Six years ago, I made an exploratory trip to Oklahoma; I was considering moving from my home in Boston.

The first place I stopped was at a grocery store. Leaving it, I found myself in a short line of people waiting to go out the automatic door. To my dismay, we were moving very slowly.

I was impatient. After all, I had a lot of Oklahoma to explore!

I looked at the woman ahead of me, patiently pushing her shopping cart. From behind, she looked like she was in her mid-thirties and able-bodied. Her shoulders and her posture didn’t suggest that she was in a hurry. She didn’t even look frustrated by whatever it was in front of her that was making us go so slowly.

So I stepped to the side and looked over her shoulder, to see what was causing the delay. I saw an old man, bent over his cane, inching along. We were going so slowly, I realized, because he NEEDED to go slowly.

I thought to myself, “This young woman is quite happy to give this old man exactly what he needs: lots of time!”

This was my first realization that Oklahoma differs from my experience of the East Coast. Back in Massachusetts, I had unconsciously come to expect that people should do everything they can to “keep up” with others. If someone needed more time, space, or assistance than someone else, it was that person’s job to accommodate to everyone else.

In Oklahoma, though, if people need something, the others expect to give it to them.

This attitude - along with several others prevalent in Oklahoma - has subtly changed me as a teller. Why is this on my mind now? Because my years here are about to end.

Farewell to Oklahoma

My wife, Pam McGrath, has accepted a job as a sole pastor in a church in Marshfield, Massachusetts. In early July, we will move 1700 miles east.

We are eager to go Massachusetts, but we are also sad to leave Oklahoma. As a tribute to the state that has taught me so much these last four and a half years, in this article and the next I will share seven lessons for life and storytelling that I’ve been blessed to learn here.

Lesson 1: Give People What They Need

If a stranger can give an old man the time he needs to walk, I can certainly try to give my audiences what THEY need. This means that I should consider my listeners’ needs first when I choose:

- The story to tell them;
- How much background information to offer them;
- The style and language in which I tell the story.

But I can also give MYSELF what I need, in order to offer the story. After all, even the airlines tell us to secure our own oxygen masks first, before trying to help others.

So, as long as it doesn’t prevent my listeners from getting what they need, I can ask for whatever I need, including:

- A sufficiently quiet and well-lighted environment;
- The time and place to prepare myself before I tell;
- A chance to catch my breath, get a drink of water, and meet my physical and psychological needs as I tell.

Some of you may always do all that, but I can think of times when I failed to ask for each of those. My storytelling always suffered as a result.

Lesson 2: Expect and Be Open to Connections

Soon after I moved to Oklahoma, I needed repairs to the fence in my back yard. So I got the phone number of a recommended handyman and called him. He agreed to come over and look at my fence. Sure enough, we agreed on a price, he did the work, and I handed him a check.

But he didn’t just take the check and leave. Instead, he stood there looking absently at the back of his hand.

“You know,” he said after a moment, “I used to have a job as a sales executive. It was so stressful! At the end of a day, I never really knew if I had done a good job.

“After ten years, I decided to give it up. I took a huge paycut to become a handyman. Am I sorry?” He looked at me and continued. “No,” he said, “it’s very satisfying to me when I can do a job like this, do it at my own pace and see the result for someone like you.”

When he left, I realized that what was unusual about this encounter wasn’t just his story. It wasn’t that he wanted to be listened to. It was that he really expected to connect with me.

Most people here - from cashiers to letter carriers - expect every interaction to become a connection. They’re not bent out of shape if you don’t connect with them, but they are open to it and want to feel that our interaction has brought us closer.

How does this affect storytelling?

Well, as tellers, we can have a tendency to view ourselves as “performers.” But we’re not really in the performance business; we’re in the relationship business.

Our primary job is not to “wow” an audience. Our job is not to “blow them away.” Our job is not even to “perform” for them. Our job is simply to connect to them, in such a way that they’ll connect to the story we tell.

If I focus on being open to connection with my audience, a certain magic tends to happen. First, I offer myself to them more openly. Second, if they respond, I tend to respond more quickly and genuinely to their response.

Third, I don’t get urgent about getting a particular response from them. After all, I’m just offering a connection through the story. I’m not forcing it on them.

If I am just present, ready to connect to them and expecting it but not insisting on it, then everything else I do as a teller goes more easily.

Lesson 3: Wait Placidly

I already mentioned the woman in the supermarket not showing any signs of impatience.

