Here are some thoughts/experiences from last week regarding anecdotes, how to elicit them and story-telling Last Wednesday I listened to Alana, an Aboriginal lady, tell a traditional teaching story and we chatted afterwards. In organisations we generally see stories morph over time, with details changing but much of the meaning being retained. Alana explained that […]

There’s a perception in business that stories are long and time consuming. “I don’t have time to tell a story. I’m just going to give them the facts,” I hear business folk say. The reality is quite different. Every month or so I run a storytelling for leaders workshop. One of the first activities I […]

In 1944 psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel published a paper in The American Journal of Psychology. It was a simple idea. Make a film of geometric shapes moving about and then ask the subjects “… to write down what happened in the picture.” 1 Here’s a slightly cut down version of the original film […]

It took me a little while to work out what was happening. I snapped my first photo of the motor scooter with clip board attached in Soho but I only got a fleeting glance and then he was gone. But my next sighting was far more informative. This time the motorcyclist was parked so I […]

I can’t remember who first said to me “you have two ears and one mouth, and you should use them in that proportion” but it is one of the best pieces of advice I have ever received. Also, when working in many organisations, I notice it is not applied that widely. Shawn and I have […]

I am working on a project requiring a major organisational transformation. On Monday, the division’s chief heads off to Canberra to get a mandate to make the change from head office. One of his biggest concerns is head office continuously second-guessing him as he leads the organisation through the change process. He recognises that in […]

Something got me thinking about City of Port Phillip’s Non Crime Hotline this morning. They have a phone number you call to report good news stories. I rang the council and found that Peter Strecker was now in charge of this initiative and he told me that it was in hibernation. It turned out that […]

My friend Terrence Gargiulo and I were chatting last week about the role storytelling plays for leaders and we agreed that the leadership-storytelling triple-threat was the ability to elicit stories, tell stories and trigger stories. When we say trigger stories we mean that a leader does something that’s remarkable so people tell the story of […]

So it’s Friday and here we are at the end of Story Week. Many thanks to all of you who contributed and here is our final story – something serious… Loading…