Tab 3 of 8

MAP

Find the events, causes, consequences, and change.

What actually happened?

0 of 22 filled in

Memories are messy. Stories cannot be.

Before you decide how to tell an experience, step back far enough to see the sequence.

The key question is not simply: What happened?

It is: What happened because of what happened before it?

That difference turns a list of incidents into a story.

Field tool: find the key event

The key event is the event on which the rest of the story depends.

What moment makes this story memorable?

If I removed that event, would the rest of the story still happen?

YesNo

What changed because of it?

If removing the event does not substantially alter the story, you may not have found the key event yet.

Field tool: timeline it

Write the story from the center outward. First the key event, then backward, then forward.

KEY EVENT

LEADING EVENT 1 — what happened immediately before the key event?

As a result…

LEADING EVENT 2 — what contributed to that event?

As a result…

CONSEQUENTIAL EVENT 1 — what happened because of the key event?

As a result…

CONSEQUENTIAL EVENT 2 — what happened next because of that?

Continue only as far back as necessary to understand the key event.

Don't overclaim

Be especially careful with:

Promotions
Firings
Relationship changes
Major career decisions
Health outcomes
Financial outcomes
Other people's motives

You know what you experienced. You may not know everything that caused another person's decision. Separate what happened from what you inferred.

Field tool: find the change

Complete both sides.

BEFORE — I believed:

BEFORE — I did:

BEFORE — I expected:

BEFORE — I avoided:

AFTER — I believed:

AFTER — I did:

AFTER — I expected:

AFTER — I stopped avoiding / began doing:

Did the change earn its place?

Change is more useful when learners can see how it developed.

Avoid: “My manager gave me feedback, I understood immediately, and I never made the mistake again.”

Look instead for:

Resistance
Repetition
Consequences
Realization
Experimentation
A later test of the new behavior

How the change developed

What did it take for me to change?

What part of that process could help someone else make a similar change?

Worked example: the night emails

Possible intent: help managers consider how communication from someone with positional authority can create expectations even when those expectations are never stated.

Leading conditions: a new manager enters a work culture where off-hours email is common. She begins sending messages to employees at night. Employees often respond immediately.

Key event: her manager points out that employees may feel pressure to respond because the message is coming from their manager.

Initial consequence: she resists the advice and focuses on what she sees as her manager's hypocrisy because he also emails her after hours.

Continuing consequence: his emails remind her how obligated she herself feels to respond.

Change: she recognizes that intention does not erase impact. Her employees may experience her messages the same way she experiences her manager's messages.

What makes it useful: the learning is not simply “don't email people at night.” The experience creates space to examine authority, unintended signals, role modeling, workplace norms, intention versus impact, and the difference between freedom to respond and perceived obligation.

Possible learner question: when does a request become an expectation even if no one says it is one?

MAP: field check

Before moving on, can you identify:

6 still unchecked.

Move to SHAPE