Continuing the discussion of Donald Miller and his book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life begun here and continued here:

As I noted in Part I of this series, Donald Miller’s approach to the notion of change-your-story/change-your-life is a bit unusual in that he has intensively studied story and what makes a good one — concluding that “the elements that made a story meaningful [are] the same that made a life meaningful.”

Miller’s writer friend Jordan offers a definition of story that Miller adopted: “A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.”

Miller devotes significant attention to character as a critical story element, noting, “The character has to jump into the story, into the discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen.”

Having attended Robert McKee’s famed story seminar, Miller cites McKee’s contention that “humans naturally seek comfort and stability. Without an inciting incident that disrupts their comfort, they won’t enter into a story.”

McKee also informed Miller’s understanding of positive and negative story turns:

A story is made up of turns, Robert McKee says. Once an ambition has been decided, a positive turn is an event that moves the protagonist closer to the ambition, and a negative turn moves the protagonist away from his ambition. All stories have both. If a story doesn’t have negative turns, it’s not an interesting story. A protagonist who understands this idea lives a better story. He doesn’t give up when he encounters a setback, because he knows that every story has both positive and negative turns.

Character development is based on real life, Miller observes: “And if story is derived from real life, if story is just a condensed version of life, then life itself may be designed to change us, so that we evolve from one kind of person to another.”

Park Howell, through whom I learned of Miller’s work, attended Miller’s first-ever Storyline Conference, and offered these notes on real-life character development (see also Howell’s “Six ways story parallels life” in the same post):

Eight ways to develop YOUR character in YOUR story:

1. We all have shared agency in what we do. We are empowered to write our own stories. We have to examine the possibility that we don’t actually want to take responsibility for our lives.
2. When you are about to begin a heated conversation or difficult negotiation, turn your palms up before you begin and keep them that way throughout the conversation. It keeps you open, honest and humble.
3. It’s so important to know what you’re bad at. Don’t dwell on it. Just get someone to handle that area so you can concentrate on deploying your strengths.
4. The “What if” challenge is the freedom to have absurd ideas. Write down 20 or 30 “What if’s,” and one or two will stick with you and bother you. Act upon those and create an inciting incident.
5. Have meaning in your suffering. Our suffering needs to have real dignity.
6. Write, create, produce, rather than consume.
7. When it gets really tough, just be awesome.
8. Create great scenes.

Park Howell’s three blog posts about Miller and the book:

Review of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life.

Howell’s two posts based on attending one of Miller’s Storyline seminars.

My next chapter opens on Donald Miller’s “Storyline Conference”

Write, create, produce, and 12 other ways to develop a better storyline for your life

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Continuing the discussion of Donald Miller and his book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life begun here:

“It never occurred to me that I could re-create my own story, my real life story,” writes Donald Miller in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, “but in an evolution I had moved toward a better me.” The notion that we can create our life story probably does not occur to most of us. We don’t think about doing what Miller did: “reshap[ed] his own life to make it a more interesting tale that matters,” as Park Howell, whose blog posts turned me on to Miller, wrote.

Life is short. We have only a finite amount of time in which to create a story on which we can look back with satisfaction in our twilight years. I think of myself as more disconcerted by the idea of death than many people. Not exactly afraid, but defiant — I don’t want to go till I’m good and ready, and I’m determined that my life go into “extra innings.” But, of course, there’s no guarantee that I won’t get hit by truck tomorrow.

Miller tells the story of his uncle, beloved by all, who died in his early 60s: “My uncle told a good story with his life, but I think there was such a sadness at his funeral because his story wasn’t finished. If you aren’t telling a good story, nobody thinks you died too soon; they just think you died. But my uncle died too soon.” I think of my dear friend Monique who died much too soon at 43 with so much of her story yet to unfold. We need to ask ourselves today if we’re living the best story we can, and if not — reformulate.

“Not living a better story,” Miller writes, “would be like deciding to die, deciding to walk around numb until you die, and it’s not natural to want to die.”

As noted in Saturday’s post, Miller employs the principles of what makes a good story in discussing how to make one’s life a better story. One of those guidelines has to do with character. “Of all the principles I’d learn about story … the idea that a character is what he does remains the hardest to actually live.” Based on his attendance at one of Miller’s Storyline seminars, Park Howell offered eight ways to develop your character in your story.

Miller says we’re not alone in this quest: “You can call it God or a conscience, or you can dismiss it as that intuitive knowing we all have as human beings, as living storytellers; but there is a knowing I feel that guides me toward better stories, toward being a better character. I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, and whispering a better story into our consciousness.” I wonder how many of us listen to that voice within.

Park Howell’s three blog posts about Miller and the book:

Review of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life.

Howell’s two posts based on attending one of Miller’s Storyline seminars.

My next chapter opens on Donald Miller’s “Storyline Conference”

Write, create, produce, and 12 other ways to develop a better storyline for your life

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Fascinating new research on stories and brain synching isn’t exactly breaking news; it was reported earlier this year.

But the research certainly provides a compelling argument for telling stories in job interviews.

As reported on Neuromarketing, “there’s new brain scan evidence that shows a startling phenomenon: when one person tells a story and the other actively listens, their brains actually begin to synchronize.”

From Scientific American — “Mind and Brain — Of two minds: Listener brain patterns mirror those of the speaker,” by R. Douglas Fields

The researchers found that when the two people communicate, neural activity over wide regions of their brains becomes almost synchronous, with the listener’s brain activity patterns mirroring those sweeping through the speaker’s brain, albeit with a short lag of about one second. If the listener, however, fails to comprehend what the speaker is trying to communicate, their brain patterns decouple.

Imagine the implications in a job interview: I’ve noted many times that job-seekers who tell stories in response to job-interview questions have all kinds of advantages over those who don’t — making an emotional connection with the interviewer, standing out, demonstrating good communication skills. But the interviewee who can get the interviewer’s brain in synch with his or hers has an astonishing advantage. The decoupling phenomenon demonstrates the importance of telling stories clearly and well.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

I’m pretty sure it was through Park Howell that I first learned of Donald Miller and his book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life. which, as Howell describes it “essentially is the story of Miller reshaping his own life to make it a more interesting tale that matters.” In other words, a better and more meaningful story.

I found myself supporting Miller in three ways. I had bought the hardback version of the book, but when I realized I was taking a road trip to Seattle last month, I decided to also buy the audiobook version (which Miller himself narrates). Then, while in Seattle, I felt I needed the printed words in front of me and had not brought along my hardback copy, so I bought the e-book version.

Miller got interested in story when a couple of filmmakers decided to make one of Miller’s previous books, Blue Like Jazz, into a movie. (It’s kind of cool that I entered Miller’s story at this point because the movie has just now started shooting. He’s been blogging about the movie shoot.) The filmmakers began to educate Miller in how to make his story more interesting and compelling. Given that the book is a memoir, Miller was a bit taken aback at the idea that his real life was not interesting enough. But as his site explains (in third-person): “Even after writing a best-selling book, he found his life was boring and felt meaningless.”

So one of themes in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is the quest for a more meaningful life. That quest, it turned out for Miller, is about making choices. In living our stories without making conscious choices about creating a better story, Miller writes, “we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to feel meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won’t make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either.”

Howell describes the activities Miller pursues on his way to making his life a better story and giving it meaning:

Miller learned he needed to begin a rewrite on his own life to bring more meaning to his time on Earth. He got his ass off the couch, got in shape, climbed the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, rode a bike across America to raise money for wells in Africa, and started the The Mentoring Project to help fatherless boys. His story also finds him in Obama’s task force on Fatherhood and Healthy Families.

I’ve seen a fair amount written about the idea of “change your story, change your life,” but MIller is one of the first I’ve seen to deeply study the concept of “story” to inform his “editing” of his life. In addition to mentoring from the filmmakers, Miller sought out books on story, as well as Robert McKee’s famed story seminar. He learned that “the elements that made a story meaningful were the same that made a life meaningful.” Miller also discusses a number of movie and book plots but concludes “the main way we learn story is not through movies or books; it’s through each other.”

Religion and spirituality clearly have informed Miller’s life, and God is prominent on his pages. The reader gets a sense of the divine wisdom behind Miller’s quest in this passage: “We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn’t mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It’s a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them.”

I don’t think it’s any great spoiler to quote these words from near the end of the book, that demonstrate Miller’s success in finding meaning in his life by creating a better story:

I don’t ever want to go back to believing life is meaningless. I know there are biochemical causes for some forms of depression, but I wish people who struggle against dark thoughts would risk their hopes on living a good story — by that I mean finding a team of people doing hard work for a noble cause, and joining them. I think they’d be surprised at how soon their sad thoughts would dissipate, if for no other reason than they didn’t have time to think them anymore. There would be too much work to do, too many scenes to write.

As someone who has occasionally experienced depression and certainly seen a lot of it in family members, I share Miller’s hope that “people who struggle against dark thoughts would risk their hopes on living a good story.”

I’ll be writing more about Donald Miller and his book in the coming days. In the meantime, Park Howell’s three blog posts about Miller and the book:

Review of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life (I especially like Howell’s list of 11 favorite scenes in his own story).

Howell’s two posts based on attending one of Miller’s Storyline seminars (I’m kind of tempted to attend one of these, in part because I love the drive to Portland, OR, along the Columbia Gorge):

My next chapter opens on Donald Miller’s “Storyline Conference”

Write, create, produce, and 12 other ways to develop a better storyline for your life

Oh, and if you read this, Donald Miller, I’d love to have you as part of my Q&A series; you are kind of difficult to contact directly.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Today is StoryCorps’s National Day of Listening, the purpose of which is to record the stories of people you care about.

StoryCorps offers a free Do-It-Yourself Guide — plus the video below — to show you how to record interviews wherever you are. (Recording is easy these days, with more devices, such as the iPad, able to record speech.)

You can listen to stories others have collected, such as Sean Lennon interviewing his mom, Yoko One. And you can post your own story to the site’s Wall of Listening.

Today’s a good day to record cherished memories because you probably have family and friends around. But, hey, I didn’t give you much time to prep, did I? Still, you can collect the stories of dear ones anytime. Don’t wait too long, though.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

My little Thanksgiving goodie — one final summary of one of The Reinvention Summit: A Virtual Summit on the Future of Storytelling sessions I attended live (I may still report on some that I listen to as recordings). I had promised this for yesterday, but you know how it is — pie-baking and such ….

Cathy Brooks was the draw for me to a session titled “Perception is Reality: The Role of Trust in Shaping PR.” I admire her work, am highly intrigued by her Story Navigation Workshops, and would love to have her as a subject in my Q&A series. She moderated this panel session that also included Julien Smith and Michael Maslansky and explored brand perceptions and PR communications in the context of trust.

The panel’s intent also was to look at:

• Bridging the two worlds of personal brand and organizational perception, using trust as the organizing frame.
• Public/private identity and managing the complex boundaries of relationship in this new era.

Cathy began by asking:
How do you get others to believe in your story, when you are faced with suspicious, guarded, or confused audience?

Michael Maslansky responded by noting that “people and companies don’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore. There’s an enhanced level of skepticism. Everyone has to work harder to get trust.”

He observed that “people are suffering under the weight of their cumulative experience,” pointing out that cable TV was a pioneer in making us all experts. The Internet enables anyone to backcheck information

Therefore, he said, we need to change in the way companies are telling stories and engage audiences on a common ground before trying to persuade them.” That means “putting the audience’s interest first” and developing a “language strategy for building trust.”

“We’re all communicating and becoming media at the same time,” Julien Smith began in response to Cathy’s question. We’re the first generation with the ability to create and own media, he noted. Yet many marketers learned from old texts and aren’t up to date about the way the world really works.

In the chat box during the session — in which Cathy participated since the panel discussion had been pre-recorded — more discussion about trust ensued. “Annette Simmons writes about how an authentic story can shortcut the time it takes to build trust,” audience member Bob Kanegis said. Cathy noted, “I think one of the challenges is that the word ‘authentic’ has been co-opted by people who wouldn’t know what it meant if it bit them in the posterior. Mandy Leith agreed: “Yes, the commodification of ”authenticity’ is a problem.”

