Suicide ranks as the 10th leading cause of death globally. *1 On top of well-established risk factors for suicide (e.g. depression, previous suicide attempts, negative life events, socio-economic disadvantage), there is considerable evidence that the way the media reports on the suicide can significantly impact on the number of subsequent ‘copycat’ suicides. The occurrence of […]

We’re excited to announce that Shawn and Mark are visiting India in late September and will be running two of our workshops in the New Delhi District: – **Storytelling to influence, engage & persuade** – 25th September – **Influencing change with the natural power of stories** – 26th September We have so many followers and […]

Yesterday in Canberra a new political advertisement aired for the very first time. As luck would have it I was in Canberra and happened to see it. The moment it started I hushed everyone in the lounge-room. I could sense that this was something different for a political ad in Australia. It was clearly a […]

Click to see larger version 800×600

This week I presented at the Sydney knowledge management round table and Rod Irwin, the co-ordinator of the group, remarked at just how long one can remember a story. He remembers one he heard in 1978. There are many reasons why we remember stories much better that other types of information. Firstly, if the story […]

It’s just over two weeks until I will be running our ‘Storytelling for Business Leaders’ workshop in Boston, MA. Really looking forward to my time in the States and working with a number of different clients, as well as running this public workshop. To read more about the course and to sign up, please go […]

Click to see larger version 800×600

Shawn and I have spent the last couple of days working with a client helping them create their strategic story down in the Mornington Peninsula. There are certainly worse places in the world to spend a couple of days than at a winery in such a beautiful spot. It was a throughly enjoyable off-site, made […]

Jonathan Gottschall, a literary scholar, has just written a piece for Fast Company called Why Storytelling is the Ultimate Weapon and in the process has set back the field of business storytelling with his emphasis on fictitious stories. I can imagine that being a literary scholar gets Jonathan entwined in myths and legends and literary […]

Greg Stephens, Lauren Silbert and Uri Hasson are Princeton University neuroscientists who in 2010 conducted a series of experiments showing that an audience’s brains light up (imagine they are all in a fMRI machine) the same way as the presenter’s brain when she tells a story. In their words, “Speaker and listener brain activity exhibits […]