My first encounter with Park Howell was through his blog posts about the work of Donald Miller. Since then, I’ve become fascinated with his work in “sustainable storytelling” and storytelling in green marketing. I’m so grateful to present his Q&A, in part because he responded so comprehensively to so many of my questions. (Also love the fact that he grew up and attended college in my adopted state of Washington.) This Q&A will run over the next seven days.

Bio: [In his own words, from his Web site] I own (Well, it really owns me) a mid-sized ad agency in Phoenix, AZ, that doesn’t just produce award-winning ad campaigns. We create movements that ignite the growth of people, products, companies and causes that dare to make the world around us better.

We do this by crafting and telling compelling brand stories that turn heads and incite action.

[material snipped because Park mentions it in his response below]

Our work has been recognized in several publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Stanford University’s, Social Innovation Review, an award-winning magazine covering best strategies for nonprofits, foundations, and socially responsible businesses.

Other notable publications include, Philip Kotler’s college textbook, Corporate Social Responsibility, Doing the Most Good for Your Company and Your Cause. Craig Cortello’s “Everything We Needed to Know About Business We Learned Playing Music,” David Bach’s “Go Green, Live Rich,” in Fast Company magazine’s blog, and featured in EcoSeed’ s “Bridging Environment and Economy” magazine.

I graduated from Washington State University, and today I combine two degrees — Bachelor of Arts in Communications and Music — to turn ad campaigns into movements that matter.

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

A: “Stop telling stories.”

I heard that a lot growing up. Second only to my sister, Melody, I could spin a yarn as long as your arm to get what I needed. And believe me, it was essential to survival on the “Happy H,” the 12-acre ranch I grew up on just outside of Seattle.

I was one of seven kids, and we were all raised with hard work, honesty and self-reliance as our core principles. For instance, my depression-era Dad had but one rule at the dinner table: “Keep one foot on the floor.”

As the fifth child, I learned early that to thrive simply meant telling a better story than your siblings. Great stories helped me lobby for a new pair of shoes, or an extra slice of pizza. It was handy when explaining how the family jeep ended up under a bridge in a river. You can imagine how it helped in managing the bad press ignited by accidentally burning down an abandoned dilapidated old house during the best high school Halloween party ever.

I don’t know if it was my environment or my genes, but the art of getting people excited around story comes to me naturally. So naturally it is how we’ve built Park&Co, one of the nation’s up-and-coming advertising and creative firms.

I graduated from Washington State University with Bachelor’s of Art degrees in communications and music composition and theory. In 1985, I moved to Phoenix, where I met my wife, Michele. We have raised our own family of three creative kids: an interior designer, a motion graphic artist and film director, and a quixotic junior in high school.

Ten years later, Michele and I began Park&Co in a makeshift shed behind our three-bedroom cottage on Oak and 42nd Streets in Phoenix. As my father taught me, we managed our business conservatively on the premise of, “Make more than you spend.” We have always operated debt-free, bolstered by a healthy rainy day fund that has helped us navigate our current turbulent economy.

Park&Co grew quickly in its first two years and we had to rent a small office in the Summit Building on 44th Street and Indian School Rd. Our three-person agency seemingly grew to 18 people over night. The stars aligned in 2003 and we purchased our 10,700 square-foot building. We had a ball remodeling our courtyard complex to personify the talent, commerce and genuine fun that springs from our creative campus. Just drive by and you’ll see the personalities found inside captured by bright, white words stuck to our windows that read in part, “Poet, writer, composer, artist, nerd…”

Our brilliant team of communication professionals is guided by seven tenets, the first being: “Run a profitable, socially conscious company.” This is our moral compass that assures we will always use our advertising and marketing gifts for good and not evil. You can see this in our work for the international Water — Use It Wisely campaign, Coca-Cola’s Eco-driving campaign, Goodwill of Central Arizona, The Bruce T. Halle Family Foundation [pictured], Habitat for Humanity, Global Water, the Phoenix Girls Choir, Girl Scouts of America — Cactus Pine Council, HearHer.org, and Social Venture Partners of Arizona. These are but a few of the important clients and causes that are a direct reflection of why we’re here:

“We ignite the growth of people, products, companies, and causes that dare to make the world better.”

An important measure of our success is found in the strength and longevity of our business relationships. Forever Living Products (FLP), the world’s largest grower, manufacturer and distributor of aloe vera-based health and beauty products, was our first client 16 years ago. FLP remains an important part of our agency today. Our Water — Use It Wisely campaign is celebrating its 12th year, while Goodwill of Central Arizona and Global Water resources have been with Park&Co for nearly 10 years.

An even more important standard is found in the ROI generated by our marketing partnerships: the result of igniting movements on behalf of our clients.

FLP has grown from $1 billion to $2.5 billion in the past 16 years

Water — Use It Wisely, which began in Mesa, has become the largest conservation outreach effort of its kind in the world with more than 400 private and public partners using elements of the campaign.

Goodwill of Central Arizona has expanded from $17 million in revenue in 2003 to $70 million in 2010, making it the fastest growing Goodwill in the world.

Our unique approach to advertising and marketing has not only caught the attention of customers, but our industry as well. I was honored in 2010 as the “The Advertising Person of the Year” by the American Advertising Federation — Metro Phoenix.

Elicit a Pause, Solicit a Thought, Be Complicit in Action

We embrace our clients and their customers by touching their hearts through the powerful and proven use of story. Once we have their attention we engage their minds with thoughtful, and often disruptive, creative concepts that inspire action. Their action ignites commerce for the betterment of all; which is simply another virtue that was part of my upbringing. My dad, who was president of a heavy construction company, mentored us with the belief that, “A deal is only good if it’s good for both parties.”

We craft and tell compelling stories through a series of communication disciplines at Park&Co, including brand and positioning research, strategy and activation; award-winning creative services; media planning and buying; web and interactive strategy, design and development; script-to-screen film and video services produced in our own edit bays; and word-of-mouth marketing and social media.

Isn’t it ironic that, even though I was admonished as a youngster to “Stop telling stories,” it is the very act of storytelling that brings us to you today?

Without it, we would not have made an impact in this world worth mentioning.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve written a number of times about business novels, which I define as employing a story, parable, or fable that conveys business principles or lessons. Here, I recapped those I’ve featured on this blog, and here, I added a broader list by Omar Adams.

Now joining that roster of books is Stefan Swanepoel’s Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business and Life, described on its Web site as “compelling … fable [that] offers a riveting tale of life in Africa’s Serengeti and what lessons it holds for today’s beleaguered business people and struggling society.”

The book offers a clever “hook,” an online quiz that enables folks to determine what animal they are based on their strongest business-survival skills.

My husband took the quiz before I did, and we were both tickled that he was a giraffe. Because he is very tall, we decided years ago that his “theme animal” is giraffe, and he collects giraffe figurines. Because my eyes are cat-like and because of my shortened name (Kat), I collect cat figurines and claim cat as my theme animal. This, I was hoping my quiz result would be cheetah.

Here, in a nutshell are the survival skills of the seven featured animals: wildebeest rely on stubborn endurance and support from the herd to survive; the crocodile is opportunistic; the cheetah ruthlessly effective; the giraffe embodies grace, the lion a master strategist, the mongoose is a risk-taker, the elephant is an excellent communicator.

Well, I guess I’m not ruthlessly effective. Indeed, the quiz showed me to be a crocodile. While in most assessments I fall into a result with a low proportion of members, crocodile has been the result for the largest chunk (27 percent) of people who’ve taken the quiz online so far.

Enterprising? I guess so. And I suppose I am resourceful, show initiative, and think outside the box. To a lesser extent, I’m determined to succeed and dedicated to advancing myself. The trait most like me: the tendency to spend a lot of time working alone.

Another cool bonus on the book’s Web site is that my friend Sean Buvala after seeing an advance copy of the book, “reflected on what the messages meant to him and decided to create some short stories based on the wisdom and truths in the book. These stories aren’t in the book, but inspired by the book.” They are available as podcasts here.

Anyway, the parable that forms the heart of the book features husband and wife Sean and Ashley Spencer. Ashley is a teacher-turned-sales-rep who has won a three-day trip to the Serengeti in a sales contest. Sean is an entrepreneur whose business hasn’t quite gelled.

Early in the trip, Sean is reunited with an old schoolmate, Zachariah, who turns out to be their guide through the Serengeti. Each animal they encounter becomes a metaphor for a business survival skill — “The travelers in the safari see in the Serengeti the essence of life itself, and find a roadmap for mastering the difficulties and struggles we all experience every day.” In the end, the learn, of course, that while one set of animal traits may predominate in each individual, successful business people need to integrate all seven skills.

The book, releasing this week (March 1), is a quick and easy read at 176 pages with large type.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Even though oral storytelling is not a major thrust of A Storied Career, I think I’ve posted something about the World Storytelling Day event most years of this blog’s existence.

The day is

a global celebration of the art of oral storytelling. It is celebrated every year on the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, the first day of autumn equinox in the southern. On World Storytelling Day, as many people as possible tell and listen to stories in as many languages and at as many places as possible, during the same day and night. Participants tell each other about their events in order to share stories and inspiration, to learn from each other and create international contacts.

Each year has a theme; this year’s is “water. This year’s Twitter hashtag is #WSD11

To be honest, I’ve always found the event’s own Web site frustratingly lacking in information. Perhaps more informative is the Wikipedia entry on the event, which tells the history and past themes.

Credit for World Storytelling Day Logo: Mats Rehnman.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve written before about Ford Myers and his championing of stories as a job-seeker’s best selling tool.

Specifically, Accomplishment Stories. In an article on Accomplishment Stories, Myers writes:

Of all the tools in your “Job Seeker’s Tool Kit,” the one that will “sell you best” is your Accomplishment Stories. Yes, these will market you even more effectively than the resume. Why? Because Accomplishment Stories state very specifically what positive things you have done for your previous or current employer, and therefore clearly indicate what you will be able to achieve for your NEW employer! So, if you’re not using this powerful tool in your search, you’re making a big mistake.

Although Myers frames Accomplishment Stories as a “document,” among the many that a job-seeker should have in his or her toolkit, he cautions that “You’ll be TELLING these stories; not using them as handouts. So, you’ll want to commit the text to memory and practice delivering them!”

A couple of comments here … Instead of “commit the text to memory,” I’d recommend: Learn and get to know the stories. If you commit them to memory, the stories will sound memorized in an interview. Certainly read them over before an interview, or even before you’re in a networking situation — but don’t memorize. The mere acting of composing them in writing will help cement them in your mind, as my partner and I discuss in this article. “Writing to Learn” principles underpin this technique. Myers also advises giving each story a title, which is a great idea because titles will further help you retrieve the stories from your brain.