On the East Coast, I would expect the woman waiting for the old man to tap her feet or look around as though to say, “What’s going on here?” Or even to check her watch.

But here in Oklahoma, people seem to wait without getting agitated.

I’m an informal student of body language. But again and again, I have watched people here standing placidly - and haven’t been able to tell that they were waiting for me.

What this tells me about storytelling is that there’s a magic in standing there looking like I am having a grand time.

Suppose that, even before I say a word at the start of a performance, I look like I’m in a hurry. In that case, I create a sense that we have to get on with things, that I will be hurrying us along.

But when I stand there completely in the moment, completely enjoying whatever there is to enjoy, I become an object of fascination. It is wonderful to see someone standing placidly, patiently delighted.

And if I can make that be my habitual stance - instead a stance of wanting something or trying to make something happen - then I become a different kind of guide through the storytelling experience: the guide who is both trusted and enjoyed.

(For more on the lessons of placid waiting, see my 2005 article at http://www.storydynamics.com/tulsa).

Lesson 4: Let Others Shine

On one of my first visits back to Boston after living in Oklahoma for several months, I noticed a kind of tension in my stomach when talking to new people. It was a familiar tension, but one that I hadn’t felt much since moving to Oklahoma.

I realized that this is the tension that comes when I’m meeting someone who is trying to show me that they are smarter, more powerful, or otherwise have some higher status than I do.

In thinking about it, I realized that in Oklahoma, by and large, people don’t so often make the little gambits that establish their place in the pecking order.

After a few months here, I found myself relaxing in a new way. But I only noticed that relaxation when I returned to my old circle and began experiencing once more the tension that comes with the “status dance.”

As a storyteller, if I am unconsciously projecting to my audience that I want to establish that I am smarter or more charming or in any way “one up” from them, I demand too much of them.

It shouldn’t be necessary that they grant me higher status, just to enjoy my story.

Instead, I can decide, unilaterally, that we get to be equals. I can take the attitude that “you are just wonderful, all you people there. Yeah, I’m fine, but what I notice is that you are fine, too, and that I am open to and respectful of you.”

In that case,, this act of storytelling will be between equals, and we can equally share its delight.

(Next month, I’ll continue this article with three more Oklahoma lessons for storytellers.)

Contents

1) WHAT CAN STORYTELLERS LEARN FROM TULSA?

2) EXERCISE: COMPARING THE STANCES - IS YOURS TULSA OR BOSTON?

1) WHAT CAN STORYTELLERS LEARN FROM TULSA?

Note: I am re-posting this newsletter, which I first wrote in November, 2005, in honor of my upcoming move from Oklahoma back to Boston (scheduled for July, 2009).

Since I moved to Tulsa last winter, the city has been my storytelling teacher.

One day last month, I walked between my car and the car parked next to it, as I was about to leave a crowded parking lot. Fifteen feet ahead of me, I saw a woman in a denim jacket standing there, smiling. I smiled back at her.

II got in my car, then took my time arranging my seat belt and my CD player. Finally, I started the engine and backed out of the parking space.

As I pulled out, the woman in denim walked into the space where I’d been standing and got into her car.

I realized with a start that I hadn’t known she was waiting for me. I had thought she was just standing there, perhaps enjoying the day. I felt a twinge of guilt, because I certainly would have moved faster, if I’d understood.

Then I remembered: this has happened to me before in Tulsa. I don’t always recognize that people are waiting. Why? Tulsans have a behavior that I never recognized in 35 years living in Boston, which I call “placid waiting.”

In Boston, if someone is waiting for you, you know it! Their body language gives many clues, some subtle, some not. The most obvious signs, which are fortunately rare, include glancing at their watches, folding their arms, and even tapping their feet. But the less obvious signs are just as clear. People stand with their weight forward. They may even lean forward at the waist. They have an expression on their faces as if they are about to take a breath and leap into something.

They do not look placid.

Now, whenever I catch myself leaning forward impatiently, I think to myself, “My impatience won’t really make this line at the grocery go faster. I might as well enjoy myself.”

When I can remember to wait placidly, I love it. I feel like I’ve been freed from an evil enchantment and can now enjoy the world around me - including the people who are making me wait.

The Storytelling Connection

You might be wondering, “What does placid waiting have to do with storytelling?”

To understand the answer to this question, you need to realize that your storytelling thrives because of many factors. For example, it’s important to imagine your story well. It’s also important to shape your story well, It’s equally important to be in touch with the emotions of the story’s characters. And much more.

