The Visual Lounge
The Visual Lounge
Mastering Visual Storytelling for Enterprise L&D with Rance Greene
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Rance says most training happens in fairyland, where nothing ever goes wrong.
This week is a revisit of one of our favorite conversations with Rance Greene, founder of NeedAStory.com and the School of Story Design, and author of Instructional Story Design: A Practical Guide for Developing Stories that Train.
Rance talks about the two ingredients every training story needs and shares a surprisingly simple trick for naming characters to make them feel like real people. He also explains when a story is the right call for training, and when it's better to skip it entirely.
Learning points from the episode include:
- Rance builds a detailed audience profile for every training session. Their values, their current pressures, what they fear, even what they do in their spare time - not just their job title.
- Rance's rule for building a story - only do it if something in the learner's behavior needs to change.
- Stories work like flight simulators for behavior. The neurons firing during a well-told story are the same ones that fire in the real situation, which is exactly what creates that desire for resolution.
Important links and mentions:
- Connect with Rance on LinkedIn
- Check out School of Story Design and Need A Story
- Subscribe to Rance's YouTube Channel
If you've never had dinner with Julia Child, you need to watch this podcast because it has nothing to do with that. But it does have a lot to do with stories. Uh, we'll talk a lot about uh characters, about what makes a great story for training. Um, this is the podcast that you need to listen to because Matt is awesome and he's asked some really great questions, and you're gonna find out the answers when you watch this podcast. All right, and hopefully I will be coherent.
SPEAKER_00Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you are and wherever you're watching from. My name is Matt Pierce, host of the Visual Lounge. Today we're gonna be talking about, I think, one of the fundamental experiences of life: stories. Stories are powerful, they're amazing, but I don't know that we all know how to use them or how to apply visuals to them, so we're gonna be talking to an expert here that is going to hopefully help us level up our game. In fact, I'm not even gonna say hopefully, he will help us level up our game and get better at storytelling, so let me go ahead and introduce our guest right now. Rance Green formed Needastory.com and the School of Story Design, which is schoolofstorydesign.com, for those who struggle with storytelling at work. His methodology, story design, and talent development professionals a systematic and creative way for discovering who their audience is and how to persuade them to take action on new ideas. He helps leadership teams, entrepreneurs, and instructional designers discover that they are uniquely equipped to tell the best story for their audiences. Rance is the author of Instructional Story Design, a practical guide for developing stories at train. He coaches, teaches, speaks, and writes often on the benefits of stories to connect people to one another. With that said, please help me welcome Rance Green to the Visual Lounge. Hey Rance.
SPEAKER_01Hey, it's great to see you, Matt. I'm so glad that I'm finally on your show.
SPEAKER_00It's so great to have you here. I I'm so excited because this is a topic I I I wish I knew more about, and so I'm excited to be able to learn about and to employ, because uh uh secret, I'm not the best storyteller out there, and I'd love to get better. But but before we dive into that, I've got one question that we love to start with.
Using visuals in your work better
SPEAKER_00What's one tip or piece of advice you'd give our audience about using visuals better in their work?
SPEAKER_01My one tip would be well, I'm gonna cheat and make it too. So uh the first and you know, my first rule for any any design um endeavor is know who your audience is. Know your audience. When you know your audience, you're able to make better design choices, um, including visuals. Um something very specific about visuals um that I would encourage um your viewers to consider is show the action. Let the visuals show the action of your message. Um that's my that's my tip.
SPEAKER_00Well, I I I love that. I I I do think we need to unpack that a little bit. So give us an example of what that might look like to show the action, because I'm assuming is it that you still talk about the action, or is it that you let the visuals do that piece of it? How does that work for you?