Myers expands on on Situation —> Action —> Result formulas for Accomplishment Stories. In his article, he also gives examples for each of the questions in this story structure:

1. What was the problem, challenge, or need [in a past job or other environment]?
2. What did you do about it?
3. How did you do it, specifically?
4. What positive, tangible results did you produce? (quantify if possible)
5. What skills did you demonstrate? (list 3-4 skills for each story)

Myers says, “It may take some time to develop your full collection of Accomplishment Stories.” So how many stories constitute a “full collection?” In my experience, somewhere between 10 and 20 is a good number to shoot for. But in exercises I’ve conducted with my students, fewer than that — even as few as three — can provide fodder to draw from in, say, a job interview.

NOTE: OK, so the graphic for this post might be a little lame. Just think of it as people being uplifted by the strength of their accomplishment stories.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

New York Times columnist David Brooks (with whom I don’t always agree but find to be brilliant) wrote last week about the “Experience Economy.”

Countering assertions in Tyler Cowen’s e-book, The Great Stagnation, that our economy has hit a technological plateau, Brooks says Cowen’s “evidence can also be used to tell a related story.” Brooks then spins two fictional tales, one illustrating a materialist economy that ended in about 1974, and the other, a post-materialist economy that began shortly after the former ended and continues today.

Brooks’s protagonist for the latter economy, Jared, “has some rich and meaningful experiences, [which] has also led to problems. Every few months, new gizmos come out. Jared feels his life is getting better. Because he doesn’t fully grasp the increasingly important distinction between wealth and standard of living, he has the impression that he is also getting richer. As a result, he lives beyond his means.” Jared has other problems, as does the economy his lifestyle generates, but they’re not relevant to my point.

Brooks never explicitly labels this search-for-meaning economy the Experience Economy, except in the column’s headline. The Experience Economy is not a good thing, according to Brooks, because “many of this era’s technological breakthroughs produce enormous happiness gains, but surprisingly little additional economic activity.”

I am not about to debate the merits of the previous wealth-producing economy versus what Brooks characterizes as an Experience Economy driven by people’s search for meaning. But I can’t help noticing that the Experience Economy is story-driven. To me, “experience” is virtually synonymous with “story.” People like Jared — and they are probably legion — would rather look back at the end of their lives satisfied that they had lived a meaningful story than that they had made piles of money.

I also recently came across the term “Reputation Economy.” I’m not sure who coined this term or when it came into use (2002 is the earliest reference I saw), but Consumer Reports defined it as “the way in which a product’s or a person’s … standing is shaped by the contributions of end users …” The 2002 piece, by Ryo Chijiiwa, describes this economy as “a system in which reputation and recognition, not wealth, is the measurement of value.”

What is a person’s or brand’s reputation if not its story? And the beholder’s interpretation of that story?

Increasingly, we both seek to live a more meaningful story and present our story to the world in a way that gains us, at the very least, acceptance, and perhaps ideally, demand for what we have to offer. A Story Economy?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

To be very honest, I am not the greatest listener. Especially to my husband. One of the ongoing issues in our marriage has been my poor listening. As an introvert, I often live in my inner world. He’ll be talking, and a tiny part of me will be listening, but the rest will be having “deep thoughts.” Even when I ask him a question, I’ll often zone out quickly instead of listening to his response. My wonderful yoga teacher used to say during savasan (relaxation) that we should listen to her guided meditation with just 10 percent of our consciousness; in many situations I think my listening capacity is at only about 10 percent.

I’ve read several pieces recently about the importance of listening when working with stories.

One is by Dr. Kevin Cordi, a performance storyteller and educator, who writes:

Story is about listening. We need to take the time to value each story we hear and listen attentively when we are not telling. … Tell often but listen more.

Kevin recalls the person who attributed his good storytelling not to his ability to tell 100 stories, but “because he listens to 1,000.”

For Ed Thompson of The Pedowitz Group, “listening” is a bit more metaphorical. He writes:

Marketing has to be listening on all channels in order to communicate on all channels. Simply telling the story isn’t good enough anymore.

He’s talking about, among other things, “listening” via social media to what the audience — customers — are saying about the stories marketers tell.

In addition, some of the rock stars of the applied story world emphasize storylistening — Gabrielle Dolan; Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham, the authors of the wonderful book The Spirituality of Imperfection; and Terrence Gargiulo and Shawn Callahan, especially in a webinar they presented a while back. Shawn noted in that webinar that he spells “storylistening” as one word for the same reason one of his professors spelled “prehistory” as one word — so the word represents a real discipline.

Some clear messages emerge:

• To be good storytellers, we must truly listen to the stories of others.
• To refine our stories and understand their effectiveness, we must listen to our audience.
• Listening contributes to community. From The Spirituality of Imperfection: “… whenever and wherever there is a storyteller, there will also be a storyhearer. In the communal act of telling and listening, listening and telling, the sense of belonging begins.”
• Storylistening is — or should be — a real discipline.
• Storylistening can help embed stories into an organization’s culture (see Gabrielle Dolan’s explanation).

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Cory Fossum, of Fossum Creative, recently discovered storytelling. Or he thought he did after he created a video about the power of storytelling in marketing. But then:

… you know how when you’re shopping for a car and you suddenly notice every single car on the street? Or when you’re in the market for a new computer and you suddenly pay more attention to what that random girl in the coffee shop is using? Or when Apple releases a new iPhone and suddenly everyone seems to have it but you? (OK, maybe I’m projecting a little.) … it became apparent to me that I was not alone. There were other storytellers out there. Everywhere. Suddenly, everyone that had anything to do with marketing was a storyteller. At some point when I wasn’t looking, “the story” had become the term du-jour of the marketing world. And now that I was looking, it seemed that everyone had become a storyteller.

Those of us who are immersed in story know that the first National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN, in 1973 is often cited as the beginning of the modern movement (see Seth Kahan’s chronology). That means we’re going on 40 years for this “fad.”

The ubiquitousness of storytelling is, in part, a good thing, Fossum notes. After all, his “worldview of connecting through emotion is finally becoming accepted by the marketing community. People are constantly looking for new ways to incorporate storytelling into their marketing message,” he writes.

But Fossum is concerned:

There is a problem in all of this storytelling business. The term itself is running the risk of overexposure. It is on the brink of jargon status and I fear that it will soon need to be placed on a shelf next to other buzzwords. I worry that the title is about to become a marketing cliche. Which would not bode well for a lot of us in this field.

Fossum is talking specifically about storytelling in marketing, but it seems inevitable to me that in business and organizational settings, storytelling as a tool could eventually go the way of Theory X, Theory Y, Total Quality Management, and any number of management approaches.

Kendall Haven, with whom I recently did a Q&A, attributes the faddishness of the current storytelling emphasis to proponents without the proper training or understanding of story:

Few of the people now claiming to be organizational storytellers are pedigreed with detailed backgrounds in, and accredited study of, story architecture or storytelling. Most have emerged from PR and corporate-communications departments. That lack of understanding makes the current bulge of storytelling activity (if there is one) more of a fad than a solid advancement.

Storyteller Sean Buvala expresses a similar viewpoint about a lack of understanding among story fans:

Backlash is to be expected at the moment. Sadly, we have gobs of storybiz philosophers out there right now that can comment eloquently about the “why” of story but few comment well about the “how” of story. What we are left with is a pile of people who are energetic about the concept but have no way to really make it go.

We who cherish storytelling have reason to be concerned. I see some hopeful signs, however, that storytelling as a business/organizational methodology will last, though it will require education and solid principles to flourish:

• It is hard to imagine that a practice as ancient and as fundamental to the way our brains function will fade away.
• Storytelling is an important component in what Steve Denning calls Radical Management.
• I am seeing Peter Guber’s almost-released book, Tell to Win, advertised, promoted, and tweeted everywhere. Perhaps it will become a bestseller, and applied story will become mainstream (or would that be the kiss of death?).
• Lori Silverman and Karen Dietz have long argued for storytelling as a core business competency. To that end, business schools need to teach it — and teach it well, with the sound foundation in psychology, neurobiology, and the other scientific disciplines that Kendall Haven cites. We also need more research both within and outside academia and across disciplines.

Of course, the faddishness of applied storytelling may be specific to the discipline to which it’s applied.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

At least a year and a half ago, I planned a post entitled “Proposition: Storytelling 2.0 is the Holy Grail of Online Content.” The post was inspired by the seminal, attention-getting, oft-cited piece by Bryan Alexander and Alan Levine, “Web 2.0 Storytelling: The Emergence of a New Genre” (which came out in the Nov-Dec 2008 issue of EDUCAUSE Review). That was a damned important piece, and no self-respecting curator of material about applied storytelling should have let it go by without notice or comment. I still have, somewhere in my milk crate of possible blog material, a thick sheaf of material for my planned post, held together with a binder clip.

But I never wrote the post. I kept scheduling it, probably beginning with its late 2008 publication date, and pushing it back. The most recent date for which I had scheduled it was Dec. 31, 2009. The post just kept growing in my brain; I kept collecting more and more relevant material; and I just never felt I could do justice to Alexander’s and Levine’s brilliant piece.

A recent post by writer and instructional designer Dianne Rees reminded my of my long-neglected response. The moment has likely long passed for the post I originally planned, but it’s worth noting that Web 2.0 storytelling, or as I prefer to call it, Storytelling 2.0, is alive and well.

Rees designed a brief, attractive slideshow describing several salient points about Storytelling 2.0:

Rees also lists 14 examples of Storytelling 2.0, of which I’ve blogged about or listed lonelygirl15, twistori, Tell a story in 5 frames, Cathy’s Book, and We feel fine.

Rees’s listings that were new to me:

• Skeleton Creek
• 2009: A true story
• Playing for keeps
• Postmodern Sass
• Alternate Reality Games
• World without oil
• Hamlet on Facebook
• Loser Queen
• Trackers

Another one, recently gaining significant buzz, though not on Rees’s list is Welcome to Pine Point, described by Kottke.org as, “a lovely interactive remembrance of a Canadian mining town that doesn’t exist anymore.” A blog post by “Katherine” on NPR’s ScienceFriday.com calls the project “an interactive documentary. A virtual scrapbook. A ‘liquid book,’ noting that Welcome to Pine Point is “hard to define, because I’ve never seen anything like it before. But it’s most certainly a beautiful project that, to me, signals a new era in storytelling.” She continues:

The format is an interactive webpage, full of photos, interviews, videos, animations, music, and text. The story is a meditation on memory, and the medium itself seems to mimic how we experience memory — through sometimes random, often powerful fragments.

Katherine also cites a piece on Neiman Storyboard that gives the backstory of the Pine Point project.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

My brother-in-law died last week. Gary’s all-too-short life (he was born the same year I was) had many ups and downs, but the saddest part of it was the last six years since he was diagnosed with an early-onset dementia.

On a poignant Web site created for his high-school senior project, Gary’s son Sam tells the story of his father’s decline. Gary died two days before the 18th birthday of Sam and his twin brother David (photo shows Gary with his sons as infants). Gary was largely inaccessible to his sons during the time they needed a father’s guidance the most. Nevertheless, they have grown to be fine young men who do well in school and in their extracurricular activities. Sam is an excellent clarinetist who will attend the music school at the University of Georgia in the fall.