But, in the end, imperfections in any of those factors can be compensated for by one skill. Further, if that one skill is absent, your storytelling will almost cetainly fail.

What is that one skill that, when present, almost guarantees success - and that, when absent, nearly always means failure?

The skill is relationship building. If you build a good relationship with your listeners, you will succeed. Your listeners will forgive you many mistakes, because they feel that you are talking to THEM. Conversely, even if you’re wonderful in every other detail, they will tire of you if you’re not creating an honest relationship with them.

What is the most important part of creating a relationship with your listeners? You must begin by letting them know that you choose to be with them, that you respect and care about them.

Sending the Message That You Care

How do you show your willingness, respect and caring? Don’t try to put it into words. As soon as you say, “I care about you,” your listener will think, “Why? You don’t really know me. What do you want from me?”

Instead, you reveal your attitude through HOW you talk, not through what you say. You convey it with tone of voice, with the pace at which you speak, and through a number of subtle but observable behaviors: How far forward is your weight? How much tension is in your head, your neck, your throat, and thus your voice?

People will respond to these cues, usually unconsciously - but all the more strongly because such signals operate below their awareness, and therefore they can’t compensate for them consciously, as they can for your words.

How do you give the right cues? It’s easier than you might think. To be sure, it’s possible to break these elements of body language into small pieces. You can work on any habitual tension in your neck, say, or on where you place your weight when you tell.

That isn’t usually the best way to improve, though. It’s often counter-productive, and, at best, not a good use of your time. Actually, the best tactic is to find your placid place, your sincerely pleased place inside you.

The Simple Way to Tell Like a Tulsan

As you tell, remember that you’re not in a hurry for the storytelling to be over. You’re not in a hurry for your listeners to like the story - or to like you. Rather, you’re having the time of your life, wanting nothing more than being right here with these people, right now.

If you find that placid place, then your subtle body language will convey a respectful invitation to your listeners. Then, if you follow up well, you and your listeners will form an ever-more-solid relationship. And that is about the most important secret ingredient of your storytelling success.

When you’ve succeeded - when you can look back at storytelling well done - remember to thank the people of Tulsa. They may not have received much recognition for their city yet. But they’re enjoying themselves anyway, while they wait.

TOP OF PAGE

2) EXERCISE: COMPARING THE STANCES - IS YOURS TULSA OR BOSTON?

Want to put the ideas from the Article of the Month (above) into pracitce? I’m giving away an exercise you can do with a partner (or a group), to notice the effect of your stance as you tell.

In this exercise, you will have a chance to learn the effects of a very specific change in your way of telling - a change that can make the difference between success and failure.

Here are the full instructions for an exercise you can do with a partner (or a group), to notice the effect of your stance as you tell.

1. Choose a story that you know well. Tell about 2 minutes of it to your partner.

2. Ask your partner for appreciations: What did your partner like about the story, your telling of it, or the effect on your partner?

3. Now spend a moment finding your relaxed, confident state. It may help to remember a time when you felt completely relaxed and alive, when you didn’t want anything to be different from how it was. Perhaps you remember:

a time you were in a favorite place?
a time you were with a favorite person?
a time you were engaged in a favorite activity?

Focus on how that time felt. Then try to bring that feeling into your body.

4. Now, tell for another two minutes. Perhaps you would like to:

tell the same exceprt or story again.
continue with the next section of the story you told
tell a different story. (This may make #5 less conclusive.)

5. Ask your partner for appreciations. Then ask one or more of these questions:

Was there anything different between the two times, about the way I told?
Did you feel differently toward me during the two tellings?
Did you notice anything different about the way I stood? About the gestures I used? About my tone of voice?

6. Talk to your partner about how the two tellings felt to you. Did you notice a difference. Did you feel differently toward your listener?

If there was a difference that you or your partner noticed, what does that difference tell you?
If there was no difference, check out with your partner which of the following may have caused the lack of difference:

Perhaps you always tell with relaxed confidence.
Does this fit your and your partner’s experience?
Perhaps you were unable during the exercise to become relaxed.
Does this fit?

7 (optional) If you wish - and your partner consents - you can try to tell one more time.

8. Switch roles with your partner and repeat steps 1-7.

Let me know how this goes for you!

When you are faced with the seed of a story, you may not recognize it. This is in part because story seeds can vary so much from each other.