Audience members also noted elements beyond language that engender trust: “People can feel if you’re sincere; it’s not the words, it’s the tone,” Jan Gordon said. “There are many ways of listening; words are only part of it,” to which Ruediger Guhl added, “Not just the tone, but more so the physiology of our body,language.” Cathy agreed that tone is “core to serious story navigation, IMO … because once one finds the motivation, the heart behind the story, no matter what words they use, the tone, the sound changes.”

Cathy summarized: We are media now, our own media brand and voice.

She asked about some of the common mistakes entities make in trying to gain trust, citing an example of her own in which someone e-mailed her asking her to post and tweet some information. Cathy didn’t know the sender, and the information the sender asked that she disseminate was not in her normal sphere of interest. Cathy’s mental process went something like this: Who are you? You don’t seem to know what I typically do and am interested in? The sender gained no trust with Cathy.

On the flip side, Julien told of a communication that gained his trust (and I am probably vastly oversimplifying this story in my efforts to take notes). The sender acknowledged that the message might be perceived as spam but hoped the recipient would give it consideration. To Julien, the message’s tone said: “I don’t assume my stuff is worth talking about.” The sender had disarmed the reader, wasn’t arrogant, and didn’t tell Julien what to do. The message was sincere, so Julien was interested. Now, I have to admit that if a sender’s tone came across to me as “I don’t assume my stuff is worth talking about,” my response would probably be “If you don’t assume your stuff is worth talking about, I won’t either.” But perhaps I’d feel differently if I saw the full message Julien referred to.

Michael talked about his four principles of credible communication, and either I failed to pick up all four, or he never got through the full list, but fortunately, he lists them in his book, The Language of Trust, which David Wyld summarizes here. The four principles of credible communication are:

1. Be personal* (the Old Spice Guy and the Old Spice Voicemail Generator was cited as an example of the personal approach.)
2. Be plainspoken
3. Be positive
4. Be plausible.

The opposite of the “be personal” principle, Michael added, is a “product-centric perspective,” which doesn’t resonate nearly as much as thinking about how product will affect the lives of people who use it. It’s the old benefits vs. features argument. It works best to describe a product in ways that are relevant, tangible, and real to customers and connect the product with something typical users do.

As you can tell, my note-taking skills were really failing me at this point, and for most of the rest of the panel session, I’m not sure which gentleman made which statement, so apologies to Michael and Julien for failing to give proper credit.

The panelists noted that we trust people, not companies. A couple of examples:

1. During the World Cup, Google added a vuvuzela button on every YouTube video, which annoyed some people. But it was a joke, the panelist pointed out. The huge corporate entity Google humanized itself by playing a joke.
2. Dominos recently admitted in its advertising that their pizza sucked. They demonstrated they were human and could make fun of themselves. Dominos’ trial of its improved product tested through the roof, its success, the panelists said, boosted by Dominos’ acknowledgement of its weakness and vulnerability. Again, a company acted like a human. Corporations have a hard time admitting weakness because they fear litigation, but the more companies acknowledge their mistakes, the more they can correct them, making for a much more interesting conversation. Research has shown that malpractice suits are less likely when the practitioner shows humanity when dealing with patients. Here, audience member Ruediger Guhl interjected in the chat box: “In the old days. mistakes were so much more finite, today we can immediately repsond to them and use the correction for a connection to the customer.”

Cathy asked the panelists to offer three key points about creating perception around self and/or brand.

Julien’s response:

1. Ask yourself: What is your brand about? What emotions?
2. Be vulnerable. Admit your errors. Acknowledge. Apologize. Act (He credited this one to Chris Brogan).
3. Do it like a human being.

Michael’s response:

1. Use apology language you’d use with someone you really care about.
2. Just because you’re right doesn’t mean you should be trusted. Everyone can develop opposing facts and stats. Narrative language, emotional language.
3. Building credibility is emotional, not rational.

Finally, someone made a statement that got tweeted a lot, but folks must have heard it in different ways because I variously read:

• Sincerity is the new black.
• Vulnerability is the new black.
• Authenticity is the new black.

Connect with the panelists:

• Cathy Brooks
• Julien Smith, blog
• Michael Maslansky, his book, The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics

*From Michael’s book, The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics, more about his exhortation to “be personal:”

The four components of personalizing your message:

• Make it relevant. Just because you think something is important doesn’t mean your audience does. You may care about shoes or the latest software or the environment. That doesn’t mean what you are selling is top of mind for your audience. Your first job is to make your message personally relevant to your audience.
• Make it tangible. Would you prefer to know that there are 10,000 active taxi-cabs in a city you visit or that the typical wait time for a cab is four minutes? Chances are the latter because it explains the fact in terms that relate to you.
• Make it human. Too many arguments are made using cold facts instead of personal stories. If you want your audience to connect with a product or an issue, you need to make it human by telling personal stories.
• Make yourself real. The fastest way to lose a skeptic is to make your message sound like fine print reads. If you want to build trust, you have to communicate as you would to someone you trust, with less corporate speak and more authentic language.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Happy Thanksgiving to all! May you share stories with your near and ones.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Thaler Pekar and her neurophysicist and brain-mapper brother Jim (pictured) will explore The Story of the Science of Story on Wednesday, December 8 in a free teleconference.

They’ll be addressing these questions:

• Is the effectiveness of story explained by “brain science”, and especially by brain-mapping?
• How does brain mapping work, and what does it tell us about the organization of the brain?
• What are the limitations of brain mapping?
• What is “reverse inference” and what is “neuroessentialism”?
• What can brain mapping say about story?

The free teleconference is generously hosted by Worldwide Story Work, a community of story practitioners focused on the application of story-based techniques in organizational settings.

The Dec. 8 event takes place 4 - 5 PM Eastern. Dial 1-218-936-4700 then enter Access Code 710691.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

After having the opportunity to experience — at ridiculously accessible prices — 32 hours of high-quality content from brilliant, thought-provoking experts on the future of storytelling, would you dare hope for more? Would you dare hope you could be part of creating more?

More you shall have if you signed up for The Reinvention Summit: A Virtual Summit on the Future of Storytelling. (You can still sign up to access recordings of the sessions — and a lot more. Those who signed up at the basic level and now have 60-day access to the recordings can upgrade and get mp3s of the sessions for posterity and other materials). I would guess that even those who have not signed up will still be able to access at least some of the “more” that emerges from the Summit.

And what might that “more” consist of? Nothing is written in stone, but in the Summit’s closing session yesterday, the design team (top slide, left column) listed these goodies as possibilities (second slide from top, right, right column — though, sorry, it’s hard to read):

• A crowd-sourced book covering the Summit’s 32 sessions, as well as the “making of” story, and more.
• An online community
• Learning modules for which guest instructors will be needed
• Virtual workdays
• Group and private coaching
• A bonus session on Dec. 7 for registrants (bottom slide, right column)

See slide at the bottom of this post.

Invoking the ongoing, collaborative “Stone Soup” theme of the Summit (second slide from top, left column), organizer Michael Margolis noted that participants will have the opportunity to author and co-create what comes next and that Summit content will be repackaged in all sorts of ways. Pointing out that the Summit’s 22 media partners and their collective audience of 2 million+ people want to continue the discussion and share the content — but the six-member design team won’t be able to respond by itself — Michael stated that the tribe will be needed. Get Storied (Michael’s company) is trying to build an ecosystem to share ideas, he said.

The team, Michael went on, wants to help participants create their “next,” their reinventions, if you will, developing “an action laboratory for channeling creative potential for what you want to share with the world. One aim is to socialize core idea of storytelling into the larger culture,” because, after all, “storytelling is our most basic human technology.”

“The world is ready,” Michael noted. “People are calling out for narrative.” He observed that we are all media and brands who can package our ideas into something that others can experience. Narrative is fundamental, he said. It’s the the base, the foundation, for everything else, the fundamental layer and vocabulary of storytelling. He spoke of a “knowledge spiral,” a concept from Ikujiro Nonaka (top slide, right column), getting one’s hands dirty in the ongoing work (middle slide, right column), and developing action plans for putting reinvention into action (next-to-last slide, right column).

Michael noted some of the remarkable aspects of the Summit — the fact that the team hatched it in just 90 days, for example. The Summit started on Nov. 11, honored as a worldwide day of remembrance (so appropriate for storytelling) and ended near Thanksgiving, a time of harvest (evoking the harvest of stories, memories, experiences). He mentioned and thanked the design team, partners, producers, speakers, bloggers and others who posted content about the Summit (wheee! my picture’s on the slide, and Michael generously mentioned me), and 566 participants (bottom three slides, left column).

In a poignant portion of the closing session, the design team shared post-Summit intentions. One of the most tweeted observations was team member George Huang’s “reinvention is messy.” The team also talked about the Summit sessions that were highlights for them, with several noting the impact of Angela Maiers’s session on reclaiming story in education.

For each live sessions I attended — eight of the 32, and I hope to listen to some of the recordings — an enthusiastic group of attendees expressed their appreciation and enriched the discussion. A few highlights of their sentiments in the final session:

• Marleen Vente: *choked up* I’m soo deeply moved by the sincerity of everyone involved… thanks to ALL who shared a piece of the stories that are so dear to them
• Karina Howell: Seriously,this conference is such a blessing. I’m incredibly grateful.
• Nico Gronenberg: I will certainly look at the term “reinvention” in a different way
• Mandy Leith: I loved how over the 11 days, the variety of perspectives offered a colourful kaleidoscopic view of the ways narrative touches and informs meaning and innovation
• Craig DeLarge: I loved the natural flawed and effective execution of this whole thing. How things continually went wrong but never was there a bog-down or frustrated or profane outburst but just a quick regroup around a deep cleansing breath without missing a beat. I loved it. Imperfection never felt so good.
• Lisa Rossetti: Hey Storytellers! Our time has come! This shared energy *must* be harnessed for the world.

The design team asked participants to think about their intentions, and I’m talking about mine in a separate blog post. In the meantime, I’m hoping some participants will share recommendations for the “can’t miss” sessions among the 24 I didn’t listen to live. I also have one more session to report on; look for that report tomorrow.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

In the closing session yesterday, The Reinvention Summit: A Virtual Summit on the Future of Storytelling organizer Michael Margolis asked participants to think about their post-Summit intentions.

My own are probably not yet fully formed, but I wanted to write something while the Summit is fresh in my mind.

When I relaunched this blog in 2008, my intention was to reinvent myself (and this is embarrassingly bombastic) as a World Famous Blogger. I had just reluctantly left teaching (when it became clear to me that the typical career path for college professors was probably not open to me). Almost three years later, I feel I have to a great extent attained the goals of that reinvention. I’m not “world famous” in any universal sense, but I am known and appreciated in the world that counts to me — the storytelling world. And I’m gratified that, especially in the last few months, readership numbers for A Storied Career have achieved a very nice level.

But I think I may be unique among folks who blog about storytelling in that I’m not a practitioner. Most storytelling bloggers do so, in part, as an adjunct and/or promotional tool for their story practices. I do not make a living as a World Famous Blogger, yet this blog — and the world of storytelling — is my passion. I’ve probably stated more than once that I make about $1.39 a month from the advertising on this blog. My main gig is as associate publisher and creative director of QuintCareers. I’ve been writing and teaching about job search and careers for 20 years now, and I still have a passion for some of that world, but not like I have a passion for storytelling.

So, in an ideal world, my post-Summit intention would be to make a living from my storytelling passion and to integrate storytelling into a reinvented teaching career. I can, of course, teach to a great extent through writing and blogging. But I’d still like the one-on-one contact with students that I have so enjoyed. I live in a place remote enough so that virtual teaching may be my best option.

Other obstacles include my extreme shyness and phone phobia, but I have shown that I can rise above, having, for example, presented a well-received teleseminar (by phone) last year for Worldwide Story Work. I also organized and will lead a storytelling track at a career conference in 2011. I’ve started to garner some invitations to talk at conferences about storytelling in the job search. I’m also interested in the ideas of storytelling for identity construction and the change-your-story/change-your-life concept (and lots more storytelling applications, but others can probably teach and write about those better than I can). I’m learning from entities like Toastmasters and Nancy Duarte to be a better presenter.

