My friend Sarah McCue, co-founder of Read/Share a Story “for women and men of the world to learn from each other for self-discovery, exchange, awareness of other cultures, and development of new friendships through online networking and communication,” just announced a Proust Questionnaire on the site. Sarah is also behind The Remembering Site.

When she mentioned the term Proust Questionnaire a few months ago, it was the first time I’d heard the term. Here’s the origin:

At the end of the nineteenth century, young Marcel Proust was still in his teens when he answered a questionnaire at two social events — one when he was 13, another when he was 20. At that time, it was a fad to answer such a list of questions that revealed the tastes and aspirations of the taker. Proust did not invent this party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them. His answers can be easily found online and show the fascinating maturing of thought and priorities in life. Proust answered the questionnaire several times in his life, always with enthusiasm.

I can’t help thinking about all the questionnaires along these lines that have made the rounds of Facebook of late. Personally, I love both responding to these questionnaires and reading the responses of others. Many Facebookers are not so receptive.

But I think the addition of the Proust Questionnaire to Sarah’s site is brilliant. It’s a way to construct your story.

Here are the questions:

• What is your current state of mind?
• What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
• On what occasion do you lie?
• What do you most dislike about your appearance?
• Which living person do you most despise?
• What is the quality you most like in a man?
• What is the quality you most like in a woman?
• Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
• What or who is the greatest love of your life?
• When and where were you happiest?
• Which talent would you most like to have?
• If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
• What do you consider your greatest achievement?
• If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
• Where would you most like to live?
• What is your most treasured possession?
• What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
• What is your favorite occupation? <
• What is your most marked characteristic?
• What do you most value in your friends?
• Who are your favorite writers?
• Who is your hero of fiction?
• Which historical figure do you most identify with?
• Who are your heroes in real life?
• What are your favorite names?
• What is it that you most dislike?
• What is your greatest regret?
• How would you like to die?
• What is your motto?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

This must be the week for kindred spirits in the realm of using storytelling in the job search. Rob Sullivan, a pioneer on this topic, has been my Q&A subject this week. A more recent discovery was Judy Rosemarin (pictured at right) , whom I came across while researching the executive-interviewing book I’m now working on. She has made some wonderful contributions to the book.

In a blog entry in yesterday’s Newsday.com Judy calls elevator pitches “stale and rote. They make claims but show nothing.”

Instead, she recommends telling a story when encountering new contacts. Here’s her example that clearly would make a wonderful emotional connection with others:

When I was a young boy growing up in Chicago, I bought myself a paper route at age 12. All excited, I took my bag of papers and threw the first on a customer’s front porch. Out of the front door he came. “Who are you?” he asked. “I am your paper boy, ” I told him with some pride. “Well, I want my papers delivered later in the day as I work late and do not want to be awakened. I also want it covered so it doesn’t get wet. And, anyway, what is going to make you different from all the other paper boys I have had?” “I said, “Well sir, I plan to give you the best customer service,” and I have been doing that for over 25 years in corporate America.

Nice. I talk about elevator stories, a similar concept in my book, Tell Me About Yourself.

Judy has also done a terrific podcast, “The Magic of Storytelling for Job Search,” the transcript of which you can read here.

Added May 31: In the Comments section, Sean Buvala points out that “many of us who have story as our core work, for years, have said the elevator speech is dead.”

He offers a link for his podcast on the subject.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Rob, his bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Q: If you could share just one piece of advice or wisdom about story/storytelling/narrative with readers, what would it be?

A: If you haven’t seen the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, rent it. If you have already seen it, watch it again. Then, look back on every aspect of your life — not just your career — and ask yourself the question: “How are things better because I was here?” In other words, take yourself out of the equation. What happened that might never have happened without your input?

I call this the “It’s-A-Wonderful-Life-approach” to marketing yourself. And it’s the best way I know to make your story memorable and impactful.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Rob, his bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, and Part 3.

Q: What’s your favorite story about a transformation that came about through a story or storytelling act?

A: It isn’t a coincidence that most of my favorite transformational stories are about career changers. After all, these are the people who have the most difficult challenge from a job-hunting standpoint. To make matters more difficult, traditional job search tools like résumés are practically useless because, by definition, a career changer is unlikely to have formal experience.

All of this was definitely true for Jill, a concert violinist who approached me about getting a job in advertising account management. When Jill first applied to Leo Burnett, the company was completely confused. When the interviewers looked at her résumé, they saw that she had played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, Daniel Barenboim, and the Moody Blues. It was a great story for a violinist. Not so great for a future advertising professional.

Looking at her résumé, I could only imagine the confusion in the mind of the recruiters who were probably thinking, “This looks great, but we don’t have an orchestra.”

At first, I was a bit confused as well. On the surface, it didn’t seem to make sense. However, after I encouraged Jill to chart her accomplishments in every area of her life, underlying themes of marketing and leadership emerged in almost every area of her life. She was recognized as a leader at age 12 when she began teaching violin at the music school’s request. From there, she marketed herself as a teacher, classroom instructor, musician, and manager of a string quartet. As she described the various marketing challenges, a more focused, enthusiastic person emerged.

Until that point, her cover letter, résumé — even her interviewing style—positioned her as a concert violinist who suddenly wanted to pursue advertising. By tracing her passion, quantifying her accomplishments, and retelling the story, we were able to position her as an accomplished marketer, problem-solver, and strategic thinking—who also happened to be a concert violinist.

After we repositioned her experience, Jill reapplied to Burnett and was hired — just a few short months after she was initially rejected. That’s the power of a great story.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

SlideShare has just announced a contest inviting entrants to tell a story in 30 slides or fewer.

Last year, the site held a more general contest, and I analyzed the winners for their storytelling capacity. I’m tickled that this year the storytelling theme is built in. I see more and more about the importance of storytelling in presentations — from such gurus as Nancy Duarte and Joyce Hostyn. That this year’s contest focuses on telling a story is a strong endorsement of storytelling in presentations. Of course, many would argue that to truly employ storytelling in a presentation would involve no slides at all. Noting the popularity of the storytelling tag on SlideShare SlideShare has joined with Fuze Meeting to hold a contest in which stories “can be about anything. A story about you, your travels, or something you love. Just tell it with words and pictures and in 30 slides.”

Everyone who enters the contest gets a free Fuze Meeting account ($270 value), and prizes include a grand prize $5,000 and four category prizes: iPhone + $100 iTunes card, the categories being Best Design, Best Story Telling Ability, Most Popular, and Best Use of Multimedia.

Contest details here.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Rob, his bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, and Part 2.

Q: What people or entities have been most influential to you in your story work and why?

A: From a speaking perspective, the person whose storytelling work I admire most is Doug Stevenson, the creator of Story Theater International.

The workshop with Doug was a terrific investment that changed the way I approached my workshops and keynotes. First, I discovered the magic of truly being myself as a speaker without worrying about what the audience might be thinking. Having gone through a variety of popular speaking programs, I was under the impression that speakers were always responsible for their audiences.

Doug doesn’t believe that. Instead, he went as far as to say:

“Some audiences suck.”

I resisted at first. But later I realized he was right. Rather than worry about the audience, he says:

“Love yourself and let them watch.”

In other words, do what you know works and don’t worry about the people watching. If you have fun, they’ll have fun.

If that seems counterintuitive, look at it a different way. As storytellers, when we craft the message, we have to take the audience into consideration. But when we perform the message, we have to do what we know works.

Not long after the workshop, I proved to myself that Doug was right. I was doing a workshop for a crowded room of college students who, for the most part, sat there motionless. I’ll never forget how surprised and disappointed I felt at their lack of responsiveness. Had I listened to the voice in my head from my early training, I would have spent the rest of the workshop exploring different ways to get their attention. Instead, I heard Doug’s voice saying, “Love yourself and let them watch.”

So, I didn’t change a thing. I did what I knew worked and did my best not to think too much about the audience. I wasn’t feeling especially good about the session until three weeks later when the school called and said, “Everyone loved you. You are our top choice for commencement speaker.”

Had I changed my story or my approach, the commencement invitation would never have been extended. Thanks, Doug!

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Rob, his bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A.