An excerpt from Sam’s story on his site Dementia Second Hand:

My father had, like many dementia patients, displayed dramatic personality changes over the course of several years. These changes, though almost imperceptible at first, were the cause of a lot of strife and negativity in my family. … He began to show signs of memory problems that are practically unheard of for a man his age. … Another thing we noticed was that he would repeat himself, telling the same story or asking the same question over and over. This was around 2003. My mother arranged for him to have a lot of tests done to try to determine what exactly the problem was. It was roughly two years before he was actually diagnosed, but even then the doctors weren’t sure what type of dementia he had. The neurologist at Shands Memory Disorder Clinic in Gainesville, Florida, thought it was likely that he had a type of dementia called Lewy-Body Dementia, but he could not rule out Alzheimer’s or fronto-temporal dementias either. During this time, my father was often depressed and angry, but he was still functioning fairly well. His personality was not the same as it had been and it never would be again. … He didn’t fully comprehend why he was deteriorating in such a way and it was very hard for him and us to deal with this situation.

In sharing his story, Sam offers hope, or at least the solace that comes with a shared experience, a shared story, to other young people who may have a loved one with dementia:

I know that there are countless young people out there with their own stories about Dementia Second Hand that may be very similar to this one. This is my story. This website may be a part of a project requirement for school, but it is also an opportunity for me to try to reach out and help people who are in similar situations. The main goal of this site is to provide a place where people can read stories like mine and relate to them. Then they can comment or leave their own story. My hope is that this communication will foster an exchange of ideas and stories and help people to cope with their respective situations. Please check out the Forum section of this site to connect with other people coping with dementia second hand.

I am so proud of my nephew for sharing his story.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

For conversationally driven web-based live online learning programs, Terrence Gargiulo recommends “telling stories, listening to stories and triggering stories,” the “Triple Threat of Storytelling,” as he calls it.

Last week, Terrence whetted my appetite by posting on Facebook a link to a short blog post by Lenn Millbower that mentioned an article Terrence wrote for the ASTD newsletter — available only to ASTD members. Terrence was kind enough to share the article with me.

Terrence absolutely knows how to design and deliver conversationally driven web-based live online learning programs; his webinars are stellar learning experiences. He emphasized the most important theme of his article:

Learning events need to trigger and elicit stories. from participants.

The article is just one juicy nugget after another. He suggests that learning organizations establish story banks. Here are his ideas on how to garner stories for a story bank:

• Listen carefully to comments during live online learning events, meetings, project debriefs, mentor and coaching programs.
• Invite veteran employees to special focus groups designed to elicit stories.
• Mine your social media outlets on a regular basis for stories.
• Hold story contests. Go here for more info.
• Provide story prompts to get people going. Stories are some of the best prompts I know. One story usually leads to another.
• Give people timelines.
• Generate a good stream of questions.
• Show genuine interest and curiosity in others, their experiences, and how they have formed their worldviews.

Terrence also generously offers these three useful tools, all documents of his on Scribd:

• How to Select a Story for Training
• Nine Ground Rules for Working with Stories
• Using Stories at All Hands-on Meetings

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Lisa Rossetti, Question 6:

Q: You describe yourself as a “champion for women entrepreneurs.” To what extent have you noticed any differences in the way women and men entrepreneurs tell stories about their entrepreneurial enterprises?

A: I volunteered as an ambassador for Women’s Enterprise a couple of years ago, as part of an initiative sponsored by our Regional Development Agency (RDA) to promote women’s enterprise in the North West of England. That work has now come to end with the decommissioning of the RDAs this year. I found being an ambassador was a good platform for meeting with other women and positioning myself as a development specialist.

In my experience, women need encouragement to create a story of success that is authentic for them. I don’t think this is because women are less capable, ambitious or visionary. I think it has something to do with language and the range of metaphors prevalent in business culture. If you bring to mind any common business success metaphor, e.g., the Ladder of Success, a Ramp, a Mountain — these are things that require muscular effort and endurance, and are competitive rather than collaborative in nature!

I gave a presentation on “Authentic Female Leadership” last year to a group of professional women working in traditionally male-orientated businesses like legal and banking. My engagement with them, illustration and content was fundamentally story. I have recently worked with the Association of Coaching contributing what I learnt from that presentation towards an article published on the leadership website, Changeboard.

I find women are exposed almost exclusively to the “Hero’s Story” of male enterprise. The language of male entrepreneurial success is usually drawn from military or sporting worlds, and often aggressive. I wonder if the language that tells the Story of Success in the world of big business is just inaccessible to women. Without a language that you feel comfortable using, it is hard to tell your own story.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Lisa Rossetti, Questions 4 and 5:

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

I’m excited about a project I’ve just placed “on the table” with Chester University. It’s a collaborative piece of Story work with a fellow coach/Story-practitioner, Lizzie Gates of The Lonely Furrow Company [pictured]. We’ve positioned it within the faculty of Health and Social Care. The proposal is to work alongside nurses with service users to help them manage their long-term conditions (like diabetes for example), to increase their self-esteem and communication skills through story work. I really hope the university finds the funding to get off the ground, as it should be really rewarding and is an innovative venture. There are few universities in UK who are beginning to carry out projects using applied story in projects or promoting Storywork e.g., Glamorgan, Westminster, Bath Spa, and East Anglia. Glyndwr University hosts a narrative practitioner forum too. I’ve also tracked down an interesting story project improving patient safety set up by South East Wales Cardiac Network. I would like to be involved with similar projects in North West of England.

In 2011-12 I see myself working more within health and social care, developing healthy and highly motivated teams. Story releases so much positive energy and healthy engagement. Story allows us to look at our fears and doubts in a safe place, and dissolves our “defence mechanisms” which can show up as cynicism or procrastination which are real killers for teamwork. Validating the contribution of each member is extremely important for the health and strength of the team. Story can help create a safe place for everyone to have a voice, to be heard and to be seen.

The other area I’d like to develop is a story skills development programme for coaches. Some coaches have been trained with very basic coaching models or in a process way. If they don’t already have creative techniques in their toolbox then their work would be very much enriched and strengthened by story. It is such a powerful tool to use when combined with coaching.

My big project is “Untold Tales.” A couple of years ago, I set a goal to return to Ghana (where I spent my childhood) to collect stories from women in rural occupations or micro-businesses. 2010-20 has been named as the Decade of the African Woman, so the time is right. Ghana is full of what I call “leaderful” women, who show initiative, resilience, innovative thinking, a capacity for collaborative working, and many other leadership qualities. These women empower their communities and bring about positive change at a grassroots level. Yet the voices of these women are not heard in the media, their marginalisation remains entrenched, and their stories are untold. But the success of this project relies on obtaining funding and sponsorship. Any suggestions or even sponsors would be most welcome.

Q: Can you talk a bit about your Walking the Stories project?

A: The inspiration came from my collaboration with a Women’s Mentor in Ghana. She has set up some wonderful development programmes for women, one of which is the Mentoring Walks. She inspired me to take a fresh look at how we support women’s development. Walking and learning through dialogue and story is a traditional practice in many cultures. Since time immemorial and across the world, women share conversations and stories as they walk together — to fields and farms, to the well, or to the marketplace.

Our Walking the Stories event is a unique blend of two traditional and powerful practices, mentoring and story-telling. Walking the Stories invites women of all ages to celebrate International Women’s Day on Sunday March 6 by walking together in the beautiful and historic Chester River Meadows. Participants will have the opportunity along the way to have an informal mentoring conversation with a trained coach-mentor. The concept has really had such a great reception. A lot of very professional women coach-mentors want to be involved.

After the walk, I am delivering a story-telling event with my colleague, Lizzie Gates. This part of the event offers participants opportunities to hear and share personal stories and reflections. Our vision is that this event will put storytelling for business and development on our local map.

If any of your readers are UK-based, they are most welcome to attend Walking the Stories. Here is the link for more information and booking.

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Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

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

Q&A with Lisa Rossetti, Question 3:

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

A: A great influence was Julia Cameron’s The Artists’ Way. In 2007, I entered a prolonged and acute episode of hypothyroidism, which basically grounded me at home unable to work, move, or even think properly. I was really struggling with fatigue and depression for a long time. I now understand this time as my “Journey in the Wilderness.” The Artists’ Way unearthed and reconnected me with my creativity which I naturally express through story. And I have really gone from strength to strength since then. I absolutely attribute my recovery from hypothyroidism to the therapeutic power of story. Journaling is one of Cameron’s recovery practices in the book, which she calls the Morning Pages. I got so bored journaling the same old frustrating story every morning that I determined to write myself into another more positive story. And it worked! I can truly say that we become the stories that we tell about ourselves.

I’ve just finished reading A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon. There is very real science behind why we are able to connect emotionally because of the architecture of our triune brain. Which is also the science behind why stories engage us, and can be used not just for knowledge sharing but also therapeutically for repatterning.

Other influences are: Annette Simmons, absolutely; Margaret Wheatley’s Turning to One Other; Roselle Angwin, who writes “Writing the Self” and articles on journaling for Mslexia magazine; Lisa Bloom for her integration of story into coaching; Joseph Campbell for his mapping of the Hero’s Journey.

I loved Hawkins’ retelling of the Mulla Nasrudin stories in The Wise Fool’s Guide to Leadership.

I’m just reading Margaret Parkin’s classic Tales for Coaching: Using Stories and Metaphors with Individuals and Small Groups. I loved the metaphor of the storyteller as a magician in Nick Owen’s The Magic of Metaphor: 77 Stories for Teachers, Trainers and Thinkers. Roselle Angwin is inspirational. I drew much strength from the extract from her book Writing the Bright Moment — inspiration &A guidance for writers — which was published by Lapidus Cornwall in Prompted to Write. In this essay she quotes Ben Okri: “To poison a nation, poison its stories. A demoralised nation tells demoralised stories to itself. Beware of the storytellers who are not fully conscious of the importance of their gifts, and who are irresponsible in the application of their art.”

This is how I see the challenge offered to us as storytellers, whether we use story in coaching and development, in business, through media, books, round the campfire.

I think that the way we construct our world and understand it depends so greatly on language and immensely on metaphors and of course the stories we tell about ourselves and our world. I read Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Johnson to get a more academic perspective when I was studying research methods for my postgrad diploma in coaching. I interviewed voluntary-sector leaders as a piece of research last year for a training department in Manchester Metropolitan University, using a semi-structured interview. In the final interview question the research participants were asked to give a metaphor for their emergent leadership. I’m interested in how the story lens helps the both the teller and the listener understand the “Being” of leadership, what it means to become a Leader.

I was particularly inspired by the recent Reinvention Summit, and Michael Margolis is a guiding light. Having an identified place within a distinct Story community is important for me. Last September, I became a founder member of the Lapidus North West branch. Lapidus a UK national charity which promotes the creative use of words. I visit the World Wide Story Work practitioners forum occasionally; it would be good to see more activity there as there are some great resources and monthly teleconferences.

I can’t remember how I first stumbled across A Storied Career but I read each and every one carefully with great enjoyment. Each issue points me towards all kinds of interesting work, authors, books, websites, projects, helping me stay fresh and current, and explore different approaches.

