Svend-Erik Engh, who appeared at the 2007 Golden Fleece conference, offers guidelines (which I’ve adapted/edited below) for giving feedback when listening to stories:

There are four steps in “interactive response:”

After you hearing a story the listener should:

1. Tell about the clearest picture in the story. When the storyteller is rewarded with an clear answer, he/she feels: I heard you and you gave me something.

2. Tell about the theme of the story. What have you heard and understood from the story?

These two are closely connected, so start with 1 and 2 together and then go to:

3. Say something nice about the way the story was told

4. Ask if the response was useful

Engh says: “A task for us now is to link this experience to the world of organisations. How does this influence managers?”

In another exercise, Engh asked participants to:

Tell of a time where you heard a story that had influence on your life. That you can remember. Focus on what happened before the story was told and after. How can we make sure that our story is heard and remembered? Is there something in the preparation of the situation that reflects the impact of the story? Can you prepare the room? Is it how well you know the story? Is it remembered because it is personal ˆ that it deals with something that matters both for the listener and for the storyteller? In a business setting: Can you prepare by telling it to a colleague? Can you prepare your listener? Can you adjust the story, so it hits the listeners?

Engh is curious about finding stories in conversation. “A story connects the two sides of the brains (again: Interaction),” he says. Engh wonders whether a conversation does the same thing. “Of course a conversation is more interactive and therefore more useful than one way communication, but does it stimulate both heart and brain? And can you look at body of a person involved in a conversation and observe the translation, when the conversation changes into a story.”

Similarly, Sandor Schuman offers a procedure for Listening and Giving Feedback to Stories adapted from “Toward a Process for Critical Response” by Liz Lerman here.

An important element of the process is that the teller decides what is included in the process and when it stops. For example, the teller could opt to stop after appreciations, or anywhere else in the process, or skip any of the steps (except the first!). The teller is in control, assisted by the facilitator. All present must be active listeners for the process to work effectively.

1. Listening: Close, attentive listening that shows the teller that he/she has the listeners’ complete attention. This is evident in the listeners’ body language and facial expression that reflects the active listening process.

2. Appreciations: Appreciations can be global (I love the way you tell the story) or specific (You projected that child’s confusion so well). Listeners respond to something they heard that was special to them; particular moments that struck them; “things that popped!”

3. Teller’s Questions: This is the teller’s opportunity to ask questions of the listeners. Specific questions work better than general ones. (Was that part clear to you? What did you think of my use of _____?)

4. Listener’s Questions: The listeners ask neutral questions. Instead of saying “It’s too long,” or “That was confusing,” ask “What were you trying to accomplish in that part?” “I didn’t understand the part where ____” or “Why was the mother so angry?”

5. Suggestions: Suggestions are not critiques or criticisms. They offer an idea the teller might want to try. Most importantly, all suggestions must be positive. For example, “I have a suggestion on a direction you could go in, would you like to hear it?” or “Have you thought of _____?” The teller has the option of saying yes, no, or later. The teller decides which to accept, reject, or save for later consideration.

6. Subject Matter Discussions: Sometimes the subject of the work is such that responders want to get into a discussion about its content. This is also a place for personal stories, memories, or feelings that may have come up for a listener.

[ Disclaimer: Some of these books I’ve read and some I haven’t. I announce books about storytelling that look interesting. ]

The Amazon description of this book, primarily about public speaking, says it “will show you how to express the full range of the magnificence within you as you learn to tell a better story – one that uplifts and changes the world, one life at a time-and step into your destiny as a transformational speaker.”

Sometimes we just don’t know how to get started in telling our stories. Here’s a book that can help.

Last year when I was going through a difficult time in my life, I got a lot of help from Louise Hay’s book, You Can Heal Your Life. I haven’t yet read the book pictured above, but the publisher’s description sounds promising:

The true experiences that are featured in this book, introduced by best-selling author Louise L. Hay, have been culled from the writings of some of the most renowned writers and teachers in the fields of self-help, transformation, social consciousness, and spirituality. These are stories reflecting metaphysical miracles; momentous milestones; heartwarming, humorous, and sometimes heartbreaking reminiscences; and extraordinarily poignant personal accounts.