Q: You state on your Web site: “the experiences that employers would find most compelling are almost never included in the résumé. Worse yet, these experiences are rarely mentioned in the interview.” Can you give an example of this type of compelling experience — and without giving away all your secrets — give readers a hint of how one indentifies these kinds of compelling stories?

A: Aldous Huxley, the philosopher, once said, “Human beings have an unlimited capacity for taking things for granted.” I would take that one step further:

Human beings have an unlimited capacity for taking themselves for granted.

One of my favorite examples came from an event planner named Andrea who had a résumé loaded with the usual laundry list of responsibilities. However, telling people what you are responsible for is not storytelling. There is no magic in responsibilities. If you want your story to be special, you have to find and include a few unforgettable details.

Andrea had the details; but they were buried. After much probing, I finally got Andrea to admit that in eight years at the company she had never gone over budget and had never missed a deadline. That was the beginning of a good story, but we need more. So I asked her to create a list of all the events she had planned along with key facts like:

• How many people attended each event

• How many people she supervised

• How much time she had to plan the event

• Her budget

• What she actually spent

• How much she saved

Of all the facts we uncovered, two were most surprising:

• The largest event she planned was for 20,000 people.

• She had saved her company a million dollars over eight years by coming in at or under budget on all of those events.

That turned out to be a great story because the average annual savings of $125,000 per year was $50,000 more than she was paid. In other words, she was an investment, not an expense.

Andrea’s story is particularly impressive when you consider how she originally discounted her performance saying, “I just did the job I was paid to do.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I could not be more excited to present this Q&A with Rob Sullivan because I think of him as my doppelganger in terms of using storytelling in the job search; we are twins separated at birth — except I think he’s probably quite a bit younger than I am. In any case, we are storytelling-in-the-job-search soulmates. He even wrote a book with a title similar to one of mine!

Bio: Rob Sullivan is an inspirational speaker and corporate trainer who has delivered workshops and keynotes at companies, universities, and trade associations across the country including TAP Pharmaceuticals, McDonald’s, Motorola, Northwestern University, and the University of Michigan. His passion is helping people recognize, leverage, and communicate the gold in their backgrounds.

Rob’s book, Getting Your Foot in the Door When You Don’t Have a Leg to Stand On (McGraw-Hill, 4th Printing), has already begun to replace top-selling What Color is Your Parachute? as a text in college career-development courses.

Rob has delivered numerous commencement speeches and been a repeat guest on television and radio stations across the country including NBC, ABC, and WGN. He was also featured in the Wall Street Journal and as a guest expert on Starting Over, an Emmy-award winning reality show that airs nationally on NBC.

Rob has a BA in psychology from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, as well as an MS in advertising from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

He blogs at Storysparking and is a career practitioner at Career Craftsman, where he also offers several e-books. Rob has also just launched the site, RIFProofing as a companion to his e-book, RIFProofing Your Career (RIF stands for “Reductions in Force”).

Q: Among all the practitioners I’ve interviewed in this series, you are the one closest to being a kindred spirit in terms of storytelling in the job search. How did you come to discover the effectiveness of storytelling in job-hunting?

A: I learned the effectiveness of storytelling by experiencing the pain that comes from not telling my story.

When I graduated from college, the job I wanted most was to work in account management at Chicago-based advertising giant Leo Burnett. Like hundreds of my classmates, I applied for one of the coveted on-campus interviews. Despite an objectively terrible interview, the recruiter saw enough of a spark that he invited me to fly to Chicago for a full day of interviews. Two weeks later, Burnett rejected me. Over the next 12 months, I had 80 advertising interviews in Chicago, New York, and Minneapolis. The following year, I reapplied to Burnett and was hired after my 23rd interview with the company. However, I was not a different person than I had been the year before. The only difference was that I had learned to tell my story.

As it turned out, there wasn’t a single moment or resource that opened my eyes to the value of storytelling. Instead, I gradually realized that the best interviews were the ones in which my story came across more clearly. At first, that made me think that my success was directly related to the skill of the interviewer. Only later did I realize the power and responsibility that I, as a candidate, had to make sure my story came across — regardless of the interviewer’s approach. Simply put, you can’t count on interviewers to ask effective questions. You have to have a strategy and a compelling collection of stories to help people make the right decision.

After spending countless hours helping job hunters from a variety of industries, I realized that the inability to share our stories is widespread - mostly because our society isn’t clear on the distinction between bragging and factual self promotion. For this reason, I decided to write Getting Your Foot in the Door When You Don’t Have a Leg To Stand On (McGraw-Hill). It’s the book that would have saved me from the ego-battering experience job hunters know only too well.

Recognizing that the challenge of marketing yourself effectively does not stop when you get a job, I recently finished a new eBook called RIFProofing Your Career: How to Protect and Keep Your Job in Any Economy. For more information, visit its companion site.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve been looking for a good way to honor Memorial Day and those who have sacrificed for our country and was pleased to find Witness to War, from The Witness to War Foundation, “a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to preserving the stories and unique experiences of combat veterans. It was founded in an attempt to answer the unanswerable: What was it like to be there?”

More from this beautifully done site:

These are the stories of scared 18 and 19 year olds thrust into circumstances of such intensity and violence, that they became the defining moments of their lives.

Inc. magazine describes the site’s underpinnings and founder:

Seven years ago, Tom Beaty began interviewing World War II veterans and videotaping their stories. One veteran walked into a minefield in Italy to rescue friends; another witnessed a sword attack by a Japanese soldier; others crossed the Rhine under enemy fire. The recordings formed the basis of Beaty’s nonprofit organization, Witness to War, which is dedicated to preserving stories of veterans, including the World War II vets pictured here. Beaty’s interest in oral history began at the University of North Carolina, where he studied military history as an undergrad. He started Witness to War in 2002 — the same year he launched his business, Insight Sourcing Group, in Norcross, Georgia. Starting two ventures at once often proved hectic, but the interviews provided an escape. “These stories highlight the randomness of war, the constant violence,” says Beaty. “Yet a million people have gone through that and survived. How amazing is that compared to my daily life?”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Once in awhile I post an entry that’s not about story but is a story — about my life or something related to my life.

Today I want to tell the story of Kettle Falls, WA, my adopted half-year home that I have been loving since we arrived here a little more than two weeks ago. It’s extremely presumptuous for me to tell the tale as such a newcomer, but I’m giving it a stab anyway because I find the story fascinating.

Humans, according to archeological evidence, have lived in this area for some 9,000 years. In fact, Kettle Falls is believed to be one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in the Northwest. The falls from which the town derives its name plummeted 40 feet into the mouths of huge stone caldrons,” hence, “kettles.” The falls were the site of spectacular salmon runs, where the native people (the Shontikwu) would catch 800 to 1,000 fish a day in certain seasons.

Settlers of European descent, specifically investors from New York, founded the town of Kettle Falls on the shores of the Columbia River in 1890 as a resort town. The resort quickly failed because the railroad bypassed the town.

Still, a very small town continued on the riverbank location until 1938. Kettle Falls was one of 12 (I’ve also read 11) towns scheduled to be flooded by the impending opening of the Grand Coulee Dam. While most of the towns that were to be flooded simply disappeared, Kettle Falls was one of the few that decided to move. So, entire buildings and 300 residents moved in 1938. Kettle Falls annexed itself to the existing Meyers Falls. Later, the blended town voted to change its name to Kettle Falls.

When the Grand Coulee opened in 1941, it wasn’t just the former town of Kettle Falls that was flooded but the actual falls, which have been submerged ever since except in 1974 when the river level was lowered for dam repairs. The photo at left shows a painting of the falls. The artist painted it after the falls were submerged, partly from memory and partly from photographs. I say river, but the water body that resulted from the Grand Coulee Dam is called Lake Roosevelt. It is simultaneously the river and the lake, which can be confusing. FDR had commissioned the Grand Coulee Dam as a Works Projects Administration project, in part to provide jobs during the Depression.

With the submersion of the falls, the salmon runs ended. The native peoples still hold yearly ceremonies mourning the end of the salmon bounty. Ruins of the original town of Kettle Falls on the banks of the Columbia/Lake Roosevelt can still be found, though not easily as Randall and I discovered yesterday when we bicycled the area. Pictured is a pair of steps to a no-longer-existing building. We also saw sidewalks and foundations. Unfortunately, a large National Park Service RV campground surrounds the ruins.

