The closest thing to mind control is asking a good question. As in the old example:
This podcast includes a fantastic short clip from my first interview with Karen Dietz. I tell a story so she can demonstrate the questions she uses to encourage “reflection and flow.” It is less than ten minutes long. [Read more…]
Does your bio suck?
My bio: What story am I telling?In this short podcast Annette Simmons and Michael Margolis discuss how multiple bios create a fractured identity that not only confuses our customers and colleagues but keeps us confused as well. [Read more…]
Michael Margolis discusses his introduction to storytelling in a workshop by Paul Costello. He said he felt like he had “come home” and found one of his tribes. He found the ethics Paul developed doing narrative therapy (Michael White) helps us dive into a juicy creative tension! For instance, whose story do you have a right to tell? Whose story do you inhabit? Whose story did you inherit?
To ask ourselves these questions changes the way we go about storytelling. We end up with juicier stories by being more ethical and taking these questions seriously.
The very notion of identity is being challenged by our interactions in social media. It forces us to question “who am I?” much more often than we used to Even the avatar we use – different photos for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, give us the freedom to be anyone but we have a dispersed self – we don’t know where we start and where we end.
Do you have a different picture for different social sites? Have you hired someone to create a photo? What “look” are you going for? How much do we let people see?
We weren’t designed for this level of over-communication and this forced intimacy sometimes leads to “ego masturbation” or “bleeding all over the place.” online. Michael entertains the idea that we are becoming “homo-narratons” as much as homo-sapiens.
I remember the days when we had some control of our “image” but now we are all over the place. I ask Michael to talk about his course “The New About Me.” He explains some of the steps from this intentional process of writing your“About me” page – an image that has replaced the face to face kind, for anyone who googles you before meeting you. We don’t want to go “open-kimono” and share everything but we still want to be authentic.
Listen in to our frank conversation about how Michael interprets how storytelling applies amidst these many changes.
Feed link: http://archive.org/download/StoryFactorPodcast004_201311/StoryFactorPodcast004.mp3
…storytelling has become extraordinarily popular.Karen Dietz and I discuss how storytelling has become extraordinarily popular. It is good that people realize story is how we think and communicate but a lot of people are confused about how to get started. People who promise to teach storytelling but have not been trained in oral storytelling miss key ingredients. In the same way that we can all write, but we aren’t all novelists: we are all storytellers, but that doesn’t mean we can tell a compelling story. It is important for practitioners to study storytelling in its natural state.
Expecting storytelling consultants to study with performance tellers is not about keeping the bloodlines pure, but about ensuring new applications of story retain the magic that keeps oral storytelling alive. Karen points out that one aspect of storytelling that gets lost is that “storytelling is deep play.” Karen says, “It’s really fun!…I lose control of the room…and that’s perfect.” Once people get permission to tell stories, that’s all they want to do.
Those untrained in oral storytelling produce laundry lists of components or a best structure for a “good story.”Karen points out that those untrained in oral storytelling produce laundry lists of components or a best structure for a “good story.” Things that are nice to know but don’t make you a better storyteller. Leaders demand, “Tell me the structure of a good story?” She gives the what they want: “The structure of a story is: Problem/Resolution. That is it’s most simple form. Now …do you know how to tell a compelling story?” Of course they don’t. It doesn’t help. Having this information, is nice, but not helpful.
Oral storyteller Ron Evans taught Karen stories are “living breathing beings that reside in us.” Moving an oral story to written form or other media means we lose the co-created aspect of the story. It “becomes concretized in a way that doesn’t allow flexibility” and “creates a relationship not with the teller but with the media” being used.
If someone thinks they can record a story “and be done with it,” they are missing the most effective use of story. Tell your story face to face whenever possible. If you need to create a video, invite members of your audience to listen when you create a video and be responsive to the future time, place and context of your listeners as they view the video in the future.
Karen encourages leaders to walk around, listen for stories and learn story evoking techniques before they spend time learning to tell stories. One of the things we both learned by studying oral storytelling is to ask ourselves “Have I earned the right to tell this story?” It keeps things ethical, but in terms of creating quality business stories this step is a constraint that ensures your story is authentic to the emotions of your audience. Adding “touches of authenticity” down the line don’t help an “unearned” story sound more authentic. The fastest and most convenient way to be authentic is to be authentic.
Studying oral storytelling shows us how to stay a part of the equation in a way that develops our personal creative process, talents and habits that anchor our stories in authenticity.
Karen concludes by saying that she would like to see storytelling become a core leadership competency. If only because it “brings pleasure and liveliness back to work.”
Feed link: http://archive.org/download/StoryFactorPodcast003/StoryFactorPodcast003.mp3
Karen is the best curator of articles about successful storytelling I know. We go back a long way. She and I met in the world of traditional tellers “back in the day.” Today she has a finger on the pulse of business storytelling. In fact, Karen Dietz and Lori Silverman have written a new book: Business Storytelling for Dummies that comes out November of 2013.
Because then, it “becomes a process of thinking, listening, understanding and meaning-making.” We talk about the practice of storytelling and how this practice changes the teller once you add reflection to your process. She isn’t interested in clients who just want a jolt of storytelling by investing in a workshop without any follow up work because when a client is ready to invest in story “for the long haul” they get the full benefit.
Karen points out that when we create a culture of story sharing we help an organization reap the returns that come from a network of rich information and meaning that fills in the blanks created by statistics and measurements. She causes me to reflect that I am the worst when it comes to offering a “jolt of storytelling” by agreeing to do one workshop and moving on. I am not telling the whole story when I do that. Karen is good – that’s valuable information for me! It is a pain in my neck to deal with, but that’s what learning feels like sometimes.
We discuss a quote from Karen’s excellent website www.JustStoryIt.com:
“People don’t resist change, they resist being changed.” Peter Senge
She explains how one story consultant managed to botch the process to the point executives referred to the process by saying “We’ve been storied.” Introducing story to an organization is a multi-faceted application with results that can improve every point of communication as well as enrich the creative problem solving capacity of work groups.
“We’ve been storied.”
When story sharing is collaborative and constant we create a more mindful organization embedding reflection and awareness that helps find opportunities and avoid problems.
Karen uses art to capture and remind people of the art part of our stories she describes as “art in the air.”
Best tool: Don’t ask for a story, but ask “Tell me about a time when…”
Look for Karen Dietz on ScoopIt.com who profiled her recently in their “Lord of Curation” series. You can see her interview about curation here.
Part two of my converstaion with Karen Dietz will be published on October 30, 2013. If you sign up below I’ll send you this and future episodes of The Story Factor Podcast.
Feed link: http://ia801003.us.archive.org/35/items/StoryFactorPodcast002/StoryFactorPodcast002.mp3
This is the first of at least ten Story Factor Podcasts. In this one, my audio guy Jay makes me explain what I want to do and I just talk… doing what I do: butchering metaphors and discovering what I am thinking by hearing what comes out of my mouth. I have no 3 second delay. It is one of my charms. [Read more…]