If you’re interested in the connection between story and career, Herminia Ibarra is a name you need to know. I first encountered her well-known Harvard Business Review article (Ibarra, H. & Lineback, L.K. [2005] “What’s Your Story?” Harvard Business Review, January, 83 [1]: 64-71) during my dissertation research and referred … Continue reading
Yearly Archives: 2011
Unearthing Your Career Story
I am often beyond surprised by which of my blog posts gets attention and resonates with readers. My Saturday post about the Earth’s stories got some mini-buzz. But who would ever think of connecting geology with one’s career story? Apparently my colleague Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter. She has written a brilliant post … Continue reading
The Earth Is the Original Nonlinear Storyteller
The Earth is a wonderful storyteller. When we spent our first summer in Eastern Washington, I became absolutely fascinated by the diverse geology of our new locale. We live in an area that, 250 million years ago, was under the Pacific Ocean, though not far from the coastline — at … Continue reading
Stories Show Job-Seekers Care about their Job History
Gerrit Hall’s article, The Relevance of Storytelling in Your Job Search, was not exactly epiphanic for someone like me who has been immersed in job-search storytelling for several years now. But Hall did mention a rationale for job-interview storytelling that was new to me. Job-seekers who respond in story form … Continue reading
In Memory of a Visionary Storyteller
In Steve Jobs’ legendary 2008 Stanford commencement speech, which has been posted all over the virtual world since his untimely death, he says he plans to tell three stories and does so. The speech is rightly cited as a classic example of using stories in presentations. I can think of … Continue reading
Watch These Two Powerful Messages about Storytelling
Here are two resources that convey a point of view about storytelling in audiovisual fashion. My friend Karen Dietz turned me on to the 15-minute video, The Arc of Storytelling, noting: Run, don’t walk to watch this incredibly inspiring video about what we are all searching for in our storytelling. … Continue reading
Connecting Creativity and Storytelling
I’ve been interested in the relationship between creativity and storytelling since I began my experimental foray into crafts this past summer. I further explored the connection in a discussion with Annette Simmons related to her new interest in painting. I was thus recently interested in an interview Michael Margolis did … Continue reading
Newest Resource in the ‘What Is a Story?’ Conversation
My friends Karen Dietz and Lori Silverman have just developed a nice, free resource — a seven-page handout, Narrative Forms and Stories: Narrative Forms Chart, which you can download from here. The question of what is and isn’t a story has been a particularly hot topic among practitioners in the … Continue reading
When Place Take Center Stage in the Story
Novelist Jess Walter has spent most of his life in Spokane, WA, and a lot of that time wanting to leave. He expresses his ambivalence about Spokane in a cleverly written piece, “Statistical Abstract for My Hometown, Spokane, Washington,” which mixes Spokane fun facts with pathos-filled anecdotes about life in … Continue reading
Will New Facebook Profile Really Tell the Story of Our Lives?
This week saw lots of buzz over the new Facebook profile timeline, which will be rolled out to users on the 29th. I couldn’t help loving the emphasis on story, as in the tagline “Tell your life story with a new kind of profile” on Facebook’s page about Timeline. The … Continue reading