Today, from what I’ve seen so far, the town of Kettle Falls has a big heart and a sense of humor. Citizens annually compete to the elected as the only town “grouch.” The new grouch will be named in two weeks at the annual Town and Country Days. The population on the logo below (from the Kettle Falls Web site) is a bit outdated; according to a billboard at the town’s entrance, Kettle Falls is now 1,640 strong.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve been saying for a while now that the fact that recruiters are increasingly using social media to find candidates indicates that they hunger to know more about candidates’ stories.

Recruiting expert Kevin Wheeler just provided more evidence. In a blog entry from earlier this week on ERE.net, he compares the databases recruiters keep of prospective candidates to talent communities (I’ve also heard the term “talent hub,” which I assume is the same thing.)

Databases, Wheeler writes, have been built up through “impersonal methods” — employer career websites, applicant tracking systems, and referrals.

Databases, he says, provide minimal information, mostly from resumes and profiles. “There is no additional information, no personal observations,” Wheeler laments.

He says most recruiters don’t even use their databases but instead turn to searching the Internet for candidates. Wheeler didn’t say recruiters search social-media sites, but we know that they do.

Now, I wish Wheeler had explained a bit more about what talent communities/hubs look like and given examples, but here’s the reason he gives for their being better than databases:

What makes the talent community I am talking about different is its ability to take advantage of technology to achieve levels of personalization that could not be achieved without it. … Candidates actually perceive talent communities as very personal. … Candidates can add more information about themselves, and recruiters can ask questions about specific skills or interests. … Recruiters may have never met a person face to face and yet know much more about them than if they have had two or three personal interviews.

In other words, candidates can reveal more of themselves, tell their stories, the way they do on social-media sites.

Indeed, in the glimpse Wheeler gives into talent communities, he talks about creating communities from Facebook pages, LinkedIn, Google groups, and Ning.

Although I have been in search of the storytelling resume (along with Terrence Gargiulo), I may be missing the social and community element that some recruiters are gravitating to.

Wheeler says the biggest obstacle to the widespread adoption of talent communities is resistance from recruiters.

I join Wheeler (and Terrence and others) in support of more personalized — and more storied — ways for recruiters and candidates to connect.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Katie, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Q&A with Katie Snapp, Question 4:

Q: Boiling down your approach to its simplest terms sounds like “change your story, change your life.” However, you seem to possess unusually solid knowledge of the neuroscience behind such an approach. Can you talk about how neuroscience enters into your story and leadership work?

A: I love science. At some level we think of “behavior” as being something intangible and therefore more difficult to manage. But not so true if you have some fundamental concept of the science behind our brains and our conscious minds. Our neuronal networks are built over repetition. Firing them enforces hardwiring them. So those deeply entrenched beliefs or repetitive thought patterns that we just mentioned that are drilled into us are changeable, whether adopted early in childhood or just a part of what we believe work or leadership should be like.

These beliefs (and the same thing goes for habits) are pathways in our brains that are easily accessed because they are strongly wired. We used them a lot so they became hardwired. BUT … that does not mean we cannot unwire them. True. Through conscious behavior change, we can avoid using those old networks and can start building the ones we want.

The journey begins with recognizing your patterns and habits, owning them, reassessing them, and then changing those that we want to let go. Try telling your story in the future. Where do you want to be? Who do you want to become? What do you want to extend that you are successful at now? Then focus on that desires outcome — the future story — and you will be setting the new paths in your brain to make them happen.

It is a little more complicated than that, but our minds have a way of making reality of whatever we focus on. You are reinventing your story!

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Nancy Duarte is a big proponent of storytelling in presentations, and she has just launched a series of short video tips on her blog to “answer some of the most commonly asked questions on storytelling, design, and presentation technologies.” Here’s her piece on storytelling in presentations, with a timely twist related to the current economy. Interesting points about conflict and vulnerability, too:

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Katie, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, and Part 3.

Q&A with Katie Snapp, Question 4:

Q: You wrote to me when accepting my Q&A invitation: “With a credential that I earned last year, I now integrate my leadership training experience into coaching individuals to understand their belief systems and how those beliefs (both empowering as well as limiting ones) write their story. Corollary topics to the life story include: your career story, your money story, your wellness story, your relationship story). All those have the same premise about how we see the world through our story filter.” First, can you talk a bit more about the credential you earned, and secondly, can you discuss the advantages of “see[ing] the world through our story filter”?

A: My Life Story credential is through a terrific program called Live a New Life Story by Dr. David Krueger at Mentorpath. His vast experience as an executive coach and author has led to powerful material about recognizing your personal themes and patterns. I realized this had potent application to leaders in the workplace and developing ourselves as more effective leaders through self-discovery. Thus, my adaptation to leaders!

Much of our personal story is derived from the “messages” we received while growing up. These become the filters for interpreting the world around us. Of course that can be a terrific tool for engaging us with what we are good at. For example, if your message was “always try your best,” you are more likely to see challenges as something to focus intently on and push through until you know you put all your effort into it.

Consider also the message that we sometimes get in a tough-love family of “don’t screw up.” Surely, mom’s and dad’s intent was something about becoming a high performer, but in our developing years we may have heard it as “you are close to being a failure.” Imagine! Now, our radar is honed in on any misstep and a fear of failure may hinder our efforts.

In adulthood, we can thwart many of those beliefs simply through conscious awareness. The problem though … many of those beliefs may be subconscious to us. Time to become introspective.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Katie, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, and Part 2.

Q&A with Katie Snapp, Question 3:

Q: What’s your favorite story about a transformation that came about through a story or storytelling act?

A: It’s a small one, but a great example. Gregory Maguire is a prolific author of children’s stories, and other stories, including Wicked, which went on to become the well-known Broadway musical. After roughly 23 publications, he observed that every one of the central characters he wrote about was missing a parent or had a dead mother. Odd pattern, and not recognized for years. Recently, though, Maguire noticed it and explained how his mother had died during childbirth. After all, if the mother is there, what’s the problem? How could there possibly be a story? This recurring theme is now a part of his newly aware belief system.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Q&A with Katie Snapp, Question 2:

See a photo of Katie, her bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A.

Q: What future aspirations do you personally have for your own story work? What would you like to do in the story world that you haven’t yet done?

A: I just started a Leadership Blog that includes Bad Leadership Stories. This blog is professional, reviewed and edited, so my aspirations for it are BIG and different from many blog mechanisms out there. I want people to have a venue to share in a controlled, professional manner.

Because I am a trainer and a problem-solver at heart, I hope that these blogged stories that come out will lead to ideas for anyone in need. I will develop web pages to address the issues the get exposed in the “Bad” stories.

(I would love additions to the blog. See http://www.better-leadership.com/Leadership-blog.html to share a story, or read one.)

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I was attracted to the practice of Katie Snapp. Her focus is leadership, and she asks leaders what their leadership story is. She also holds a certification in New Life Story Coaches™ Training, which intrigues me. It’s a pleasure to bring you this Q&A with Katie, which will appear over the next five days:

Bio: Katie K. Snapp comes from a corporate business environment and technical production, where the daily grind was less than inspiring, until she found the hidden secrets in transforming work into creative prospecting. After leaving the engineering world 21 years ago, she became a Leadership Performance Coach and a nationwide speaker. She thrives in interacting with groups and training teams to be more productive while having fun.

Katie’s first book Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership has just been published and is a collection of inspiring ideas and practical tips for women in leadership.

Katie is also the founder of Better-Leadership.com, an online resource for what she refers to as the “Everyday Leader.” This ever-growing website serves as a worldwide outreach to educate leaders in not only the basics of leadership, but how to realize fuller potential.

Q: The storytelling movement seems to be growing explosively. Why now?’ What is it about this moment in human history and culture that makes storytelling so resonant with so many people right now?

A: It is definitely growing, but it really has always been there to a large degree. Storytelling has been around since the beginning of time and was critical because it was the primary medium for passing along culture, history, lore, lessons learned. I believe we are simply re-labeling it and deploying it just a little differently.

Now that we have such powerful communications tools, it is still as important, but more massive that we can digest. So, we find those areas that we can relate to. We find the channels (blogs, websites, newsletters) where there are people to which we can personally relate. The stories have always been there, but now we have vast media to broadcast them.