But it’s mostly because, until you’ve made up a lot of successful stories, you probably haven’t had many chances to connect story seeds with the stories they grow into.

The Unrecognized Seed

Think about it: you hear finished, fully-grown stories and you love them. Then one day you get a simple image. Do you think, “Boy, I bet that image could grow into a great story?” Probably not!

Instead, you think, “I’ve seen stories. They don’t look much like this image.” So you ignore the image. You don’t “plant” it.

Given that our society talks so often about “artistic talent” as a rare thing that most people weren’t born with, you may even conclude that your baby image “proves” that you could never create a finished story.

So you abandon the image before it can grow. It’s understandable that you might do that. But it makes no sense!

To help you connect a seed of an image with the tree of a story, let me give you an example of a very simple image, which grew into a story that I perform and have even recorded.

Noticing the Image

Years ago, Jay O’Callahan and I gave a series of workshops together. In them, we helped people notice and respect the images in their stories.

Our last workshop was in Pennsylvania. On the morning of its final day, I said to Jay, “Let’s try out a new exercise. Let’s ask people to just wait for an image to come to them.” It was a risky exercise, because I had never done this myself! Still, it seemed worth trying.

Joining in as a listening partner, I got a ten-minute turn to try the exercise. During that turn, I sat in silence and waited for an image. As I waited, I felt a slight pain in my side. I thought, “I have to ignore this pain. I’m waiting for an image.”

But something about it made me think, “No, this feeling is part of the story. Go with it.”

So I said to my listening partner, a little apologetically, “Well, I’m feeling this kind of pain in my side.” Soon after I said that, the pain got more specific.

I said, “I think there is an old man having this pain.”

A minute or so after I said THAT, I had an image of a particular old man. “I think it’s a rabbi,” I said. “He’s holding his side, and he’s bending over in pain.”

I waited a minute or two. More clarity came; I said, “A sound is causing that pain. Someone is singing, and that sound is going right to that place in his side.”

That was the end of my turn.

Planting the Sprout

A few days later, I had a fifteen-minute turn to be listened to by a partner. I said to my partner, “I want to get more images from the story about the rabbi with the pain in his side.”

Nothing came to me right away. But after a few minutes of waiting silently, I saw the rabbi again. Now I heard someone singing coarsely. Then I realized that the singing was a prayer. After a couple more images came, my turn was over.

The third turn I devoted to this series of images was 40 minutes long. I told my partner the images that I had seen, heard, and felt so far. I tried to let the images come anew, even if they had changed since last time. I just imagined the images, describing and experiencing them.

I did not tell the images in “performance style.” Rather, I sat with my partner, waiting for images to come. When the next image came, I said, “Okay, now he’s doing this. Okay, here’s what I see.”

By the end of this third turn, I understood that the singer was an old man who had been a cantor but couldn’t sing anymore. When he tried to sing, though, the rabbi heard, in the cantor’s unmusical singing, the exquisitely painful and beautiful music of God. That was the bones of the story as I had received it.

In the coming weeks, I repeated the process two or three more times, until the story felt like it was wasn’t changing much anymore. At that point, I felt that I knew what happens in the story.

But How Do I Tell It?

But knowing what happens isn’t the same as knowing where to begin telling it. So I devoted a turn with a listener to “asking” where the story began. I waited for an image.

In a few minutes, I saw the rabbi walking back and forth in front of his congregation, gesticulating and muttering. He wasn’t talking to the congregation; he was talking to God. I could tell that the congregation was waiting for him impatiently.

So now I knew what happened, and also where to begin the telling. At this point I stopped “riding the images” and began my usual process of getting playful about the language and deciding how to tell the story. In time, I gave this story the title, “Hearing the Music.”

(You can read the story online at http://hasidicstories.com/music ; I have also recorded it on the CD, “Can You Hear the Silence?” - http://www.storydynamics.com/cyhs )

The Sprouting Process

This story began with an image so subtle that I nearly ignored it. It was a kinesthetic image, not a visual one.

But when I paid attention to it and described it aloud, the image began to come into focus and to grow. I merely kept describing, to willing listeners, the images that came to me - until it seemed that I had uncovered all the images of the story.

Later, I began the process of deciding in what order and with what language to tell those images. In other words, I decided how to decorate my story. But by then, that first seed - of a pain in my side - had already grown up.

So, the next time an image comes to you - in any sensory mode - you can try to treat it as a potential story. You can water it with your attention, and wait, patiently and attentively, for it to grow.

