People remember stories. One of the best ways for people to relate to you is to tell a story. My favorite stories tend to be of situations where everything goes wrong, but it all comes out right in the end because of the team. Yes, business is about facts and figures, but people get bored with presentations of data and information. But what does bring them together is the narrative.

The story, which the WSJ talks about here, is an art like anything else. The classic narrative is the hero’s journey….a seemingly average person who is faced with a “monster”, but becomes a hero by overcoming the obstacles, usually accompanied with the right friends (Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter). We relate to the average person (don’t we all think we’re average at some level?) but we want to believe that we too can overcome “the monster” with our friends and family and be heroes ourselves if we needed to.

This is the commercial that is referred to in the article called “An Empty Chair”. It has all the elements of a powerful narrative, and I dare you to watch it and not shed a tear.