Corporate storytelling is new on the scene though, at least in title. Take anything you might have previously labeled as “rumor” or “bad customer experience” and refine it a little. It makes a GREAT story when told with the key elements of storytelling — which include plot, people, problem, place, emotion, and hopefully the eventual solution.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I recently came across yet another example of the generous world of storytelling.

Paul Furiga and John Durante of WordWrite Communications are offering a whitepaper, Tales Worth Telling: How the ageless power of stories delivers business success, which they introduce like this:

In the 21st century, the traditional cookie cutter approach to communication is dead. In a world inundated by competing information and messages, the audiences you want to reach are hungry for meaning, yet they struggle to find it. You can provide meaning by telling your story, if you tap the ageless power of storytelling.

I don’t know the authors, who employ a method called StoryCrafting, but they provide an interesting paper. They offer these critical characteristics of persuasive business communications rolled into a storytelling paradigm:

1. The story must have context and be told by fluent storytellers.

What the messenger says about a product, service or business must have depth and provide a coherent whole to enhance audience understanding. Those presenting the story must be fluent storytellers who acknowledge the power of clarifying to communications effectiveness and have great command of their topic.

2. The story must be authentic — rooted in a business’ competitive facts and its core business purpose.

Authenticity in telling business stories is everything because it:

A. Builds audience trust, which

B. Determines how receptive an audience is to the story content, which is

C. Largely determinant of communication success.

3. Measures of story effectiveness must be frequent and appropriately used.

For hard-core organizational-story practitioners and enthusiasts, much of the paper may read like preaching to the choir. But newbies and veterans should glean good insights from it.

I look forward to learning more about Furiga, Durante, and WordWrite Communications.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Today is the 2nd International Day for Sharing Life Stories.

The site that operates this day explains:

This day is an opportunity to celebrate and promote life stories, as a way to encourage critical thinking, cultural democratization, and social transformation. The International Day is organized by The Museum of the Person International Network (Brazil, Portugal, USA and Canada) and the Center for Digital Storytelling (USA, Canada, Denmark, Czech Republic, Ireland and Portugal)

The chosen theme for this year’s day is “Journey for Justice — Migration and Refugees.”

My offerings for this day don’t fit the theme and may not be lofty enough to “encourage critical thinking, cultural democratization, and social transformation,” but here they are anyway:

• A fitting item for a day that celebrates life stories is an article in The Atlantic that I first learned about on the blog Mind Hacks. The article, entitled “What Makes Us Happy?” and written by Joshua Wolf Shenk is introduced thusly:

  Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.

  “Vaughan” on Mind Hacks had this to say about the article:

  It weaves the staccato train of numerical data with reflections and insights from the men themselves to attempt the impossible — it hopes to record lives.

  From their brash early adulthood to their deaths or dotage the stories are brief but profound, sometimes tragic, sometimes joyful, sometimes mundane.

  The study itself has generated some remarkable findings, such as the massive impact of relationships, the fading long-term effects of childhood experiences, or the role of defences in managing emotional well-being, but the piece is as much about the life of the project as its conclusions.

  I have to admit I haven’t yet had a chance to read the article, but it was again called to my attention by LivelyWords (Albert E. Martinez) on Twitter, who noted that the piece “focuses largely on storytelling.”
• Cathie Dodd, who participated in a Q&A on A Storied Career, has started a Facebook group called Everybody Has a Story — What’s Yours?, particularly noteworthy for its nice list of the kinds of life stories that folks can tell.
• An article on the AARP site offers tips to Make Your Family Stories Come to Life.
• My own paltry contribution to this day is the beginning of a site that tells the story of my first year of being “bicoastal” with my husband Randall. If you follow this blog, you know that we bought property last year in Kettle Falls, WA, with plans to live here in the summer and in our Florida home in the winter. We set out on our RV journey here on April 24 (spending a week in San Antonio for a conference) and arrived eight days ago. This journey has been remarkable for me, for us, in part because of the indescribable beauty of this little corner of Eastern Washington. Being here is truly life-changing. Today we plan to renew our wedding vows after 25 years of marriage. We’ll have no officiant; we crafted the ceremony and vows ourselves; and our church will be the Cathedral of Nature here on our breathtaking land. The site needs to do much more to tell and share the story of this momentous turning point in our lives. But it’s a start.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Casey, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Q: The culture is abuzz about Web 2.0 and social media. To what extent do you participate in social media (such as through LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Second Life, blogs, etc.)? To what extent and in what ways do you feel these venues are storytelling media?

A: I do participate in social media (blogging, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and online communities specific to my field). However, I’m still exploring how story fits into this new development.

They all have the potential to be storytelling media but in different ways. Some formats are more suited to telling a complete story in a single serving, such as blogging and YouTube. Others are more about building a story about yourself, your business or your brand in bite-size pieces, such as on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

What’s fascinating is that they’re all interactive. Stories are not just told, but people can immediately comment and add to the understanding, or share their own similar stories. In my realm of marketing communications, this is unprecedented access and communication between an organization and its audiences. It’s part of a greater movement of authenticity and bringing down barriers. They’re letting go of control of every single word, and the result is impressive. Many companies are also now creating their own online communities that foster relationships and storytelling between their customers.

I think organizations have to find ways of weaving story into social media without sounding too contrived. A company can share a story on its blog or link to a YouTube video from Facebook, but ideally their customers are the ones freely sharing the stories and links in social media venues. The most compelling stories will be ReTweeted and shared again on any of a number of other sites like Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc. That’s when the real momentum starts to happen.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

My list of suggested story folks to follow on Twitter was one of my more popular postings. Now that it has fallen off this main page, I have created a permanent page for it. You can find it here. I hope to maintain the list, so if you want to suggest someone to add (including yourself), please e-mail me.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Casey, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, and Part 3.

Q: Success-Story Marketing, which you define as “the act of leveraging the stories of satisfied customers — in any form and any way—for promotional purposes,” is the centerpiece of your book. How did you initially come to discover the effectiveness of Success-Story Marketing?

A: I had been writing and managing customer case studies for a year or so before I truly understood their power. As it turns out, I needed to hear stories about the effectiveness of these case studies for it to click for me! Such is the power of story.

After creating and managing a number of customer case studies for a client, a software company, word got back to me about a very specific success with one of the case studies in particular — featuring one branch of a nationwide mortgage company. The mortgage company was saving a significant amount of money by using the software, and improving customer service, and that was documented in the case study.

From there, the software company approached the national contacts for this mortgage company with the case study in hand. Sharing the success of a single branch led the national folks to recommend that branches adopt the software, leading to numerous new deals.

After 10 years in this field, I have now heard many anecdotes about how customer stories helped land media coverage, win an industry award, get people to sign up for a webinar, donate to a worthy cause, and so on. It’s an approach that just about any organization can leverage to communicate with their audiences.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Casey, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, and Part 2.

Q: If you could share just one piece of advice or wisdom about story/storytelling/narrative with readers, what would it be?

A: Since my focus is customer stories (which can also mean beneficiaries of a charitable cause), my advice is to keep it real. By that I mean try to maintain authenticity in the customer’s voice.

A major pharmaceutical company recently came out with customer success-story videos. The customers were real, but they seemed very coached to the point of sounding like actors. The videos completely lost the real quality, and man-on-the-street style endorsement that carries power. It was really a lost opportunity. They had these customers with great stories and they manipulated them to the point where they felt just like all the other drug company stories with actors. It would have been much more effective if they had spent a lot less money and just let customers tell their stories.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Shawn Callahan of Anecdote has just announced a brand-new whitepaper entitled “Why some leaders inspire action while others are mostly forgettable: The Vital Role of Business Storytelling.”

Here’s Shawn’s description:

The main purpose of this whitepaper is to introduce senior leaders to the idea of business storytelling and demonstrate its importance, especially in the increasingly complex and unpredictable world we live in. It also provides some approaches to how you find and recount your experiences in a business context.

Interestingly, Shawn got feedback and editorial suggestions for the whitepaper through Twitter.

Download the whitepaper here.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Casey, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A.

Q: What’s your favorite story about a transformation that came about through a story or storytelling act?