One Day, They Arrest You…

Can you imagine being unjustly accused of murder? At first, you might not be too worried, sure that the truth will set you free. If you’re poor, you might not care whether the court appoints you a good lawyer, because you know you were home with your friends at the time of the murder.

Surely this is a big mistake, and will be over quickly, right?

That’s what Gary Drinkard thought. But then his own half-sister, facing charges in an unrelated robbery, made a plea deal: she’d testify against Gary in exchange for dismissal of all charges against her. Her common-law husband, also implicated in the robbery, joined her in fingering Gary.

Then Gary’s lawyers failed to even interview the people Gary was with at the time of the murder. They failed to call to the stand the physicians who would have testified that Gary’s back injury made it impossible for him to have committed the murder. Worse, the police themselves bruised Gary and then exhibited his bruises as proof that Gary had fought with the murder victim.

Before he knew it, Gary was on death row, awaiting execution.

Gary Was One of the Lucky Ones

Naturally, Gary appealed. For years, the verdict against him was upheld.

Then, fortunately for Gary, some excellent volunteer lawyers joined his case. They won an appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court. He was granted a new trial on the basis of prosecutorial misconduct. He won his case. After 6 years in prison, he was released.

The Story Isn’t Over…

There are 130 people in the U.S. who, like Gary, were released after being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death. (Others weren’t so lucky. Their exonerating evidence came to light only after they were executed.)

You might think, “Well, once you’re released, the story is over. You get back to your life.”

For many of those 130, you’d be wrong. Their years in prison not only disrupted their lives, they disrupted their faith in society. Many are so angry that they have turned to drink or drugs. Others have lost all that mattered to them before their wrongful conviction. The life they might “get back to” no longer exists; or they can no longer live it.

But Gary isn’t one of those. Gary has channelled his outrage into a cause. And his chief weapon in this fight is his story.

Helping Them Tell Their Stories

Last weekend, I travelled to Philadelphia to coach Gary and seven others like him on telling their stories. Even though they have all done public speaking (through the organization Witness to Innocence, http://www.witnesstoinnocence.org) I gave them the key tools I give any beginning (or advanced) storytellers: tools for imagining, remembering, organizing and adapting their stories.

Like others I have worked with, these eight exonerees took well to what I taught. A little suspicious at first (after what happened to them, they’re suspicious of everyone!) they left feeling empowered to make their stories fit their cause, their purposes, and each unique audience.

A Brotherhood of Heroes

But for me, this group was unlike any other. As I see it, these men are truly heroes. They have travelled past the boundaries of ordinary life, conquered a dragon of injustice, and returned to offer us the elixir of their truth.

This group was founded to bring their stories to the world. But it has also functioned to bring the exonerees to each other. And they are desperate to know each other.

Can you imagine? You’ve experienced a waking, multi-year nightmare. Wouldn’t you be thirsty to meet others who had experienced something similar? These men have gained solace and strength from being brought together.

To me, these men are heroes in another way: they are fiercely protective of each other. They have formed a brotherhood of death row exonerees, a brotherhood of witnesses to injustice. A brotherhood of storytellers.

The Power Made Visible

I felt honored to be allowed to enter their circle for a weekend. As I left, I could tell they were excited about applying what I had taught them, in order to tell their stories even more effectively.

Even more, I had experienced the power of storytelling, yet again. I saw how it helped these men individually. I also saw how it helped them form a brotherhood and maintain their focus in the wake of their suffering. And I heard how it was changing society.

Their strength seemed to infect me. I felt even more determined to share the transformative power of well-told stories.

How about you? Are there stories that you have lived, witnessed, or heard, that the world needs to hear?

Like these witnesses to innocence, are you willing to put yourself out there, so that your stories can strengthen others?

And are there others like you to join with, so that, through your stories, you can help each other become ever more determined and bold?

2) DO YOU WANT TO LEARN WHAT I TAUGHT THEM?

If you’re interested in the basic storytelling principles, tools, and exercises I taught last weekend (see the article above), they are contained in the Beginning Storytelling Toolkit.

And the Beginning Storytelling Toolkit is now available, for the first time, in hard-copy form: eight CDs plus a notebook of handouts and transcriptions.