I also really like Twitter where you can read fantastic little Flash Fiction Stories from everyday life told through a huge variety of voices. I was a bit resistant at first to social media, thinking what on earth could I say of any real purpose in 140 characters, and why bother. But then I reframed Twitter as a kind of writing discipline and gave it a go. There’s something quite playful about Twitter, I think. I’ve recently taken to sending my new followers a “Twaiku” — a Twitter Haiku in the traditional form of 5-7-5 syllables, which is rather fun! I met one of our Chester Literature Festival committee members via Twitter. That’s how I got involved with a community-storytelling event in my neighbourhood last autumn, which involved our local primary school — a real joy!

Lizzie Gates of the Lonely Furrow Company has been immensely encouraging, and is my creative-writing tutor. Lizzie works with stories in health and social care settings like I do and introduced me to Lapidus. She co-delivered with me on my first excursion into storytelling, a story workshop called “The Storyteller Within” at an International Women’s Day event in Manchester, England.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Lisa Rossetti, Question 2:

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

A: My relationship with story has been a lifetime in its unfolding. Of course, like most children, I loved to make up stories about my toys or imaginary friends, and listen to stories, too. My father used get up especially early before work to read out loud from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy to me when I was about 6 or 7. So I was exposed to those Anglo-Saxon rhythms of language and style of storytelling at an early age. I remember that time with my father as very special, very close.

In 1970 I spent a year studying Indian religion at university, which is when I started to understand that stories can be used for personal discovery and transformation. I came across Idries Shah’s The Exploits of the Incomparable Mullah Nasrudin, and was intrigued by how traditional Sufi Stories could work on many levels. My imagination was captured to use stories in this transformational way. But nobody seemed to be talking about using story for learning and development in Britain at the time. Stories were for children in school; and then there was “serious literature” for the adults, like Milton, Tennyson, Shakespeare, etc. There was nothing like coaching, no NLP [neuro-linguistic programming], no storytelling for business — all that was yet to come!

When I was teaching IT skills to staff in the National Health Service (NHS), I started using metaphor and stories in my training sessions to encourage learners to have more confidence. I’d acquired some basic NLP techniques and was exploring different ways of engaging learners. I remember one learner was struggling with using a mouse and the new Windows environment. So I started to tell her a story about stone-age technology, how the hand-quern [pictured] for grinding corn was so perfectly shaped to the human hand. She began to relax and her “mouse technique” improved. So I was dabbling about really in a not very systematic way, using metaphor and stories in the learning environment.

Eventually I came to realise the potential power of stories and story-techniques, and that kindled a desire for me to integrate these techniques more in my training and coaching work. Training as a coach helped me to master some great story-based techniques. I remember my coach trainers giving me a lot of acknowledgement and encouragement to use metaphor in my coaching.

One significant threshold moment for me occurred at a coaches’ Christmas gathering. I’d been invited to contribute a poem to the festivities. I captured the essence of what was spoken and shared around the room in an improv poem, which I call “Threads.” A Threads poem draws together and capture the group’s story in the moment. I offered my Threads poem up to the group and there was a long silence. A very long silence. Were they bored? Mystified? Would the gift be accepted? Then somebody said “Wow!” Everybody slowly looked at each other. Then they looked at me — as though they saw me clearly for the first time. I knew then for sure and for certain that I was going to work with words and stories in groups — promoting inner reflection and strengthening group connection.

So what I love about story is both the connection with others and the connection with self, and the transformational power of stories. But it’s taken me a long time to stand up and declare “Well, yes actually I am a storytelling coach.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Just a few recent items worthy of notice:

• Judy Rosemarin is currently offering a one-sheet PDF on why business people (and careerists) should tell stories. The downloadable document also offers tips on how to find your stories.
• Thaler Pekar has added concise, storied case studies to her firm’s Web site, showing successes her company has had with story and narrative. These are excellent fodder for those seeking evidence of the effectiveness of organizational storytelling/business narrative.

• I would not have guessed that a book released last year, The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change touts storytelling; nothing about storytelling appears in the book’s table of contents. But an article in McKinsey Quarterly that has generated quite a bit of buzz in the past few days focuses on the book’s story emphasis. The article excerpts a bit of the book — about Scott Harrison and how he created charity: water. Storytelling, assert authors Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith, was one of the “four design principles for generating engagement with a brand through social media.” Following the book excerpt, McKinsey’s Dan Singer interviewed the authors. Here’s my favorite bit from the interview (Aaker is the speaker):

Treating stories as assets is an underrealized idea right now. Stories serve as glue to unify communities. Stories spread from employee to employee, from consumer to consumer, and, in some cases, from employee to consumer or consumer to employee. Stories are much more memorable than statistics or simple anecdotes and are a mechanism that allows communities to grow. Strong stories can be told and retold. They become infectious.

The comments on the article are also thought-provoking.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I believe I first learned of UK-based Lisa Rossetti through a comment she made here on A Storied Career. We’ve had a number of exchanges since, and I’m delighted to welcome her as a Q&A subject. This Q&A will run over the next five days.

Bio: Lisa Rossetti has more than 20 years’ experience in training, mentoring and coaching. With a background in learning and development, she worked for 13+ years in a local Mental Health NHS Trust. Much of her work now focuses on supporting teams and team leaders in health and social-care settings, the public sector and third-sector organisations.

A qualified Leadership and co-active coach, Lisa is credentialled by the International Coach Federation (ACC) and is a member of the Association for Coaching, working to their ethical standards. Lisa is currently studying for a master’s degree in coaching for leadership, and a diploma in coach supervision.

She is an Ambassador for Women’s Enterprise and Mentor for the NWDA Mentoring Scheme, and has been a Business Mentor for the Graduate Enterprise Project for Liverpool John Moores’ University. She has successfully coached many start-up businesses in North West. She also offers supervision (coach-mentoring) to coaches to improve and safeguard the quality of their work.

In her spare time, Lisa volunteers her time and skills to support the volunteer environment and aims of Words of Peace Global and humanitarian initiatives of The Prem Rawat Foundation.

Lisa is returning this year to Ghana, where she spent her childhood, to collect stories of Courage, Perseverance and Hope from ghanaian women. These stories will form the foundation of an inspiring programme of resources for women entrepreneurs and social enterprises. Any assistance in achieving this goal would be most welcome!

Lisa’s interests include: Storytelling in organisations, Creative Writing, collaborative projects. Visit her Web site for more information.

Q&A with Lisa Rossetti, Question 1:

Q: Has storytelling always been a part of your coaching practice, or has it evolved into a component? Do you encounter any resistance to your using storytelling in coaching (especially from organizational clients), and if so, how do you sell them on the concept?

A: I do use a lot of metaphor and story techniques which come naturally to me, and work very powerfully.

I trained as a co-active coach with the Coach Training Institute. Co-active techniques and methodology are often highly creative and quite “Gestalt-y.” Some of the approaches I now recognise as intrinsically story-based, and very powerful for shifting limiting self-beliefs. Future Self is a technique I particularly remember learning and always incorporate in my coaching programmes. The coachee envisages their future vividly and tells the story of his or her Future Self. So the story element has always been there in my coaching. What seems to be happening now in my practice is a shift from coaching incorporating story techniques towards focusing on the story itself and drawing out the learning using a coach approach.

However, I want to remain flexible with what I can offer people. I find when I talk about stories in the context of personal development, team, or business vision, that it’s a very graspable concept. And a very healthy one, as the client places himself or herself as both author of their story and the main protagonist, the hero or heroine. It’s empowering and grants them personal authority. The structure of the story with its denouement or resolution is well embedded in us; we understand and accept that structure emotionally. Story is a wonderful sense-making tool and lends its own particular power to the coaching relationship. Just to ask a client “What’s the real story here?” sets in train a whole process of self-reflection and self-actualisation.

I find overtly promoting storytelling as an element of business coaching is still considered a bit radical here in UK, probably because the outcomes are not understood. I have seen some resistance in UK organisations to creative coaching and a preference for more process coaching models. Unfortunately, just when staff need motivation, leaders need inspiration and companies need innovation, creative activities tend to take a backseat. I suppose it is because we are experiencing times of change and uncertainty economically, and that’s when HR tends to play safe.

A key phrase I am using that seems to hit the mark is “The soft skills are the hard skills.” I explain that storytelling nurtures our softer skills like communication, engagement, intuition and empathy. You aren’t going to learn these things on a virtual learning platform any time soon. I’ve recently agreed to facilitate a couple of sessions with local health and social-care organisations, training their volunteer and management teams to use stories in their work with elderly service users. So hopefully perceptions of using story in learning and development are shifting.

The way I am selling the concept of storytelling is through demonstrating, e.g., giving presentations at conferences. I tell stories and ask participants to reflect on the stories in pairs or groups. Once they’ve experienced the power of stories, and they see a legitimate context for stories in their organisations, then it is a matter of exploring what their specific needs are. Depending on the audience, I make sure that there are credible references, and examples of how story is used practically in similar organisations. You have to make the benefits very obvious that are relevant for the audience. For example, there is research in UK that shows that storytelling improves nurses’ reflective practice, humanises the service and enables new staff to memorise important knowledge.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

My admiration for the contributions of the company Narativ and its founder Murray Nossel (pictured) spans past, present, and future. I first wrote about Narativ and Nossel in 2008. Later, I learned that career practitioners I admired were taking Narativ workshops and integrating storytelling into their work in career marketing and communication.

One practitioner, Barb Safani, shared her Narativ learnings in a blog post. For another, Judy Rosemarin, a one-day Narativ workshop was such an epiphany that storytelling became a significant focus of her coaching practice. I am confident that my admiration for the company will extend into the future; one reason is that another practitioner, Chandlee Bryan, will deliver a presentation, “Stick the Landing — The Art of Storytelling in Interviews” at the April conference of the Career Management Alliance. Chandlee, who will also participate on a storytelling and career panel I’m moderating at the conference, is a disciple of Narativ, and I’m sure her presentation will include material she learned from the Narativ folks.

In the recent past, I had my closest exposure yet to Murray Nossel and Narativ, thanks to a webinar put on by Jullien Gordon of Career Change Challenge. I had to love the webinar’s title, Creating A Storied Career: How To Tell Your Career Transition Story. (By the way, even though the webinar is over, if you click the preceding link and register, Jullien will send you a link for the recording — in which case read no further lest you learn all the spoilers!)

My overriding impression while listening to the webinar was one of richness — the richness of the stories Nossel told, the richness of his ideas, and the richness of his voice and his South African accent (listen for yourself in the video clip at the bottom of this post).

Here’s a summary of the webinar:

On how Nossel discovered the power of stories:

Nossel tells the story of being a clinical psychologist in 1986 in South Africa and being asked by a doctor to visit a blind AIDS patient at home. Nossel didn’t want to do it; at that time, people feared catching the AIDS virus from casual contact. Nossel reluctantly went to see the pale patient, whose skin hung on his bones. Nossel wouldn’t shake the hand of the man, who also couldn’t talk because AIDS had damaged his brain. Nossel went home and washed everything with Pine Sol.

