You’re More Convincing When You Tell Your Own Story

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A couple of posted items talk about the value of telling your own story.

a goodman’s wonderful newsletter, Free Range Thinking, tells of Dr. David Olds, founder of the Nurse-Family Partnership, which sends nurses into the home of low-income first-time mothers. As ambassador of the program, Dr. Olds was often called on to speak about it but reluctant to tell his own story of why he founded the organization (he had seen the effects in a daycare center on children for whom many problems could have been averted with early intervention).

Once Dr. Olds learned to tell his own story, he said, “Telling my story allowed my own sense of purpose and emotion to get communicated in the context of the presentation. As a result, I was a much more persuasive speaker.”

Similarly, Karen Hegmann, as quoted by Neil Davey, talks about George Cohon of McDonald’s and how he “used his history of how he got to where he was to help his employees connect with the company, to give them that sense of history.” Bringing the personal into a company history resonates because of employees’ ability to identify with the class archetypes of “the hero/leader, the obstacle that the hero has to face, and the antagonist that is trying to take over the organisation.”

Interesting Uses of Storytelling

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I frequently come across uses of storytelling that are tangential to my direct interests but are interesting nonetheless – uses I probably would not have thought of, though they certainly don’t surprise me. Here are a few:

    • Software development has the “user story,” defined as “a very high-level definition of a requirement, containing just enough information so that the developers can produce a reasonable estimate of the effort to implement it.” See Agile Modeling User Stories
    • Similarly, software testing: Karen Johnson posts fascinating reflection on how storytelling might be applied to software testing, excerpted here:

      I felt surrounded by facts, stacks and stacks of facts. How many builds did we have before we shipped? How many defects have been found? On and on with the facts and metrics. I think the American culture is a bit obsessed with facts too – the daily paper is loaded with useful facts and stats like the stock market and sports page. The paper is also loaded with bizarre facts that I don’t know what to do with (like the first octopus with 6 legs was just found) fabulous but what am I supposed to do with this information? Facts roll out of my mind quickly, I don’t retain them. It’s like reading about the national deficit – interesting isn’t it that the larger the number the less meaning it seems to have and that without meaning the information doesn’t stick? I’ve grown restless with facts. My analytical brain has been saturated… I think part of me wanted to hear the stories I was missing, I missed the connection to the gory tales and details of the bugs.

    • There’s a huge amount of discussion about storytelling in games, especially videogames, which I find a little amusing because I love storytelling but loathe and detest games. An interesting discussion on the subject appears here. In the blog Man Bytes Blog, “Corvus” notes that “modern card games have very deep storytelling roots.” He or she goes on to discuss the custom deck for Renown, a game that is played within Corvus’s storyworld: “I wanted to design a deck that had deep cultural significance (within the storyworld) and that could be used for multiple purposes within the context of my games.” I don’t pretend to understand Corvus, but despite my loathing of games, I am intrigued. In the blog, Digital Worlds – Interactive Media and Game Design, Tony Hirst (I think) discusses the “argument between narratologists and ludologists on the role of story in games,” addressing the question: “Do Game Players Tell, or Create, Stories?”
    • In a similar vein, Archetype Storytelling Cards are available for “develop[ing] fascinating situations, random traits or even entire characters for your games and stories. Inspired by the Tarot, these lavishly illustrated cards embody universal concepts found in every person, object or situation you might encounter.”
      Artist Joe Costello creates “Sandstory,” which he describes this way: “Sand scattered on a light box is formed and reformed into ever changing shapes and images that tell visually powerful stories.” More here.

  • Hip-hop music. I don’t follow hip-hop at all, but at the blog Stuntin’ on Prose, “Hugh” says: “My favorite element of hip-hop is storytelling. Over the years I’ve heard countless tracks where the emcee paints a vivid picture giving us characters, a plot and even sometimes a twist ending.” He goes on to list his 10 favorite storytelling hip-hop tracks.
  • Proposal writing. Mike Brotherton’s blog entry about using story in astronomy proposals reminds me of Robert S. Frey, who was a wonderful resource for my dissertation. A highly successful proposal writer, Frey has an article about using story in writing proposals (the PDF version no longer seems to be available, but the HTML version is here.)

Stories of How People Score the Coolest Jobs

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Each chapter of Alexandra Levit’s new book, How’d You Score That Gig?, opens with a snippet of a story from someone in an interesting career. Levit then weaves the stories of several people who share each career (60 in total are profiled) throughout the chapter. Sidebar quotes from some of these folks in cool careers add to the narrative. The Web page for the book states:

On the college recruiting scene, the story is always the same. Despite a major that you thought was going to prepare you for a career in the real world, by the time you’re a senior you still have no idea what you want to do with your life. You visit the campus career center and are introduced to a bevy of consulting and banking firms, Fortune 500 staples, and advertising and public relations agencies that employ the “creative” types. You don’t want to go to graduate school right away and might not know what to go to graduate school for, so you interview for these jobs and inevitably accept one.

