During that long hiatus when I wasn’t updating this blog because I was working on my dissertation, I got an e-mail from Dr. David Morris about his blog on marketing and storytelling.
Lots of great content there and of interest to me not only because of the self-marketing angle in my work but because my partner is also a marketing professor.
Steve Denning earlier this year began offering videos on his site. I can only hear the audio, not see the video (some sort of Mac incompatibility, I’m guessing), but he has some interesting titles, such as Who Can Be an Organizational Storyteller?
Seth Kahan this year has started a blog on collaboration: collaboratioNation, a look at how people work together across boundaries.
Michael Margolis contributed this quote from “This American Life” host Ira Glass to the Working Stories discussion group:
“The most powerful thing you can hear; and the only thing that ever persuades any of us in our own lives, is when you meet somebody whose story contradicts the thing you think you know. At that point, it’s possible to question what you know, because the authenticity of their experience is real enough to do it.”
– Ira Glass, Host, This American Life
I am quite interested in using story for persuasion, especially in connection with my research work on storytelling in the job search. Glass’s comment explains, in part, why storytelling is so effective for persuasion.
Some time ago, I noodled with the Comments feature of my blog because I was getting inundated with spam comments. I wanted to set it up so that registered users could comment, but I hoped it would not be cumbersome for them to do so.
I’m not there yet.
Two people have taken the trouble to tell me that they had difficulty commenting, including Tim Sheppard, who has a fabulous UK storytelling Web site. I hope to soon fix this feature so others won’t experience the frustration he describes. In the meantime, please be patient, and e-mail me if you’d like to comment in the meantime: kathy@astoriedcareer.com.
I was enjoying reading your Storied Career blog and wanted to make a comment, but ended up in a nightmare of dead ends. You might like to make some adjustments to your site:
Firstly I tried to post a comment to a blog entry, and was sent to TypeKey to create an account before I was allowed. After that palaver, which I almost didn’t bother to go through, I went back to your blog and was told that:
The site you’re trying to comment on has not signed up for this feature. Please inform the site owner.
In other words your blog is inviting comments after every entry but refuses to accept them – very frustrating after making all that effort just to try to post a helpful comment, but I suppose it explains why I couldn’t see any other comments on the blog site.
As instructed I then tried to inform you but couldn’t find contact details for you anywhere, and when I started following links in your ‘shameless promotion’ section I found that one website about you again had no contact details, and your PhD link is password protected so that’s not a helpful link to publicise! Finally I found another site which at last gave this email address for you. I hope the above information will help you make your sites less frustrating.
Anyway, the blog itself looks interesting so I wish you well with it.
Tim
=========================================================
Tim Sheppard England story@timsheppard.co.uk
Storyteller & Trainer
see The Storytelling FAQ at http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story
I was very close to the finish line of my dissertation when I suddenly started seeing a source pop up in virtually everything I read. It’s not like he was someone new on the scene; on the contrary, Jerome Bruner’s work is seminal in the storytelling world. As pointed out by a member of the Working Stories group, Bruner, in his Acts of Meaning suggests that stories are hard-wired into humans – that they are the primary symbolic activities that human beings employ in sense- and meaning-making. “There are certain classes of meaning to which human beings are innately tuned and for which they actively search.” Narrative, he says, organizes experience and “specializes in the forging of links between the exceptional and the ordinary.”
Odd that I didn’t come across his work till so close to the end of my research. So close in fact that I ended up not citing Bruner. I have nightmares that someone reviewing my dissertation will gasp, “I can’t believe you didn’t cite Bruner!”
This concept of people being hard-wired to think in narrative is important for my work, though, because it suggests that hiring managers are more receptive to job-search communications in narrative form.
Another member of the Working Stories group suggested a number of additional works that address narrative as a way of thinking. See those in the continuation of this entry.
Narrative as Argument in Indian Philosophy: The Astavakra Gita as Multivalent Narrative, by Scott R. Stroud. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 2004, 37(1), 42-71.
Understanding Organizations through Language by, Susanne Tietze, Laurie Cohen and Gill Musson. London: SAGE Publications, 2003. (Reviewed in Organization Studies 26(2): 311-317, 2005.)
The Resilience of Language, by Susan Goldin-Meadow. Psychology Press, 2003.
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, by Steven Pinker. HarperCollins, 2000.
The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain, by Terrence Deacon. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.
