Nancy Duarte: uncertainty

Transcript context

…So, you wrote a book called Illuminate and something that stood out to me from that book is this idea of a torch bearer and torch bearer leader. Can you just talk about what that is and why that is important in power? Yeah, I loved writing that book. Co-author Patty Sanchez, a hat tip to her. So, to come up with this book, we knew that there's one presentation, there's a single presentation, could be on a stage, could be in a meeting, just updating people on a project status. And we knew though that every presentation usually is part of a larger movement where you're trying to move people in mass to this alternate future. So, we studied movements, we deconstructed the largest movements. We met with Marshall Ganz at Harvard to say, "Hey, could this be true?" Because he studies movements. It was so fun. And then movements have a five act structure. So, picture, there's this moment where you have to verbalize the dream like, hey, we're going to head to this new place and this is what I have to do at my kickoff meetings. It's like imagine this place in the future that we're headed to. So, it's five steps, it's a five act story structure, if you want to call it five acts. It's dream, leap, fight, climb, arrive. So, the torch bearer, the reason we called that is the leaders know where they're headed, but they might not ever see it super, super clearly. And we chose a torch because a torch, if you're in a cave and you have a torch, you only see about five, eight feet around you, but it's enough to dissipate the fear of the people following you in. And so nobody sees the future clearly. Nobody has that kind of level skill. All we know is I need to traverse this direction to be at the right place in the future so all my staff is safe, all are, we stay a leader in the industry. That's all I know. And as we start to head there, there's these moments of communication you need to do, which is, hey everyone, here's the dream. Here's where we're headed. That's the dream phase. Then there's this moment where they either choose to jump in and go with you or they choose not to. You could talk about Frodo like Sam and only a few hobbits followed him. And so it's like people select to commit this journey. That's the beginning of your movement. But then the middle is the messy middle of a story. We call it the fight and climb phase. So, what happens is they commit to your idea, they commit to your program, your project, and they're like enthused at first. And then they go into the state of, oh my God, this is harder than I thought. It's a long slog. This climb is getting exhausted. I don't know if I have this much fight in me to make this all work, not fight with each other, but like, oh my God, I'm having to overcome this roadblock and that roadblock and we have to go get that budget. So, it's just, it's like a fight, climb, fight, climb, fight, climb. And then ultimately you arrive. Each one of those five phases you need to use speeches, stories, ceremonies and symbols at each phase to give the people traveling with you the emotional fuel they need to keep going, to keep seeing that idea become realized. ases you need to use speeches, stories, ceremonies and symbols at each phase to give the people traveling with you the emotional fuel they need to keep going, to keep seeing that idea become realized. And it literally is about fueling the right emotions with speeches, stories, ceremonies, and symbols while you're moving people toward a bigger initiative. So, it's bigger than just one presentation, it's multiple presentations, multiple stories, multiple ceremonies. So, I loved that book. People are really feeding off of it right now because leading change has been nonstop. It's just been change, change, change the last especially few years.…

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