But what if there was another way? HOW’D YOU SCORE THAT GIG? features 60 cool jobs, divided into seven categories based on the broad personality types that are generally best-suited to those jobs. Author Alexandra Levit selected the cool jobs via an online survey in which she asked nearly 500 twenty and thirty-somethings to tell her about their dream careers. Based on the responses, she generated a list of the top 60 careers and constructed a comprehensive profile of each using the information she gathered from written sources and in-depth interviews with more than 100 real-world individuals currently holding the jobs.

Then, Levit researched various personality type measures to develop her seven “passion profiles” – adventurer, creator, data-head, entrepreneur, investigator, networker, and nurturer. Which one are you? Take the quiz at the beginning of the book to find out!

Mini-stories from the book also appear on the Web site. Levit has started a Facebook page for the book.

Gearing Up for Mother’s Day with “Mom-oirs” and True Mom Confessions

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True Mom Confessions is:

… a place where women [can] confess their fears, frailties and fantasies … without any risk of judgment or consequence. … We provided a simple platform, and now mothers from around the globe add their voices to the ever-evolving conversation about what motherhood really is …. not what it should be.

The site has also teamed up with Smith Magazine for a contest of 6-word Momoirs.

Stories for Change

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One of my most significant storytelling interests is the idea of using stories to spark change. That’s the concept behind the site Stories for Change, described this way:

Stories for Change aims to connect and extend the network of workshop facilitators and organizations that have come together in community-based digital storytelling workshops. The site provides a space for members and visitors to share their favorite curriculum ideas, post the stories they create, and engage in meaningful conversations around the stories they watch. The power of community digital storytelling workshops rests in their ability to inspire, connect, and incite action within and between local groups; the goal of Stories for Change is to further nurture that spirit online.

The site provides the opportunity to upload digital stories (216 populate the site at this writing) and has a nice Resources section, featuring Articles, Case Studies, Curricula, Links, Methodology, Presentations, and Tutorials. Forums on the site enable visitors to discuss the site and various aspects of digital storytelling for change. Digital storytelling events also are listed.

Situation, Action, Results Stories in Branding

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Came across a fantastic article by Ray George on brandchannel.com about how and why stories work in branding.

George kicks off the article by declaring: “If brands are an experience, then stories are an effective way to describe this experience to others.” He adds:

Brands are also a balance between left brain and right brain thinking—they combine functional, rational aspects of the category (left brain) with a more emotional connection (right brain).

He compares two example organizational stories – one a vague a platitude-filled bit typical of what most organizations tell, the second a specific story that shows (instead of telling), the brand story the organization wants to convey.

Moving on to what makes a good story, George cites the common formula, Situation –≥ Action –> Results, which interestingly, is also a frequently recommended formula for job-interview and other job-search stories.

Thus, it becomes interested to apply George’s concepts to personal branding. For each of the Situation –≥ Action –> Results (SAR) components, he offers these criteria:

Situation should be significant and specific.
Action should be brand-relevant and authentic.
Results should be both rational and emotional.

Let’s analyze a job-interview response story from my book, Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers, to see how these criteria apply:

Situation: Recently my firm was facing a huge turnover problem, especially in our technical staff because of lack of growth within the organization. No defined path was shared with the employees. To address the situation, I not only had a huge task of defining grades and identifying and compartmentalizing our employees’ growth needs but also a race against time.

George notes that the protagonist of the story, in this case the job-seeker, should hold some significance to the audience, in this case the interviewer. In this case, the candidate is interviewing for a position in human resources and has described s situation significant for an employer hiring an HR pro. George also asserts that the story must be specific, and here the job-seeker has detailed a very specific situation.

Action: I knew the tasks would be time consuming, but I set a deadline for each piece. I aggressively collected information on the employee growth needs by sending questionnaires via emails and reaching out to the workforce. I compiled the data and determined short-term and long-term achievable goals. I developed a small-projects subset of the bigger project. I designed a system so that we could track each other’s project and meet every day. The most prominent finding was lack of challenge at work. I decided to implement a leadership program, effectively identifying the top 10 to 25 percent of workers suitable for the program based on the performance reviews, peer-reviews, and qualifications. I set an aggressive target of 15 days each for each zone to complete this part of the survey.

George says that the action must be brand-relevant, summarizing key tenets of the brand. In the job-search situation, brand-relevant means summarizing key skills that comprise the personal brand. In the action segment above, the candidate has described his brand-relevant skills of goal-setting, organization, and innovation, among others.

George also notes that the action taken must be authentic – something that the audience can relate to. The candidate’s description rings true to what a good HR manager can do in this situation.

Result: I met the deadlines, and by the end of a second month, we were ready with the budget for the training program, targeted pilot training group, location, and a trainer selected. We rolled out our first training on effective leadership, and by the end of the quarter, data showed that employees were now engaged and challenged. As a result, turnover was cut in half.