SPEAKER_01So depending on what the venue is. So if you are presenting and you have a slide deck, first of all, turn the PowerPoint off unless you absolutely need it to um to further the understanding of what you're saying. Um, but if you need a visual to shoot to demonstrate what you're what you're saying, focus on the action. So for instance, I went to I was helping a sales team with their with their pitch, and they were showing static images of um semi-related, you know, things to what their message was. And one of their messages was, you know, we will send emails, you know, customized emails to your um to your employees. Um, and this was like an insurance company. And make sure that they know how to log into the portal and see things that are relevant to them. Um so rather than um showing a you know a graph that had or a table that had all of the information in it with a lot of words, um, a simple visual would have made that message really sing. We could have seen, you know, just an icon of you know, an envelope, you know, being uh sent to uh the employees. So icons representing who those employees are, and either an arrow pointing to those employees um or the little icon of the mail actually going to the inbox of those employees. Then I say, okay, I see what they're talking about now. They're talking about um uh that because they have a visual to follow what the message is. Um and then you know, display like one of those sample emails. Okay, this is what we're talking about. This is what is within that email. Um, and we can see how it is actually customized for that individual employee.
SPEAKER_00So it sounds sounds like clear, just make it as clear as possible there, then by giving them kind of all the representation needed.
SPEAKER_01Right. And so that's gonna speak a lot more than showing a stock photo of a happy employee.
SPEAKER_00Well, I I I love that, and I want to get back to visuals here in a second,
Common mistakes in storytelling
SPEAKER_00but I want to step back for a second just with storytelling. I mentioned uh uh in the intro, like I feel like I I I've learned things about storytelling, you know, I've I've done like some storytelling, but look, I'm I don't consider myself a good storyteller. So what do you think fundamentally most people get wrong with using stories, particularly in this line of in you know, in training and development and and kind of the business settings, because it does feel like I've either seen stories that are like, oh my gosh, it has nothing to do with this thing, or I'm not making that connection to like it's going on too long, or you know, just it's it's weak. It maybe doesn't help. So do you have some kind of guidelines or things that can help people to get better?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that you're right. They're when you kind of know when a story for training isn't hitting the mark. So let me ask you, Matt, um, when you think of stories that you watch, stories that you read, stories that you listen to or even tell, um, what are the elements that make a story a story, in your opinion?
SPEAKER_00Well, good qu now I'm on the spot. This is my podcast. You're not supposed to do this to me. Uh no, it's it's no, I I I I love that question. Um so I think I mean there's the classic kind of uh, you know, there's there's tension, there's uh builds to some kind of like climax resolution. Um but there's you know, there's it might I would I as a video creator we often refer to like the hero's journey, right? Like how does the hero get through to the thing that they're trying to do? Um so I think there's elements of that in any good story that is like there's something that draws you in to engage you to say, one, I can kind of see myself in that situation, but two, there's conflict, and I don't necessarily know how it's gonna be resolved that that keeps me going. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love that you're talking immediately about conflict. Um, and that is one of the key ingredients of any story, especially for training, um, that there has to be there has to be conflict. Um, so my
Creating relatable characters and strong conflict
SPEAKER_01little formula is there's two essentials for any story for training. One of them is um strong conflict, the other is relatable characters. If you have relatable characters, and I use the word relatable because you know your learning audience needs to have some empathy toward those characters. Um and those characters are in strong conflict, and I use the word strong because I want to remind us all that yes, we do need it, and it needs to be as strong as possible because it is, as you mentioned, the very thing that keeps us going, the thing that produces within us this tension, as you said. And and when you think about it, Matt, um, when you put relatable characters into strong conflict, how would you describe the feeling inside that tension? What name would you put to the tension that you feel inside?