Two years later, Nossel went to New York City to become a playwright but eventually had to support himself with a paying job. Remembering his revulsion over the South African AIDS patient, the one thing he didn’t want to do was work with anyone in AIDS. But the only job he could find in 1994 in New York City was with an AIDS day program. Wondering how he should talk to the patients, Nossel was told to encourage the patients to explore their feelings. That modality proved unsuccessful; patients retorted with responses like: “How would you feel if you were dying of AIDS?”

So Nossel sought a different approach. He noticed that when the patients died, all their possessions were placed in large garbage bags that no one claimed. “They had no one,” Nossel said, “they had nothing to leave.” Then Nossel realized that the one thing we can leave when we die is our stories. He encouraged the patients to tell their stories, and the storytelling became quite popular. One woman wanted to videotape her story for her 3-year-old daughter. So Nossel started to videotape all the stories. When New York legislators were planning cutbacks in AIDS programs, Nossel and some of the patients went to Albany and left tapes on desks of legislators. The cutbacks didn’t happen. Nossel had discovered the transformative power of stories for the patients, as well as the way stories can change minds.

On the kinds of stories people can tell

People often feel as though they don’t have a story to tell, Nossel noted. He teaches them the classic storytelling structure — the hero’s journey, in which the hero encounters an obstacle, surmounts obstacle, and attains resolution. “How the hero gets around the obstacle tell us so much about the character of the teller,” Nossel said. He pointed out that stories of how people overcome obstacles is significant in job search and career because employers want to know how their employees will deal with challenges and solve problems. “Take the risk of revealing things about yourself that you are not totally comfortable with,” Nossel advised. Struggle and failure, he said, can be very powerful.

On using listening skills in telling stories to employers (such as in a job interview)

Nossel cited Peter Guber’s forthcoming book, Tell to Win, which asserts that what persuades us is visceral, immediate connection by sharing something authentic that shares and connects humanity. You have to let the person to whom you’re telling your story know you are, Nossel noted. You don’t know how the person will be listening. For a job interview, for example, prepare as much as possible to know the person that will interview you — for example, by studying the company Website. Observe the interviewer’s language and values to calculate which story you’ll tell. Not everyone will take great risks with their stories, but Nossel himself prefers to takes high risks to convey his “authentic, genuine experiences.” Job-seekers need a bank of stories to draw from to show they can be of use to employers.

Storytelling is a reciprocal relationship, Nossel emphasized (this reciprocity is the topic of the video below). Listening creates telling, and telling creates listening. Tell your story, Nossel advised, and then acknowledge the listener and thank him or her for listening. Then let go and listen when the listener starts talking.

Stories prompt the listener to ask “What happened? Then what happened?,” Nossel said. “One of Narativ’s hallmark tools is a story map in which the storyteller first plots the end of the story, then the beginning, and then the salient turning points in between,” Nossel said (the quote is actually from Narativ’s Web site because my note-taking in the webinar did not adequately capture his point about beginnings, middles and ends). “The end of my story is this very moment,” he said. When a job-seeker says to an interviewer, “I want to tell you what happened,” he or she gets attention. Stories, Nossel asserted, are not open to interpretations, opinions, or judgments because they simply tell what happened.

Keep reading in the extended entry.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

My friend Liz Massey (pictured), who has interviewed me for her blog Write Livelihood has published a piece on the Arizona State University alumni site, What’s your story? Crafting a career narrative.

Liz cites me and A Storied Career copiously in the piece, including Plotting the Story of Your Ideal Career, my interview with another storytelling-in-the-job-search proponent, Judy Rosemarin, and the 10 Career Stories on sister site, 10CareerStories.com.

She also shares some resources I hadn’t seen — a post by Carole Pemberton, The Importance of Creating an Authentic Career Narrative, and a book that Pemberton recommends, Authoring Your Life: Developing an Internal Voice to Navigate Life’s Challenges by Marcia B. Baxter Magolda.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

During the time I was having my emotional meltdown over my personal bio story, the comments function here on A Storied Career wasn’t working. However, two women I greatly admire wrote to me via e-mail to offer supportive thoughts and ideas. Both of them, Karina Howell and Thaler Pekar, had been in on the webinar that inspired my meltdown.

In fact, I mentioned something Karina said in my post, though I didn’t mention her name: “Kathy, I don’t connect with ‘riddle’ either, but QUEST really resonates. Your dedication shows drive that comes from a deep source.”

She elaborated on that idea in her e-mail to me: “In my creative writing courses we were always taught that the main character must want something. Particularly in travel stories, this often takes the form of a quest — our desire may be vague, but we find things along the journey.”

Karina characterized my blogging as a quest: “It strikes me that your journey as a dedicated blogger is a fascinating one. I have often wondered what drives you to post every day. Such dedication! I see it as a quest that is still unfolding.”

Here’s a germ of a thought in response: I began my journey as a “dedicated blogger” three years ago this month (the blog started three years before that, but my blogging was sporadic). I had recently completed my PhD and undergone disappointment in my professional life (leaving my position as a college instructor when it became clear the job had no future) and devastating turmoil in my personal life. At the end of 2007, I had decided to take a “personal sabbatical” of up to a year to decide what I wanted to do next. I can’t recall exactly why, but the sabbatical included my decision to strive to be a World Famous Blogger. One of the things that I thought would contribute to that goal — that quest — was extreme frequency in blogging — in other words, blogging every single day.

Back to Karina, especially with the idea that her ideas can help others struggling to tell their own stories: “Another suggestion: Perhaps it would be fun just to write out a few vivid scenes from your journey. That way you will be better about to identify the choice points and decide which details are most important to include.”

Thaler, meanwhile, suggested common threads and framing devices:

Perhaps you discovered a thread connecting all the seemingly disparate things you do? Applied storytelling is the sensible frame for all your interests? And you were in awe of the people who got there before you, and who are helping others to use this simple tool of story, and you decided this was a way to both learn about and honor the people working in the field, and to bring this delightful knowledge to a larger audience? That the time — professionally, personally, technologically — is right to connect with people, sustain relationships, and contribute what might become a legacy?

I felt I expressed a common thread in the personal bio story I crafted as my homework for the webinar: “… the common denominator has been creating and propelling informative content out into the world.” But that seems a bit too generalized and inexplicable (why I get such a rush from crafting and disseminating content). I’m therefore intrigued by Thaler’s idea of considering applied storytelling as a framing device.

I love what she said (presumably) about my Q&A series: “You were in awe of the people who got there before you, and who are helping others to use this simple tool of story, and you decided this was a way to both learn about and honor the people working in the field, and to bring this delightful knowledge to a larger audience.” Totally true that I was in awe and wanted to share, though I didn’t have an especially lofty vision for the Q&A series when I started it in the fall of 2008.

“Contribute what might become a legacy” still feels a bit too grand for my modest self, but the blogging journey absolutely has been about connecting with people and sustaining relationships, and I value the connection and sustenance more than I can express.

On a tiny scale, I have achieved my goal of becoming a World Famous Blogger. My readership is not gigantic, but a few people around the globe know who I am.

The journey, both as a blogger, and as a seeker of storied self-actualization, continues …

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve never met Dr. Ray Jimenez (pictured), but I believe I have seen him at the three Golden Fleece conferences I’ve attended in Washington, DC.

I recently came across some nice resources that Dr. Jimenez offers through Vignettes Learning, of which he is chief learning architect. They’re described on the company’s blog.

First is The Master Storyteller Survey and Profile, which Dr. Jimenez describes as “a product of my research on how to help trainers, learning and eLearning specialists to reflect on how well they are applying the ideas of storytelling in improving learning and performance.” The illustration at right correlates to the survey and the teaching/learning aspects of storytelling.

The survey is not a scientific instrument but rather an exercise for reflection. I especially like the fact that the survey is followed by short items that provide ideas for reflection.

The survey is apparently related to a webinar, Be a Master Storyteller, for which the above mentioned blog post provides links to download the PowerPoint slides (see opening slide below) and view the recording of the webinar (registration required).

An ancillary site to Vignettes Learning is Stories2Learn, described as

a tool … to encourage trainers, teachers, eLearning designers and developers, leaders, designers, subject matter experts (SMEs) and everyone in all types of organizations to share stories and collaborate to refine and fine-tune stories. The ultimate goal is to build a site that everyone can share their stories and borrow stories to use in their learning activities.

I’m also intrigued by Dr. Jimenez’s e-book, available on LuLu, Scenario-Based Learning: Using Stories To Engage e-Learners.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Studies and surveys I’ve read over the years are fairly consistent in what they say are the biggest mistakes job-seekers make in employment interviews — insufficient enthusiasm for the job, lack of knowledge about the organization at which the candidate is interviewing, and an overall lack of preparation for the interview.

Thus I was not surprised to see Peter Guber recount, both in his forthcoming book Tell to Win and on the book’s site, that executive-search guru Bill Simon had told Guber “that lack of preparation is the number one reason why executive candidates fail to win over prospective employers in job interviews.”

Guber noted that executives fall back on their résumés instead of preparing, which Simon described as a fatal mistake “because the essence of what audiences remember is wrapped not in the tellers’’ résumés but in the way they tell their stories.”

Guber and Simon agreed that a candidate — Teri Schwartz (pictured) — who had really knocked their socks off when they worked together in the process of hiring a new dean for UCLA’s film school (Guber was on the search committee) illustrated the importance of having a purpose for telling a story in an interview.

“A new dean must change the culture and create a new story for the school,” Schwartz had said in the interview, “Economic well-being will follow collective response but never precede it.””

Guber recalled that Schwartz argued that “the hero of our story —— our future dean —— would have to be someone who could galvanize everyone from students to administrators to go down a very new and special road.”

“Schwartz’s “vision for a great school whose graduates will become industry leaders and inspire change for a better world” was, Guber writes, “the heart of Teri Schwartz’’s goal for her story.

Further, Guber relates, “Teri concluded her story with the magical analogy of our school as a reflecting pool into which every person associated with the school would drop a new quality of diversity, innovation, and technology. All these drops would ripple outward into the world and into the future, and each ripple would reflect our individual and collective vision and participation.”

Schwartz’s storytelling in the interview enabled her to overcome all three of the common mistakes candidates make. She conveyed her enthusiasm; she demonstrated that she had done her homework on UCLA and its situation, and she showed, by telling stories backed by goals and purpose, that she had prepared fully for the interview. Of course she was hired.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I recently rediscovered an author whose work I read and loved some 25 years or so ago — Susan Isaacs. I’m now on a quest to complete my reading of her fiction oeuvre — three novels to go. Isaacs writes smart, funny novels, often with women protagonists who solve crimes even though it’s not part of their job description.

To make sure I’m on track in reading all her stuff, I’ve visited her Web site a number of times and recently read her bio.

Reading the bio through the eyes of someone who is struggling to craft a better, more storied one for myself, I see Isaacs’s telling of her story as what I aspire to.