A: The best stories of transformation through story are those that mobilize people to give or do for great causes. There’s such an emotional component to putting a story behind a problem. Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath recounts a couple of these stories. Their book names Stories and Emotion as two of the six principles of sticky ideas.

They share an anecdote about a study where people were asked to consider donating to Save the Children. Two different appeal letters were used to portray the problem of hunger in Africa. One gave statistics about food shortages and the number of people affected. The other recounted a brief tale about a single seven-year-old girl who would be helped by the money. Those who received the second letter gave more than twice as much as those who received the first letter. Putting a face and story behind a problem truly makes a difference. Kiva.org, which gives microloans to entrepreneurs in developing countries, has been very successful with this concept as well.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

The Journal of Applied Communication Research (Volume 37 Issue 2) has devoted its latest issue to Health as Narrative. You can access its articles in a library, or by paying for them, or waiting a month or so till they are available through an academic library database. This new issue contains the following narrative-related articles:

Healing Through Stories: A Special Issue on Narrative Medicine Authors: Lynn M. Harter; Arthur P. Bochner

Narrative Medicine as Witness for the Self-Telling Body Author: Rita Charon

Observations from the Outside In: Narratives of Illness, Healing, and Mortality in Everyday Life

Narratives as Dialogic, Contested, and Aesthetic Performances Author: Lynn M. Harter

Performing Narrative Medicine Author: Kristin M. Langellier

Vulnerable Medicine Author: Arthur P. Bochner

Narrative Medicine and the Stories of Friends Author: William K. Rawlins

Narrative and Decision Author: Richard M. Zaner

The Applicability of Narrative Ethics Author: Teresa L. Thompson

The Polis of a Discursive Narrative Medicine Author: Rita Charon

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I was quite excited to come across Casey Hibbard and her Compelling Cases approach to telling customer stories — as well as her excellent book, Stories That Sell, and am delighted to bring you this Q&A with her, which will run in five parts this week:

Bio: The following is from one of Casey’s Web sites:

Casey Hibbard, founder and president of Compelling Cases, Inc., has helped dozens of companies create more than 450 customer stories over the past decade. She has produced and managed success stories for companies such as Macrovision, Jobfox, USA.NET, IHS, and Vocus. Casey is featured in numerous books, articles, and teleclasses. She consults with organizations one-on-one and conducts online customer-story classes. She is also author of Stories that Sell and the blog of the same name.

Q: In the introduction of your amazingly comprehensive and information-rich book, Stories That Sell, you note: “If it seems as though you’re seeing more customer stories than ever, you are.” To what do you attribute the growth in customer stories?

A: The use of customer stories has grown considerably in the past 10 years. Technology companies are the original pioneers of customer stories because they were extra compelled to educate and validate potential customers about their complex and expensive products.

Now that has spread to all types of organizations for a few reasons: We’ve suffered from a credibility crisis. Surveys show that the public’s trust in companies is at its lowest ever. Along with that, trusted sources information have changed as well. A company is now way down on the list of trusted sources compared to 10 years ago. Now “strangers with experience” is a close second behind someone a person already knows. You see that in how much we rely on Amazon and eBay reviews and feedback.

We also no longer do business face-to-face as much. It’s much easier to establish trust and feel confidence in what you’re buying if you can talk face-to-face with another human being.

Finally, there’s more of a need to validate purchases. Companies have never been so pressed to make decisions that will bring a return on investment.

In the absence of trust and in-person connections, customer success stories and case studies help foster credibility and validate products and services. A potential customer can read a true account of another organization just like them that solved a problem successfully — increasing their confidence. If the story has measurable results, then it also provides the validation that buyers need.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Several weeks ago, Irina Shamaeva posed the question on ERE.net, a site for recruiters: Will Resumes Become Obsolete?. Not long before that, David Manaster asked on the same site: Social Media: The New Cover Letter?.

Both postings are the latest in a long line of predictions from recruiters and job-search experts that resumes and cover letters are on the way out. The most prevalent prediction I’ve heard from the hiring community is that some sort of very standardized profile (hmmmm, sounds a lot like a job application; haven’t we already done that?) is what they want to replace resumes.

I don’t buy it.

Shamaeva talks about “how the expansion of everyone’s online presence may affect the set of documents and information that accompanies a job application.” In my opinion, the massive gravitation of hiring decision-makers to using social-media tools to recruit proves that a standardized profile or questionnaire won’t cut it.

The fact that social media has become such a prevalent tool in recruiting tells me that recruiters hunger for a more human way of viewing candidates — dare I say it? — a more emotional connection.

They hunger for candidate’s stories.

Shamaeva discusses the process she’d use for reviewing candidates if she were a hiring manager — resume, LinkedIn profile (not Facebook), possibly Twitter. Her rationale — “I also may get a sense of who the person is. We are looking for a live member of our team; this always involves some chemistry, so the person’s style of presenting himself matters” — tells me that she would like stories. What better way to discover who the person is, how the person will fit in as a live member of the team, what kind of chemistry the candidate will have with the employer, and how he or she presents himself or herself?

Manaster notes that “social media allows you to take control of your personal brand and highlight your strengths. You can show rich examples of your work. You can let people peek inside your head in a way that resumes and cover letters never have and never will.”

I don’t agree with “never will.” I believe resumes and cover letters must morph into formats that do open that window on your personality for hiring managers. I also believe it is already relatively easy to use a cover letter as a storytelling vehicle — much trickier with a resume.

Shamaeva concludes by asking: “… looking into the future, could it happen that a submission of a candidate will not have a resume but will be done with a set of online professional profile links accompanied by a job-specific questionnaire?” The professional profile links, if done well, will help tell the candidate’s story. I’m not sure about the job-specific questionnaire; it still seems too much like a dehumanizing application form to me. I can see the value of such a questionnaire for evaluating how well the candidate expresses himself or herself. I can see gleaning information on the candidate’s job-specific knowledge and skills.

But I still think there is a job-search communication vehicle that has yet to be developed. I am still in a quest for the Storytelling Resume, which I am convinced has not yet fully evolved.

I, and folks like my storytelling-in-the-job-search doppelganger Rob Sullivan, and the career experts who contributed resumes to my book, Tell Me About Yourself, have developed story techniques to integrate into resumes.

But the true, elusive Storytelling Resume vehicle has yet to emerge. When it does, I am reasonably certain it will incorporate social-media elements. Terrence Gargiulo and I are working on research into what the Storytelling Resume looks like.

Like social media for recruiting, the Storytelling Resume would not be without legal and ethical issues. Discrimination is always a possibility when candidates put themselves (and their photos, for example) out there. It’s also true, as Manaster points out (citing Alison Doyle) “The vast majority of professionals are unwilling or unable to send the time and effort needed to maintain a[n effective online] presence.” The same is already true of resumes and cover letters. Most job-seekers don’t put the required time and effort into them. I know from my five years as a resume writer that the vast majority of resumes are crap. However, just as job-seekers hire career practitioners to write their resumes and cover letters, they can hire them to help them craft compelling social-media profiles and other aspects of a compelling online presence.

Manaster cites college student Matthew Cadwallader as having the kind of presence that impresses hiring managers. He sure does — because his Web site tells his story.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I haven’t done one of these compilations of the storytelling topics that people are talking about on Twitter for a few weeks because I’ve been traveling across the country in an RV with limited Internet access. Now, I’m one place — our summer home in Kettle Falls, WA, till sometime in October.

This compilation doesn’t represent the absolute latest in Twitter storytelling buzz, but it’s somewhat recent — the last month or so:

• This one actually is from the last week, though I first saw it sometime last year. Probably the most re-tweeted comment about Philip Toledano’s poignant photo essay Days with my Father, was “For those who think the web isn’t yet capable of emotional storytelling.”

