“You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not.” — Isabel Allende Courtesy of my partner, Randall. And Isabel Allende, of course.
Author Archives: KatHansen
Blogging about an iPod-delivered Audiobook on Blogging
I’m winding up a 13-day trip for my PhD program, during which I wanted to make blog entries every day, but I always had more pressing obligations. On my drive from VA to NH, I listened to an audiobook by Hugh Hewitt on blogging. I think that blogging about the … Continue reading
Telling Their Narratives Helps Women Gain Self-Understanding
I came across another fascinating piece that relates story to career, in this case the careers of women. Teresa J. Carter conducted a heuristic study in which she was co-researcher with 10 women. She interviewed them and also had them keep journals. Here’s the reference followed by the story-related excerpt:
Carter, T. J. (2002). The importance of talk to midcareer women’s development: A collaborative inquiry. The Journal of Business Communication, 39(1), p. 55+.
Telling their stories to me in narrative format through our conversations and through their journal entries became the means of re-framing identities and gaining self-understanding. Continue reading
Blogging Newbie
Visitors can probably tell that I’m a total blogging newbie. I think of myself as somewhat tech savvy for someone of my age, but there’s a lot to learn about publishing a blog — a whole new vocabulary. RSS, pinging, trackback, CSS, XML. I have been keeping a quasi-blog for … Continue reading
A Career of Telling the Stories of Others: Save a Life — In a Story
Recently I received an e-mail from Marcia Duffy, who is a personal historian. I find that a fascinating way to make a living, and it’s related to my interest in story and career. Here’s her story of telling the stories of others:
By Marcia Passos Duffy
So many people keep meaning to interview their parents or grandparents — and capture all those entertaining and enlightening family stories. But most people never get around to it, and put it off until it is too late and the storyteller has died or is too sick to tell stories anymore.
This was the case with me. My grandmother died two years ago at the age of 94. She was born in Portugal and immigrated twice — to Brazil then to the United States where she lived with my parents for 30 years — and many stories to tell of her adventures. I was very close with my grandmother, who came to live with us when I was 12. She was a skilled, animated storyteller — as are many people of her generation. Continue reading
Now That’s What I’m Talkin’ About…
Here are a some articles/blog entries that embody some of what my work is about — connecting story to career: A one-minute story may be key to a storied career by Penelope Trunk, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 7, 2003 Multi-Story Resume, Higher Profile, author unknown Is your resume telling a compelling … Continue reading
Story/Narrative in Career Counseling
My preliminary literature review for my dissertation touches on using story/narrative in career counseling, but while working on an assignment (from which this entry is adapted) for a class I’m taking through Capella University (Strategies for Career and Life Planning), I was quite surprised to discover several articles on that topic that I hadn’t seen before. “How could I have missed these?” I asked myself — and then I realized that it was because this area of career counseling is so emergent that these articles hadn’t even been published when I was first conducting my bibliographic searches. Continue reading
“Heavy Hitters” of Organizational Storytelling at Washington, DC, Conference, Part III
The second day of the April 2005 weekend of storytelling was sponsored by the Golden Fleece group. Keynote speaker Molly Catron, speaking on “Difficult Stories to Simulate Dialogue and Change Organizations’ Culture,” was a hoot. Though she didn’t get to talk about many of them because she told so many … Continue reading
“Heavy Hitters” of Organizational Storytelling at Washington, DC, Conference, Part II
The highlight of the Smithsonian portion of the conference for me was Annette Simmons, author of The Story Factor. Annette offers all kinds of great downloadable stuff on storytelling and her other areas of expertise at her Web site. These storytelling folks are all about giving away their knowledge — knowing that it makes us listeners even more likely to buy their books and such. Shades of Oprah, at the end of her presentation, Annette gave the whole audience a partially completed version of a CD she plans to sell in the fall. Her hope was that audience members would review it and give her suggestions.
I had communicated with Annette about my dissertation and quoted her in my proposal, and she was nothing like I imagined she would be based on “talking” by e-mail, reading her book, and checking out her Web site. She’s a fabulous speaker — funny, genuine, and just a pleasure to listen to. Continue reading
“Heavy Hitters” of Organizational Storytelling at Washington, DC, Conference, Part I
The first, sponsored by Smithsonian Associates and titled Storytelling for Organizational Success, was kicked off by Steve Denning, the prolific organizational storytelling guru and author, whose newest book is The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative. Here also is Steve’s blog.
The theme for the day’s conference was Narrative in Marketing, Branding, Public Relations and Partnerships, relevant to me because a major part of my PhD program focuses on using storytelling for personal branding for organizational entry and career success. A quick summary of Denning’s presentation follows, but he says it best himself in his slide presentation Continue reading