The Narrative Construction of Reality, by Jerome Bruner. Critical Inquiry, 1991, 18(1), 1-21.
Acts of Meaning, by Jerome Bruner. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press, 1990.
Pinker, S. & Bloom, P. (1990). Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13(4): 707-784.
Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action, by Walter Fisher. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 1987.
Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences, by Donald E. Polkinghorne. SUNY Press, 1988.
Culture tales: A narrative approach to thinking, cross-cultural psychology, and psychotherapy. by Howard, George S. American Psychologist. 1991 Mar 46(3) 187-197.
Thinking in Story: Preaching in a Post-Literate Age, by Richard Jensen.
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image
The online journal, Emergence: Complexity and Organization, presented a Special Double Issue: Complexity and Storytelling (Volume 7, Numbers 3 & 4, 2005) with guest editors Ken Baskin and David Boje. The journal is available by paid subscription, and individual articles are available for purchase, as well.
My dissertation is not quite out the door, but it’s complete enough so that I can get back to my poor neglected blog. I begin by sharing numerous resources from this year’s Smithsonian Associates/Golden Fleece storytelling weekend in April.
I didn’t attend this year, but much wonderful material was shared through the Working Stories discussion group.
The willingness to share these resources is a wonderful thing and a hallmark of the storytelling community.
This blog sadly has not been updated since I’ve been working
on my dissertation (to be finished soon), and comments are
strangely disabled (to be fixed soon), so with permission,
I’m posting a response to last year’s
Storytelling for College Students: Stealth or no Stealth:
I came upon your blog “A Storied Career” while researching for my workshop proposal aimed for storytellers to connect with college-aged audiences.
I am especially interested in your entry Storytelling for College Students: Stealth or no Stealth that was submitted July 3, 2005.
I started my own storytelling blog called “Voice – A Storyteller’s Lifestyle.” You can get there directly through http://www.storytellingadventures.blogspot.com“or you can go to my website and then click on “My Blog” in the upper right corner.
As for whether to use stealth or not for college students, here is my opinion –
When you teach what you normally teach, which uses storytelling, then the college students will gain an appreciation. They may not know what you are doing that is drawing them into your class. After about a couple weeks of storytelling, then you can share the importance of story. It’s easier for college students – or anyone for that matter–to understand storytelling and its importance after the experience of storytelling.
With the college scene based primarily on lectures, students are not exposed to storytelling. Let’s think about when someone learns to ride a bike. Before getting on the bike, a child had to perceive riding a bike as fun. Perhaps a neighbor kid or a sibling already knows how to ride a bike. A kid usually doesn’t walk up to a bike, a strange assortment of metal and rubber, and want to ride the bike. Only when that bike is pedalled by others will the child now have a desire to ride a bike.
Another thing to consider is that, for many people, “storytelling” has people think of children, bedtime stories and library tellings. At first, college students believe storytelling is for children. By choosing stories that fascinate this age group, the students will realize that anyone can enjoy a good story.
One way to put storytelling in their vocabulary is to show examples of “storytelling” and “storyteller” used in other settings. For example, college students respect other types of media such as movies and music. Many times critiques say that there was amazing storytelling in such-and-such a film or that this director is a fine storyteller.
Show that storytelling is something that everyone strives to have.
I look forward to hearing your comments and more of your insight on college students and storytelling.
Until we tell again,
Rachel Hedman
Professional Storyteller
Youth, Educators, and Storytellers Alliance
(801) 870-5799
mailto:rachel_hedman@us.aflac.com
http://www.rachelhedman.com
http://www.yesalliance.com
I approached January and February as a time to really get my dissertation research organized and plunge in energetically. But I’m stalled. That’s not like me. I write and research easily. Could be the time of year. I’ve always thought of the “Jan-Febs” as the most depressing time of year – that dark, cold time with seemingly so little to look forward to. Even here in Central Florida, January is our only really cold month (and truth be told, it has been unseasonably warm this year). And spring will begin to arrive in February, the season of the dreaded greenish-yellow pollen.
Being stalled on one’s dissertation is nothing new for PhD students. The trials and tribulations this ordeal are chronicled — the dissertation story told — in the blog Dissertation Hell, described as “a place to rant publicly but anonymously on the many tortures of writing a dissertation.”
Today, my school’s Institutional Research Board approved my research plan, so I can, in theory, move full speed ahead. Let’s hope….