See a photo of Diane, her bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A.

Q&A with Diane Wyzga, Question 2:

Q: To what extent and in what ways has your background as an RN contributed to your story work?

A: What a great question! Critical listening began at the bedside, in the emergency room, in the out patient clinic. Nurses hold the space for patients and families to tell their stories. I worked as a pediatric nurse, so I had to learn to employ a lot more whole-body listening to understand what was said between the lines. A child could tell you they were not hurting — so they could appear brave — but one look at the clenched face told another story.

For many years I had to listen stories out of patients, parents, siblings, and families. Some spoke English, others did not. Some were in this country legally, others were not. There were cultures and customs to learn. I recall taking care of a child who was a high-ranking member of a gypsy family. The family and its king camped out on the grounds of the hospital. Try understanding that story.

With this nursing background, I was primed to learn from someone like Doug Lipman who taught me that the teller knows the story they need to tell provided someone can listen it out of them. With my experience I am in a better place to help my clients identify, shape and effectively deliver the story they need to tell.

Indeed, listening carries over to focus group research, mock trials, and jury selection. Lawyers want to attend to the literal words someone uses to respond to a question. In truth, the real answer is revealed in metaphors, intention, tone of voice, comparisons, experiences and the like. The more adept we are at listening to how they said what they said, the better we can hear what is being said and why.

My introduction to Diane Wyzga was several years ago through Stephanie West Allen, who had published an insightful interview with Diane on her blog. Diane asked not long ago to participate in my Q&A series, and I was delighted to welcome her to the fold. The Q&A will run over the next several days.

Bio: [from Diane’s blog]: Diane F. Wyzga, RN, JD, and professionally trained storyteller has become nationally known as an experienced litigation consultant for her work using the principles and techniques of storytelling to persuade, inspire, and guide as a key trial strategy. Skillful use of narrative creates meaning for the decision-maker to relate a stranger’s case to their own experience.

Diane’s clients effectively employ storytelling principles to identify and develop the legal case story that will guide them through discovery, help strategize the trial presentation from voir dire through closing arguments, and influence decision-makers far beyond the reach of any PowerPoint presentation. How does this work? Using language with power, passion and precision any skillful lawyer can translate case images into compelling themes and desired verdict action.

Lightning Rod Communications is affiliated with other nationally recognized litigation and jury consultants to provide a broad spectrum of litigation consulting services for our clients. Diane’s specialties are legal communications, focus group research, and precisely identifying the trial story that needs to be told for verdict or ADR success.

Diane has authored many articles on storytelling and legal storytelling for such diverse publications as The Warrior, The Jury Expert, Diving in the Moon, TRIAL, The American Association for Justice, and Trial Talk (for Colorado Lawyers), as well as having contributed to number of professional texts for lawyers.

All of that seems easy enough. At least in hindsight. This current effort to join the blogosphere is driven by a desire to identify the larger, more universally themed stories we tell. Humans are ‘homo narrans’ grounded in stories and the telling of stories to relate and understand each other. I want to know: What are the stories we are telling? For what purpose and uses? And what are the words we use to express the emotional meaning of those stories?

When not helping lawyers identify, shape and effectively deliver the stories they need to tell for their clients, Diane is actively engaged as a Lady Beewrangler managing her own apiary, paddleboarding and kayaking.

Q&A with Diane Wyzga, Question 1:

Q: Your specific niche of legal storytelling is unique. This field seems to be fairly well established and growing; for example, a Google search reveals conferences, publications, and consulting practices. Can you talk about the evolution of the profession from the time you entered it to today? Were you a pioneer, or was it already well established when you entered? What changes have you seen?

A: I believe I was a pioneer bringing storytelling skills, techniques and principles to the legal profession. Prior to my coming on the scene, actors like Katherine James and Alan Blumenfeld of Act of Communication were teaching lawyers “platform” skills to engage the listener in the theater of the courtroom.

With Lightning Rod Communications I set out to go where I was needed but not wanted and leave when I was wanted but not needed. As an experienced trial attorney shared with me, “We need stories and we need to know how to persuade with stories. Yet, we ‘diss’ storytelling at the same time we secretly crave it.” I thought this was a pretty vulnerable statement to make.