So there you have it. My Reinvention Intention. And even though I tend to be a bit of a lone wolf, I want the tribe by my side for my next reinvention.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

More than two years ago, I discovered and wrote about a story-based assessment process that I was interested in learning more about and perhaps being trained to use.

Late last month, I underwent five days of training in this method, called the Dependable Strengths Articulation Process (DSAP), developed by Bernard Haldane.* (The photo shows the leaders of the workshop I attended.) The Dependable Strengths Web site describes the process in story terms:

… the heart of the process is storytelling. DSAP Facilitators are trained to elicit the kind of stories that illustrate a person’s Dependable Strengths — those strengths characteristic of a person’s best work. Participants tell their stories in small groups, and receive feedback in the form of written and vocal comments from each of the others in their group. Participants are encouraged to pay special attention to body language — that of the storyteller as well as that of the listeners.

To get a feel for the story aspects of this process, you can also check out a paper by Ernest F. Biller called “Career as Story.” You can read an abstract from the Dependable Strengths site, ask Dependable Strengths for a copy of the full paper, or, if you have access to the library database ERIC, download the full paper yourself. (See other research and information about the process here and here.)

While the thrust of Billers’ paper is the suitability of the DSAP with multicultural populations, he talks about humans as natural storytellers and about capturing narratives “while providing a valid and reliable means for recommending career choices consistent with a client’s interests, abilities, and values that are embedded within their unique (idiographic) life story.”

Juxtaposed against the term “nomothetic,” “idiographic” is important because it underscores the subjective nature of the DSAP, compared to objective assessments, such as the popular Strengths Finder 2.0 (You can read on Wikipedia about the nomothetic/idiographic dichotomy.) Biller compared Dependable Strengths results with another objective assessment, Holland’s Self-Directed Search (SDS), and found an 80-90 percent correlation between the two.

The way Biller describes the Dependable Strengths process aligns closely with what I experienced in the workshop. “… [T]he process must allow for the counselee to construct [his or her] own story,” he writes, “… by carefully identifying … achievements (good experiences)” and finding a pattern of skills and talents repeatedly used to make those achievements happen.

In groups (ideally of four), participants share their stories of good experiences while the other group members listen, ask questions, and record key “strength” words they hear in the stories. “In this way, the process roots out the skills or strengths embedded in the story,” Biller writes, going on to note that typically 3-5 keywords emerge as recurring throughout the majority of good-experience stories. (Biller refers to these words as “verbs,” but that distinction was not made in my workshop.)

Biller notes that it’s common in the workshops to find people who hate their jobs because they are not using any of their strengths. He also observes that because the DSAP is so simple to use, people often disbelieve that it will work. It does, though. I saw it in action with 13 workshop participants. One thing that makes it so effective is the group aspect and the reinforcement participants get by having peers point out their strengths. “The benefits to the individuals in these groups … are limitless as each member of the group is working to uncover the strengths of each other,” Biller writes, “and I do not believe there is a stronger reinforcer of self-esteem that that which comes from peer reinforcement.”

As I told the leaders of my workshop, I was a little disappointed with the minimal emphasis on the storytelling aspect of the DSAP. I want to work with them to give greater consideration to telling stories well in the career sphere, and to adapting stories to various forms of job-search and workplace communication.

*When I wrote of my interest in Dependable Strengths in 2008, I mentioned wariness about the mixed reputation of the “Bernard Haldane” name. I learned during the workshop that Haldane sold Bernard Haldane and Associates (BHA) in 1974 and thus had nothing to do with the practices that gave BHA its questionable reputation.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

My colleague Jason Alba, developer of the career-management system JibberJobber, recently wrote about “job journaling” and followed that up with a piece about a commenter to his original entry who derived great benefits from recording job/career success stories in journal fashion. Job Journal is actually a feature of JibberJobber and is a vehicle for job-seekers to record their accomplishments and success stories.

The commenter’s sentiment is typical: “I kept putting off the effort. I guess subconsciously I didn’t really believe I had any successes.”

I cannot tell you how many people I’ve encountered who don’t believe they’ve had any significant accomplishments. That’s why it’s so important to record them as they happen. For those who fail to do so, I find that a set of prompts/questions that enables you to mine for accomplishments and brainstorm success stories is very helpful. On Quint Careers, the parent site of A Storied Career, we offer an Accomplishments Worksheet (free) that asks 18 accomplishments-mining question about each job. There’s also a section for new grads and others with minimal paid experience that asks brainstorming questions about school and other unpaid experience.

Jason’s commenter notes that she “buckled down” to develop “PAR” stories, meaning success stories that follow the structure Problem —> Action —> Result. (Another of Jason’s commenters offers a worksheet for developing PAR stories.) Then she said:

It’s pretty powerful let me tell you. What a boost of confidence it gave me! What a powerful statement it gave my resume! On my resume, instead of a long boring list of every job and responsibility I had, it zooms right into where I added the most value. I can pick and choose from my PAR statements to customize the resume for the type of job I’m targeting. It’s a GREAT exercise for every current and future job seeker.

Yup … accomplishment/success stories not only make your external career-marketing communications (resume, cover letter, interview) more powerful; they also bolster your confidence. And, as the commenter points out, these stories give employers what they’re really looking for — ” where [the job-seeker] added the most value.” She’s right that employers don’t want to see “a long boring list of every job and responsibility I had.” They want to know that the results, successes, and outcomes you’ve had in past jobs can apply to what you can do for your future employer. Every resume should be 100 percent accomplishments-story-drive, not focused on duties and responsibilities.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

I will admit to very slight disappointment when Angela Maiers began her presentation on storytelling in education Thursday during The Reinvention Summit: A Virtual Summit on the Future of Storytelling. I’ve long been interested in using story in teaching — college students. Angela’s focus was very young children. But I quickly became captivated by her passion and ideas. I also recognize that fixing our broken education system should be one of America’s top priorities, and positive approaches like Angela’s contain some of the answers we need. “Saving education requires understanding that the most powerful quality we hold as teachers, leaders, and change agents is our power to tell new stories,” she said in describing her session, entitled “Story Power: Reclaiming the Place of Story in Education and Life.”

“The individuals who are going to change the world are sitting in school now,” Angela began. “They don’t know their voice matters.” The “big idea” that Angela intended to drive home in this session: “Children have world-changing ideas, and we haven’t given them to tools to tell their stories.” She cited the “miracle of literacy,” embodied in the top left photo in the montage below, in which one little girl excitedly reacts to a story being told and written/drawn by an older little girl.

She noted that “story is a somewhat unnatural conversation in education” and that storytelling is often seen as a time-filler in lower grades.

“Stories aren’t meant to be just received but to be told and shared,” Angela said. “Technology today is all about ways to tell and share stories.” She asserted that the 21st-century competencies most in demand (see graphic at left) can be enhanced by honoring value of stories. We don’t couch the most important skills as stories, Angela said, but stories are vital because because it’s biologically impossible for our brain to process facts unless they are wrapped in stories (“Our brain cannot process what our heart has not processed.”) “When we answer the question, ‘Why do we need to know this? Why do we have to do this work?, we are telling a story,” Angela said in her description of the session. “When we describe science or explain an algebraic equation; we are telling a story. When we write, when we read, when we dream of a desired future or struggle to understand our past, we are using storytelling to shape learning and lives.”

To illustrate the world-changing ideas of children, Angela told the story (and I hope I’m retelling it accurately) of finding pieces of paper — story fragments — plastered along a bike path in Iowa, all about saving the lives of animals. Angela located the storyteller, Hayley (I’m guessing at the spelling). Hayley (second photo from top in montage below) invited Angela to her bedroom, which Hayley called her “laboratory.” The little girl was on a quest with her bike-path posters to save a sick panda in China, and she had raised some $400. She even had a Plan B.

I was stunned when Angela stated Hayley’s age — four and a half!

“We grow out of being comfortable telling stories,” Angela observed. Children’s storytelling tendencies get beaten down by teachers, whose red pens bleed all over their written stories. “Your story isn’t good enough until your writing is good enough,” is the message many teachers communicate to children, Angela noted. Thus, creativity is quashed. (See the shocking Creativity Index graphic at the bottom of the montage of images below). “Technology should be used in service of helping kids telling their stories,” she said.

Angela has developed a framework — a work in progress, she says, called the “Teaching and Learning Cycle/The Story Cycle” (see graphic above). It’s about the “pattern-seeking/meaning-meaning part of curriculum,” she explained.

Angela went on to describe two ways she’s used story in education, one with children and one with adults:

The project with children began with the book Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars, a work of historical fiction about the Holocaust. The students went out and discovered other stories about the Holocaust. They broke into groups and studied the time of Holocaust. They narrowed the stories they’d collected down to four compelling stories and were to find a way to compel the rest of the class to vote for their story. I’m a little fuzzy on this next point: The students found a video with compatible subject matter but decided it was deficient, so they reinvented the video and uploaded it to YouTube, garnering 161 comments in 24 hours. Based on a horrible comment from a white supremacist, one teacher wanted to bag the project. The students contacted a Holocaust survivor, who said, “You live in a time where your stories matter. You can tell the story, and the world will listen.” From the supremacist’s comment, the students learned that sometimes the story told is not truthful. The entire school then did deeper research on hate groups. The approach Angela described here seems a lot like “story across the curriculum.”

The adult project Angela worked with looked at why parental involvement is critical in education. The project organizers collected stories from parents and teachers using the prompts “Tell me a story of the last time you interacted with a teacher” (with parents) and Tell me a story of the last time you interacted with parents (with teachers). Using Wordle.net, they made a word cloud from the texts of these stories, to show which words popped up most often in the stories. As you can see in the third image from the top in the montage at right, the parents told rather negative stories (word cloud at right) that were very different from the positive stories told by teacher (word cloud at left). Together the groups created a word cloud (top right image of montage) based on a new story for how parental involvement in schools should look.

“We need to be excited about the contributions and passion of children,” Angela said. We need to “teach kids to become the storytellers they were meant to be.”

We need to tell children what Angela told little Hayley: “You are a genius, and the world needs your contribution. Your ability to get your story out there is something I don’t see adults doing.”

That moment when a child realizes someone values his or her contribution results in what Angela calls “smiling eyes,” (embodied in the photo of Hayley, right column, second from top in the montage above), and the recognition of the valued contribution motivates the child to be better.

After the heart of Angela’s talk, she and Reinvention Summit organizer Michael Margolis talked about fixing education. “Education must be reinvented, not reformed,” Angela declared.

“Let’s go back to the core fundamentals of how we experience and interpret the world,” Michael said. “We’re stripping away our ability to live in narrative.”

Angela explained her concept of education reinvention: “Start with what kids can do, not the negative about what can’t be done or what they can’t do.” She noted that the lack of desire to go to school used to hit kids in about the eighth grade. “Now 5-year-olds don’t want to go to school,” she said. She talked about the audits she conducts in schools, noting that she can predict by the classroom environment whether kids will be successful. She looks at the materials and what’s on the walls. (I wish she’d said a little more about what kinds of materials and wall hangings indicate a successful environment.)

“To find out what kids can do, you have to hear their story,” Angela said. “It all comes down to hearing someone else’s story.”

“If you can’t imagine the possibilities,” Angela concluded, “go to a playground, go to a mall. See children.”

Some resources:

• A TED talk by Benjamin Zander that Angela cited. The story-laden talk deals with passion and refers to “shining eyes,” a concept similar to Angela’s “smiling eyes.”
• The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life, a book Angela recommended.
• Angela Maiers Educational Services

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

I mentioned yesterday in touting Nancy Duarte’s session as part of The Reinvention Summit: A Virtual Summit on the Future of Storytelling that she recently put on a free webinar of which a video is available. I speculated that since the webinar had the same title as the Reinvention session (“That Resonates with Me! How to Change the World One Presentation at a Time”), the content was probably similar.