• Tweeters praised a piece on narrative, brevity, and storytelling by Jessica Helfand on the blog Design Observer in which she said: “the pithy, out-of-context statement is becoming its own narrative form” and asked: “Is there some human need to experience stories with beginnings, middles and ends?”
• Generating some 33 comments was a piece on role of storytelling (real narrative) in new media at BBH Labs. The author, Mel Exon, talks about “the wholesale reinvention of a (sometimes much maligned) skill, the art of storytelling” and responds to someone else’s “observation that ‘there’s currently much less of a culture of developing narrative or storytelling on the web.’” Exon’s own observation is that “we are now in the business of starting stories, not attempting to nail them down from beginning to end. Letting stories take on a life of their own, to be played with, passed around, modified and enriched by the audiences they’re developed for.”
• Not in the least surprising was the amount of buzz for the blog entry on Psychology Today, How storytelling can make sex better, but I couldn’t find much about storytelling in the piece.
• Beth Kanter of Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media got significant attention for her entry, Transmedia Storytelling and Co-Creation Networks, which includes a very cool diagram by Gary Hayes. Kanter talks about the application of transmedia storytelling to nonprofits, offering this definition of transmedia storytelling from Henry Jenkins via Lina Srivastava:

  Transmedia storytelling is storytelling by a number of decentralized authors who share and create content for distribution across multiple forms of media. Transmedia immerses an audience in a story’s universe through a number of dispersed entry points, providing a comprehensive and coordinated experience of a complex story.

• No link for this one, and I also failed to note who tweeted it, but it’s a quote I found interesting: “Social media is not about technology. It’s about STAR: Storytelling, Transparency, Accountability, and Relationships.”
• And another very cool and highly re-tweeted quote — from my good friend Terrence Gargiulo — is: “The shortest distance between two people is a story.”
• Robert Nagle got some buzz for his post on Idiot Programmer, Blogging is a Careless Activity; Storytelling is Not, in which he announced that he “decided to commit to using this blog as an outlet for more creative forms like storytelling. Not fiction per se, but informal storytelling.”
• Jacques Arsenault got re-tweeted for the blog entry Mapping the Seven Deadly Sins, about a project in which “geography researchers at Kansas State University have used publicly available statistics to map the Seven Deadly Sins in the United States” as “an example of the storytelling power of visualization” You can read more about the project and see more images here. Fascinating visualizations, yes. Storytelling? I’m not so sure.
• Garnering buzz was news that A Storied Career mainstay SMITH magazine has launched SMITHTeens and will publish Six-Word Memoirs by Teens Famous & Obscure.
• As possible proof that I’m ahead of the curve, A Million Monkeys Typing enjoyed significant recent buzz, especially as related to a blog entry, A Million Monkeys Typing: Collaborative storytelling; I blogged about the site back on Feb. 26

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Lori, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A,Part 2, , and Part 4.

Q: What’s next on your agenda for the field of story work?

A: I’m in the process of working with Karen Dietz to create a line of self-study products that provide the user with a significantly more detail than is in either of my books, Stories Trainers Tell and Wake Me When the Data Is Over. These products go beyond anything either of us has written and address issues we have experienced when teaching story work to others and in integrating it with the way all sorts of organizations do business.

What has been really exciting about this work is that we are truly making the concepts in the field much more pragmatic and easier to access. Our ultimate goal is to have work groups work through the materials and apply them to their daily work as a way of addressing current challenges, especially those that appear chronic in nature. By doing so we know they will uncover new and emerging applications for story use and move the field forward.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I almost did. In terms of Story Week (previewed here), sponsored by the firms Anecdote, Sparknow, and Innotecture, this is the worst possible week for me to be traveling cross-country in an RV with limited Internet access.

Here’s how Story Week, on Day 4 as of this writing, is described on the Anecdote blog:

The Story Week is here! Over the next 5 days, we’ll be offering you 5 stories — some momentous, some more low-key — and we’re inviting you to tell us what you think of them. After you have viewed, read or heard the story, we’d like you to fill out the form [appears below story each day of Story Week] and maybe tell us a story of your own. We will be publishing (under a creative commons license) the aggregate results from this little experiment and also some of the stories that you tell us.

You can go here for the first Story Week entry and then click on each day.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Lori, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A,Part 2, and Part 3.

Q: If you could share just 1 piece of advice or wisdom about story/storytelling/narrative/working with stories with readers, what would it be?

A: We’ve overlooked a critical fundamental concept in the field of story work.

All story is narrative. However, not all narrative is a story. It’s extremely important to be able to distinguish between a story and all other forms of narrative (e.g., case studies, examples, profiles, news reports, etc.). Without this, you may invest money in a story-based initiative that will not provide the level of payback your organization desires. (These distinctions are brought forward in the piece, “Narrative Forms”).

There are specific qualities that are integral to stories: They need to have a plot (a conflict), characters, dialogue (preferably both internal and external), a universal theme (key point that applies to all who hear, experience or read it), drama/intrigue, contrast, and sensory information (the ability to paint a picture in the mind’s eye). To use the word “story” for narrative forms that do not have these elements is misleading — and it causes a huge problem in the field: It waters down the meaning of the word, “story.” The consequence of this is that many organizations do not think they need internal or external “experts” in the field of story work to help them with their story-based initiatives.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I recently rediscovered an academic journal article that I had first encountered in 2006. Though I had never seen any buzz or media attention to the study behind the article, I found it rather significant.

The article described a case study of a single job applicant. This job-seeker had electronically submitted applications for 27 vacancies back in 2005. The candidate submitted nine with no cover letter, nine with a one-sentence cover note. Finally, she submitted nine with a cover letter.

Author Sam H. DeKay reported that “no application submitted without a cover letter or just the one-sentence cover note received a response. However, all nine application forwarded with cover letters resulted in invitations to interviews,” one of which resulted in a job offer.

Slightly complicating this study is the fact that the subject created two styles of cover letter. Apparently no differences ocurred in employer reaction to these two different styles. Th author claimed the first style conveyed “emotional engagement with the prospective position.” Following is the paragraph he claimed contained this emotional content:

I would like to be considered for the Training Director Position. I hav had over twenty years’ experience designing, developing, and delivering training programs at all levels of the organization. I have also designed needs assessments to determine organizational learning and developed programs to meet those needs. I look forward to hearing from you.

DeKay claims the one-paragraph letter was “intended to convey emotional engagement with the prospective position. Really? I don’t see much emotional content in that paragraph.

I see much more emotional content — in fact I see a story — in the second type of cover letter the job-seeker sent. The story is on the first paragraph, quoted below; the other two paragraphs, in my opinion, contain standard cover-letter language, so I’m not including them here:

I am extremely interested in the training coordinator position. I was active in the training profession for years, but two years ago, I decided to enroll in law school. I am now at a position in my legal studies that I can attend part-time.

As it stands, this study shows in a limited way that job-seekers who accompay their resumes with cover letters are more likely to get interviews. I find it interesting that employers made no distinction between what I consider the storied cover letter and the non-storied example. I’d love to see a study aimed at the differences in so-called emotional content. I had focus-group members evaluate storied covr letters during my dissertation research, but they did not compare them to non-storied examples.

Both letters, in my opinion, also are flawed. The first one uses the phrase “I look forward to hearing from you” instead of taking a proactive stance that suggests the job-seeker will follow up with the employer. The second letter begs the question, will this applicant leave the position as training coordinator once she finishes law school?

Still the study suggests interesting possibiities for storied cover letters with emotional content. It also shows the importance of always including a cover letter when you send a resume.

The article appers in th December 2006 issue of Business Communication Quarterly and is titled “Expressing Emotion in Electronic Job Cover Letters.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Lori, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, and Part 2.

Q: What are some of the cautions you advise in carrying out the 5 story practices you describe?

• how to find stories
• how to dig into them to uncover hidden patterns and themes
• how to select those stories that need to be reinforced
• how to craft memorable stories
• how to embody stories to positively affect attitudes, thoughts and behaviors.

A: Overall, there is a significant different between implementing story as a “tool” or “technique” and seeing it as a core competence for running a business that can get it significant returns on investment, especially in a recessionary economy. In order to embrace these five practices, you need to embrace the latter mindset rather than the former. Unfortunately, articles and books continue to be written on it as a tool and technique. To see the bigger picture means educating leaders on the possibilities of what can be and a broader scope of business application.

This is no different than what happened in the quality movement. In the mid-to late-‘80’s, everyone wanted to learn statistical process control (SPC; today it would be Six Sigma or lean manufacturing or root cause analysis). Only when failures happened did organizations recognize there might be fuller, richer approaches to the subject that meant shifting quality to the way you do business. The challenge we have is that story has not taken off with the same fervor as quality did two decades ago so its evolution as a field has been slower. My concern is that instead of evolving, the field of story work will disappear as so many other management approaches have over the years.