Lawyers who helped show me the way to be of use to lawyers are those who call themselves “Warriors” after graduating from Jerry Spence’s Trial Lawyers College. They “get” the purpose and value of storytelling more than many of their peers. Why? As one of them told me, “The college is all about doing an archeological dig on yourself to clear away all the debris and artifice that stands between you and an open, authentic conversation with another human being.”

Has story work expanded in the legal field? Yes and no. Yes, there are articles on bringing your case to life with storytelling; however, they tend to be a rehash of Robert McKee’s work [Story: Substance, Structure, Style and Principles of Screenwriting] telling the lawyer what to do not how to do it. I believe that you have to stand and deliver your work, not just read about it.

My own work evolved from teaching storytelling skills to the larger world of story techniques and principles. For example, now I teach and speak nationally on applying storytelling to the whole of legal discourse from writing briefs to alternative dispute resolution to witness preparation to courtroom trials. One of my workshops is “Trial Blueprints.” I show the lawyers what a case looked like before and after the use of storytelling principles to identify, shape and deliver the trial story. Then we apply the same techniques to their trial stories by emphasizing two things: (1) critical listening, and (2) the story equation: “content + context + value = emotionally meaningful story” so they can tell their client’s story with power, passion and precision.

My experience has shown me that story and litigation are still at an uneasy fit. Granted, this is a complex time for litigators. They are under siege on many fronts not the least of which is the “Googling-Tweeting-Texting Juror”. But to gain traction in the human arena that hears cases, we still have a very long way to go to push back what has become a reversion to the familiar terrain of fact-based structure. Following a current model, lawyers are using reactive brain to frighten, not reflective mind to enlighten. By staying tied to a rehash of a familiar model lawyers are short-changing themselves and decision-makers.

More so than in any other profession it seems that some judges and lawyers still believe that the storytelling concept, while crucial, is so far outside their frame of reference, skill set, comfort zone, and experience that it seems little more than a luxury with little value. If we do not learn the effects of story and practice its uses when we speak to decision-makers, we have lost the singular opportunity to get the action we desire.

Many lawyers still want to talk about the facts of what happened but not why or how an event happened. Facts are necessary. Facts get the case evidence-proofed; but only a heartfelt story artfully told will get it decision-maker proofed.

I am encouraged by efforts such as those at Sturm College of Law inviting practitioners to explore the role of narrative in both law practice and law teaching to develop uses for narrative as a tool of persuasion. Another example of the growing use of story in the legal profession is Gordon Johnson and TBI Voices to educate the public about the many mysteries of traumatic brain injury. Finally, there are many legal voices in alternative dispute resolution — such as J. Kim Wright, author of bestseller, Lawyers as Peacemakers, Practicing Holistic, Problem-Solving Law (ABA, 2010) — who are relying on storytelling principles to find successful solutions to human problems.

See a photo of Mary, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Q&A with Mary Daniels Brown, Question 5:

Q: What has been your favorite or most meaningful project or initiative relating to life stories/narrative identity theory and why?

A: I loved working on my dissertation, which was about the life stories of five women who graduated from medical school between 1849 and 1905. Because these were some of the first women to train and then practice as professional physicians, they had no books to read about how to do this. They all wrote the book as they went along. Although they took somewhat different approaches to their work, they all faced the challenge of reconciling their life choice with a culture that was initially opposed to education and professional work for women.

Doing the individual analyses of the five life stories was fascinating, but even more exciting to me was the overall cultural progression of the stories throughout the latter half of the 19th century. The first two were very strong women who faced almost universal disapproval of their chosen life work. But by the end of the century, because the earlier women had provided a model, more women began to train as physicians and to document their own journey. As a result, the role of woman physician gradually became more acceptable to society.

People generally choose their life story from the plot lines that their culture makes available to them, and all of these women contributed to making life as a woman physician a possible choice for girls. In this way life stories, which are always rooted in a particular cultural context, can lead to social change.

See a photo of Mary, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, and Part 3.

Q&A with Mary Daniels Brown, Question 4:

Q: What people or entities have been most influential to you in your story work and why?