SPEAKER_00So I I think for me it depends on uh on the conflict and the characters, but sometimes it's an anxiety. But also I think there's an empathy there, particularly if I relate, really relate to somebody in it, or if I like conceive that circumstance or situation having either been in it or kind of facing that. So empathy is probably the word I would think of.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you're putting your yourself kind of in the story yourself, like feeling what they're feeling. Um, and those are the wonderful attributes of stories, um, is that they kind of act like flight simulators, so that the same neurons that are firing during the story are the same ones that would need to be happening in real life in a similar situation. Um, and so that um what you're describing is really what I call a desire for resolution. When you put relatable characters into strong conflict, it produces a desire for resolution. Like you want them to figure it out. Like, how do I get out of this? Um so you that once that desire for resolution has been sparked, the story for training is finished, it's done its work, it brings you to the height of that conflict and it leaves you there. And it leaves you open to resolution, and that's where instruction comes in. Where do people get it wrong? Either the characters are not relatable, which means they don't know who their audience is very well, and so for every new audience that I train, I create an audience profile, and I want to know things about them more than just um their position in the company, their tenure in the company, you know, more than the demographic stuff. I want to know what are their values, what are their current circumstances at work? Um, how are they reacting to those circumstances? What do they fear? Um, what do they do in their spare time? Because the people that are going to be taking this course are people, they're people. They don't come to training as just a brain, they come to it also with emotion, including perhaps some resistance. And it behooves me as a designer to know who that audience is so that I can create characters that they will truly relate to. Secondly, and this is more common, is that people don't include conflict in their stories. Because as an instructional designer, we love to like just lay it all out nice and easy. This is what you do, this is how you do it next. We're gonna show the story of how it works in fairy land, you know, outside of the bounds of reality where things are not working so smoothly. And so that that when you put um characters in conflict, and where does that conflict come from? It comes from the action list. And I call it an action list. Some people may call it learning objectives or a task list, but I call it an action list, my team calls it an action list, and I train my stakeholders to call it an action list because I want everybody involved to remember that we are training people to do things. Umservable actions. And when I have a list of observable actions that I'm training people to do as a result of training, I can put those characters into strong conflict with those actions, and it produces this custom-made story, this tailored story for training. And that's where most people get their story wrong.
SPEAKER_00Well, I I I love that, and I I do have a question for you because I can see uh from a standpoint of someone's like, well, okay, I I love this idea, I want to use stories, but
Using stories in systems training
SPEAKER_00I'm teaching them a system rollout, or I'm teaching them to use a new tool, or I'm doing X, Y, or Z. So when in the training process do you find that like it's like, yep, we're gonna use stories here, and are there times you're like, no, a story is not the right way to do this? Um, because I think this is where we get caught up, right? Like, I think people aren't always quite sure. And I think that there's something about that conflict. I need to noodle on it a little bit, but it feels like there's some uh big barriers there that people have because I don't know, we don't want to have conflict. We don't want to, like you said, we want to spill it all out. But let's go, let's let's talk about like are there types of training that you're like, yeah, you don't need a story for this, just show them what to do.
SPEAKER_01I get asked that frequently, and I'm always a little bit um puzzled by that question. But um, the only time you need a story in for any reason in business is if something needs to change. Um and training naturally has built into it um behavior change. And so anytime behavior change is needed, a story will always be beneficial to it. So, for example, um you mentioned systems training. Um, I had a student who came through um the School of Story Design and they were training people on how to use a new system for booking rooms. Okay, very straightforward stuff. But anytime there's behavior change, it's gonna be hard for people to change behaviors because there was a former way of booking rooms. Um, but convincing people to use the new system was was also a barrier. Um, so they they did that. They showed a story where the main character in their story was in conflict with every action on that action list. And you know, systems training is great because it you've got all the the steps, observable steps that you have to take kind of spelled out nice and neat. Um, so it's great for you know that that part is easy. Whereas another training, like you know, how to be a more empathetic leader, those steps are a little bit more difficult to define. Um, but with systems training is easy. Um, and then they shared that story where and they not only shared that story of them being in conflict with all those actions, but also the consequences of that. The room wasn't ready, the room was messy, um, the cust they lost the customer as a result of just being unprepared. And then they went through the systems training part and they kept referring back to the story. Hey, remember when they did this? Okay, you don't have to have that kind of experience because you're gonna take these steps and this is going to set you up for success. And then at the very end, because they were just like, I've got to have a success story after they had gone through all those steps, then they showed um an example. But really, what's happening during the instruction is that you're getting resolution to the story. Um, but at the very end, they kind of put all those steps together and showed that character doing things in a way that that made things work well, they got the customer, um, and you know, the the room was booked appropriately. Um, so that's an example of systems training that worked really, really well with a story. So I would say, you know, if you're if you're training somebody to press a button. And it's really, really short. Like perhaps you don't need a story for that. But when you have people, when you're asking people to change their behaviors, a story is always appropriate.
