I had come across Cindy Atlee and her company, The Storybranding Group, in my curation travels, but her work especially caught my eye when I noticed her Professional Values & Story Index (PVSI), which I wrote about here. A significant mentor for Cindy has been Carol Pearson, who works with archetypes. I heard Dr. Pearson speak some years back. The Q&A will run over the next several days.
Bio: Cindy Atlee has been fascinated with stories and how they shape identity since writing her first (and last!) novel at the age of 13. Instead of becoming a novelist, she channeled a passion for helping others understand and express who they are in the world into a 20+-year career as a strategist, facilitator, and coach. Along the way, she’s been able to combine her extensive executive experience in branding, communications, and planning with innovative training in organizational culture and identity, leadership development, and personality type.
Cindy is currently principal of The Storybranding Group, a brand and culture consulting firm that helps clients define and give voice to what’s best and most distinctive about them — and use the power of story-based communications to create compelling brands, develop inspired leaders, and deeply engage their workforces. Previously, she was senior vice president, branding and organizational culture, at the global public-relations firm Porter Novelli and has held a variety of senior-executive positions at mid-Atlantic advertising agencies and marketing firms.
Cindy’s innovative storybranding process and story-based communications tools have won multiple awards and been used by such organizations as Kashi, NASA, Volunteers of America, and Procter & Gamble. In addition to her consulting and planning work, she is a frequent speaker and workshop leader. She’s currently writing her first book, Discover Your StoryBrand: 12 Story-based Styles to Unleash Your Voice and Let the World Know Who You Really Are.
When she isn’t deeply engaged in her work, you might find Cindy art journaling, playing with her four cats, dreaming up her next creative adventure, or driving her husband crazy with yet another home design project.
Q&A with Cindy Atlee, Question 1:
Q: How did you initially become involved with story/storytelling/ narrative? What attracted you to this field? What do you love about it?
A: Well, I did write my first novel when I was 13 (sadly, it remains unpublished ☺), so story has always been an important part of my life. But it wasn’t until the first of my (several!) mid-life crises that I really integrated story and narrative into my work. After many years in the advertising and communications business, I was pretty conflicted about my path in life — wondering if what I did mattered very much and whether I was really using my gifts in the most meaningful way. Just at that turning point 10 years ago I met Dr. Carol Pearson (www.herowithin.com) , the renowned archetype scholar and best-selling author of books like The Hero and The Outlaw, The Hero and the Outlaw Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes, and Awakening the Heroes Within.
Dr. Pearson was giving a lecture about spirituality in marketing (a
concept I’d given zero thought to before that evening), and it captured my imagination like nothing had in years. During her talk, she shared her system for defining the spirit or essence of a brand — or an organization, or a person — through the lens of 12 universal or archetypal storylines that each captured a different aspect of human meaning and motivation. Dr. Pearson said that by exploring these storylines, you could come to understand the deep and often unconscious essence that lived inside — and shape that insight into an authentic brand identity that offered real meaning to others as well.
That talk led me into a discovery process of my own. I studied for a year with Dr. Pearson at Georgetown University, learning everything I could about how archetypal stories could be used to define personal purpose and organizational culture. I developed “storybranding,” my process for helping individuals and organizations establish identities based on the storylines and characters that captured what was best, most authentic and most distinctive about them.
I also found out very early on that the character of Creator drives the story framework of my own life. When I’m true to that storyline — when I’m helping clients understand and express who they really are in the world — I’m doing my best, most fulfilling work. The Creator story is where my real purpose and power comes from, and really owning that changed my life.
So, what I love most about my work now is seeing those aha moments when a person or a team or an entire organization sees themselves for the first time through the lens of a story; when they get it and own it at a really deep and intuitive place inside themselves that knows they’ve found the truth. It’s interesting to me that we sometimes equate lying with telling a “story.” I’m not sure where that really came from, but to me, nothing has a deeper truth in it than an authentic story expressed by someone who believes deeply in it.