On Monday I led a 90-minute storytelling workshop in New York for a CEO and his direct reports. They were trying to work out how to rally and unite their employees, but I came away with something, too: what I’m modestly calling A Grand Unified Theory of Storytelling. The event’s organizers had an artist there … Read more
Last week I was in Cleveland visiting family and I finally got to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (+Museum). I really did enjoy it and I appreciated what they did, but I came away feeling they could do a much, much better job telling the story of “the world’s most powerful art … Read more
An elevator pitch can be a handy tool for networking, but it will only take you so far. If you really want to make a connection and influence people to act on your behalf (hire you, buy from you, help you in any way), you need to learn how to craft and tell the story … Read more
I’m presenting a webinar this Thursday that will offer advice on how you can use storytelling to better persuade audiences and make your ideas stick. It’s sponsored by Ragan Communications and there is a registration fee. You can check out the details here. Here’s the program description from the Ragan website: Nothing beats a well-told … Read more
(A version of this post originally ran as a guest post on the Spin Sucks blog.) Study after study points to the power of storytelling to transform our communications, help us move and persuade audiences and get more of what we want out of life. I find people are either totally intimidated by the notion of … Read more
Today I’m guest blogging over at the estimable Spin Sucks blog. So click on over for the story of Estela and the Candy Factory and my Easy Formula for Unlocking the Power of Stories. And if you’re interested in marketing, communications and social media, it’s a great blog to add to your feed!
Five million people come to the Grand Canyon every year and a handful don’t make it back alive. This is the story of one of those deaths, and what it can teach us. Grand Canyon visitors get into trouble in all kinds of ways. They don’t carry enough water or food, they underestimate how strenuous … Read more
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoPu1UIBkBc&w=420&h=315] Whether you think Ronald Reagan was a great communicator or THE great communicator or simply a decent one, the man knew how to tell a story and land a joke. A great example is the now-legendary moment during a 1984 debate with Walter Mondale. For those who weren’t alive or sentient then, there … Read more
Storytelling is both deceptively simple and deceptively complex. That is, people either underestimate or overestimate its difficulty. As a result, some people get intimidated and don’t believe they can tell a decent story. Others are undeterred, and go around claiming their anecdotes and accounts of their everyday travails are actual stories. So striking the right … Read more
Stories can do amazing things for you. Telling the right story can help you nail a job interview, win over a customer, rally a team, motivate employees and many other things. But what exactly is a story? A colleague of mine went searching for a definition of story for a book he was writing. He … Read more