Until organizations begin to implement these five practices as a holistic package, we will not have the data to truly detail best practices in these five areas. This assumes, however, that organizations are astute enough to put measurement systems in place to ascertain the value of story work usage.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Lori, her bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A.

Q: In your article “The Five Sides of Story”, that appeared in Communication World magazine in January/February 2007, you describe “five practices surrounding the use of stories that bring results:”

What are your thoughts today on these five practices and their utilization in organizations?

A: I frequently reference these topics in presentations to audiences of several hundred people across a variety of industries and organizations. Prior to delivering these talks, I always interview a minimum of five attendees. Most do not understand the difference between an example, case study, anecdote, etc. and a story. What it tells me is that organizations that think they are using stories really are not doing so. Even when I look online at story examples that several organizations make public, most are descriptions of situations or profiles of people or companies. As a result, Karen Dietz and I have crafted a piece that speaks to the distinctions between story and other forms of narrative called Narrative Forms.

The second thing that stands out for me in these interviews is that few, if any individuals are cued into applications of story beyond storytelling — both the crafting and the oral tradition of delivering a story. So, while some organizational story practitioners may be working with clients on other types of story practices, organizations as a whole and their leadership are not consistently practicing them. Even within the industry of story use in organizations, I am now of the opinion that most practitioners have not grown their own learning in these other areas.

As a result, I believe the real power of story has yet to be realized in organizational settings.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Three years ago when I was working on my dissertation, Lori Silverman did me the amazing kindness of sending me page proofs of her book, Wake Me Up When the Data Is Over: How Organizations Use Stories to Drive Results, so that I could use it in my research even before it was published. We have remained in contact since, and I look forward to meeting her someday. This Q&A with her will run over the next five days.

Bio: The following is an excerpt from the bio on Lori’s Web site, and the full bio can be read here:

It was in 1999 that Lori Silverman came to truly grasp the need to make story work conscious and purposeful rather than happenstance. The turning point was the night before a keynote talk to eleven hundred people in Seattle, Washington, which she planned to give without relying on visual aids.

Through feedback from a friend who heard her practice she suddenly realized that something needed to replace the props—stories that brought concepts and ideas from her book Critical Shift:The Future of Quality in Organizational Performance to life. Soon after, she simplified her talks and queried colleagues for tales to tell. No more brain overload for those sitting in the audience.

In her consulting, varied kinds of future stories entered her strategy work, and storytelling to facilitate organizational change and performance improvement became a thoughtful occurrence. Yet something was still missing. But Lori chose to go with the flow and let life take its course. It soon brought the opportunity to coauthor Stories Trainers Tell: 55 Ready-to-Use Stories to Make Training Stick. While interviewing trainers, storytellers, speakers, consultants, and business leaders for the book she stumbled onto more answers—and more questions that stimulated the current book, Wake Me Up When the Data Is Over: How Organizations Use Stories to Drive Results.

Q: The book, Wake Me When the Data Is Over, has been out for just over two years, but organizational storytelling is evolving so rapidly that I would imagine you have already thought about changes for the next edition. What are the first things you’d change or add to the book for its first revision?

A: I have two reactions to this question.

First I’m not certain the field of story work in organizations has evolved since the book was written. The piece that is still missing for me as a strategist is story as an organizational core competency. I’ve yet to find an organization that has systematically thought about how story could be used in all its work processes, both internal and external to the enterprise. It’s my contention that until we change how we talk about this subject—and move from calling it “storytelling” which is a self-limiting term, to calling it “story work,” this broader context for integrating story throughout an organization will be hard pressed to occur.

Secondly, there are several things I’d do in the next edition.

1. I’d reconnect with each interviewee and ask them to update me on their organization’s progress with story. There hasn’t been any longitudinal data on story use as far as I know.

2. I’d add several chapters that time did not allow us to research fully. They’d include topics such as story use in a recessionary economy, sales, innovation, and mergers and acquisitions. As someone who once worked in the field of career development, I love the application of story to the job-search process that you, Katharine, present in your book, Tell Me About Yourself.

3. I’d add the composite results across all 72 examples which are in the article, “The Five Sides of Story”, to the book’s content and update it with data from the new examples. In this article (which outlines the story use model presented at the end of the Wake Me Up book), it becomes evident that telling a story may not be as powerful as some other approaches such as evoking stories from others, listening to them in a specialized way, the symbolic embodiment of story, and finding ways to employ story triggers.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Karen Dietz did such a great job formatting news of this blog entry by Thomas Clifford for Fast Company that I am simply duplicating her formatting.

The entry features the latest book by this week’s story guru, Lori Silverman, in which Dietz played a significant role. Clifford also lists six other books of interest to those interested in using story to improve organizations. There are a couple on the list that I’m not familiar with (thanks, Thomas, for turning me onto them), but I heartily agree with his recommendations. By the way, this entry was seven more books; you can see the original list of seven here (including my storytelling/job-search book).

7 More Books To Help Your Organization Become Better Storytellers   BY FC Expert Blogger Thomas Clifford Mon Apr 20, 2009 at 3:56 PM This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert’s views alone.  “When facts become so widely available and instantly accessible, each one becomes less valuable. What begins to matter more is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact. And that is the essence of the aptitude of Story- context enriched by emotion.” Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind   If there’s one thing the social media “tsunami” has shown us it’s this: storytelling is far from dead.   Now that we can tell our stories to the world in an instant, it might be a good idea to learn some of the basics in crafting an interesting story.   So where do we begin learning to craft our personal stories and the stories about our organization?   This set of books is the second half of my favorite books on storytelling for personal and business use. Each one is unique and offers tremendous insights into the world of storytelling. If you missed the first set of books, you can find them in the previous post.   7 More Books to Help You and Your Organization Become Better Storytellers   1. Wake Me Up When the Data is Over: How Organizations Use Storytelling to Drive Results. Lori Silverman   Of all the 14 books listed, this one is the most comprehensive books on organizational storytelling. “Wake Me Up” gives the reader dozens of examples on how to discover, craft and increase the use of stories within an organization. The book is divided into three parts: how stories are being used, specific applications and finally, advice on integrating stories into specific business needs. It’s definitely worth reading several times as it’s packed with dozens of real-life examples covering just about every angle of storytelling.   2. A Little Less Conversation: Connecting with Customers in a Noisy World. Tom Asacker   3. Sandbox Wisdom: Revolutionize Your Brand with the Genius of Childhood. Tom Asacker   Confession time. I’m a huge fan of Tom’s books. While some may say these books don’t technically fall into the “storytelling” genre but more into the “marketing” arena, I’d quickly disagree. Tom magically weaves the concepts of brand loyalty, marketing, customer engagement and how we connect with people using the power of a simple story. Both books use fictional short stories that take us on a fun journey from “business as usual” to “business as it really should be.” Like magic, these fictional stories and conversations quietly weave new ways for us to think about how we might begin approaching our own business practices. Ah, the power of a great story.   4. The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion Through the Art of Storytelling. Annette Simmons   5. Whoever Tells The Best Story Wins: How to Use Your Own Stories to Communicate with Power and Impact. Annette Simmons   Not sure where to start in your story journey? Want to start using your own personal stories when networking with others? Think about starting out with Annette’s books. I really, really love the “The Story Factor.” It’s a perfect book for beginners to get their heads wrapped around the power and basic concepts of storytelling. Annette covers the six stories we need to learn to tell, what is a story, storytelling do’s and don’ts and several other important ideas behind telling stories.   6. Squirrel Inc.: A Fable of Leadership Through Storytelling. Stephen Denning   7. The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations. Stephen Denning   I think “Springboard” was the first book I ever bought on storytelling years ago. While Denning’s book is geared more for organizational storytelling, I enjoyed crafting my own springboard stories simply personal practice. “The Springboard” is another great place to start incorporating a single story into your personal or business life.   What, then, is a springboard story? Denning explains a springboard story this way: “…a tiny story- 29 words or 200 bytes- is less a vehicle for communication of large amounts of information and more a tiny fuse that ignites a new story in the listener’s minds, which establishes new connections and patterns in the listeners’ existing information, attitudes, and perceptions…the listeners generate a new story.” (pg. 82-83)   “Squirrel Inc.” offers quite a different take on the power of storytelling through a fable involving a cast of squirrels; yup, squirrels…and the story works like a charm! A must-read, for sure.   BONUS: Of course, don’t forget Seth Godin’s classic, All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World.   Do you have your favorites? What books did I miss? Would love to hear from you. Share you comments here. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to hit the “Recommend This” button.   Veteran corporate filmmaker Thomas Clifford helps Fortune 100’s to non-profits who are stuck, frustrated, losing employees or market share because they can’t breathe life into their brand story. He believes remarkable organizations deserve remarkable films. http://www.fastcompany.com/welcome.html?destination=http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/thomas-clifford/lets-see-again-breathing-life-your-companys-video/7-more-books-help-you-and-you

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Recent encounters have provided me with new ideas about how to structure stories in the job search. As I sold copies of my book, Tell Me About Yourself, at the recent conference of the Career Management Alliance, career practitioners told me they recognized the value in job-seekers telling stories but that it’s hard for them to come up with ways to structure their stories. My book offers a number of structures, but I’m always looking for even more ways that job-seekers can build cohesive stories.