Shari Caudron is the author of Who Are You People?: A Personal Journey into the Heart of Fanatical Passion in America, which present stories of “rabid devotion – from Barbie collecting to ice fishing” (Entertainment Weekly). She also blogs a bit at Storylines.

2007’s Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins is not exactly hot off the presses, but is certainly worth noting, as is anything Annette Simmons touches. I bought but have not read this book; however, it is reminiscent of Simmons’s composition book I wrote about in this blog’s first year, and I suspect the composition book morphed into this volume.

Simmons has also developed a seminar for the American Management Association Storytelling: How to Lead and Inspire Through the Use of Stories being offered eight times in 2008 in various locations.

In a recent entry, I mused about whether pictures or words do a better job of telling a story. I’m seeing more and more in the storytelling realm about digital storytelling, and while I think that some aspects of digital narrative are a bit far afield from my interests in this blog, others – like the convergence of social media and storytelling as a way of constructing identity – are closely related to the topics I want to cover here, and I’ll be delving more into these areas in the coming weeks.

But just as a stunning example of what’s possible in the digital storytelling realm is the incredible series, The Whale Hunt by Jonathan Harris, who took photos at least every 5 minutes for the week of the tale, and then created what my grade-school bud Jeff Jarvis called “a stunning interface to display his 3,214 photos.” Stunning is right. This is the kind of visual display that makes you feel old because you could never imagine technology that would make this kind of storytelling possible. Jarvis, of Buzz Machine, wrote that he was undecided about the form.

I’m in awe of it. It shows us in a breathtaking way the power of digital storytelling. (Though I admit I didn’t go through all 3,214 photos).

Here’s what creator Harris said his purpose was in creating the story:

First, to experiment with a new interface for human storytelling. The photographs are presented in a framework that tells the moment-to-moment story of the whale hunt. The full sequence of images is represented as a medical heartbeat graph along the bottom edge of the screen, its magnitude at each point indicating the photographic frequency (and thus the level of excitement) at that moment in time. A series of filters can be used to restrict this heartbeat timeline, isolating the many sub stories occurring within the larger narrative (the story of blood, the story of the captain, the story of the arctic ocean, etc.). Each viewer will experience the whale hunt narrative differently, and not necessarily in a linear fashion, constructing his or her own understanding of the experience.

The Transformative Language Arts (TLA) Network, focused on networking and right livelihood for those who use the written, spoken and sung word for social change and personal growth, holds a conference September 12-15, 2008, at Goddard College, Plainfield, VT.

The organization also offers a book called The Power of Words.

• • Storytelling … is one of the most powerful tools for achieving astonishing results. For the leader, storyelling is action oriented – a force for turning dreams into goals and then into results.– Peter Guber in Harvard Business Review
  • Storytelling is an amazing tool because it is holistic, engaging the whole person. It makes it possible for people to bring all their resources, head and heart, to bear on creating new solutions.
    – Seth Kahan, in an article by Sue Dancy

Words are how we think; stories are how we link.”
– Christina Baldwin

Decision-makers look for the most compelling story from their persona library of possible solutions, comparing each to the current solution.
– Gary Klein, Sources of Power

• • Leaders achieve effectiveness largely through the stories they relate … Stories must in some way help audience members to think through who they are … and frame future options.
    – Howard Grdner, Leading Minds
  • The biggest stories anyone has ever told are all held in people’s live.
    – Prof Hamish Fyfe, University of Glamorgan
  • There are more truths in twenty- four hours of a person’s life than in all the philosophies.
    – Raoul Vaneigem in The Revolution of Everyday Life
  • A leader’s job is to create stories that are worth believing.”