I’ve now watched the webinar video and learned that the content is indeed similar — but the webinar offers even more than yesterday’s session — a slightly abbreviated version of the the webinar’s content — did. And the webinar is wonderful. Terrific production values and graphics, and you get to see Nancy’s excellent presentation style onscreen.

So, is there any point in summarizing what Nancy said yesterday when you can watch it for yourself and get even more content than attendees did yesterday?

Yes. For one thing, you might like to know that Nancy’s talk yesterday was exceedingly well received. Several attendees immediately felt that they needed to completely revamp upcoming presentations based on Nancy’s ideas. Some sample comments from attendees included:

• My mind has officially just been blown open.
• You have me glued to the screen … love this.
• This is simply awesome!
• WOW WOW WOW!
• Seriously, the hairs on the back of my neck just stood up.
• Wild applause!!!!!
• I wish we could call in now so you could hear us clap and ROAR, Nancy! ovation!
• Amazing!!!!!!!!!!!
• Just what I needed to hear! Amazing how I put myself in Nancy’s story.

Since you can essentially see what we saw yesterday — and then some — I won’t summarize in as much depth as I have for some of the other Reinvention sessions, but will hit on what were highlights for me and direct you to some additional resources Nancy generously provides.

In explaining her thesis that we can change the world one presentation at a time, Nancy Duarte said:

• You have the power to change the world.
• The most powerful thing is an idea, but the idea is powerless if you don’t put it out there.
• We form communications to put out ideas.

• The two extremes of writing are the report on one end of the continuum and story on the other end — the presentation is right in the middle (above).
• PowerPoint gives us a template to create a report, but since a presentation should not be a report, it’s better to start with blank sheet, a not template.

• The ideal is to communicate from the area of your audience’s shared experience (above). But, the bigger the audience, the harder it is to find shared experiences. You must know your audience. (Here, Nancy talked about some of the ways she drills down to get to know her audiences before giving a presentation, and she covers these in the webinar video as well).

• Most presentations from companies/organizations contain an obnoxious “About us” slide that is a lot like the self-absorbed party guest who thinks he’s a chick magnet (above).
• It’s much better to focus on the audience, not you as the presenter or presenting organization.
• The audience is the hero, not you. If your presentation is a Hero’s Journey, the audience should be the hero, and you should take them on an Audience Journey.
• The stakes in presentations are higher than ever because the audience has a voice. Where before, an audience member might think or turn to a neighbor and say ‘This guy’s an idiot’ when listening to a weak presentation, today’s audience member will tweet that sentiment.
• Take a stance of humility and honor your audience
• The Audience Journey starts with the Big Idea, which in turn consists of a unique point of view, plus a description of what’s at stake.
• If there’s nothing at stake, there’s no need to persuade.

• The presenter should determine where he or she is trying to move the audience from and to (above).
• In screenwriting, it’s important to know who the character is when we first meet him/her and who is he/she at the end. The presentation must have a transformation, and the presenter must define audience transformation.
• Having taking taken two years off to study story, Nancy looked at Aristotle, Freytag’s structure, and other story structures. (At this point, both Gregg Morris and I speculated that Robert McKee’s story seminar was probably part of Nancy’s studies; I know McKee’s book, Story was.)

• Then Nancy developed her own story structure (above, and you can see a more detailed version of it among the free supplements to Nancy’s book Resonate), which she tested out for presentations by overlaying it on two speeches that she considers to be the best ever: Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and Steve Jobs’ 2007 presentation to introduce the iPhone, which she considers to be the best corporate speech ever. She was elated when both speeches conformed to the structure she developed.
• Nancy’s structure begins with a call to adventure, a section that transitions back and forth between “what is” and “what could be.” The norm (“what is”) is boring vs. “what could be.” (Here, audience member Mark Weaver noted in the chat box: “The back and forth of the ‘what is’ against the potential of ‘What can be” is the continual counterpoint that drives evolution.”)
• The structure should contain a STAR moment, STAR being an acronym for Something They’ll Always Remember.
• You can find STAR moments in TED Talks, and Nancy cited a few TED talks with especially striking STAR moments: statistician Hans Rosling, “Silicon Valley’s legendary moneyman” John Doerr, and Jill Bolte Taylor.
• The call to the action at the end of the presentation should describe the “new bliss” that audience members can experience if they heed the call to action.

• Using her structure as analysis tool, Nancy noted these high points of Jobs’ 90-minute presentation:

Its components consisted of Jobs speaking, a video, a demo of the iPhone, and a guest speaker.

Jobs elicits physical reactions in his audience, such as laughing and clapping.

Jobs behaves as though he’s seeing the iPhone for the first time.

The “What could be” is this revolutionary product that changes everything.

The STAR moment is when the audience sees the iPhone in action for the first time.

Jobs tells a personal story when his equipment malfunctions.

• In analyzing Martin Luther King’s speech (which is only 16 minutes!), Nancy noted:

Repetition of key points.

Metaphors and visual words.

References to familiar songs, scripture, and literature.

Political references.


• Nancy’s final call to action for the audience: “Do something. Change the world.” Her visual here suggested we put ourselves in the same world-changing position as Martin Luther King.

So, here’s my call to action to you:

• Get a hold of Nancy’s books, especially her latest, Resonate.
• Check out the generously offered free book supplements and resources on her site.
• Watch the webinar.
• See Sacha Chua’s sketch notes on Nancy’s Reinvention session.
• Change the world.

Oh, and one more thing: I want to look into how well Nancy’s story structure works for job-interview responses.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Yesterday’s NPR story, Art Of Storytelling Alive And Well In Audio Books, prompted me to say to myself: Why didn’t I think of that?

I believe I’ve mentioned in this space previously that I’ve gotten hugely into audiobooks in the past couple of years for two reasons. One is that I’m a painfully slow reader, so reading books in print is sometimes frustrating for me. Imagine trying to get through graduate school with a snail’s-pace reading speed. The other reason is that “reading” via audiobook enables me to multitask. I can read while I’m cleaning the house or engaging in the many chores required when building a new house and maintaining a woodland farm.

The NPR piece makes the point that audiobook narration is a bit like oral storytelling, or at the very least, a partnership between a book’s author and its audiobook version’s narrator:

“When you think about history,” [author Wally] Lamb says, “Mr. Gutenberg came along and suddenly we had the book. But long before that, we had the oral traditions, we had storytellers sitting down and weaving a plot and presenting characters.”

That listening experience hasn’t really changed much for eons, [George] Guidall [the audiobook narrator who is the subject of the NPR piece] says. Think back to the cavemen who sat around the fire, listening to tales of the latest hunt.

“Now the cave is the SUV,” Guidall says. “[People are] listening to the books while the 18-wheelers go by. The parallel is still there. There is still the safety and the tribal nature of people listening to something being told to them.”

Guidall has no illusions about his own role. It is the writer who is the real storyteller. He is an actor; his role is to bring the words alive.

A good narrator can truly enhance the audiobook experience. I can recall only one book where less-than-stellar narration detracted from the experience. The reader of David Plouffe’s The Audacity to Win spoke so slowly that I often got frustrated in listening.

Like good storytellers who can express various voices, accents, and emotions, some audiobook narrators are just outstanding. A few who’ve stood out for me: In one of my earliest audiobook experiences (back when I listened on cassettes!), Jeffrey Eugenides’ stunning Middlesex comprises dozens of characters, and narrator Kristoffer Tabori tackled them all beautifully, making each one distinctive and engaging. Simon Vance, who narrated all three books in Steig Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy” (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, et al) is marvelous and gives the reader/listener a feel for Swedish life (I believe he’s a Brit). I’ve loved the three narrators of Tana French’s engrossing tales of the Dublin Murder Squad: Tim Gerard Reynolds (Faithful Place), Heather O’Neill (The Likeness), and Steven Crossley (In the Woods).

Some other observations about audiobook narrators/storytellers:

Authors who read their own work
A few authors choose to read their own books for the audio version. Two that I especially liked because they conveyed the essence of the authors were Elizabeth Edwards reading her book Resilience and Mary Karr reading Lit. I liked Edwards’ calm, melancholy strength (this was before her snake of a husband owned up to fathering Rielle Hunter’s child; maybe Edwards would sound more angry now.) More recently, I listened to Donald Miller read his A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I got a good sense of Miller, but I wonder if someone else might have been a more lively reader. All three of these are in the memoir vein, so self-narration by the authors is certainly appropriate. I’m curious about why an author chooses to read or not read his or her own book.

Sometimes I like narrators because they sound the way I imagine the author would sound. In my mind, Scott Brick is Michael Pollan, Brick having narrated at least two of Pollan’s exposes of the Western diet and food system. Sandra Burr is Mary Roach, author of Packing for Mars. Randye Kaye is Susan Isaacs (Past Perfect), one of my favorite authors, although the next book I’m planning to listen to is a Susan Isaacs novel (As Husbands Go) read by a different narrator. I’m interested to see if my brain will resist the other narrator because she doesn’t fit my picture of Isaacs’ voice.

Gender
Good audiobook narrators are equally adept at male and female voices. Another reason The Audacity to Win was probably my least favorite audiobook (not in terms of content but in terms of narration quality) was the reader’s laughable attempts at female voices. Anna Bentinck did a masterful job of depicting — with her voice and storytelling ability — both the male and female protagonists of David Nicholls’ excellent One Day. Christopher Welch did a similarly good job with a range of male and female characters in The Imperfectionists. It’s also interesting to see the gender choices audiobook producers make in selecting narrators. I’m currently “reading” River of Doubt, the rather testosterone-laden tale of Teddy Roosevelt’s expedition to a tributary of the Amazon River after he lost this third-party bid for the presidency in 1912. The twist is that the book was written by a woman, Candice Millard, but the producers wisely chose a male narrator to convey the macho material. The flip side was the book I read before this one, One Thousand White Women. I’ve always been fascinated by men who write from a female point of view and in the voice of a female character (as well as female authors who do the same with male characters); author Jim Fergus inhabited the mind of his female protagonist in One Thousand White Women, but it would have been foolish for the audiobook narrator to have been male. Laura Hicks was the main narrator, although a male voice read a few smaller segments….

Casts of Narrators
… which brings me to a recent trend: Audiobooks read by casts of narrators. One of the most successful examples is Kathryn Stockett’s superb The Help, one of whose narrators did such a magnificent job that she has been cast in the movie version of this civil-rights story. Other books I’ve read and enjoyed that were enhanced by a cast of narrators are Girl Who Fell from the Sky, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and Bloodroot.

Accents
Some audiobook narrators are called upon to employ various accents, and most do so admirably. I missed Ted Kennedy’s Boston accent in his memoir, True Compass, nicely read by John Bedford Lloyd, but I’m sure the senator wasn’t really up to doing his own narration as he completed the memoir at the end of his life. Christina Moore did a nice job with multiple accents in Commencement, about four women who attend and then graduate from Smith College. I can’t recall ever hearing a recording of Teddy Roosevelt speaking (supposedly he sounded as though he’d inhaled helium), but I can’t help thinking River of Doubt narrator Paul Michael’s TR accent sounds like a cross between FDR and any of the Kennedy brothers.

It all makes sense to me now that my passion for storytelling fits right into my obsession with well-read audiobooks.

[Image credit: From the site of audiobook narrator Wayne June.]

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

In just a few hours (2 pm Eastern), last week’s Q&A subject Nancy Duarte will present her session as part of The Reinvention Summit: A Virtual Summit on the Future of Storytelling. If you miss it, I’m guessing you can get the essence from this recording of a free webinar Nancy recently presented with the same title as today’s Reinvention session, “That Resonates With Me! How to Change the World One Presentation at a Time.”

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Day 4 yesterday of the The Reinvention Summit: A Virtual Summit on the Future of Storytelling saw two sessions with similar themes and messages and a vision of one’s career as a story.

In the session “Screw Your Career Path, Live Your Story,” Jason Seiden railed against the idea of the “career path.” In fact, he said, “You never had a career path; you had a career story.” Seiden’s suggestion that people “live a better story” reminds me a lot of the work of Donald Miller (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years), on whom I plan a three-part series later this month.