Read the details at http://www.storydynamics.com/begin

Yours in storytelling,

Doug

Even more miraculous, my parents’ new bed was covered with the most luxurious object I had ever come across: a chartreuse, satin comforter. (I never knew the word “chartreuse” until my mother used it to describe the comforter.) I had never touched anything so silky. I had never seen anything that color, or with that kind of sheen. Even the word “comforter” suggested luxury.

Each day, while our parents lingered at the dining room table after supper, my brother and I found ourselves in our parents’ new bedroom, admiringly stroking this smooth, shiny, miraculous comforter.

Going Under Cover

We never knew how we ended up IN our parents’ bed. But every evening, there’d we be: lying on our backs, side by side. We always snuggled down so that we could feel the comforter on the bottom of our chins and see our little feet poking up beneath it.

We started playing little footsie games. His foot would nudge mine and I’d nudge his back. Then we’d giggle.

Once, my foot said “hello” to his foot. His smaller foot said “hello” back. Our feet began having conversations.

Then, one day I told a little story about two feet. One was Big Foot; that was clearly my foot. The other was Little Foot; that was his. The two feet did what my brother and I had done that very day.

After that, I always told stories about Big Foot and Little Foot. If my brother had said something funny or had done something endearing, then that would show up in what Little Foot had done. If we’d had an adventure or been scolded that day, so had Big Foot and Little Foot.

These stories would simply flow out of me. I never thought ahead about them. But our memories of the day were always fresh. And it was simple to reframe them as stories about two feet. The stories felt as rich to our imaginations as the comforter felt to our skin.

Stories in School?

Years later in middle school, I learned about “stories.” Stories were something you wrote. If you spoke them, you had to get every word right. You argued about their meaning.

Suddenly, to tell a story seemed difficult and subject to criticism. By the time I was in high school, I was afraid to even try.

Then in my early 20’s, I took a job as a teacher. One day, when I needed to keep a group of 70 very tough children busy for a few moments, I told a story that I’d heard on a recording. Luckily, the story not only calmed them but it also made us feel closer to each other than we’d ever felt before.

As I told that story to those students, the experience seemed vaguely familiar, even though it had little in common with my experiences in English classes. Many years later, I realized it was like the experiences I’d had laying in bed with my little brother.

Four Ways to Make Storytelling Easy

The “under the comforter” storytelling experience had four important qualities that made it easy and enjoyable. In fact, I’ve discovered that, if you can replicate those conditions, your storytelling will be as easy, enjoyable and successful as mine was at age seven.

First of all, I was talking to a particular person. I wasn’t telling the story of Big Foot and Little Foot with the hopes that it would “be a good story.” At that point, you see, my little brother wasn’t old enough to go to school, but I was. As a result, our daily experiences had diverged. Our times in our parents’ bed became a way of bringing our worlds together a little. So I was motivated to connect, not to make something “good.”

Second, I followed my sense of fun. If he laughed when I said something I hoped he would find amusing - or snuggled up tighter saying “ooah” when I hoped he would - then I felt rewarded. Encouraged, I’d go on to try something else that felt like fun.

Third, it was totally correctable. If something went wrong in the story, I just dropped it and went on to something else. In other words, there was no big penalty for mistakes.

Fourth, the response and the reward were both immediate. I wasn’t telling for some future day when this would be a good story. I told for right now. When it worked, we both enjoyed it fully in the moment.

Claim Your Right To Tell!

Humans have told stories since before we have any history. (After all, our first way of recording history was through stories!) Storytelling is natural to us. It’s a birthright. It’s significant. It’s part of how our brains work. In large measure, we take the world in through stories and process our experiences through making stories out of them.

It’s not hard to tell stories. It just requires us to have the four conditions that I had the good fortune to stumble on during those evenings snuggled under a comforter, next to a precious little brother:

1) Direct communication with your listeners;
2) A playful attitude;
3) Lack of concern for momentary failures; and
4) A focus on the immediate moment.

Changing Our Lives

At the time, my brother and I didn’t think we were doing anything that would affect our futures. To be sure, neither of us remembers a single story that I told.

But those moments changed our lives. How do I know? Well, a couple times a year, my brother, who is now in his 50’s and has two grown children, will sign one of his emails to me, “With love from Little Foot.”

But is this an accurate assumption? What is the exact relationship between a story and the meaning or meanings that a listener experiences? If you tell stories in a practical context (such as business, religion, education, therapy, public policy, or persuasion of any kind) what is a useful way to think about how stories convey meaning?

Interpreting a 3-Word Sentence

Let’s start simple and work our way toward complexity.

