Using narrative to influence
Mark Carney's Ferocious Storm
The Canadian PM gave a speech to the EU parliament recently. He conjured ferocious storms and mighty oaks. He referenced Goethe. It was a powerful lesson in storytelling.
Mark Carney is really managing to stand out from the crowd, just as he did in January at the WEF in Davos. He’s transmitting statesman energy, and in the process securing a level of domestic political support that should make most western democratic leaders green with envy.
He’s a great speaker yes but more than that, he has a sure grasp of narrative structure. It’s a form of communication that is hard-wired into every human brain.
Here’s how his speech breaks down, story beat by story beat. This structural approach is how HumanStory work with clients to shape their narratives.
Just as a caveat, this post isn’t about Mark Carney’s politics, the details of EU-Canada relationship or the geopolitics that surround it. It’s about analysing the communications techniques he uses so well, as a learning tool.
This speech is a skilled use of structured, neurochemically active storytelling.
1) Character: Who are we?
The speech’s central character is Canada and the European Union.
“Our ties are deeply rooted to our lands.”
2) Connection: What positive values bind speaker and audience together?
Carney builds emotional connection through memory, place and values. He gives the institutional relationship between Canada and the EU a human, physical and intergenerational dimension. Goethe, heroic European resistance, the creation of the European Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the story of Canadian Lieutenant Leslie Miller.
In 1917, Miller carried acorns from the devastated landscape of Vimy Ridge back to Canada, where they grew into a forest. A century later, grafts from those Canadian oaks were returned to France.
“We hold common values, for which we have always fought, and in whose defence we must always remain vigilant.”
3) Incident: What has changed to upset the status quo?
Disruptive forces have changed our world and demand our attention. Climate change, democratic erosion, trade weaponisation, coercive finance, fragile supply chains and powerful technology platforms have altered the strategic landscape.
“This combination is a ferocious storm”.
4) Challenge: What must be achieved?
The Canada-EU relationship must now acquire “a new dimension” because the conditions that once supported security and openness have changed.
The challenge is to achieve strategic autonomy without retreating into isolation.
“The objective is not self-sufficiency. It is collective resilience. “
5) Struggle: What obstacles stand in the way?
Multilateral organisations are being weakened, sovereignty and openness are difficult to reconcile, tariffs are being used as a means of pressure. Financial mechanisms are used for coercion. Supply chains have become vulnerabilities to exploit.
“We all have important gaps in these strategic capabilities, and we each must rely on individual nations or companies to fill them”
6) Crisis: What happens if we fail?
Canada and the EU remain individually exposed in a world where the dependency can be weaponised. Given the views of his audience it’s no accident that Carney focuses in on the threat posed by unregulated technology companies to provide his speech with its ‘crisis’, its moment of peak tension and threat.
“Technology platforms increasingly seek to act as sovereign powers. They want to dictate the rules of regulation – and even circumvent them. They want to control our data, spread misinformation, and steal our children’s childhoods.”
7) Transform: What can we do to change, to overcome struggle and crisis?
To overcome the struggle and avoid the crisis, Carney proposes transformational change. Seamless digital trade, deep cooperation in the full range of strategic capabilities, critical minerals, defence industrial capacity, AI, energy security. Freedom of travel and work for Canadian and EU young people. Deeper partnership for mutual advantage and collective resilience.
“A single tree will come down in it. A forest will not”
8) Climax: What does success look like?
The prize is a resilient transatlantic alliance that protects freedom while creating prosperity and opportunity. Creating a world order that is just, stable and prosperous.
“Deepening and widening our relationship will strengthen our sovereignty, improve affordability, opportunity, and security for our citizens, while safeguarding our ability to live our lives as we choose.”
9) Resolution: A call to action.
Carney ends by returning to the Vimy Ridge and the acorns, the central metaphor of the speech. And makes his call to action.
“So, let us now deepen these roots, widen this canopy, and grow a transatlantic forest under which our citizens can flourish as free people on free ground. “
Whatever you think of Mark Carney and his reading and response to the geopolitical changes of the day (feel free to read the caveat at the beginning of the post again) this speech is a skilled use of structured, neurochemically active storytelling. I hope that other political leaders, including in my own country, are taking note, because it’s making them look like amateurs by comparison.
And if you’re a leader, commercial or political, who’s interested in harnessing the power of narrative to become more influential, please do drop me a line. You’ll be surprised at how quickly and simply you can up your game.
- Structure persuades: Carney’s speech follows clear story beats: character, conflict, crisis, change, resolution. Human brains are wired to follow that shape.
- Connect before you challenge: Before naming any threat, he builds emotional ties through shared values, memory, place and history.
- Name a vivid threat: Picking a crisis the audience already fears, like unchecked tech platforms, creates the peak tension that drives action.
- Use one central image: A single metaphor, like the Vimy Ridge acorns growing into a forest, ties the story together and makes the call to action stick.
- Storytelling is an essential leadership behaviour. It can be taught.