SPEAKER_00Well, now you can anytime anyone else asks you that question, you can say, just go listen to this podcast. I answered it and just pull it up for them and let them let them go. But I I I I love that answer, and it it makes so much sense to me that be when we have behavior, story can impact that. And I I I think that's really helpful because so much of, like you said, training is it's about behavior, right? It's about the actions, kind of the attitudes, the the kind of the whole package we need people to do to be able to perform at the level that we need them to perform or to be able to accomplish the things that we need to accomplish. So I so I do love that. Um let's go
Visuals in eLearning
SPEAKER_00back into the kind of the world of visuals, and we started, I think, really strong, and you gave some good advice. Um I'm gonna let me pose a true or false question for you, and and and maybe it's not true or false, but I'm gonna pose it that way for you. Uh people show too much when they use visuals. So when they're telling a story, they've got visuals, they're they're they show maybe they show too much, true or false. Uh I know what you said about the PowerPoint, and so maybe it makes me think what your answer is gonna be, but I'm curious, what do you think?
SPEAKER_01Um, I would say in the world of e-learning, let's talk about e-learning a little bit because you mentioned trends. So that a lot of your viewers are probably into um creating e-learning. Um so in an e-learning course, I would say not enough. I would say that um there's usually a static image, there's very little animation as far as images appearing at times when people are ready to see it. Um and there's usually a lot of text on the screen. So if you took one of my courses, um, like the instructional story design experience, um, you will see little to no text on the screen. It is all visuals. So you will hear narration, you will also has close, you will also have closed captioning. Um, but the visuals are timed to the narration to show the action of my message. And so you will have icons, you will have pictures, you will have um it is chock full of visuals that support because you have to you have to show something in e-learning, right? It's it's a screen, you have to show visuals. And so I maximize when I'm not in person speaking or not virtually talking, it's just it's an e-learning course. I will have a ton of visuals to uh show the action of my message.
SPEAKER_00So with that, I I often we often I'm hearing particularly lately, like the the approach to the visuals, the style will say, for you stylistically, are there differences that should be approached? So, for instance, what I mean by that is you know, it given unlimited budget and opportunity, you could have actors doing the thing, right? That are acting out the story. In e-learning, probably not gonna have actors, but you might have graphics or animated characters. Um, maybe you have a talking head, maybe you know, like if we're taking a course from you, is there a time and a place for all of them, or do you have preferences of things that you like to see? Uh, I know these are often it very much it depends kind of questions because let's face it, in in e-learning, in particular and training development, it often depends on circumstances. But do you have any thoughts about which kind of stylistically what you should use when or where or or not?