George offers the interesting dichotomy that the result should be both rational and emotional. Rational results are often quantified; in this case, the candidate reduced turnover by half. The emotional element is that employees were now engaged and challenged.

One Million Children

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Gospel Light Worldwide wanted to tell the story of what it does “in a very real, engaging way.” The organization enlisted Nims Media for its concept of creating a film around the children in the field who are using the GLW Bible-study curriculum. They made a film about “children who have found hope in Christ, adults who have devoted their lives to sharing the love of Jesus with children in their community.”

I am neutral about the the group’s mission but enthralled with the storytelling images on its Web site. You can go to this part of the site and click on beautifully produced clips of children worldwide. There is also a lovely photo gallery.

An interesting tie-in with storytelling is the children’s understanding of Bible stories.

Fun Story Prompt Presented in a Cool Way

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I love the way blogger Michelle Panik O’Neill presented the story prompt she learned about at a workshop. If you go to this blog entry, you’ll the see the above image, which you can click on to get an image big enough to read – a photo of a blog entry as a piece of paper in a typewriter. I found the prompt – about a button – charming as well.

A Snapshot of Organizational and Applied Storytelling Worldwide

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Just about a year ago, Michael Margolis, Madelyn Blair, and Karen Dietz of the WorkingStories group surveyed member story practitioners to compile a collective picture of organizational and applied storytelling worldwide.

Although the results have yet to be formally analyzed, Michael has given me permission to share a preliminary snapshot here.

The survey’s purpose was to ask…

    • • What is the evolving state of the field (of applied/organizational storytelling)?
    • • Where do we each come from, and what do we share in common?
    • • What issues/challenges might we want to organize around?

One-hundred-fifteen respondents from 10 countries around the world (Australia, Canada, Denmark, India, Israel, Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, United States, and United Kingdom) completed the survey.

Most (57 percent) respondents are independent solo practitioners, with 24 percent claiming 2-10 employees, 6 percent with 11-50 employees, and 12.5 percent with larger enterprises of 100+ staff.

Key highlights from the quantitative portion of the survey:

Story practitioners prefer to describe themselves in their own words. When asked what best described your professional affiliation, the “other” category was filled to overflowing. Throughout the survey, a consistent ~ 20 percent expressed their ideas by using the “other” category.

Story is most often at the core of respondents’ work. 45 percent use story as a core tool or technique. 30% use story as a support tool or technique, and 21 percent use story as an organizing principle.

While still an emerging field, a body of core practitioners is established. Of survey respondents, 56 percent of story practitioners have been in business for 10 or more years, and 48 percent have used story in their practice for more than 10 years.

Services are delivered and packaged in a range of formats. 74 percent provide workshops/training, 68 percent are professional speakers, 66 percent deliver consulting, 59 percent facilitate, 57 percent write, and 53 percent serve as coaches.

Culture is the most frequently mentioned application of story work. 68 percent apply story in culture work. This was followed by 55 percent applying story to training and 53 percent to change management. Conflict resolution, education, leadership development, and organizational development each came in respectively at 48 percent.

Story practitioners see results from their use of story. 74 percent reported that the results of their story work were “clarity and focus” and “strengthened relationships.” 63 percent reported that a sense of unity was another derivative effect.

Knowledge sharing and collaboration head the activities that would motivate respondents to join and actively participate in an association focused on organizational storytelling showed (reported are the responses for “really motivates me” and “somewhat motivates me”):

Collaborating and sharing knowledge: 91 percent
Being part of a community: 84 percent
Gaining credibility/legitimacy for the field: 73 percent
Accessing forums/conferences/convenings: 72 percent
Finding new business: 71 percent
Sponsoring group research: 42 percent

A New Kind of Storytelling Resume

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I have for the past several years sought out the elusive “storytelling resume.” Is it a version of the traditional resume, as I write about in my book? Is it a blog, as I’ve written about before, most recently here? Is it a social-media resume, as I’ve written about here? Several career professionals have told me they create story resumes, but their examples never seem to quite what I envision a storytelling resume to be (even though I’m still not quite sure what that vision is).

Perhaps the storytelling resume is like the snazzy, multimedia creations being touted by the site VisualCV, now in beta testing. These “documents” (and I hate to use that term because it suggests something static) can contain photographs, charts and graphs, video, audio clips, and additional documents (such as letters of recommendation or examples of your work).

The VisualCV of Kristen Wright, part of which is pictured above, includes a video clip of Kristen that helps you get to know her better, little mouseover popups about her employers and schools she attended, a bar graph showing her performance (that enlarges when you mouse over it), and downloadable PDFs that include samples of her work and letters of recommendation, all presented in an eye-catching and appealing design.

I’m still not sure if VisualCV is THE storytelling resume, but it tells more of the job-seeker’s story than most I’ve seen.

When you go to the site, wait a few moments for the little Flash “commercial” to run, and then you can see a bunch of VisualCV samples that you can browse through.

Neat concept. I’ll probably try it and report on my experience.