1 . Nothing works 100% of the time. A machine can have a motor replaced but a sales manager can’t have a personality transplant. Maybe a new story about who he is and why customers need him will mean he sells more, but maybe it won’t. Successes of 70% or higher are good. Expect more
Madelyn Blair’s company name Pelerei represents two root words that mean “lifting people up.” She made up the name as a hidden reminder of who she is and why she is here. Learn more about Madelyn’s books: Riding the Current and Essays in Two Voices. In Essays in Two Voices Madelyn offers a simple process
The best part of this podcast may be when Madelyn’s husband shows up and gives her a bouquet of red roses for their 40th anniversary! But the rest of it is pretty good too. This week’s conversation begins as Madelyn Blair (www.pelerei.com) describes the idea of Narrative Intelligence. She describes a quick process she recently used
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, 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
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