SPEAKER_01Yes. So, Matt, I should I should make a little bit of a distinction. So, um, what I just described about all the visuals was for the non-story portions of the e-learning. Um, so I have a ton of visuals for the non-story um portion of the e-learning. Let's talk about the story portion. Um, the story can be produced very simply. Um, it can be text on a screen. If it is designed well, it will work. Um and it depends, as you said, on your audience. So if I am training the board of directors, um, I am probably gonna use a more sophisticated style, uh, very stylized, um, very sophisticated kind of graphic, very one graphic. With text on the screen that they're going to read, I may have an option for somebody to read it to them if they want if they want that. And if I'm training more of a general audience, like a large corporation, and there's 30,000 employees at that corporation, and they're all going to be taking this course, it's going to be a bit more colorful and lively. I might use animated video, or I might use static images that you know come in at the proper time in the story that sync with narration. But the style really can be anything. I mean, I've had students do um a diorama with little puppets, and they and they did the voices for all the puppets. I'm like, oh my goodness, that's that's so incredibly fun to watch. Um I've had uh students use uh PowerPoint to just you know share an image of a person and there was text on the screen, or there was narration and they just showed you know static characters and the dialogue between them. I've had people use you know speech bubbles next to pictures of people. I use that a lot. I use photographs of people. I'll set up the scene, I'll take pictures of them, um, I'll have them, you know, saying their lines as I'm taking the picture, which is a little bit of a funny thing. Um, then I'll come back and I'll and I'll say, okay, let's record those lines. So they only have one thing to think about at once, right? Because these are amateur actors for the most part. And then I'll just sync their voices with the pictures, um, or I'll use speech bubbles that come out of their mouths. But um the vast there is a vast range of story production from very, very simple to very, very complex.
SPEAKER_00Well, I I I appreciate the clarification and and just that kind of sense that, yeah, fit fit to your audience, it always goes back to your audience, right? What's gonna resonate with them? What's the message that the you know, how are they gonna receive it? What's gonna keep them engaged? So good stuff. Rance, we're gonna we're about ready to move into our speedrun questions, but before I do that, is there anything else about story that you would want to tell us that maybe I didn't ask about? Because, you know, I don't always have the all all the questions, so I'm sure I missed as probably we could go on for this. Is why you have a course, right? This is because there's so much you could cover. But any highlights here quickly that you would you would want to cover that we missed?
SPEAKER_01Um, you know, let how about just a little knit, a little tiny piece of information. Let's talk about naming characters
Naming characters in your story
SPEAKER_01for your story. Because I find this so interesting that when people um write their story, the first draft inevitably is John and Mary. You know, John and Mary are the characters, and you know, there are real people named John and real people named Mary, and there are there's absolutely nothing wrong with those names. But um, I find that when you use a cast of characters that have, you know, incredibly common names, um, it seems less real. But when you give care your cast of characters um unique names, and when I say unique names, I mean the variety in the number of syllables in the name. So think about it, you know, a cast of you know Paul, Jack, and Jill. You know, okay, yes, there are people named those, but compare that to a cast of characters with um TJ, LaRonda, and Barry. You know, the second cast almost sounds like people that I may have worked with. So a mix of unusual names with common names, um, a mix of syllables within the names. Just uh that's my quick tidbit for naming characters.
SPEAKER_00Well, I I love that. It reminds me of a mode of my very first jobs in I was finishing up grad school and and uh I went, we were doing some work for uh I think it was this was Blue Cross Blue Shields, or maybe it was McDonald's, like at McDonald's headquarters. And uh the producer that I was working with, because we were doing using a story technique, uh, he would ask the people around the room for various times and names, like, who is your best friend? What was your best friend's first name in first grade? What was the name of your teacher in fourth grade? Like these questions that were like elicited like real real people's names and combined them together, which so I love that. That's a such a great tip. And I think we often forget that that that those that's a detail, right? A name is a detail that matters to towards realism.
SPEAKER_01So that's a really good technique. The the asking the questions thing. Another technique is to um I I encourage my students to create their character description first before they name their characters, like describe them first. And so sometimes what I would do is I would like hand that description to somebody else and say, What would you name this person? And a lot of times it's somebody that reminds, you know, it's somebody that they're reminded of in their in their life. And so it's a real person, and they'll say their names. So I love your technique though. That's a cool, that's a cool way to do it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. All right, Rance. Well, we're gonna jump into our speedrun
Speed round questions
SPEAKER_00questions. These are quick, fast answers to questions determined by the roll of the die. So here we go. All right, I'm gonna bring up our dice tower, and here we go. This is I how many times have you been on a podcast where they roll a die, Rance? Probably, probably this is it. All right, first question: what is a hobby or interest that you've always wanted to pursue, but haven't had a chance to as of yet?
