Anna Deavere Smith is a wonderful actor who “performs” stories by taking on the personality of the original teller. She brings people from Studs Terkel’s collections back to life and takes her audiences on a tour . Here she is pitching a workshop on Empathy but this little clip reminded me how to really pay attention and I thought it might be
Anna Deavere Smith is a wonderful actor who “performs” stories by taking on the personality of the original teller. She brings people from Studs Terkel’s collections back to life and takes her audiences on a tour . Here she is pitching a workshop on Empathy but this little clip reminded me how to really pay attention and I thought it might be
Lea Thau, creative director of TheMoth.org for a decade (2001-2010), Lea teaches business people not so much how to tell personal stories, but how to use the principles of storytelling to shape strategy, to roll out new initiatives, or frame business proposals. However I learned most by asking more about her process at the Moth and
Lea Thau was creative director of TheMoth.org for a decade (2001-2010), developing the format and process that has become one of the most popular storytelling organizations in the world. From the beginning, Lea favored the idea of sticking to true stories told in the first person – a critical decision that created what we know
And most guitars have more than one story… Guitars are known by the stories of those who loved them and the music they created. When Ian opened his guitar shop, he didn’t so much sell guitars as tell their stories. Ian Rhodes not only found his way back to his passion for playing guitar, he
“The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing; it feels like a story.” – Jim Signorelli Jim believes that the best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing; it feels like a story. Have a look at Jim’s agency website at esw-storylab.com he practices what he preaches with website design and content. If technology and techniques get ahead
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