I furiously typed notes during Seiden’s session, only to discover that much of what he said is contained in a blog post of the same title as his presentation, which is especially helpful in explaining why career paths are “fiction.”

In both communications, Seiden explained why career paths exist. “People think they are on a path from point A to point B toward enoughness,” he said. “But the whole idea of career path is misguided … We’re complacent. We’re trained to go through a linear career path, not trained to live our stories. Being a good student doesn’t make you a good teacher; being a good worker doesn’t train you to be a good leader or manager.”

Seiden noted that the “career path is unnatural.” The boxes and straight lines of a linear career path don’t exist in nature, he said. He then juxtaposed the negative consequences following a career path can lead to with the more sanguine aspects of living one’s story, as seen below:

Seiden used Freytag’s Pyramid (second box from top, above) to illustrate career as story. “You’re not really in control of your career,” he said. “When you accept that you’re living a story, things get interesting. You become open to a world of possibilities.”

As a starting-point exercise in how to live your story and get away from a career path, Seiden in his blog post, uses Freytag’s Pyramid. But in yesterday’s session, he used the familiar “95th birthday” exercise:

• Write a letter to younger self.
• If you had had all the money in the world, what would you have done with it? As a 95-year-old looking back, what did you do with your money?
• Talk about a skill you developed in your life above all else and the joy you got from embracing and making the most of that skill.
• Think of event thrown for you on your 90th birthday — who spoke, who threw it, all the details.

The letter you come up with, Seiden said, becomes the blueprint for living your story. “You already are living your story,” he said, “so embrace it. You are exactly where you’re supposed to be right now. You’ll become trapped at the exposition stage if you don’t embrace it.”

He offered three quick tips to keep participants focused (the three bottom slides from the graphic, above right, beginning with “Don’t commit …”)

One idea he offered (tying into the final tip: “‘Yes’ turns opportunities into stories”) was one I’ve been hearing more and more about and seeing increasing numbers of story practitioners pursue: Take improv classes. One improv activity illustrates the effectiveness of saying “yes” in creating opportunity. It’s the “Yes, and …” exercise, and I actually participated in this one at the 2009 Golden Fleece conference while partnered with the wonderful Paul Costello. One person suggests an activity. The partner must respond with “yes, and …”, filling in the rest with some twist on the suggested activity, which keeps the story going. The partner cannot respond with “no,” because to do so would end the story. I remember that one of my twists was “Yes, and let’s take pictures of each other.”

Seiden’s session was covered by two folks who take visual notes and make them available: Mouseover the camera icons for Nicky Grunfeld and Sacha Chua here to get a flavor, but see the full-sized graphics: Nicky and Sacha.

Jason Seiden’s Web site is FailSpectacularly.com. He believes that “if you’re not truly messing up in life, you’re not living your life.”

Julie Ann Turner’s session, “Shift Your Story Arc: Crafting the Trajectory of Your Life, Work and World,” built on Seiden’s. Hers was perhaps a bit more conceptual, as well as better suited to story newbies than those who’ve been working with story for a long time. Her thesis was that our lives, work, and world are shaped by story — the stories we tell and the stories we believe. “Story is a container,” Turner said, “filled with built-in, inherent relationships that create the meaning in our lives.” Quoting the Buddah, she said, “With our thoughts, we create worlds.” (As in the Wizard of Oz world in the top box at left.)

Turner devoted much of the session to the hero’s journey — the master archetype consisting of departure, initiation, and return — hence, my observation that the session was best suited to story neophytes.

She focused on people’s unique “Story Arcs” and how we can shift, step by step, to our highest life and work trajectory. “Story arcs take us to a higher level,” she said, “and we discover the power was in us all along.

Stories of overcoming obstacles are powerful because we realize the limits we feel we face are only in our minds, Turner noted. Citing President Obama’s improbably story, Turner said, “We can envision possibilities that never existed before we imagined them.”

The centerpiece of her thesis, she said, is: “You may choose to create something that already exists.”

We can look at “What is” vs. “What can be” and ask ourselves in which realm are we currently living. (second box from top, at left)

The Power Arc is the the creative process through which we can claim our power. It’s a three-step master system or sequence that works at every level, in every setting, Turner asserted. Here, her example was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s story — his transition from body-building to his ambition, eventually realized to be the “No. 1 box-office star in Hollywood.” The bodybuilder turned movie star turned governor of California created a vision of who he wanted to be and then lived into that picture as if it were already true, Turner explained.

The Power Arc, she elaborated, involves three questions (third box from top at left):

1. Where? Where am I going?
2. Now? Where am I now?
3. How? How do I get there?

“If you look only at where you are now,” Turner said, “you see limitations.” She pointed the limitations that could have held Schwarzenegger back — lack of acting experience, thick Austrian accent, for example — had he not taken the storytelling view.

We must, Turner exhorts, ask ourselves: “What is my unique gift and greatness? What is my highest story arc?” You can find more of Turner’s work here.

Both Seiden’s and Turner’s approaches are well suited to these tough economic times in which many of us are without jobs. As explained in an article this blog’s parent site Quint Careers, ran on Job Action Day earlier this month, the workplace has changed forever, and we must take charge and become proactive if we are to prosper. That’s why career paths no longer make sense and why we need to reimagine career goals in terms of where we want to be instead of where we are.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Lisa Rosetti, a “story scout” for this blog, returned not too long ago from a trip to Berlin, where she saw a storied mural project on the underground (subway) line, the U10. (It occurs to me that most murals are probably storied).

Lisa writes:

A project undertaken by Simon Grennan (UK) & Chris Sperandio (USA), called Invisible City, recorded stories from nightworkers on the underground and then portrayed them in comic-book-style murals.

How do these “stories” impact? Well, I guess that depends on the viewer. I was intrigued, as ever, by the notion of all that behind the scenes activity going on. Obvious really, but the story-mural was a reminder of the Invisible City under my feet.

Imagine if an organisation, like the National Health Service in UK for example, created a series of murals of their “invisible workers”. What would it be like to be interviewed for such a project, to share your story? What would the conversations be like if stories of the “little people” were told, rather than those at the top of the tree? As a leadership and career coach, I envisage the culture (i.e. the conversations) would be much healthier, the people more heard and more engaged.

PS: I am glad I took the U10 that day!

Lisa wonders what others think the effect might be if more “invisible people” told their stories.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Some venues I’ve come across recently that either offer collections of topic-specific stories or serve as collection points for stories — or both:

• Glamour magazine runs an annual contest to find the best real-life story submission. I’ve read a lot of the past winning stories, and they are quite compelling (Read last year’s winning story of surviving sexual abuse.)

• Tales from the Tunnel is a play in New York City in which (as reported by Andrew Grossman in the Wall Street Journal, six actors perform 100 very short stories, ranging in duration from 20 seconds to seven minutes, that the playwrights collected from friends, family, and people whom they met on the subway during the last three years. “The stories are mostly light — and occasionally heavy — takes on the strange interactions that arise from being stuck in a long metal box with strangers,” Grossman reports. “One character tells of the time he gave a Tic-Tac to a hypoglycemic man suffering from low blood sugar.”
• GDP — Measuring the human side of the Canadian economic crisis, from the National Film Board of Canada, is Canada’s “first bilingual web documentary, a pan-Canadian project that bears witness to the far-reaching effects of the crisis in our lives and communities.” You can see the stories here.

• PenTales was created in NYC by two childhood friends passionate about connecting people through stories. The friends “instigate story experiments and experiences around the world, including storytelling events.” They “believe that everyone has a great story to tell, that telling and listening to stories connects people in meaningful ways, and that getting people together in real spaces to share real experiences can produce powerful creative connections.”
• Story of Stuff creator Annie Leonard is back with The Story of Cosmetics. The Story of Stuff Project’s intent is to leverage and extend the impact of the first film in the series, The Story of Stuff. “We amplify public discourse on a series of environmental, social and economic concerns and facilitate the growing Story of Stuff community’s involvement in strategic efforts to build a more sustainable and just world,” the site says. Other films in the series include The Story of Bottled Water and The Story of Cap and Trade. Just released last week is The Story of Electronics.
• The White House Project, a national, nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization, “aims to advance women’s leadership in all communities and sectors, up to the U.S. presidency. By filling the leadership pipeline with a richly diverse, critical mass of women, [the project] make[s] American institutions, businesses and government truly representative.” Part of the project is telling the stories of women leaders.
• The Storytellers Project by New Roots for Refugees helps refugees tell their stories of resettlement.
• During its recent two-week vacation, TEDTalks published “playlists” from among the 700+ presentations in the TED series. First up was a playlist of Life Stories, including Ben Dunlap’s “tale of a grand life, lived with passion, principle and humor,” Stefan Sagmeister’s learnings from his life so far, Deborah Scranton facilitation of three soldiers telling their own stories of conflict in Iraq in her powerful “War Tapes,” and A.J. Jacobs’s tale about about his year of living Biblically
• My Days is a collection of stories from 25 elderly Norwegian men and women between 79 and 104 years old from their everyday lives. Filmmakers Hanne Jones and Eli Lea from the Norwegian film production company Flimmer Film went from door to door in old people’s homes in Bergen collecting stories from the residents lives. The stories were recorded, edited and vizualised with photographs from the storytellers personal photo albums.
• Neiman Storyboard publishes a collection of what they call Notable Narratives, outstanding examples of narrative journalism drawn from newspapers, magazines, radio and television.
• On Small Biz Stories, small-business enthusiasts can connect by sharing experiences. The site publishes the stories of entrepreneurs at least once a month.

• The Red Umbrella Project is founded on the belief that storytelling is a building block of movement-building and solidarity. (The red umbrella is a symbol of international sex worker solidarity.) “People who have spent time in the sex industries know all too well the social and legal stigmas that prevent us from being treated with the dignity and respect we deserve,” the site says. “While researchers, the media, and myriad others fill up page after page with stories about the sex trade, the voices of people who have lived this reality are consistently denied and erased. Everyone has a story, and the people who are best equipped to tell the stories of people in the sex trade are the people who have personal experiences in the industry.”
• The host of 100 Word Stories, who seems to go by “Mr. Crap,” says that 100-word stories, commonly known as the Drabble, “are an extremely brief form of flash-fiction. … Every Sunday, a new Weekly Challenge will be posted.” Mr. Crap continues: “I’ll offer up a topic or theme which you will use as the inspiration to write and record your own 100-word story. Then, send them to me via email so I can include them in a podcasted collection for all to enjoy.”

• Recognize a Leader is not s storytelling site per se, but the author behind it, Steve Denning, is an organizational storytelling pioneer whose new book, The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management, was recently released. Visitors to the site have the opportunity to recognize leaders by writing them a note. None of the notes I saw were especially storied, but there’s no reason visitors can’t tell stories to support their leader recognitions.
• The Purple Couch “is on a quest throughout America’s “living room” (anywhere the couch lands) seeking to be a platform for the truth about what matters, a platform for the people to speak and be heard. We believe that there is power in our stories — the power that comes with understanding. And, when it finally dawns on us that we have much in more common than that which sets us apart, we will begin to heal as a country and a planet.”

• Mortified “is a comic excavation of the strange and extraordinary things we created as kids. Witness adults telling stories about their lives by sharing their own adolescent journals, letters, poems, lyrics, plays, home movies, and art. After all, where else can you hear grown men and women confront their past with firsthand tales of their… first kiss, first puff, worst prom, fights with mom, life at bible camp, worst hand job, best mall job, and reasons they deserved to marry Jon Bon Jovi.”

• In mid-2009, The Inspire Foundation launched the #Manweek campaign to raise awareness of issues such as the fact that in Australia, young men commit suicide at more than three times the rate of women of the same age and mental illness and drug and alcohol dependency is severely affecting men aged 16-24. A number of Australian bloggers supported this campaign, sharing their thoughts, challenges, and experiences with their readers. As the campaign ended, the organizers felt that the campaign had only just scratched the surface; they wanted to take these stories and share them with others - with brothers, fathers and uncles. The book The Perfect Gift For a Man 30 Stories About Reinventing Manhood is the result. All proceeds go to The Inspire Foundation.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Annette Simmons is unquestionably one of the best presenters I’ve ever experienced, so there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity to hear her present as part of Day 2 the The Reinvention Summit: A Virtual Summit on the Future of Storytelling.

