We learn more about storytelling from iterations of listening and practice than any template could teach us.
I think we spend too much time looking for the “right” story. We can’t know a story is effective until we try it out because stories are co-created. I have suggested we expect a 30% fail rate – a percentage I made up – so people won’t craft a story to death before they try it out. I
Earn your turn! Listen first. If there is dead silence offer your story as a little gift to get things rolling. Begin with an obvious link to their particular use for your story. “I am particularly interested in… how you do X…because my interest in X started one time when your focus on X…because I
Stories come from every where, every field of study, and particularly from people who deeply care about something, or someone. Seek the geeks!!
Create a vivid picture by using descriptive details that light up more than one part of a listener’s sensory cortex. Mix up sensory details sound and vision when you describe a detail like a quiet face, a blue humming, or screaming purple. Every sense you stimulate makes your story feel more like a real experience.
“What’s your opinion on the topic of structuring business presentations as Story?” Question from: Gonzales Alvarez Good question, Gonzales. Let me begin by giving my definition of a story: A story is a narrated sequence of words or other triggers in a way that an simulated experience (def: images, smells, sounds, tastes, touches, and emotions) is
According to Pew research, disdain between opposing political parties in America has doubled in the last 30 years, coincidentally the span of my own consulting business, Group Process Consulting. My efforts to document true stories about these escalating conflicts inadvertently produced a set of oral histories across the years: Territorial Games (1997), A Safe Place
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” Groucho Marx Troublemakers erode trust faster than we can build it back right now. Yet, many of these “troubles” are invented conflicts that distort predictably contrasting values. It helps to know what to look for. And once
I’ve been trying to infiltrate the halls of power for decades. My secret mission is to increase the diversity of thought by teaching those without a voice how to tell their stories and by teaching leaders how to find and retell stories that broaden everyone’s understanding.
We need a Magic School for Storytellers Thirty years before J. K. Rowling created Harry Potter, Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series imagined a magic school that taught apprentice sorcerers how to avoid abusing the power of magic. Le Guin points out early in the series that “even to light a candle is to cast a
Truth in Storytelling When I wrote the first edition of The Story Factor twenty years ago, I began with the idea that people don’t want more information. They want faith in you and your positive intentions. I never suspected that two decades later we’d be discussing an explosion of stories that intentionally undermine this faith. Without