Suppose Jack said to Jill, “I love you!” What meaning does Jill attribute to that three-word statement?

Obviously, it depends on Jill’s past experiences with Jack and her attitude toward him. For example, does she take Jack’s statement as a long-awaited declaration of undying affection? Or does she take it as an insincere attempt at seduction?

Equally obviously, Jill’s interpretation of meaning depends on the immediate context - on where they are and on what has just happened.

For example, if they were sailing on Jack’s yacht for the twentieth time and she had just told him that she was sick of sailing in stormy weather, does she take Jack’s statement as an attempt to stop her from being mad at him?

Or if they had met only three days ago on a cruise ship and she had just told Jack that she has decided to leave the cruise and go back to Yonkers, does she take Jack’s “I love you” as his attempt to make her change her mind and continue with the cruise?

In other words, Jill’s interpretation of Jack’s words depends on the nature of her relationship to Jack, her attitudes toward him, and the context of his remarks. But that’s just part of the problem.

But the Story of Jill?

Jill is responding to the Jack she knows. But what if you hear about all this second-hand? In short, how is this different for the listener to a story about Jack and Jill?

There are multiple differences between Jill’s interpretation and a listener’s interpretation. For today’s discussion, let’s notice simply that Jill has first-hand knowledge of what happened with Jack. But the listener to Jill’s story has to imagine what happens during Jill’s story, based on the storyteller’s description.

What Actually Happened?

Even though you and I may have heard the same story about Jill and Jack, we may imagine subtly different events.

For example, suppose you heard a story that begins like this:

“On the shifting deck, Jack knelt down in front of Jill and said, ‘I love you!’”

When you read that, you most likely created your own mental images. For example, you probably created a “shifting deck” in your mind.

Take a moment to notice: What was YOUR “shifting deck”?

Did you imagine the deck of an ocean liner? Or of a sailing ship? Or did you imagine the porch of a house in an earthquake? Or…?

And when Jack knelt down, how did you imagine him? Was he on one knee or two? Was he looking at Jill or not? Did you imagine how he was dressed?

If you took the time to imagine that scene, you imagined it in your own way. No two people ever imagine a scene exactly the same way, because each has his or her own predilections and memories to draw on.

So the details of your images differ from Jill’s and from every other listener’s. Your exact version of the story itself is unique! It’s no surprise, then, that your interpretation of those events will be unique.

Be Thoughtful About the Factors

Once we understand that many factors go into the process of a listener’s creation of a meaning and that listeners will arrive at many different meanings from a given story, then we can be more thoughtful about the problems of applied storytelling.

In entertainment storytelling, the engagement of your listeners is paramount. You want listeners to find your stories meaningful, but you are generally not invested in a single meaning.

But in applied storytelling, the particular meaning your listeners arrive at is as important to you as their engagement with the story.

Not an Arrow in a Target, but Ripples in a Pond

If you assume that telling Story #1 will automatically cause listeners to arrive at Meaning A, then your communication will fail for many of your listeners. Why? You will not be paying attention to all the factors under your control that tend to guide people toward a particular meaning.

What are those factors? There are many. But they all affect the exact context in which the story is heard. They affect the listener’s relationships to the storyteller and to the events of the story.

All great applied storytellers make use of these factors, at least unconsciously. Fortunately, everyone can learn to be aware of these factors. With experience, you can learn how changing each one of them affects the listener’s likelihood of creating a particular meaning. It is even possible to master the adjustment of several factors simultaneously.

But first - and foremost - you need to understand that stories convey meaning only by influencing the individual meaning-creation decisions of your listeners. This is an artistic process, not a mechanical one.

In even the most matter-of-fact environment, stories “mean” by initiating a complex, interactive series of communicative events. That complexity is the source of the power of stories. If you use creativity and thoughtfulness about the process, you can fully unleash that timeless power.

Contents

1) THE STORY: TEACHING IN THE DARK

2) A WINTER BLESSING FOR STORYTELLERS

1) THE STORY: TEACHING IN THE DARK

Here’s a story for the time of year - and the times in society - when the darkness can seem all-encompassing. And a blessing based on the story.

Teaching in the Dark

One Hasidic rabbi said said to another, “How often do you check up on your followers, to make sure they are doing what they are supposed to?”

