Scale the story so the audience knows who you are.
principle — attributed to Jonathan Steffert
Steffert's framing of storytelling is foundational. The future is in storytelling because that is where audiences are getting their news. The discipline is to scale the story to the most basic level: who am I, what is my place in the world, where have I come from, what values do I stand for. Everything the embassy does or arranges stays true to New Zealand's culture and his upbringing, which is why it reads as authentic rather than as performance. The implication for any communicator is that the story has to start at the level of identity, not at the level of capability or product. The audience needs to know who is speaking before they can hear what is being said.
For diplomatic communicators, brand storytellers, and any organization explaining itself to new audiences. The principle is most useful as a corrective to communication that starts with capabilities rather than identity.
storytelling, identity, values, narrative-foundation