And looking at her bio through the lens of the teachings of the recent Get Storied webinars I’ve experienced, I am convinced that Isaacs hits all the notes. She especially tells a story that people can identify as their own. The webinars talked about the two extremes of typical bios — obnoxious self-importance and boring earnestness. Isaacs’s bio projects neither of these traits. It’s humorously self-effacing without being overly modest (like my recent attempt apparently is). For example, she talks about enormous success with her first novel but attributes that success to good luck.

Here’s a snippet of her bio:

I was born in a thatched cottage in the Cotswolds.

Oh, you want the truth. Fine. I was born in Brooklyn and educated at Queens College. After leaving school, I saw one of those ads: BE A COMPUTER PROGRAMMER! Take our aptitude test. Since I had nothing else in mind, I took the test-and flunked. The guy at the employment agency looked at my resume and mumbled, “You wrote for your college paper? Uh, we have an opening at Seventeen magazine.” That’s how I became a writer.

I liked my job, but I found doing advice to the lovelorn and articles like “How to Write a Letter to a Boy” somewhat short of fulfilling. So, first as a volunteer, then for actual money, I wrote political speeches in my spare time. I did less of that when I met a wonderful guy, Elkan Abramowitz, then a federal prosecutor.

We were married and a little more than a year later, we had Andrew (now a corporate lawyer). Three years later, Elizabeth (now a philosopher) was born. I’d left Seventeen to be home with my kids but continued to write speeches and the occasional magazine article. During what free time I had, I read more mysteries than was healthy. Possibly I became demented, but I thought, I can do this.

And that’s how Compromising Positions, a whodunit with a housewife-detectives set on Long Island came about. Talk about good luck: it was chosen the main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, auctioned for paperback, sold to the movies, translated into thirty languages, and became a bestseller. I was a little overwhelmed by the success, but since it’s hard to be cool and go to fabulous downtown parties when you’re living in the suburbs with a husband, two kids, two dogs, and a station wagon, I simply wrote another book… and then another and another. About half my works are mysteries, two are in the spy genre, and the rest regular novels. In the horn-tooting department, all my novels have been New York Times bestsellers.

Analyzing the bio based on the five components Michael Margolis taught in the webinars: Isaacs conveys that her natural authority came from writing for her college paper and her early job writing for Seventeen; her expertise came from reading a huge number of mysteries; later in the bio, she talks about other past experience; she mentions her external validators, for example in the last paragraph above, without sounding obnoxiously boastful about them; and she humanizes the heck out of the bio. You really must read the full bio, which Isaacs also writes like a compelling story. She also offers an entertaining FAQ/Q&A.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Periodically, I like to look at how folks are using visual media to tell stories:

• In Lapham’s Quarterly, a magazine of history and ideas, Joyce Pendola created a beautiful infographic, City Narratives that tells the stories of Algiers, Istanbul, Beijing, and Mexico City.
• “kirkr” created a storied visual tribute to his late grandmother, writing:

  … last spring, my Grandma Ruth died. I was flooded with memories of growing up with her and was saddened to think that my kids would never know anything about her. I wanted to write down every memory I had of growing up in Seaside and being with my Grandma. Everytime I saw pen and paper I had a new memory I wanted to hold on to. I started looking through old photo albums trying to remember what she was like when I was young. In looking at them, I realized that the people and places in my memories don’t look the same anymore: Kerwin’s drug store is a sushi restaurant, my dad no longer wears grey Oregon State t-shirts and the Star Wars posters are no longer in my bedroom (they’re in my son’s room now). With that in mind, I tried to draw the world where I grew up to go along with my memories of my Grandma Ruth, who was so much a part of that world.

  Kirkr said he hopes his drawings capture the feel of growing up with such a wonderful woman. Below left, a picture from the tribute

• Also about a grandmother, Cry Rock is a short film, a story about storytelling, from Smayaykila Films in which “wild beauty of the Bella Coola Valley [British Columbia] blends with vivid watercolor animation illuminating the role of the Nuxalk oral tradition and the intersection of story, place and culture.” As the site Field Notes for the Anthropology of British Columbia Canada notes, the narrator “wonders if she should record for posterity the stories of her grandmother. [She] weaves her response to this question with Nuxalk stories told by elders and young people — leading us to the conclusion that stories are embedded in places and people. For this reason, [she] decides that she must live her grandmother’s stories with her grandmother; any recording would so fundamentally change the nature of the story that it wouldn’t be the same.” The trailer is embedded below.

  CRY ROCK trailer | a short documentary from Smayaykila Films on Vimeo.

• National Geographic’s All-Roads Photography Program recognizes and supports unique stories and talented international storytellers whose still photography documents their changing cultures and communities. Further:

  The All Roads Film Project, a National Geographic program [is] dedicated to providing a platform for indigenous and underrepresented minority-culture storytellers from around the world to showcase their works to promote knowledge, dialogue, and understanding with a broader, global audience.

  You can see the 2010 awardees here. In the photo, below right, by Rashid Talukder, a procession of students marches in Dhaka, the capital during the 1970 noncooperation movement in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

• Talking Pictures is a very cool column/blog by Ransom Riggs that is part the Mental Floss online magazine. I wish there were sort of a home page for the column that explains more about the premise and lists all the columns (best to just search the site for all the columns), but the idea seems to be found photos with writing on them. It’s always fascinating to speculate on the stories behind old photos, and sometimes writing on them illuminates those stories (and sometimes it makes them all the more enigmatic). I’m reminded of my son who often bought old photos at flea markets. Here’s a sample Talking Pictures column; the column is also to be made into a book.
• A few years ago, I wrote a paper about intertextuality. I’m wondering if Jonathan Safran Foer’s project, Tree of Codes, might be a physical embodiment of intertextuality. Foer’s publisher, Visual Editions, describes Tree of Codes: “The book is as much a sculptural object as it is a work of masterful storytelling.” To create the book, the author used an existing piece of text, his favorite book, The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, and cut a new story out of it. You can see a short video of people reacting to the book, pictured at right below.

• Graphic Details is a touring exhibition, providing, its blog says, “the first in-depth look at a unique and prolific niche of graphic storytelling — Jewish women’s autobiographical comics. While the influential role of Jews in cartooning has long been acknowledged, the role of Jewish women in shaping the medium is largely unexplored. This exhibition of original drawings, full comic books and graphic novels, presents the powerful work of eighteen international artists whose intimate, confessional work has influenced the world of comics over the last four decades, creating an entirely new genre.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that folks can get in on the transformative experience of crafting a personal bio story, as I’ve recently done.

Get Storied/Michael Margolis is offering a six-week virtual course, The New “About Me,” which will take participants through “a fun and empowering process to reinvent how you tell the story of you.” Further:

You’ll learn step-by-step how to reveal your epic character, and paint a picture that reveals what makes you special - all in the context of your professional bio. You’ll discover how to package this experience, passion, and personality into an endearing profile that attracts exactly the right people.

The course, which costs $397, involves two one-on-one coaching sessions with Michael and follows this schedule:

• Class #1: Thursday, February 24, 2011 5pm ET
• Class #2: Tuesday, March 8, 2011 5pm ET
• Class #3: Thursday, March 24, 2011 5pm ET
• Two 1-on-1 coaching feedback sessions with Michael

Michael’s limiting the course to 50 participants and suggests that advisors, authors/speakers, coaches/consultants, entrepreneurs, executives, thought-leaders, and sales reps will especially benefit from the program.

I was a participant in what Michael calls the “alpha-version of this The New About Me course,” along with 40+ VIP participants from last year’s Reinvention Summit. He’s calling the new, longer course “the Beta version of this breakthrough program.” I found the alpha version compelling, and dare I say life-changing. The sense of community and support among participants was astonishing. I definitely recommend the new course, especially because participants will benefit from a longer course and the one-on-one coaching.

You can get a feel for the course (which I’m sure will be significantly fine-tuned and enhanced for the beta version) by checking out the list of posts at the bottom of yesterday’s post.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I had an out-of-body experience on Thursday. Or so it seemed.

The backstory:

As regular readers know, I’ve been posting about a four-part journey to craft a personal bio story (see a listing of these posts at the bottom of this post), led by Michael Margolis of Get Storied. I’ve played the roles of both reporter/blogger and participant.

For the fourth and final session (“Putting the Elements Together”), participants were to prepare a draft of their personal bio stories and had the option of submitting them to be critiqued in the final session.

So, I did that. My draft sprang, to a small extent, from a previous bio, which, in turn sprang from my LinkedIn Profile.

[Side note: Although most of the samples Michael had given before we developed our drafts were in third-person, I felt I needed to do mine in first-person (like the Jon Thomas sample Michael gave).]

So, here’s where the out-of-body experience comes in. The bulk of the final session consisted of Michael’s critique of 13 bios that had been submitted. Mine was maybe 10th or 11th in the sequence.

What Michael said about mine was so unexpected and emotionally overwhelming to me, that I literally felt as though my spirit left my body and was hovering somewhere overhead. It was a little like being in yoga class and having the instructor say, “Empty your mind of thoughts, but if any stray thoughts enter your head, simply acknowledge them and let them float away.” Michael’s words were like those thoughts — in my head, but not really, just passing fleetingly. Meanwhile, back on Earth in my embodied self, I felt myself turning beet purple and as though I wanted to weep. I got the essence of what Michael was saying, but I could not even tell you right afterwards exactly what he had said because I was so overwhelmed. (Luckily, the session was recorded, and I could revisit it.)

So, did Michael like my bio? Not really. But apparently he really likes my work and cited a huge disconnect between my work and the bio. He said:

… [Y]ou don’t do justice to the power of your work and contribution. … Your blog is one of the leading distinations online for applied or organizational storytelling. And you’ve done interviews with … how many 155, 3,000 storytelling experts, whatever that is [it’s about 65]. … You have the opportunity to claim more authority for you passion, your commitment, your contribution to your field. … the opportunity to put some of that more front and center. … You are one of the most dedicated pople I know who is working in the world of storytelling.

Meanwhile, in the webinar’s chat box, participants were typing things like: “Kathy, your blog is amazing! It take such dedication to do what you do, posting every day and covering such a broad field” and “Own it girl!”

Ulp. Out-of-body experience.

I offer more of Michael’s analysis of my bio, not so much so I can keep talking about myself, but so it might enlighten others interested in crafting this kind of personal bio story. (And by the way, watch for tomorrow’s post for information about how you can get in on Michael’s teachings.)

One of the five elements (see graphic at left) that Michael recommends for these personal bio stories is External Validators, the “social proof” of our expertise and accomplishments. I decided to use links for most of my External Validators; I figured I’d take up less space that way, and readers could learn more if they want to. Michael also recommends Personal Markers, the often quirky, eccentric stuff that humanizes us — the stuff that, as Michael says, we “geek out on.” I also listed my Personal Markers in the form of links at the bottom of my bio. Did Michael like the link approach? Not so much. “One one hand, it was really cool. Wow, you can explore all these different worlds,” he said, “but the experience was that as I read through, it gave me so many doors to walk through that I didn’t really know where I stood.”