Annette’s session, entitled “Deep Roots: Looking Backwards in Order to Move Forward,” felt like one extended story, or a folksy conversation comprising smaller stories. And while Annette did virtually all the talking in this conversation, she’s the kind of conversationalist you could just sit listening to on your front porch all day long.

She had five points she wanted to make in her plea that when you reinvent yourself, you should not lose the parts of yourself that really matter:

• Don’t leave your mountain to chase someone else’s story.
• Reinvention stories don’t start from scratch.
• Lead does not turn into gold.
• Honor the past. Celebrate the future.
• Tap into the power of ritual.

Reinvention stories don’t start from scratch.
Annette began this conversation by recalling her return to the US from Australia, where she had been working. She felt she had lost her identity. “A cultural shift is harder when you come back home than when you enter a new culture,” she noted, “but if you have good coping mechanisms, you reexamine and decide what’s important. Annette recalled her confusion, noting that “the ‘confused part’ needs to validated.” A symbol, perhaps, of the cultural shift and confusion she experienced was the 1966 Mustang she not only brought over to Australia but had refitted with a right-side steering wheel. “No one had one in Australia,” Annette said of the car she had named “Thelma” after the film Thelma and Louise, “It was one hot car.” She got another ‘66 Mustang when she returned, but found the vehicle wasn’t as cool in the US.

Don’t leave your mountain to chase someone else’s story.
Annette paid homage to one of most famous storytellers in the US, Ray Hicks (top left photo), who lived in the mountains of Appalachia and died in 2003. Annette had first encountered him at the National Storytelling Festival. You can get a much better sense of Hicks and why has was so important to Annette on her Web site. He is part of Annette’s “Who I Am” story, and if you know Annette’s work, you know the “Who I Am” story is one of the six kinds of story she talks about.

Annette explained that Hicks told morality tales called “Jack Tales,” which “concern a poor mountain boy, an American cousin of the farm boy in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and ‘Jack the Giant Killer.’ Jack outwits thieves, witches and ogres,” notes the obituary of Hicks on Annette’s site. “Fairy tales have serious wisdom in them,” Annette said. “They are powerful tools, not immediately evident from storytelling of last 30 years. It’s not smart to skip the roots.”

She cited Hindu stories, such as that of Vishnu the Destroyer (photo: left column, second from top; a couple of attendees to Annette’s session said that actually Shiva is the Destroyer, and Vishnu is the Maintainer), noting that “destroying is an important part” of reinvention. Reinvention of a sort — beginnings, middles, ends — comprises a significant part of many religions, Annette pointed out; for many of us, the most familiar example is the death and resurrection of Christianity.

Honor the past. Celebrate the future.
Annette noted that she has lived four lives and is in the middle of her fifth. She compared reinvention to metamorphosis, noting that the cocoon stage — “bug soup” — (photo: middle of left column) lasts a long time. “The old is gone, the new has yet to emerge, things are messy, and you aren’t as productive as you’d like to be,” she said. Companies undergoing reinvention should, she suggested, “eliminate blame and shame about the messy part.” Where folks tend to go wrong, she pointed out, is by failing to “orchestrate the death of the old story. Instead, “we ignore the old story.”

Lead does not turn into gold.
“If your reinvention story is based on turning lead into gold,” Annette cautioned, “you’re spending your time in alchemy (photo: left column, fourth from top) which [historically] took lots of time and money, but lead was never turned into gold.”

“Examine the deep meaning of analogies,” Annette said, “because they have something to tell us.” For example, we could not go forward from our belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction until we examined the past. She spoke of going back upriver to take another channel, noting that, “going backwards might bring the real eureka moment.”

Annette’s session was the day after Veteran’s Day, and she noted that we carry strong emotions about the military. She told the story of a friend whose father was a merchant marine, more of which had died in WWII than any other service branch. But they didn’t get benefits and weren’t recognized. Happily, though, when the father died, he was buried with full military honors. For Annette’s friend, “reinvention was enabled.”

As another example, Annette cited a Japanese soldier (photo: top of right column) separated from his unit on Guam and found 28 years later. Japan gave him a hero’s welcome, including a parade, and he met the emperor, Annette explained. “You may have an old, outdated product, but you honor it,” she said.

Tap into the power of ritual.
“Ritual is one of the best ways to create a reinvention,” Annette declared. She described the ritual she organized for a friend who was getting breast reduction. Annette supplied lemons and grapefruits (and possibly one other fruit that I missed), to party guests and then took photos of them holding the fruit at breast level and sporting happy and unhappy faces with each of the fruits. Annette also served a cake “with boobs.”

“You can facilitate the direction in which a group comes to a new story,” Annette offered. In an initiative called Photo Story (which is described in greater detail on Annette’s site), the goal was trying to change a community’s behavior regarding healthcare (photo: right column, second from top). Everyone in the community was handed a disposable camera, to take pictures of anything in their community. Later, community members voted on the photos using dot-shaped stickers. Dialogue ensued about the stories told by the 20 or so pictures that they choose to represent the community. The community members were looking at who they were as a community. “When you ask, ‘who are you?’, you invoke a conversation that goes backwards and forward,” Annette said. She described a process in which people move from saying, “someone should do something about it,” to saying, “We’re going to do something about it.”

Annette then described a time before her seminal book about business storytelling, The Story Factor, was published. The book “scared the beejesus out of me,” she recalled, “because I knew it was the best work I’d ever done.” To cope with her fear, she acquired a ring (photo: middle of right column) that gave her permission to be powerful, and she gathered other women to have a ritual (photo: right column, fourth from top).

Reinvention Summit organizer Michael Margolis wrapped up the session by asking Annette where her energy is currently. “I’ve learned to relax and not be undone,” Annette replied. I’m more healthful and youthful. I don’t get flustered. I listen better.”

Finally, she embraced her appreciative audience with the words: “Y’all are my tribe.”

Annette also announced that her brand-new Web site AnnetteSimmons.com had just gone live (and still has a few kinks to be worked out). I love the site, which improves on her former site under her company name, Group Process Consulting. Below is a graphic from the site’s main page. I appreciate the whimsical and typically Annette features of the site, such as Infrequently Answered Questions. Like so many storytelling practitioners, Annette generously gives away content. Huge letters on her main page invite visitors to “Build a community: Feel free to use this material.” Here’s her explanation:

I am happy to share anything that might help your group feel more connected and more responsible towards each other… because ultimately that will make the world a better place. I am grateful for what I make through books, speeches and training. It is enough.

I am deeply honored that A Storied Career is included among the handful of links Annette offers on her Recommended Sites page. The last photo in the right column is one I like of Annette taken from her new site.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

As The Reinvention Summit: A Virtual Summit on the Future of Storytelling began on Thursday, I found myself gravitating toward tried-and-true speakers — presenters I’d heard before and was well familiar with. I do plan to try some folks new to me, and if I hear good buzz about a speaker I missed live, I’m delighted to be able to access recordings of the sessions.

My first experience with the tried-and-true was Andy Goodman on Day 1 — but I also got to enjoy a presenter new to me, Andy’s co-presenter, Lily McCombs, in their session with the title shown in the graphic, above right. (See short bios and links to more info on these two at the end of this post.) Summit organizer Michael Margolis of Get Storied conducted the session as an interview. Attendees were muted and couldn’t participate orally (this session had been pre-recorded anyway, so interaction would not have been possible), but a nice chat feature on the presentation screen enabled the audience to type comments and questions, some of which I’ve interspersed below.

Noting that nonprofits and causes come to the table with baggage about old way they tell the organization’s story, Michael asked: “How do you get buy in for story?”

Lily suggested asking leaders of these organizations, “Why are you here?” She talked about leaders connecting to value of their own story. Michael expressed this idea another way: “Do you believe in your own story?” At this, attendee Peter Fruhmann noted that if organizational leaders don’t believe in what they stand for, they have no story. “They should ask themselves, ‘Why am I doing this?’” Fruhmann said.

Andy told the story of one of his clients, Lighthawk, a group of pilots with their own planes. Andy explained that larger environmental organizations call on these pilots and planes to fly over a site to see environmental problems. But the group’s members were “all over the map” in trying to communicate who they were and what they did. Everyone had a different description. Some described the organization as a partnership; others said an advocacy group; still others called in an education organization. Andy asked them to describe a “magic moment” that embodies what the organization actually does, the Lighthawk moment.” Here, the group’s members were unanimous: “It’s that moment in the plane when the passenger looks out the window [at the environmental problem] and says ‘Oh my God, I had no idea.’” With Andy’s help Lighhawk’s tagline became: “Change is in the air.” The organization had created a new narrative of getting people to the plane and experiencing a transformation.

Michael summarized this concept as “magic moments, pictures or metaphors that show your work in action.” If you could get a camera and take a picture of your organization doing your thing, what would the picture be?

The panelists then discussed expanding the emotional range of the stories causes and nonprofits tell, with Michael asking, “How do your shift from old, self-righteous moralizing genres of cause stories?”

“People will not think about what they don’t care about it,” Andy responded, noting that causes and nonprofits often “press the ‘fear’ or ‘shame’ button.” He cited print ads such as those for Save the Children that shame readers by saying, “You can save this child or you can turn the page.” But, Andy said, “audience gets numb to those messages. If you want to reach people on an emotional level, there’s a while emotional palette to play with. Storytelling can engage people emotionally.”

Lily noted that even for the nonprofits and causes who convey these messages, “it’s no fun to communicate in the fear and shame ways. Sustain people over a longer-term engagement and communication. If you feel awful about sending a message, it’s probably a sign you shouldn’t send it.”

Here, Fruhmann interjected, “Yeah, stories should evoke emotion and empathy, not shame, fear, or a feeling of incompleteness or imperfection (which advertising sometimes does). And yes, there are stories which succesfully evoke hate.”

Michael introduced the notion of bringing storytelling into the culture of organizations, asking Andy and Lily how they convince clients to change their style of storytelling and asking them if they are telling a big enough story that people want to be part of. How do you help clients find a more universal thread? And Michael wondered if the very act of becoming aware of its narrative is enough to cause an organization to create a culture of storytelling.

Andy’s approach, he said, is to go into organizations “planting a storytelling seed and hoping a storytelling culture will grow.” He suggests that organizations “tell stories in board meetings, staff meetings, their newsletters, internal and external communications.”

He suggests to his clients: “Just try it. Make that leap of faith.”

Also important, Lily added, is not to get disconnected from your cause’s audience. “Instead of feeling like you have to own your story,” she suggested, “get in touch with your supporters. What’s their story? Why do they support your cause?” She noted that the first response to a question like, “who are your supporters,” usually consists of demographics.” Lily suggested that organizations designate part of their Web sites where people can share their stories. “Enable audience to see themselves in your story,” she said. “Make the audience the hero of your story.” (Both panelists in various parts of the session cited the Obama campaign and, to a lesser extent, the president’s administration, as revolutionizing this kind of Web-based cause storytelling.) Attendee Lisa Rossetti added that “people love stories of personal transformation.”

Michael asked Lily and Andy for a quick tip or suggestion for telling stories with technology.

Andy’s tip originated with Steve Jobs: “No amount of technology can improve a bad story.” Andy suggested that nonprofit and cause leaders “learn what makes a good story first, then technology will be a tailwind, a booster.”

“Stop sending boring newsletters,” was Lily’s suggestion. “Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. If it’s not something that will engage your audience, don’t send it. Make it about them.”

One of the panelists, Lily I think, suggested that organizations keep a story file, an idea that seemed to resonate with the audience. Attendee Thaler Pekar said: “A client calls this collection of success and thank you stories her ”Happy Folder’ — and she encourages every staff member to have one.”

