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- 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
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- 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.”
- 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.
– 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