, you need to pay more attention to inspiration, stories, and surprise.
Put yourself in the shoes of the audience and consider what they want or need to hear from you.
You also need to consider how much time you have. You may only have a limited time slot to pitch to funders / investors or to an authority - stick to it. Generally speaking, the shorter the pitch the better. People’s attention span is limited. The longer your pitch, the more likely the audience will lose the message.
When you make a pitch, you may need a pitch deck. A pitch deck is a set of visual slides that supports your pitch. Like the pitch, the simpler the slides the better. Clear slides that use mostly imagery and very little, but large, text are best. Keep the slides to the absolute minimum, as a starting guide aim for 10 or less. You can get specific advice about the pitch and pitch deck in the Pitch tool linked below.
Practice Activity
The pitch below comes from the Acumen Fund website. The site has other examples of pitches you may want to watch for ideas. The pitch below is short, just under 4 minutes.
Open the Pitch tool from the Tools list below. Keep it in front of you while you watch the pitch in the video. Identify 5 things you can see the founder Joel Ssimbwa doing to make his pitch successful.
TED-style Talks
A talk is different from a pitch. While the primary purpose of a pitch is to persuade, a talk is about building an idea in the minds of your audience. The best talks are those that try to change our mental models about the world. They teach us something new and inspire us. They make us want to share our ideas with others.
Figure 5. An inspired audience has energy and will spread your ideas (Jackson, CC BY 3.0 US)
Chris Anderson is the head of TED, the organisation that hosts TED Talks around the world. You may have seen these talks online or in your classes. He has seen many effective talks in his time at TED and explains the purpose of talks very well in the short video below.
His advice for effective TED-style talks (Anderson):
Limit your talk to one major idea
Give your audience a reason to care by tapping their curiosity, or exposing a problem with their mental model (what he calls “worldview”)
Build your idea out of concepts your audience already understands - metaphors can help
Make your idea worth sharing by ensuring it will impact others
Project Activity
Investigate whether there is a forum in your school or elsewhere where you could do a TED-style talk. Perhaps at the next PTA meeting, or school assembly. Maybe there’s even a speaker’s corner (Figure 6) in your community. Develop a TED-style talk about your ideas and try it out!
Figure 6. A speaker’s corner in Auckland, New Zealand (Mauruszat, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Examples in different contexts
Reducing plastic in the household
“I am helping families to reduce their plastic consumption and waste by informing and helping them execute 3 easy steps.”
“I am working with grocery stores to help them reduce plastic packaging by linking them with local entrepreneurs providing zero-waste products.”
The student expanded on each of these with a one-minute expanded explanation of what she was doing.
The student also developed a clever, mental-model addressing, 8-minute talk to explain the importance of consumers taking steps to reduce plastic consumption, despite the low individual impact of individual household action. She delivered this talk in various school contexts (assembly, PTA meeting) as well as at a regional circular economy conference.
Mitigating CO2 emissions in the school
The students also had to develop shorter, more informal pitches to explain their project at various fundraising opportunities, like PTA meetings and bake sales.
The students were asked by the forest department to prepare an inspiring TED-style talk to present to school groups in the area about the role and importance of trees in Earth systems. The students were regularly included in events hosted by the forest department and were a key part of connecting students with the forest service.
Informing people with Down syndrome about social distancing during a pandemic
- how fulfilling it was to engage with a community which is often marginalised
- how much they’ve learnt about the importance of providing information which is accessible to al, and
- how excited they felt about the response from the stakeholders.
In the video, they included screenshots of some of the social media responses as well as testimonials from the stakeholders.
Finally, they encouraged other students not to feel constrained by the lockdown as there are ways to contribute to the community even without leaving the house.
The video was uploaded online by the students and the school.
Tools
Displays for exhibitions and reports
Don’t forget to document your work. For a reminder about documentation, see Module 1(e).
Ideas for documentation in this section include:
Video of a practice pitch or talk
Text of your pitch or talk
Slides of your pitch or talk
Works cited
Anderson, Chris, director. TED's Secret to Great Public Speaking. TED, Mar. 2016, www.ted.com/talks/chris_anderson_ted_s_secret_to_great_public_speaking?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare#t-463363.
Mauruszat , Axel. “Speakers' Corner in Auckland.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, 2016, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakers%27_Corner#/media/File:Auckland-Albert-Park-Speakers-Corner.jpg.
Onyiego, Eric. “Building Youth Leaders: Through the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, 2017, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Building_youth_leaders,_East_Africa_(24768121237).jpg.
Pink, Daniel H. To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth about Persuading, Convincing, and Influencing Others. Canongate, 2013.
TEDxHaarlem. “20160922_MG_3469@Marjory Haringa.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 23 Sept. 2016, https://tinyurl.com/yxbcelk2.
van der Sluijs, Peter. “Talking Young Women Sri Lanka.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, 2015, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Talking_young_women_Sri_Lanka.jpg.
Images for examples in different contexts source information:
Samoilov, Yuri. “Coronavirus.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 20 Mar. 2020, https://tinyurl.com/ya2ngksd. CC BY 2.0
Webster, Tony. “Plastic Bottles - Waste.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 16 Sept. 2012, www.flickr.com/photos/87296837@N00/7992944072. CC BY 2.0
XoMEoX. “Tree.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 28 May 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y8bw46ns. CC BY 2.0
