Still Deeply in Love with A Goodman: Part 3

Posted on by

Another bit from the nice outline (by “gwennis48” at the Luther I. Replogle Foundation) of key points from the presentation that Andy Goodman delivered. I’ve blogged previously about my fondness for Goodman’s Web site and company…

To build a lasting storytelling culture in your organization, identify the organization’s core stories, Goodman advises:

To build a storytelling culture, these are the stories that you need:

  1. the “Nature of our Challenge” story
  2. the “How we Started” story
  3. the emblematic success stories
  4. stories about your people; performance stories
  5. the “Striving-to-Improve” story
  6. the “Where We Are Going” story (the future)

Also on the subject of nonprofit storytelling, Kivi Leroux Miller posts on the blog Nonprofit Communications Five Questions Nonprofits Should Answer with Stories, as well as a terrific collection of great nonprofit storytelling sources.

Storytelling for Your Health

Posted on by

Having seen a couple of bloggers note that they were telling their breast-cancer stories at a site called Trusera, I thought the site was devoted to stories about breast cancer.

I discovered, however, that it’s for stories of all kinds of health issues. Here’s how a press release on the site describes Trusera:

… a free invitation-only network of people who care about health. The site connects people who’ve “been there” to people seeking credible, relevant health information. [Trusera’s approach is to] first, invite a group of people with experience in health and wellness. Encourage them to share their experience and invite others. Second, provide the community with the tools to personalize the health information they create and receive. Enable them to control their experience through filtering, privacy controls and personalization.

When you search for stories on the site, you can enter a search topic. Popular topics seem to be: Female, Male, Autism, nutrition, cancer, fitness, parenting, yoga, diabetes, depression, research, allergies, breast cancer, and running.

In the section for telling one’s story, the prompt is: “Please tell us about one of your health passions, interests, or experiences.”

Still Deeply in Love with A Goodman: Part 2

Posted on by

Continuing my series of bits from the nice outline (by “gwennis48” at the Luther I. Replogle Foundation) of key points from the presentation that Andy Goodman delivered. I’ve blogged previously about my fondness for Goodman’s Web site and company…

To illustrate the effectiveness of stories for memory and learning, Goodman noted that when told to remember pairs of words, a group of 5-year-olds can remember one pair out of 21; if they make a sentence out of the pairs, they remember 8 of 21; if they make a question about the pairs, they remember 16 of 21. If the pair is “soap” and “shoe,” the question might be “Who put the soap in my shoe?” The research subjects remember when they ask a question because the question helps them make a story.

Still Deeply in Love with A Goodman: Part 1

Posted on by

I wrote a while back about how much I love the Web site and company, a goodman.

A blogger named “gwennis48” has blogged at Luther I. Replogle Foundation about a presentation that Andy Goodman delivered sponsored by the Washington Grantmakers and Nonprofit Roundtable. The blog posting is a really nice little outline of Goodman’s key points. I thought I’d post and comment on several of them individually.

First up, Goodman talked about storytelling to form identity.

He suggested this exercise:
When you go home tonight, list the top 10 stories that you like to tell about yourself. What do they say about you? (Are they the right ones?)

The exercise is inspired by Robert B. Reich’s book Tales of a New America in which (quoting gwennis48 here):

Reich described the four stories (he calls them parables) that have formed American life for the past 400 years. Names change over time, but the stories remain the same.

Here are Reich’s four stories:

  1. Mob At the Gate (guard against outsiders)
  2. Triumphant Individual (Horatio Alger story/American Idol story; also all the redemption stories)
  3. Benevolent Community (we will uplift the poor, heal the sick; witness the anger felt during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina)
  4. Rot at the Top (guard against corporate and political corruption)

Story as Emotional Hook in Your Resume

Posted on by

Master Resume Writer/Career Strategist Jacqui D. Barrett notes that job-seekers who do not begin telling their stories in their resumes may not get the opportunity to do so in an interview because the employer will feel no enticement from the resume.

From Barrett’s article entitled “Career Branding – What Does This Mean to Me?: The Branded Resume as an Essential Tool,” published in the E-Bridge newsletter of The Career Management Alliance:

Most resumes possess the essential elements as touted by resume-builder tipsters to construct an intro (Summary/Profile), middle (Experience), and end (Education/Development), and some include the appropriate measurements (%, $, #), but in a majority of cases, these resumes do not compel the (right) reader to call. The reader initially is interested and hopeful to digest the rest of the story, but s/he often drifts off the page, uninspired or unclear as to how this person’s message resonates with his/her specific needs.

Avoiding Me-too Resumes/Creating the Emotional Hook

In other words, one resume mimics the content, results, and “buzz” language of the next resume and the next resume . . . and next resume . . . and so on. An objection I often hear from individuals whose resumes I review, when I urge them to try my resume writing ideas, is that they don’t want to say “too much” on their resume – that they want to wait to ‘save this information to tell’ during the interview.

Unfortunately, when they do not create a hook or emotional appeal with their resume, they will not secure the opportunity to tell more of their story later. I am confident, through observing my clients’ profound results with the resumes we develop, that they can successfully build muscular content into the resume and still leave more of their story for the telling at the interview. (Trust me: most people’s stories could fill a 300-page book, so a 2-3 page resume will not threaten to exhaust their career archives.)

Followup: Storytelling in the Modern World

Posted on by

I must have deleted it since it was in the past, but at some point, I had posted about a session at the Skoll World Forum called Storytelling in the Modern World .

A couple of venues are available for those who’d like to learn what was said in the session.

There is apparently video, though I was unable to see it (Real Media Player rarely works on my Mac).

And Nick Temple has blogged about the session here, in kind of a bare-bones, outline form.

Healing Acts of Telling and Listening

Posted on by

Erin Hoover Barnett recently reported in The Oregonian on how stories of change are healing neighborhoods through the Restorative Listening Project.

Some snippets of the article that show how these stories of change can heal:

The city of Portland is using a deceptively simple technique — storytelling — to confront the complicated issue of gentrification.

And it’s bringing surprisingly powerful results.

The Restorative Listening Project, run by the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, invites blacks to tell whites how it has felt to see them move into and remake inner North and Northeast Portland — for decades, the heart of Oregon’s African American community.

Some question how storytelling can make a difference after housing prices already have forced out so many. Yet similar projects that grappled with much weightier issues — the horrors of apartheid, the Holocaust and World War II — show how the fundamental acts of telling and listening can heal… The Portland project is rooted in the principle of restorative justice: that healing starts when the sufferer can describe the harm and the listener can acknowledge it.

Barnett also quotes documentary filmmaker Ken Burns on how “stories reveal our shared humanity. Seeing what you have in common opens the door to becoming allies.” Burns says that hearing about someone with whom the listener can identify is “what storytelling is.”

Other links about this project:
City of Portland’s Restorative Gentrification Listening Project
Radio story on the project

Telling Your Story Keeps Your Brain Fit

Posted on by

Stephanie West Allen blogged about (and turned me onto) an article by John Darling about to keep our brains fit as we advance in years. One of Darling’s suggestions (quoting “Brain Fitness” teacher Lorraine Jarvi) is to write your memoirs:

If reading is stimulating, writing is stimulation tenfold. Jarvi says keep a journal, challenging yourself to explore complex topics or current events. Also, write your memoirs, which stimulates the vital part of your brain used for memory — and it’s guaranteed to have interested readers at some point down the road.

I was reminded of the recent excellent HBO series on John Adams, who lived past 90 and seemed sharp to the end (at least in the mini-series). Bored after retirement, Adams wrote his memoirs.