Public Narrative
Harnessing the power of personal and collective story telling
Inspired by Marshall Ganz
By telling our personal stories of challenges we have faced, choices we have made, and what we learned along the way, we can inspire others and share our own wisdom. Because stories allow us to express our values not as abstract principles, but as lived experience, they have the power to move others.
“Some of us may think our personal stories don’t matter,” says Ganz. But “if we do public work we have a responsibility to give a public account of ourselves – where we came from, why we do what we do, and where we think we are going.”
“Stories not only teach us how to act – they inspire us to act. Stories communicate our values through the language of the heart, our emotions. And it is what we feel – our hopes, our cares, our obligations – not simply what we know that can inspire us with the courage to act.”
“Stories are specific – they evoke a very particular time, place, setting, mood, color, sound, texture, taste. The more you can communicate this specificity, the more power your story will have to engage others. This may seem like a paradox, but like a poem or a painting or a piece of music, it is the specificity of the experience that can give us access to the universal sentiment or insight they contain.”
Identifying key challenges and choices that define us
A strong public narrative is based on a series of “choice points” that have impacted your life and moved you to the place where you are today – challenges you had to face, choices you made to deal with the challenges, and the outcomes you experienced, satisfactions or frustrations.
Challenge: What was the challenge? Why did I feel it was a challenge? Why was it so challenging? Why was it my challenge?
Choice: What was my choice in response to the challenge? Why did I make this choice? Where did I find the courage and hope? Describe how it felt.
Outcome: What happened as a result? What did I notice about the outcome? What did I learn? What do I want you to learn? How do I want you to feel hearing this?
A three part process
The public narrative process has three parts: “story of self,” “story of us,” “story of now.”
My “story of self” tells how I got to where I am and why I feel called to be here in the group.
My “story of us” communicates the values and experiences that I feel we need as a group and what capacity or resources that community of “us” has to accomplish our goals to build a community, organization, campaign or movement.
My “story of now” communicates the urgent challenge we are called upon to face now and calls us to action.
Examples to watch
A good example of Public Narrative in action – moving through the three phases of “story of self”, “story of us” and “story of now” – is this story told by Harvard student James Croft: https://youtu.be/lymvc5d6qxY.
You can also see how Barack Obama used a similar structure in the first 7 minutes of his speech to the Democratic National Convention in 2004: https://youtu.be/eWynt87PaJ0