Michael also criticized — and rightly so — my second paragraph, about being a “divine dilettante.” He said I sounded like I was apologizing. It was a last-minute inclusion, harkening back many years ago to a time when my best friend and I tried to redeem the reputation of dilettantism. I thought of his critique of another participant’s bio story, in which Michael cautioned against “telling it like you’re therapeutically working your way through it.”

One of the most important components of Michael’s Personal Bio Story concept is Gifts/Expertise, or defining our work. (The importance gained even more clarity during the critiques because it seemed that most of us hadn’t defined our work as clearly or prominently as we could have.) The hardest part of the process for me was defining my work. The conclusion I came to at the end of Michael’s Reinvention Summit back in November was that I wanted to make a living using my passion for applied storytelling. I have been struggling with how to do that.

Thus, I decided that in the Personal Bio Story I would see if I could make Defining My Work a self-fulfilling prophesy. I said “I teach — in the classroom, online, and through my writing.” While I have done all three of those kinds of teaching, the only one I’m currently doing is writing.

And here’s what Michael said that really turned me into a beet-purple, teary-eyed, out-of-body blob of embarrassment, shame, pride, astonishment, fraudulence, lack of confidence, and 75 other unidentified emotions:

Here’s what I want to hear from you in this bio: What’s the riddle you’re trying to solve? … You are so committed to this stuff. And nowhere in your bio do I get a sense of why you do this. What’s the kernel you’re chasing after? … Why does storytelling matter to you? … Reveal some of that. That’s your power and your strength and what’s going to invite me into to connect emotionally.

I responded in the chat box that I wasn’t sure what riddle I’m trying to solve, to which another participant responded, “Kathy, I don’t connect with ‘riddle’ either, but QUEST really resonates. Your dedication shows drive that comes from a deep source.”

But why DO I do it? I’m not sure I can articulate the answer. Not yet anyway. I don’t make even an infinitesimal part of a living from it. It does not promote any other business endeavor. But in terms of work, it’s all I want to do, and I am constantly frustrated that I don’t have enough time for it.

(Michael also felt I should explain my passion for the career-management field, which has been my work for more than 20 years, but I feel I’m moving beyond that field and don’t have the passion for it I used to.)

This post is already quite long. I need to think and write more about my riddle, my quest, my why. Here’s what I know:

Writing this blog is everything to me (at least professionally). You, my readers, are everything to me. To be continued ….

Previous posts in this series:

• second webinar: Revealing the thru-line arc
• prep for second webinar, preparation for second webinar
• summary of the first webinar: Remembering, mapping Plot Points l (best viewed in Firefox or Internet Explorer).
• first post, about the prequel to a series of three webinars: Moving from an Old Story to a New Story.

One more thing: This seems like a terrible week for my comments function to be disabled, which it is because of some tech issues I’ve been experiencing. It’s the week of Kendall Haven’s remarkably provocative Q&A and my bio dilemma. If you’d like to share any thoughts on either, please e-mail them to me, and I’ll post them.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Kendall Haven, Question 7:

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

A: I am torn between two and, so will offer both.

First: Know effective story architecture as well as you know effective oral delivery. If you master the form and process of building effective stories, you make your storytelling much easier. Storytelling becomes a burden only when you have to rely on performance technique to drag an audience through mediocre material.

Second: When you orally tell a story to an audience, how you say it is more powerful than what you say — the specific words you say. Too many tellers focus on the words and feel pressured to “get the words right.” Research has consistently shown that we humans don’t really listen to your specific words. We listen to the gist. We think we hear and remember your exact wording. But we don’t. We hear the gist, and in our own minds create our own wording to express that gist and then remember that self-created wording thinking that it is an accurate recording of what you said.

What story listeners do quite accurately note and record is how you say it — the energy, emotion, passion, etc. with which you say it. Listeners’ interpretation of how you say it drives their process of creating visual imagery and specific language to attach to your story and to file into memory.

[Editor’s note/image credit: Image at left is of storyteller Robin Bady. I felt photos of her on her site really embodied Kendall’s words about “energy, emotion, passion” and figured she wouldn’t mind the publicity. Visit her site to see her wonderfully expressive photos.]

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Kendall Haven, 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 do not agree with the premise of this question. Where is this explosive growth? The number of storytelling festivals in this country is not increasing (and, in fact, has decreased through the first half of this decade). The total annual audience for storytelling festivals is holding steady (at best) or — for many festivals—is in decline. I see no explosive increase in the number of night clubs, comedy clubs, or theaters featuring storytelling and professional storytellers on their stages. Ever since the plague of No Child Left Behind descended like a wet blanket over education, the number of schools hiring storytellers has radically decreased in almost every state. There are fewer full-time working storytellers supporting a family with their storytelling earnings now than there were in the 1990s.

So where is this “explosive growth?” Most point at the business community, at organizational storytelling. I do see growth of interest in storytelling in corporations, in agencies, and in organizations. I see a large increase in the use of the word “storytelling” over the past 15 years. I have documented phenomenal growth in the number of people and organizations that promote themselves as organizational (business, corporate, etc.) storytellers and storytelling consultants.

But do I see real growth in actual, effective storytelling? No. I don’t see it. I see PR firms, advertising companies, and HR departments using the word. I see communications departments leading focus groups to discover that the words “story” and “storytelling” have a strong positive image with the public and, so, need to be worked into release copy.

But as I have researched it for ISC (the International Storytelling Center) over the past six years, the real growth in storytelling has been halting and gradual — much more like the tortoise than the hare. Over these last several years of the “Great Recession” the corporate and nonprofit organizational use of storytelling has actually decreased.

If there is growth in storytelling in this country, it is primarily housed in the PR use of the word “storytelling,” not in the actual effective practice of it.

Few of the people now claiming to be organizational storytellers are pedigreed with detailed backgrounds in, and accredited study of, story architecture or storytelling. Most have emerged from PR and corporate-communications departments. That lack of understanding makes the current bulge of storytelling activity (if there is one) more of a fad than a solid advancement.

The problem with fads is that they soon fade. Once faded, they are much harder to resurrect. I have interviewed more than 40 individuals who market themselves (most fairly successfully) as organizational storytellers. None could effectively define “story.” Most couldn’t even offer a concise definition at all — accurate or inaccurate, effective or ineffective.

So I’ll volley this question back with a counter question: If this is, in fact, a period of storytelling growth and opportunity, what are we in the storytelling community doing to ensure that what surfaces in the public and organizational consciousness is not some slick oversold fad version of storytelling, but the process and practice of genuine and effective storytelling?

Q: The culture is abuzz about Web 2.0 and social media. To what extent do you participate in social media? To what extent and in what ways do you feel these venues are storytelling media?

A: Call me a charter member of the Luddites of America. I don’t participate actively in social media. But let me break my answer into comments on three separate uses of social media.

1. As a vehicle to actually tell and share stories: I haven’t seen evidence that they are effective vehicles through which to share stories. Stories come alive in the details. Details create vivid imagery in the receiver’s mind — sensory, character, and event details in the text, and details provided through gesture, voice, and/or facial expression. Research has shown that a primary cue listeners use to distinguish stories from other narrative forms is the density of sensory details (significantly higher in stories). But those details require space on the page and/or time on the video.

   The social media emphasize (if not mandate) brevity. At best, they allow the “Reader’s Digest Condensed Version” of a story. Thus, social media force the writer to imply many key story elements and force the receiver to fill in those massive story gaps on their own — with no chance for positive feedback or reaction (as would happen live) and with no guidance from other audience members. The teller must abdicate much of his/her responsibility to construct and convey a story and leave it to the reader to assume the shape and content of the full story.

   Research shows that readers aren’t very good at that feat. It has long been a guiding principle of writing that, if there is any possible way for readers to misread and misinterpret what you write, they will. The purpose of laborious and tedious editing is to make the writing so precise that it cannot be misread and misinterpreted. The form and nature of social media preclude that level of precision and, thus, of effective storytelling. That means that storytelling through social media tends to isolate, rather than to connect and expand, groups. The only ones who will “get” these abbreviated story snippets are those in the same group as the author (with the same banks of prior knowledge, with the same perspectives, etc.) who will be likely to make the correct assumptions to fill in the story. Others will be excluded from the point, nuance, and meaning of the story. That’s the long way of saying that, no, I don’t see that the social media — as currently constructed — are effective avenues for disseminating and telling stories.

2. For interpersonal connectedness: It has become so common a research conclusion that it has almost reached cliché status: Social media connect us — but not with the people in the same room with us. These media don’t connect us person to person. They connect us person to machine to person. Two people sitting at dinner both text and check emails instead of talking to each other. We text and check Web sites while on dates and at parties — rather than focusing on the people and experiences in the room with us. We learn to think of “personal relationships” as developing without requiring the physical presence of the other person.

   Research results are beginning to emerge from a variety of fields that point to the net negatives of this trend. Those negatives, I think, must be significantly multiplied when considering the act and process of storytelling. For eons storytelling has been a live, teller-to-audience, shared experiential event. Both teller and listener have a role to play to create a successful and effective telling experience. In the 1990s when the National Storytelling Association board sought to create an association definition of storytelling, one element of that definition insisted upon by virtually every guild and working teller in the country was that storytelling, as we understood and practiced it, described the performance of a story to a live audience. That, a short 14 years ago, is what the American storytelling community said storytelling was. How can that be compatible with social media that mandate each individual’s connection be funneled through personal (individual) electronic devices?

   Yes, there are substantial benefits of social media. Yes, social media are alluring and “fun.” Yes they make us feel “connected.” But I suspect that, 15 years from now, American culture will bemoan the degradation in general interpersonal communication skills that comes from having so much of our human contacts filtered through personal electronics. This is not a phenomenon that might surface at some distant future time. American schools are, in almost every state, already reporting declines in student ability both to write and — especially — in their ability and willingness to stand in class and speak (debate, orally report, orally discuss, etc.). Students at virtually every grade are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with having to stand and talk directly to their classmates and teachers. As a storyteller, as one who values the ability to effectively, powerfully, write and to speak, this trend is quite disturbing.

3. As a marketing/communications tool: Having said all that, social media can be effectively used to broadcast a message or information, to connect with others, or to gather story material (to connect a teller with a wider community of sources for their story information) and, certainly, as a marketing tool to promote and advertise available stories, organizations, or other story-based products.

   Will social media survive? Certainly — with or without my participation. Use them to connect with friends, clients, groups, organizations, or others. But I see red flags when I think of using them as a greater part of a story- or storytelling-related career/business. I suspect — and fervently hope — that the current manifestation of these social media represents the field’s infancy and that future incarnations will move to alleviate some of these swirling negatives.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Kendall Haven, Questions 3 and 4:

Q: How important is it to you and your work to function within the framework of a particular definition of “story?” (i.e., What is a story?) What definition do you espouse?