A: Daniel Taylor’s book, Tell Me a Story: The Life-Shaping Power of Our Stories (Bog Walk Press, 2001), was a life-changing discovery for me.

Taylor argues that we can change our life by changing our life story. This book was the impetus for my return to graduate school to study what I later learned is called narrative identity theory.

Taylor’s book is written for a general audience, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about this empowering area of study.

See a photo of Mary, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, and Part 2.

Q&A with Mary Daniels Brown, Question 3:

Q: Interest in life stories and memoirs seems to be enormous at the moment. Why do you think that is? What makes people hunger to tell their own stories and learn the stories of others at this moment in time?

A: We humans have an innate affinity for stories. The earliest stories were told around the common campfire. Petroglyphs are the early expression of a community asserting its identity through its stories. Children who beg for “just one more” bedtime story are not simply jockeying to stay up later. They are truly enthralled by stories that keep them asking, “And then what happened? . . . And then what? . . . And then?”

Storytelling is a communal activity. We think about and explain ourselves in stories that we tell both to ourselves (internally) and to others (externally). Even the stories we tell ourselves are framed within the prescriptions and proscriptions of our culture. Shared stories tell us how other people function within their society and also transmit that society’s values, beliefs, and traditions.

I see the enormous current interest in memoir as a result of the economic, political, and social flux we now live in. When cultural norms begin to break down, we look for new stories to help guide us through change. Every memoir we read by people who have coped with issues such as faith, illness, rejection, infertility, divorce, addiction, financial hardship, or political oppression shows us how to live through these circumstances. The more upheaval we face in our lives, the more we need stories to show us how it is possible to live in our world.

Mary Daniels Brown is another practitioner I’ve run across as part of my Scoop.it curation of organizational storytelling. I am most intrigued by her work on narrative and perspective, as illustrated by these words from one of her blogs: “Each individual’s point of view is unique, and point of view shapes the stories people tell to themselves and to others about themselves and their relationships with their environment. The same event narrated from two different perspectives will produce two different stories.” I am thrilled Mary Daniels Brown is participating in this Q&A series, especially since she went above and beyond in responding to my questions. The Q&A will run over the next several days.

Bio: Mary Daniels Brown completed the course work, though not the dissertation, for a doctorate in English and American literature before changing gears and earning a Ph.D. in psychology. Her dissertation focused on narrative identity theory and life stories. She writes about literature at Notes in the Margin and about psychology at Change of Perspective.

Q&A with Mary Daniels Brown, Question 1:

Q: “Perspective” seems to be the centerpiece of your work and philosophy. Can you talk a bit about your “perspective on perspective”?

A: One day my husband and I were shopping at Target when two men got into a confrontation at the end of the aisle. I don’t know what started the argument, and I don’t remember at all what it was about, but they were gesturing and talking loudly at each other. I think we left the aisle before the dispute was resolved.

After we had checked out and were walking across the parking lot, my husband said, “What did you think of the man in the Hawaiian shirt?” “What man in the Hawaiian shirt?” I asked. My husband stopped walking and stared at me. “The man who was arguing with the other man,” he said. “I know you saw him.”

Yes, I had seen him arguing with the other fellow. But because I’m always interested in the ways people interact, I had been watching each man’s face and gestures as they argued back and forth. What the men were wearing was irrelevant to me. My husband, however, is always much better than I am at noticing physical details about his surroundings. He focused on the Hawaiian shirt, whereas I didn’t even notice it.

As this story indicates, the concept of perspective has both a literal and a metaphorical aspect. In the literal sense, we see an object differently when we change the place from which we view it. In the metaphorical sense, we all view the world from a perspective created by the intersection of our temperament and our unique set of personal experiences, values, and beliefs. And because we are all unique, we all see the world at least a little bit differently than everybody else sees it. This is why two people may have very different memories about the same event. No one’s perspective is necessarily better or more correct than anyone else’s. The two are simply different.

A Native American proverb advises us not to judge other people until we’ve walked a mile in their moccasins. This advice encourages us to at least try to see a situation or an issue from another person’s perspective before passing judgment or starting an argument. Even if we don’t agree with another person’s perspective, just trying to understand that perspective can make us wiser and more tolerant people. And the world could certainly use some more wise, tolerant people.