And now the mini-bios I promised. You can also read more about Andy, Lily, and all the Summit’s presenters here:

Lily McCombs said she “became engaged during Clinton administration,” observing the “the rise of the right and identity politics taking shape.” She became interested in applying the techniques of creative communication to something more meaningful. She joined the online-based Australian campaigning organization GetUp.org (similar to MoveOn.org) in 2005. Michael described Lily’s background as involving “big online cause, political, and issue campaigns — and the role of storytelling to engage grassroots.” She co-founded the boutique global-communications consultancy, Make Believe, based in Sydney.

Andy Goodman said he’d grown up watching a lot of TV and decided he wanted to write for sit-coms — which he did, contributing to “Dinosaurs” and “The Nanny.” He got out, he said, because “life is too short.” He then ran a nonprofit for five years. He had found that in TV, people had nothing to say but told great stories, while nonprofits had everything to say but didn’t know how to tell a great story. “People weren’t good at communicating their message,” Andy observed. Nonprofits seemed to be saying, “we’re good at what we do, not talking about it.” Once Andy started his consultancy for nonprofit communications, a goodman, he began asking questions like, “Can you tell me a story about an entity you helped?”

Here’s a very cool bonus to the session: Sacha Chua, an Enterprise 2.0 consultant at IBM, created wonderful sketches of the sessions on Day 1 of the Summit. If you mouseover the tiny camera icon in this sentence, you can see her sketch for the Goodman-McCombs session. (It’s very tiny here, so see its full-size form.) UPDATE: Here’s another one from the folks at ImageThink. Mouseover here.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

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

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Q&A with Nancy Duarte, Questions 5 and 6:

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: I think that we’re a densely populated yet very lonely planet. People are craving a sense of connection with others and story does that. We don’t want to go to work every day and be an automaton, but we do. People want more out of what they do than that.

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

A: I have been transformed by the work of Chris Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey and Robert McKee’s Story. I enjoyed many insights from Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat, Randy Olsen’s Don’t be Such a Scientist. They all had insights I could apply to how stories apply to business

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

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

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Q&A with Nancy Duarte, Question 4:

Q: How did you initially become involved with story/storytelling/narrative? What attracted you to this field? What do you love about it?

A: I knew that the truly great presentations must follow a hidden story form. For some reason, great presenters engage an audience with rapt attention the same way a storyteller does. So I set out to study the art form, read everything I could find on various literary story forms which included fables, mythology and screenwriting. Sure enough, there are some foundational elements of story that the best presentations use. I was fascinated by the patterns I found. That many foundational story elements overlap across all the genres of story.

NOTE: Nancy will be a featured speaker during the Reinvention Summit that starts TODAY. Her slot is a week from today, Thursday, November 18, 2pm — 3pm Eastern.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

As a testament to my cultural ignorance, I was not aware before today that Canada also honors veterans on Nov. 11 in a holiday called Remembrance Day. I learned of this day through an article by Don Butler about the success of a Facebook page called Canada Remembers, which at this writing has 342,008 fans (likers?). Veterans’ written and video stories are part of the page.

Meanwhile, as Larry Smith writes in the Huffington Post, SMITH Magazine’s newest project, is “Six Words on Coming Home From War,” a collaboration with Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), “the country’s first and largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A few especially poignant six-word “coming home from war” stories appear below.

Thank you, veterans all over the world who have fought for freedom.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

The latest from Annie “Story of Stuff” Leonard, “The Story of Electronics,” was released yesterday to take on the electronics industry’s ‘design for the dump’ mentality and champion product take-back and spur companies to make less toxic, more easily recyclable and longer lasting products. Produced by Free Range Studios and hosted by Annie Leonard, the eight-minute film explains ‘planned obsolescence’ — products designed to be replaced as quickly as possible — and its often hidden consequences for tech workers, the environment and us. The film concludes with an opportunity for viewers to send a message to electronics companies demanding that they “make ‘em safe, make ‘em last, and take ‘em back.”

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

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

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Q&A with Nancy Duarte, Question 3:

Q: Should slides for a presentation be able to stand on their own without narration? There are thousands of slideshows on sites like SlideShare, and many have an audio track, but I wonder about the usefulness of the slideshows that lack narration.

A: Slides that can be understood without a narrator are a document, not a visual aide. Documents are built in slide applications all the time and that’s ok. But when you’re standing and delivering a live presentation, you should use visual aides as a backdrop and setting for your great idea, not as a document. There are some presentations on SlideShare that I love for their simplicity and level of engagement. Many of the ones by Garr Reynolds are fantastic. The slides themselves are visually simple and text is sparse, which requires you to engage your brain in clicking often as you quickly skip through clear content with supporting images.

[Editor’s note: The slide image above is a sample Garr Reynolds slide.]

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

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Q&A with Nancy Duarte, Question 2:

Q: In a 2008 article in Business Week about storytelling in presentations (against the backdrop of the presidential election), Carmine Gallo cited as one reason that “few business communicators employ this device in their own presentations”: “Most presenters are afraid of opening themselves up in a business context.” Do you find that to be the case, and if so, how do you overcome that fear in your clients?

A: Telling a very good story does require that the protagonist encounter a problem or have an unmet need that the story resolves. To stand in front of your peers or clients and let them know you’re not perfect and you’re human is intimidating. But, the transparency that story inherently envelops is a powerful empathetic connect device with an audience. To overcome fear of storytelling, you need to understand that story is like the sugar the helps the medicine go down. You need to be SO committed to your presentation and message you’re trying to convey that you’ll do anything to get that message out for your audience to contend with. So other than tons of practice, I feel like the presenter needs to go on their own journey of their soul, find the passion inside that transcends your fears and tap into that.

[Editor’s note: The graphic that you can see by mousing over the camera icon after these words , from Nancy’s new book, Resonate — Present visual stories that transform audiences, compares stories, such as those in movies and literature, with other forms of communication, showing how storied presentations achieve the effect Nancy refers to above. And see below, a video in which Nancy talks about how stories work in presentations:]

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

An area of applied storytelling that continues to fascinate me is the use of stories in presentations. Without question, one of the best-known figures in incorporating storytelling into presentations is Nancy Duarte, who has just extended her expertise in a new book, Resonate — Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences. Like many story practitioners, Nancy is very generous with her wisdom, offering sneak peaks of her books, “assets” (such as charts and diagrams) that folks can freely use in blogs and presentations, and enhanced Web content that extends the content in her books; you can find these goodies here. I’m honored that Nancy is participating in this Q&A series. This Q&A with Nancy will appear over the next five days. NOTE: Nancy will be a featured speaker during the Reinvention Summit that starts this Thursday. Her slot is Thu, November 18, 2pm — 3pm Eastern.

Bio: As CEO of Duarte Design, Nancy Duarte has advanced the art and literature of presentations, emerging with her agency as one of the most sought-after authorities in presentation design. Duarte and Duarte Design have worked with global companies and prominent thought leaders — including Adobe, Cisco, Food Network, Facebook, GE, Google, Al Gore, HP, Nokia, TED, Twitter, and World Bank — to help influence public perception of some of the world’s most valuable brands and many of humanity’s most pressing causes. In 2008, Duarte authored Slide:ology —The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, which won the Axiom Design award for its distillation of best practices in visual communications. She just released her second book Resonate — Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences about how presenters can incorporate story to create a groundswell for their cause or idea. For more information on Duarte and Duarte Design, visit the Duarte site.

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Q&A with Nancy Duarte, Question 1:

Q: How do you define story in the context of a presentation?

A: Story can be used as an overall narrative structure in a presentation or for emotional appeal within a presentation. Since story is said to have an arc to it, I set out to determine if the best presentations also have a contour to them also. After collecting insights from the 20 years of presentations we’ve developed plus extensively studying cinema and literature (even topics like philosophy and mythology), I uncovered a story structure that works for presentations. Here are insights in a nutshell:

Beginning: Somewhere in the beginning of your presentation you need to dramatically paint a picture of the gap between the world without your idea (what is) juxtaposed to the world with your idea adopted (what could be). You should make that contrast as dramatically apparent as possible. This is similar to an inciting incident in a movie, it’s a Call to Adventure you’re taking the audience on. It will force the audience to contend with the imbalance created if the world if it doesn’t have your proposed idea in it.

Middle: The middle needs to be packed with contrast that creates a sense of rhythm. You can do that structurally by moving back and forth between “what is” and “what could be”, or you can create contrast by incorporating emotional appeal through stories and other devices, or you can create contrast by mixing up the delivery method by showing a video or involving the audience in some way.

End: You should end your presentation with a clear Call to Action…but don’t stop there. Conclude by stating as clearly and compellingly what the world will look like if they adopt your idea. What is the new bliss? Describe it as beautifully and articulately as possible; ending your presentation by painting the world as a better place.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

What kinds of stories do inanimate objects tell, and what stories can we tell about them? Two projects I recently learned of look at the story possibilities behind two, perhaps unlikely, sets of objects — clothing and the contents of junk drawers:

Maria Popova writes on her blog Brain Pickings: “You can tell a lot about a person by their most invaluable possession — those quirky trinkets and sentimental keepsakes we all keep in a box or drawer somewhere, a timecapsule of all we’ve ever romanticized and treasured.” Indeed, you may be able to tell someone’s story by viewing those contents. The subject of Popova’s post, Brittny Badger makes this story prompt possible by “photograph[ing] … these trinket timecapsules she calls Junk Drawers [one is pictured below], capturing indirect portraits of their owners though the tchotchkes they’ve accumulated over the years.” (By the way, Brain Pickings is a very cool find courtesy of Michael Margolis.)

Worn Stories is a collection of stories [by various authors] about clothing and memory. It is updated every week or so and edited by Emily Spivack. Here’s Spivak’s explanation of why she started the site:

In my sock drawer, I’ve got a pair of peach socks that my mom bought me in sixth grade. I sported them during my first concert — Milli Vanilli. Every day I wear a ring that was my grandmother’s. She used to slip it off her finger when we would bake together. And the black Doc Martens I wore as an angsty teen are now front and center in my closet. I’m not overly sentimental. Nor am I a hoarder. I just feel a strong connection to the memories that accompany clothing. Which is why I started Worn Stories.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

The other day I speculated that narrative processing and my storied brain make it difficult for me to meditate and achieve the kind of stillness prescribed in yoga and similar activities. My friend Cynthia Kurtz tried to post a comment (as did Ulf Arnstrom), but for some reason both comments ended up in my spam queue. By the time I had figured that out and posted them as comments, I had already decided Cynthia’s comment merited its own post.

I am enormously relieved to learn from Cynthia that meditation is compatible with narrative processing/a storied mind. I did the kind of yogic breathing she talks about in my yoga class this very morning. I love her way of explaining how yoga and meditation can work with story.

[image from http://www.thequietmind.us/]

This is a fascinating topic, Kathy. I’ve been doing yoga and meditating as part of that for decades, and all my favorite forms of meditation involve narrative. In my experience narrative can work WITH meditation. Indeed, some styles of meditation deliberately incorporate narrative. Being is being in time, and a quiet mind doesn’t have to be an unchanging mind. The Taoists talk about movement in stillness and stillness in movement:

“The stillness in stillness is not real stillness. Only when there is stillness in movement can the spiritual rhythm appear which pervades heaven and earth.” — Ts’ai-ken T’an

Narrative is the spiritual rhythm of the universe, and being with a story — and only with the story — is a meditation in itself. A few examples:

One of my favorite meditations is the one where you picture your body as full of a nasty sticky liquid in your most-hated color (representing stress, pain, whatever) that slowly drains out of little valves you open in your toes and fingertips. I’ve done this so many times I can actually FEEL the fluid work its way down inside me. Then after the sticky fluid is gone, there is a refreshing cold (internal) shower of clear sparkling water. This is meditation, and it is highly focused on a single image, but the image has a narrative, time-oriented quality.

Yogic breathing has a predicament-action-resolution structure within each breath, like the story of a journey. I like to do the form of yogic breathing where you slowly increase the length of each breath until you are breathing only a few times a minute. This is not to achieve some goal, but simply to feel your breath “stretch out” to its fullest extent. The course of that change from rapid and shallow to deep and slow is a story of a journey as well.