It’s always easiest to think about using these structures in stories that respond to job-interview questions. They can be used in resumes, cover letters, and other aspects of the job search, but doing so is trickier in those contexts, so let’s first apply them to interviewing.

• In a much-retweeted blog entry Lesley Morgan wrote about a Storytelling Blueprint that she calls “a simplified outline of well-known mythologist Joseph Campbell’s the Hero’s Journey.”

  Morgan has titled this structure the Feel … Felt … Found Blueprint. In the table below, Morgan’s blueprint appears in the left column while a suggested adaptation for the job search is in the right column:

  

  How might you bring up a story like this? An effective approach would be to introduce this story during the phase of the interview when you are asking the interviewer questions. Ask a question such as, “What’s the greatest challenge your organization faces?” If you have a story about handling a similar challenge in a current or past job, you can use the Feel-Felt-Found Blueprint to structure your narrative.

  Would you really say to the interviewer, “I know how you feel?” Possibly. Take your cue from the emotional content of the interviewer’s story. For example, if the interviewer says the organization’s challenge sapped the morale of its employees, it might be appropriate to say, “I know how they felt.” If the challenge the interviewer describes lacks emotional content, you can simply skip the “feel/felt” words and say “I know what your organization is experiencing.” Then tell the story of how you handled an analogous situation.

• At last month’s Golden Fleece Conference, Gerry Lantz talked about using the question “What’s at stake?” to think about story structure.

  

  In a job interview, use this question to build details of your story. As you are describing a problem you solved for a current or past employer, tell what was at stake — what would have happened if you hadn’t solved the problem.

  Here’s an example, a response to a question about how well the interviewee handles pressure, that truly shows what was at stake — the life of a person. If the candidate could handle pressure when the stakes are that high, he or she could likely handle in the job he or he was interviewing for:

  My past experience as an administrative coordinator required me to deal with many serious situations since I held emergency on-call duties as a supervisor. One example was when I was called by a resident assistant to deal with an attempted suicide on her residence-hall floor. The situation required that I think clearly and quickly in this life-and-death situation. I had to weigh the many tasks that needed to be completed. I had to assign RAs to call 911, make sure the paramedics could get into the locked building, while at the same time applying first aid, and ensuring that the rest of the residents on the floor were OK. I also had to make sure the privacy of the resident in need was respected. I basically prioritized and dealt with each task by its importance. I delegated responsibility to RAs for things that they were capable of handling because I could not physically be in many places at once. Once the resident was taken to the hospital, I handled the paperwork and followed up to make sure the staff members, residents, and the resident in need adjusted back to “normal” life. I know this is an extreme example not found in the financial consulting field; however, it shows just how well I can deal with tremendous pressure.

• At the Career Management Alliance conference I just attended, I had the pleasure of hearing — for the second time — screenwriter Bill True of Minneapolis-based Sage Presence. The story-based aspects of True’s interview recommendations are not exactly new, but he frames and presents them in a fresh way.

  

  Part of the Sage Presence approach is that interviewees should tell stories that demonstrate how they were the catalyst for beneficial change. Otherwise, when searching their brains for interview responses, they will likely get lost in the sea of information that could be brought up in an interview.

  The structure that Sage presence recommends for stories to tell in interview is one in which actions occur that take people from a negative situation to a positive one. Then, the interviewee must identify the changes that he or she facilitated that illustrate benefits to the prospective employer. “The job-seeker’s past experience is today’s value,” True said.

  True also suggests thinking of your interview persona (and perhaps responses to individual interview questions) in terms of movie titles: “[name of interviewee] brings [description of benefit].”

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  Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

   

  

Two sites I admire and have on my sidebar are undergoing improvements.

Kevin Cordi’s Storybox Project already has its own Web site, but now it has a Ning group, billed as a place to “Share your Story, Story Ideas, and learn more about the Story Box Project!”

Here’s more describing what the Storybox Project is about:

Share your stories by sending them to us so that we can place them in the international/national Story Boxes. These Story Boxes are shared with new audiences in places in and around the world. Hundreds and thousands of people will read them. A teacher may use the story to help their classroom. A storyteller may perform your story to a group of kids. We have had people published as a result of reading their story in the Story Box. A community organizer may share their story to help others value their community. A child may create their own world based on your imagination. We guarantee the story will travel and with each new place, new readers will discover your story.

The Story Box is designed to help share the global world of stories. The narrative either we make up or we live is worth sharing with others. No story is edited. We do ask that you mark it for kids /adults or both. It is simply placed in the Story Box. However, when you fill out the story form, people are encouraged to let you know where the story travels and what they did with it. Don’t be surprised to hear from others around the world about your story. Kids write the authors. Other writers share ideas. Your writing is part of the Global sharing experiences.

The other site undergoing big improvements is The Remembering Site founded by my new friend Sarah McCue. The site is getting a redesign, slated for around Mother’s Day. Here’s what the site is about:

And here’s a tiny thumbnail glimpse of what the redesign will look like:

Speaking of Mother’s Day, SMITH Mag is teaming up with truuconfessions and Postcards from Yo Momma for a new six-word challenge about all things Mom. Truuconfessions, which just released the book, True Mom Confessions: Real Moms Get Real, will choose the best six-word story about parenting; the editors of Postcards from Yo Momma will award the prize for the best six-word story about your relationship with your mother. Both winners will get signed copies of the three books published by the sites, plus artistic validation and Internet fame. Three runners-up will win one book of their choice. The contest ends on May 10, Mother’s Day.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Thaler, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Q: Your background includes research in cognitive linguistics, brain imaging, and persuasive communications. In your article, “Storytelling is Only Half the Story,” you note that many leaders seek communication techniques “to inspire an audience and move people to action.” How does storytelling fit into that objective?

A: I prefer story sharing, not storytelling. Leaders must share their stories so as to evoke stories in their listener’s minds and guide them toward personal understanding of the issue and need for action. It’s a two-way, 2.0, conversation.

Sharing a personal story helps establish trust with your listener, and evoking a story in your listener’s mind helps make your information personally relevant. These are the steps through which any persuasive communicator must move in order to entice their listener to take action.

By evoking a personal story, your listener is also able to recognize their part in the solution you are proposing. Once your listener is personally engaged, they are more likely to hear and process your message, and to take the action you wish them to take.

My easy-to-remember and even easier-to-apply approach to persuasive communications is called Heart, Head & Hand™.

Heart, Head, & Hand can be used by leaders to establish trust with their audience. First, I recommend that speakers share a story that their listeners are likely to find emotionally relevant, often by sharing a personal anecdote. In this way, leaders connect with their listener’s heart.

Only then can reasons, data, and a rationale for the leader’s message be provided. Only after connecting with the listener’s heart should leaders seek to connect to the listener’s head. [Steven Denning has profound things to say about “Reinforcing with Reasons” in The Secret Language of Leadership.]

Then, true leaders give the audience something to do — they put something in their hand and invite them to be part of the solution.

Both “Storytelling is Only Half the Story,” and “Heart, Head & Hand: The Science of Communication” can be found on the Tools page of my web site.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.