– Austin Hill of Billions with Zero Knowledge

• It seems to me that every community has a memory of itself. Not a history, or an archive or an authoritative record…a living memory, an awareness of a collective identity which is woven from a thousand stories. The sum of these stories creates a meta-narrative that is far greater than the sum of its constituent parts.
  – Prof Hamish Fyfe, University of Glamorgan
• “We are made of stories. Stories contain power. People don’t just tell stories. Stories tell us who we are and how to live.”
  – James Ball, formerly with Fox TV and ABC and now with smartMemes
• “Unsung, the noblest deed will die.” – Pindar, 500 BC
• ““Storytellers help us process our lives.” – Abbott Joseph
• “Stories are a powerful medium for creating and making meaning. Because leadership means, in part, making sense of the variety of often complex and ambiguous experiences, stories can help us. Stories communicate deeply held individual and organizational values. Listening to the stories.. is like reading the maps that guide our thoughts and behaviors. Stories reinforce culture. One important task is telling stories about our history. We learn from the mistakes of the past and better understand the present and where we want to go in the future. Stories promote the weaving together of leadership, spirit, and community, generating new energy and vitality.” – Russ S Moxley
• “Looking at humans from an evolutionary psychology viewpoint may explain why telling and recording stories is becoming an important part of formal knowledge management and learning strategies within many organizations. Telling and listening to stories has been at the very core of human communication since the dawn of time. As technology has advanced, our stories are now more likely to come from books, television, film, and the Internet, rather than from fellow tribe members seated around a campfire. But, stories still remain central to human life.” – Richard Nantel
• “The lessons we take from the stories become part of us.” – Sandra J. Sucher
• “Storytellers will be the most valued workers in the 21st century. All professionals, including advertisers, teachers, entrepreneurs, politicians, athletes and religious leaders, will be valued for their ability to create stories that will captivate their audiences.” – Futurist Rolf Jensen, Director of the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies
• “Without air, our cells die. Without stories, ourselves die. … Because a story evokes both visual image and emotion, it is likely to be remembered.” Sandra Morgan and Robert Dennehy
• “We are always telling stories; our lives are surrounded by our own stories and those of other people. We see everything that happens to us in terms of these stories, as we sometimes try to lead our lives as if we were recounting them.” – Jean Paul Sartre
• For a huge collection of story quotes, see this article on Storyteller.net.
• “Stories are a natural stimulant. They are the antidote to boredom and indifference.” – Lori Silverman, author of Wake Me When the Data Is Over
• “Stories are best shared, don’t you think?” – Dandelife Web site
• “We create meaning by telling ourselves stories. Storytelling is the DNA of all communication and meaning.” – Annette Simmons quoted on One Thousand and One Web site
• “If your goal is to educate, persuade, or simply connect in a meaningful way with a particular audience, storytelling is the single most powerful communications tool available to you.” – a goodman Web site
• “Our Selves are nothing but cross-sections of stories. Our identities are created by a vast web of stories, as is out relationship with reality. We understand and identify things by placing them in stories we tell about them: just like selves, things do not really exist outside of stories.” – Stefan Snaevarr in Philosophy Now magazine
• “What do people get from … stories? Some pick up bits of wisdom they can apply to their own work—do’s and don’t’s of planning and design, maybe a technical insight that helps solve a problem. Some are inspired by stories of success. Most gain a greater sense of connection with the organization, because they hear about what colleagues have been doing, because the stories express values and aims that tellers and listeners share, and because they are participating in a communal experience. I believe building trust and relationships is a more important effect of organizational storytelling than knowledge transfer.” – Don Cohen on Babsonknowledge.org
• “Telling our story, and sharing the meaning we find in our life, also helps to connect more to the human community. By sharing our story, we find that we have a lot more in common with others than we might have thought. This sharing of stories creates a bond between people who may not even have known each other before. After sharing, or listening to, a life story, a connection is established that remains even if we don’t see the other person again. … We discover in the process of telling our life stories that we are more sacred beings than we are human beings. A life story is really a story of the soul of a person.” – Robert Atkinson in The Gift of Stories: Practical and Spiritual Applications of Autobiography, Life Stories, and Personal Mythmaking

The Department of History of Art and Architecture of University of Pittsburgh in collaboration with the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Film Studies Department announces the 2008 edition of its graduate student symposium.

The topic of the forthcoming event is “Storytelling: Playful Interactions and Spaces of Imagination in Contemporary Visual Culture.” The symposium is scheduled for October 10-12, 2008 and it will tie in with some of the thematics of Life on Mars, the 55th Carnegie International (CI08), a world-renowned triennial exhibition organized by the Carnegie Museum of Art.

The symposium will feature prestigious keynote speakers. In conjunction with it, the Carnegie Museum of Art will organize University Night, a special event including vibrant gallery and social activities to which one of the artists in the 55th Carnegie International will be invited to give a talk. More information here and call for papers (due March 17) here.