Some of the other breathing exercises in yoga also have a narrative element to them, for example chanting “aum” (or “om”). Many people think this is just a simple sound, but as I was taught it, it has three parts that tell a story. The “a” part at the start represents the chatter of the outer world. The transitional sound “u” represents a level mid-way between outer and inner, and the final “mmm” is the full arrival in the meditative state. The “aum” chant is the telling of story, a story of a journey, and it is both meditative and narrative.

Another meditation I regularly practice is picturing myself as a leaf gently descending an outdoor staircase (with of course great visual detail). On each exhalation the leaf is picked up by the breeze and wafts down another step, to come to rest during inhalation. As the leaf descends so I descend into mindfulness and concentration. This is another meditation that contains the story of a journey.

Yet another narrative meditation (one you might like) is one that takes place in the woods (though you could do this anywhere there is sufficient interaction — the beach, a rooftop, even a city street). I go out to a special place, lie on the ground, and listen to the forest. A predictable sequence, a story, takes place. The forest gradually recovers from the disturbance I made getting to my spot, and simultaneously I gradually open my attention to the forest around me, leaving all other thoughts behind. First, I notice the patterns of sun and shade. Then, I start hearing the little rustlings and creakings of the trees. Soon the birds, then the chipmunks and squirrels, start to move around and chatter in their usual ways. Later I hear louder noises and sometimes see larger movements as the less frequent and more cautious sounds come and go. As this is happening my senses are becoming more attuned. I remember one time I watched a bird drink from the pond just as I was getting aligned to the sights and sounds around me — it was euphoric. This is a narrative meditation because I know the sequence and I both follow it and participate in it. It’s no less rejuvenating than non-narrative meditation, and as somebody who lives and breathes stories, it’s just right for me.

So I don’t think you have to give up narrative processing to do meditation; you can incorporate it, and you can find resources that help you do that, if you look around. I’d say you can find many techniques like those I have found. The point is to draw your attention inward with complete attention and away from the chattering world. And narrative can work with that! Stories can draw us in as strongly as they draw us out.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

In a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, study participants chose the underdog brand 71 percent of the time.

Those findings have implications for job-seekers and align with a twist on behavioral interviewing I reported on back in May. In that post, John Zappe described “motivation-based interviewing,” in which high performers are seen as achieve better results despite obstacles, while low performers think the obstacles are responsible for not achieving the high performance. I suggested a new variation on the standard acronyms/formulas for stories used in repsonse to job-interview questions: Situation —> Action —> Positive Overcoming of Obstacles —> Result, or SAPOOOR.

Of course, that suggestion assumes that employers choosing employees behave the same way as consumers selecting products. I believe that they do. After all, the researchers in the Journal of Consumer Research study notes the pervasiveness of underdog narratives across contexts, cultures, and time periods and how these have inspired people. Stories about underdogs are pervasive in sports, politics, religion, literature, and film,” write authors Neeru Paharia, Anat Keinan (both Harvard University), Jill Avery (Simmons School of Management), and Juliet B. Schor (Boston College).

Further:

The authors examined the ways many contemporary brand narratives highlight companies’ humble beginnings and struggles against powerful adversaries. For example, Nantucket Nectars’ label says the company started “with only a blender and a dream,” while Google, Clif Bar, HP, and Apple emphasize that they started in garages.

“Underdog brand biographies contain two important narrative components: a disadvantaged position versus an adversary and passion and determination to beat the odds,” the authors write.

The authors found that consumers identify with underdog stories because most people have felt disadvantaged at one time or another. In a series of four experiments, the researchers found that consumers identify with underdog brands and are more likely to purchase them. They also confirmed that brand biographies that contain both external disadvantage and passion and determination generate the strongest purchase interest.

Job-seekers would be wise to include underdog/overcoming obstacles stories in their arsenals of narratives to have at the ready during the job search.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

The Reinvention Summit: World’s First Virtual Conference on the Future of Storytelling is, the organizers proclaim, “a totally bold and audacious attempt to break out of the old silos, explore the expanding role of narrative in the context of personal, business, and social reinvention. It takes place ONLINE, starting a week from today, November 11 through Nov. 22. and consists of 30+ hours of content, social networking, and bonus materials – starting at $11.11. Sessions are recorded for playback so you can chill out and take part in this global happening anytime.

Who’s this for? The organizers are gathering a new tribe of storytellers: Change-makers, marketers, creatives, innovators, bloggers, filmmakers, coaches, and entrepreneurs who all see narrative as fundamental to what they do. From the organizers: “We’re all in the midst of such dramatic change in the world, moving from old stories to new stories. As you know, the new story is still a work in progress for many of us, even visionaries amongst us. That’s why we all need to come out of isolation and connect with others about the new tools, vocabulary, and frameworks of storytelling; our most basic human technology for this adaptive age.”

This is not your usual cast of characters, the organizers note. The diverse lineup of world-class speakers includes:

• John Gerzema, President BrandAsset Consulting, Young & Rubicam
• Tiffany Shlain, founder, Webby Awards, and doc/cultural filmmaker
• John Elkington, pioneer of corporate social responsibility/sustainability
• Annette Simmons, author and speaker
• Julien Smith, co-author, Trust Agents, pioneering podcaster
  
• Nancy Duarte, author, Slideology and Resonate: Present Visual Stories — and NOTE that Nancy will appear here on A Storied Career a a Q&A subject during the time of the summit.
• Get a full list of speakers

The summit is being produced by Get Storied, with help from a lot of friends and partners. “It’s been a total stone-soup creation,” the organizers say, and they’d love you to join them for 30+ hours of inspired content for just $11.11. They’re also asking folks to spread the word via social media. Twitter is @getstoried and the hashtag is #reinvention. There’s also a Facebook page. The summit folks want your reinvention story and passion in the mix. Visit the summit website.

Resource:“ Believe Me: a storytelling manifesto for change-makers and innovators” An 88-page gift; complimentary download is available here.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

I really enjoy yoga and have also considered meditation to address various issues.

But I have a very hard time with the instructions typical of these pursuits: “Empty your mind. Strive for complete stillness. Quiet your mind. Connect with your breath. Just be.”

I recently read an article about meditation that helped me understand why these guidelines are so difficult for me. The author, Catherine Price, uses the example of an exercise in Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) form of meditation, in which the meditator imagines he or she is a mountain:

A mountain reminds you of skiing, which reminds you of a family vacation, which reminds you of the weekend, which reminds you that a friend invited you to dinner on Saturday, which reminds you that you never got back to her and that maybe you should be writing her an e-mail instead of sitting on the floor pretending you’re a mountain — which reminds you that you’re supposed to be sitting on the floor pretending you’re a mountain, which makes you mad at yourself for letting your mind wander. And then — bam. Not only are you no longer cultivating intimacy with the present moment, you’re committing one of mindfulness’s biggest faux pas: beating yourself up for getting distracted.

That’s me to a T. My mind is always buzzing like that when I’m supposed to be living in the present moment, doing yoga or whatever. I gave up on Eckhardt Tolle pretty quickly because I could not achieve the stillness he espouses. Nor did I really want to. I like to think. I dislike not thinking. Isn’t thinking what our minds are for?

Price goes on to talk about how meditation can change the way we use our brains, first citing the mental state from which we might want to change:

… we (by which I mean your average nonmeditating American) respond to new stimuli and experiences automatically, based on how we think they’ll affect us. A traffic jam isn’t just cars; it’s a problem that will make us late for dinner — so when we see a red wall of taillights in front of us, we become stressed-out. … In other words, we don’t just experience, we evaluate — and then respond without thinking (clogged highway = extra minutes stuck in the car = misery).

Price is describing narrative processing, which happens in the “medial prefrontal cortex of your forehead that coordinates complex behaviors and thoughts. (It’s also the part of the brain that’s being used when your mind starts to wander.)” Meditation, Price writes, can help activate a different part of the brain, the insula, which “informs you of what’s happening in the present moment without connecting the experience to a specific emotion. When you’re thinking this way, a traffic jam doesn’t seem like a problem; it’s simply a bunch of cars on the road.”

It’s difficult for most people to empty their minds and stay present, and even meditation may not get completely get a person to that point.

All that makes me feel better about my yoga and meditation deficiencies. But I really enjoy my narrative processing. Maybe people who are really into storytelling particularly like narrative processing and have a harder time than others shutting off that processing.

What say, storytellers and fans of storytelling? Is it hard for you to meditate?

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

Not long ago, Nishwa Ashraf asked readers of The Melcrum Blog if they prefer the communication on the left or the one on the right:

The one on the left is obviously a story, while the one on the right is essentially a platitude intended to convey a company value.

Ashraf suggests asking three questions when considering using storytelling as part of a communications strategy — but I’m inclined to turn that suggestion around and ask these questions of any communications vehicle:

1. Would you remember it tomorrow?
2. Could you repeat it in six months’ time?
3. Did you understand the core message?

For example, look at the two approaches above, and ask yourself which you’d be most likely to remember tomorrow, able to repeat in six months, and which is most understandable. I’m guessing the story would win out for most people.

About the same time as Ashraf published her thoughts, Tony Quinlan, principal and chief storyteller of Narrate, set forth some guidelines for folks who want to introduce storytelling in their companies (it can be hard to get buy-in, as I discuss here):

• Use an external practitioner
• Use enticing language
• Rationalize your budget
• Form alliances with other stakeholders

For more about each guideline, see Quinlan’s full post.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

A Job Action Day 2010 Guest Blog Entry by Don Goodman, with Julie Davis

Today is Job Action Day 2010, so I’m sharing two stories about using LinkedIn to create opportunity:

Don Goodman (picture below), president of About Jobs, tells this story:
I received a call from a recent client asking for some quick tips for an upcoming important interview. He was meeting with the VP of sales for a sale leadership role and really wanted to make sure he nailed it. My first piece of advice? Go to LinkedIn.

First, I asked him to look up the interviewer on LinkedIn and find out where he came from, how long he had been at the company and what did people say when they recommended him. Then I asked him to lookup the company and see who had recently joined, who had recently left and where they went. Pretty simple to do.

Here is what he found: The company was clearly ramping up its sales force as there were many new hires for the territory he would manage. All of the new hires had good industry experience. He also saw that someone had this job before and left after eight months. Finally, he noticed that the interviewer had been there six years and his past included a stint in Iraq in the military.

Now, it seemed apparent that the person holding this position did not work out. The employer was rebuilding the sales force and would probably want someone who could come in and train the new hires in the appropriate practices to quickly become productive. So my client mentioned his military training, (knowing that the interviewer would pick up on that) and how he was practiced in driving a disciplined approach to sales. That tidbit prompted a long conversation about how the military was a terrific background to have in these types of positions and the interview quickly changed into a conversation.

The result? A 30-minute interview turned into a two-hour discussion. During the talk, my client admitted he used LinkedIn to research the company and the people, which so impressed the interviewer (after all this is a sales job) that he was offered the job the next day.

Everybody knows you should research a company before interviewing with them. Now you can see how LinkedIn can provide unique insights to help you.

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Meanwhile, my former student, Julie Davis (pictured below), also shared a LinkedIn success story:
I was just offered a position that I applied for through LinkedIn. The company posted a job on the LinkedIn job board with directions to apply through their site, but I couldn’t find the job post on their site.

I went ahead and sent the hiring manager a message (I believe she was in my network or I might have sent her an InMail, not sure) with my cover letter directing her to my online portfolio. I recently updated my portfolio to be an interactive PDF which is what I believe really impressed her, granted this position is with a brand agency and focuses on making new business presentations.

They said they were attracted initially by my unique approach to applying though. They offered me a position after one phone interview and an in-person interview!

Don Goodman, is a nationally recognized expert resume writer, certified career management coach, and job-search strategist. A graduate of the Wharton School of Business and Stanford University’s Executive Program, Don has helped thousands of people secure their next job. Read his blog; contact him at 800-909-0109 or by e-mail, or follow him on Twitter.

Julie Davis is a new college graduate. The position she attained through LinkedIn is as business development and marketing coordinator at FutureBrand.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.