A: This, for me, is the very heart of storytelling and of the work of every storyteller. What separates storytelling from a lecture, a talk, a presentation, or from some rambling oration on the sidewalk? It is the power and draw inherent in the “story” half of the word, “storytelling.” What grabs and holds an audience or a listener? It is the form and structure of that we interpret as story. What is the first question one must ask in order to create, craft, shape, or develop a performance piece? “What’s the story?”

Yet, we, as a culture — and even as working storytellers — tend to accept a vague, nonspecific notion of what the word story really means. Humans respond to “story” differently than they do to the same content organized into any other narrative form and structure. Every storyteller has bucket loads of anecdotal examples to support this claim. (See my answer to Question 1 for one of mine.) Science research has both qualitatively and quantitatively confirmed this same finding. The human mind processes “stories” differently than it does other narrative forms.

Words and sentences — seemingly magically — suddenly become, in the mind of the listener, a story and, at that moment, the receiver’s mind begins to respond to and to process the material differently.

Those processing differences inside the receiver’s mind are the key to storytelling’s power. The human mind processes a story differently. The human brain is literally hardwired to process stories differently than other forms of information. Our minds understand story information differently. They create meaning from stories differently. They remember and recall stories more vividly and more accurately. Stories can lift human hearts and make them soar into the heavens. Stories can literally change lives! The same information delivered in non-story form rarely does so and is often, at best, mildly amusing. Why? What — specifically — about the form and structure of story creates those amazing responses?

Thus “What is a story?” becomes the all-important core question. It lies at the heart of the allure and captivating power we daily rely on in our work. Traditionally, this has not been an easy question with which to grapple. When, in the 1990s, I was on the NSA Board (the National Storytelling Association evolved from NAPPS and was the predecessor of the current National Storytelling Network) I led a two-year effort to create an association definition of storytelling. We collected input and eventual approval from every storytelling guild and group in the country to create a short and concise definition that reflected our collective vision of what storytelling is (and is not). And then we had to add three pages of text to explain what was meant — and not meant — by virtually each and every word in those few sentences.

Luckily for us, modern science has, over the past dozen years, developed ways to peer into the living human brain and watch it work, watch it function — literally — to watch it think. From that work we can take a whole new approach to our understanding of story and begin not with what the storyteller does and says, but with what happens inside the receiver’s mind. From newly available science research we can thereby glean a very specific answer to our core question: what makes a story a story? What triggers the human mind to process it differently?

First, turn to the dictionary. Virtually every dictionary, as a primary definition of “story,” uses the wording, “a narrative account of a real or imagined event or events.” Now pause to assess that definition. Consider this sentence: “He went to the store.” That is “a narrative account of a real or imagined event.” It fully meets the dictionary’s criteria. But is that what you mean by the word “story?” Did that “story” touch your heart and soul? No. It does not. But true stories do.

Conclusion: the dictionary is wrong. It absolutely is.

Its wording is woefully inadequate. Recent neural science research can shed specific and practical light on what we mean by that word and what, structurally, a story requires in order to engender the neural and emotional responses we seek inside the listener’s mind. That, to me, is the first rational, practical way to construct an understanding of the unique properties and mandates of story.

How does this new research allow us to refine and modify the dictionary’s vague and non-specific definition? Simple. But first, my caveat: This is an incredibly condensed presentation of this material. Virtually every word in this definition has a specific, precise meaning that, if I had a chapter instead of a page, I could include.

Now an improved definition of story based on what neural science has revealed.

A story is: a character-based narrative of an interesting character’s struggles to reach a real and important goal that is initially blocked by some combination of one or more problems and conflicts that have the potential to create some real risk and danger (jeopardy) for that character, all presented in sufficient detail to make the story seem vivid, compelling, and memorable.

There is a definition that can lead you to a much deeper understanding of what drives the effectiveness of story. Those are the narrative elements that trigger into action the hardwired neural story net (a linked bundle of interconnected neurons) inside human brains. Yes, we humans are literally mentally hardwired to think, to make sense, to understand, and to remember in and through those specific story-based elements. Understanding story at that level, for me, makes all the difference.

Q: I get the idea from your Web site that you didn’t get into to proving the scientific aspects of storytelling until you were challenged to do so by NASA (see first paragraph on this page). To what extent did you find it easier to “sell” the idea of storytelling to your constituencies once you had developed the scientific proof and written Story Proof?

A: It depends on the audience to whom I am trying to sell the idea of story and storytelling. Most teachers and librarians don’t need the science references. They already accept the value and power of story and of storytelling. School district (or state) administrators often do need the science to put story and storytelling on an equal footing with other well-researched aspects of language in the curriculum. Arts councils typically do not. Typically, Departments of Education do. Most scientific and engineering agencies and organizations need that grounding into the research world with which they are familiar and through which they do their own work. So do most in the military-industrial complex.

In general, is it easier to “sell” storytelling with sufficient scientific proof in my pocket. It’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it. It is better to bore believers with a dash of science they don’t need than to leave skeptics firmly entrenched in their opposition to storytelling by omitting the science rationale they needed.

Let me use a church-based analogy. Those in the choir don’t need the science. (They’re already convinced and committed.) But they don’t mind hearing it shouted from the pulpit. The congregation members lounging in the nave are reassured by the existence of scientific backing and often need such reminders and reinforcements to re-charge and to maintain their faith.

But the science that explains the power of story is most valuable to those out on the street who haven’t yet been willing to step into the church at all. They, typically, are subject to the BIG MYTHS about storytelling and need the science to make that leap of faith that will allow them to risk poking their heads inside to see what the fuss is all about.

In most parts of our culture, science research has credibility. It is worthy of our time and consideration. It is not summarily dismissed. That credibility will open doors, justify what appear to be giant leaps of faith, and buy opportunities that anecdotes and personal testimony never can.

The power and effectiveness of story do not come from the science. The act of storytelling does not involve the science. But the availability of science research that explains the structure, process, and effectiveness of storytelling can offer a rational explanation for the seemingly non-rational human response to story. Further, that research provides insights into the use and control of story architecture that make it attractive, reasonable, and (ultimately) doable to those who, suffering from the Three Great Myths about story, have felt that they can’t effectively use storytelling; that they will appear foolish if they try; and that they will be ridiculed, not taken seriously, or otherwise have their professional reputation harmed if they do use storytelling.

The science allows me to expand the community of storytelling believers and effective story users in ways I could not expand that population without it.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

At least six months ago, the search function of this blog inexplicably stopped working. I wasn’t terribly worried because I have a plug-in called Apture that provides a search bar (it pops up if you scroll down a bit on the page). However, a couple of readers were concerned about the non-functioning search, so I decided to get it fixed. (I caused chaos in one of the other blogs I maintain by trying some experimental fixes — the other blogs I maintain had the same problem.)

I’m happy to say that search is functioning again on A Storied Career.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

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

Q&A with Kendall Haven, Question 2:

Q: You’ve undergone some transitions that might be considered unexpected — West Point grad to master storyteller (with research scientist in between) and performance storyteller to story consultant in education and business. Can you talk a bit about how these transitions came about? Do you find it unusual to have made the transition from hard science to the more literary, non-analytical world of storytelling?

A: Every life path is filled with twists and turns that, at the time, feel like blind gropings through an unsolvable maze and yet, in hindsight, seem to patch together into a unified and cohesive whole. The real question, of course, is: “What was I doing in the world of military, science, and engineering in the first place?” As a child I acted stories in the back yard, wrote stories, lived in the world of imagined stories. Yet, for reasons I cannot begin to imagine now, it never occurred to me that story-writing, story-acting, or story-telling were things a grown-up person could actually do. They were private things I did for myself and for myself alone.

I went to West Point because I was named after my grandfather who was an general and, so, I had been told form the day I was born that I was going to go to West Point. As evidence of how unconscious I was as a teen, it never occurred to me to question that pronouncement. Within a day of arriving in the cadet world of gray, I clearly knew that West Point and the army were not for me. But by that time I had already joined the army and (this being 1964) if you dropped out of West Point, you were shoved on the next plane to Viet Nam. That was motive enough to stick it out and graduate.

After five years in the army I got out and either had to get a job or go to grad school. So my only question was which school and to study what? It turned out that a single book — a story — made my decision for me. I read The Year of the Whale, a story of the first year of life of a young sperm whale, and fell in love with the oceans. Decision made. Even though I get violently sea sick, I went to grad school and got a doctorate in oceanography. Ironic that a story changed my life and decided my career — and I still didn’t put it together and realize the power of story or how it controlled my life.

I liked oceanography. I deeply enjoyed those in the group I led. I liked the work. But then — wham! — the power of story slammed into my mind and consciousness (see my answer to question No. 1). I could suddenly gaze back over the first 35 years of my life (I was 36 at the time) in a whole new light. I could make sense of it.

At the age of 36 I dived into the world of storytelling, feeling that I had wasted my life up to that point. But experiences are, in truth, never truly wasted. Those 17 years spent fumbling through the world of science and engineering planted analytical processes, techniques, perspectives, and approaches deeply into my being that have, in the three decades since then, allowed me to study story, storytelling, my stories, and my storytelling in ways others from more traditional storytelling backgrounds have not been able to.

For several of my books, I have studied the history of inventions and discoveries. A preponderance of the major world advances have been made by people who substantially shifted fields or areas of work, bringing the perspectives, wisdom, and techniques from one discipline to bear on a seemingly unrelated subject area. Specialization can be as much a curse as a blessing. Cross-pollinating our minds with the teachings and processes of radically different disciplines, is, I believe, a far richer avenue to greater understanding and discovery.

To specifically answer the question: Is this rambling path to storytelling of mine the best way to enter storytelling? Probably not. Countless other pathways offer strengths of their won. But, does the path I followed have advantages? Absolutely, yes. It has allowed me to tear into the form and process of story and of storytelling in a way not possible without the infusion of science methodology. It has given me a most valuable advantage.

One final note: I disagree with the final phrase of the question. Storytelling is most certainly an analytical world. Successful teller must moment-to-moment analyze and study the audience. They must analyze their technique and compare their own to that of other tellers. They must critically and ruthlessly analyze their stories and their performance of them. Without this critical, active, and continuous analysis, the teller is doomed to mediocrity at best.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Annie Hart, a participant in my Q&A series, announced today that she has launched three new blogs.

The most story-oriented seems to be Stories Change the World, “which brings forth ancient wisdom for modern times,” Annie writes. She further elaborates in her first post:

My deepest wish is to share the wisdom from the ancients — the mystics, prophets, and teachers who knew the way so long ago. I believe the time is now and that stories truly do change the world. May the stories in this blog be a modern pathway for ancient knowledge and a tribute to our elders who have held this wisdom for us until now.

The other two blogs seem as though they will be written in stories but not about stories. Breaking Through comprises “stories, insights and tools for getting unstuck and breaking through in your life, while Tales from the Love Goddess offers “the truth behind love and real relationships.” Further:

This blog is my dedication to a new way for love and relationships on this planet, featuring stories generated from personal experience, the lives of other women and the persistent urging of my niece Devon, to share these tales. Every month, one woman’s story will unfold. These may eventually become a book but, for the moment, each tale is separate and distinct.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.