SPEAKER_01Um well, I like water sports, I like to water ski um and jet ski and stuff like that. But I've only done done wakeboarding once. And I got up, I had a, you know, I had a um uh I guess I was alright at it, but I would really like to like do that more. I would like to do more wakeboarding.
SPEAKER_00Sound sounds like a lot of fun. Uh so let's move on to our next question. Let's see what we get here. This is a five. Oh, this is a fun one. If you could instantly acquire a new skill, like just like that, what would it be and why?
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's a good one. I guess I would say, well, I I would say like software engineering um because my son is studying that right now. Um, or I would say American Sign Language because because my daughter studies that. And so it would be nice to be able to just know those so I can have intelligent conversations with my kids.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I I love that. Uh uh try AI for some learning some computer science engineering. You'll you'll you'll pick up a few things. All right, one more here, just real quick. Last die roll. Oh, this is one people people people will tell me this one's a little harder, so I apologize. But if you could have dinner with any historic figure or even a live person, well, we we won't limit it. You could have dinner with anyone, who would it be and why?
SPEAKER_01Oh man, that's easy. Uh Julia Child. I mean, come on, she's like the French cook. Want to get a good meal, have dinner with Julia Child. That's my answer.
SPEAKER_00Uh well, you you you had me at food, so there we go. Uh Rance, this has been so wonderful. I appreciate you sharing so much of your your experience, your your knowledge, and your understanding. If people want to connect with you, they want to work with you, where should they look?
SPEAKER_01Oh, thank you for asking that. Um, yes, uh, contact me at um for those of you who are instructional designers, uh developers, or you are LND leaders or facilitators, the school uh school of storydesign.com is where you can find our courses for each of those um specific people in talent development. Um, if you have a message that you need to storify, you can contact me from the school as well, um, or at nitastory.com. And we actually have um cohorts for instructional designers that take them through the entire process of instructional story design from the beginning, all from analysis all the way to delivering a story-based course with guided feedback, all of that. It's a six-week cohort called the Instructional Story Design Experience. And I'd love, love, love to see some of your viewers um at one of those cohorts.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Matt. Absolutely. Well, Rance, we like to end the show basically the same
Conclusion and final thoughts
SPEAKER_00way with our guests. What is your final take from our show today?
SPEAKER_01Um, if you've never had dinner with Julia Child, you need to watch this podcast because it has nothing to do with that. But it does have a lot to do with stories. Uh, we'll talk a lot about uh characters, about what makes a great story for training. Um, this is the podcast that you need to listen to because Matt is awesome and he's asked some really great questions, and you're gonna find out the answers when you watch this podcast. All right, and hopefully I will be coherent.
SPEAKER_00Well, Rance, thank you so much for joining me on the Visual Lounge. Always appreciate getting the chance to talk to you. And I hope I hope people go out and check out the school of design. Of story design. Thank you. You bet. All right, everybody. I you gotta love when folks come on and they're the authentic self and they just allow themselves to share the things that they know. We have so many great experts coming to the show, and we want to talk with them all about all these great topics. And story is one that is so important, especially if you're making video or if you're using images in your learning development. What's the story that's gonna cause or help that behavior change to happen within your audience? So definitely take a listen. If you didn't listen to everything, go back, watch, listen again, but check out Rance's stuff because he really knows what he's talking about and there's so much good. We'll put the links down below so you can easily get to those. But of course, all this is here for you because we want you to get better. We want to see behavior change in you, which is get better, get better at instructional design, get better at video, get better at using images. And we hope you take a little time to level up every single day. Thanks everybody.