The second rabbi said, “Let me tell you a story:

“There were once three prisoners locked in a dark dungeon. It was so black inside that they could not even see their own hands. Two of them did well enough in the darkness. But the third had been so disoriented by the months of deprivation that he could not even feed himself when food was brought. One time he would drop his food; another time he would let his plate tilt and spill his food into the muck at their feet.

“One of the other two prisoners tried to help the struggling one. Every day he would teach him exactly what to do: ‘Put your left hand about a finger-length from the edge of the plate. Bring it down now….’ But the next day, the food would be arranged differently, and the poor fellow would have to learn all over again.

“One day, the prisoner who had been teaching the suffering one said to the other, ‘Why don’t you help me teach him?’

“The other said, ‘He will never learn to eat in this darkness. Why don’t you help me with MY task? I am trying to cut a hole in the wall of our cell, to let in some light. Once he can see for himself, you will have no need to teach him!’

“And so,” continued the second rabbi, “I do not try to check up on what my followers do each moment. Instead, I try to bring some light into their thinking.”*

How Will You React to the Darkness?

Faced with darkness, will you resort to “managing the dark”? Will you rely too much on manipulating minutia, on trying to control exactly what happens at each moment?

Or will you trust the storyteller within you - and the creative intelligence of those around you? Will you tell - and be guided by - stories that can help summon the light?

A note on the story: “Teaching in the Dark” is my version of a Hasidic story told about the Rebbe of Pshishke and the Rebbe of Apt - but sometimes about other Hasidic rabbis. (Hasidism, by the way, is a Jewish mystical sect founded in Eastern Europe in the mid-eighteenth century.) The magnificent storyteller Sharon Humphreys-Brooks kindly called this story to my attention.

2) A WINTER BLESSING FOR STORYTELLERS

May the coming of the new light find you already surrounded with stories that nourish, liberate, and illuminate!

]]> http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2008/12/24/50/feed/ http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2008/12/06/storytelling-your-life-line-in-a-recession/ http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2008/12/06/storytelling-your-life-line-in-a-recession/#comments Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:29:10 +0000 Doug Lipman http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/?p=45

Contents

1) THANKSGIVING, TEETH, AND CASEY

2) STORYTELLING: YOUR LIFE-LINE IN A RECESSION?

1) THANKSGIVING, TEETH, AND CASEY

Before getting down to this month’s article, let me tell you about my Thanksgiving experience - which does relate some to storytelling.

Did you celebrate the U.S.’s Thanksgiving holiday?

Pam and I did. We drove 12 hours from our home in Oklahoma to Indiana. We were visting Pam’s middle daughter, my step-daughter Casey. Casey is a graduate student in evolutionary biology; this was our first time to see her new home.

I loved seeing how well Casey is doing. She manages her studies, her money, and decorating her home beautifully, without losing her playfulness and sense of joy. She is also a good home-repair student; I taught her how to update her ungrounded electrical outlets. I was delighted to be able to give her some of the tools she needed, to continue the work after I left.

Driving home, Pam and I were singing along with Christmas carols on the radio. Some station in Missouri played the 1940’s novelty song, “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth.”

Suddenly, I could see in my mind my Jewish father’s face as he brought that record home to me one day. It must have been in the mid-1950’s, because I was missing a couple of teeth at the time. My Dad said, “I just had to buy this, because of you.” I tried to explain to him that my missing teeth were on the side, not the front. But I couldn’t mistake his delight in having found a song that, he felt, reflected the experience I was going through.

And now I was enjoying the giving of a well-suited gift to Casey, who I first met in her high school years - long after her permanent teeth had come in. But the delight was the same.

Isn’t it a similar joy to tell a story that fits an audience perfectly?

2) STORYTELLING: YOUR LIFE-LINE IN A RECESSION?

In hard times, is storytelling just a frill? Or can it be part of a strategy to survive and even thrive?

Cheap and Tasty and Good for You?

When times get really hard, people change their eating habits. They look for food that is

1. cheap

And also

2. nutritious enough

And finally

3. as tasty as possible.

Different people will give greater preference to each of the three. But if you can provide something that combines cheap, nutritious and delicious, you’ll have people knocking on your door in the darkest economic times!

Storytelling Gives You All Three

As Karen Dietz says, storytelling is a core business competency. So it can assist you no matter what field you are in.

In particular, in difficult economic times, storytelling can save money and be economical when compared to alternatives (cheap). It can make you or your business more effective (nutritious). And it can provide the unique flavor that makes you or your business stand out among all the others (tasty).

And this is true whether you are

I. A performing storyteller,
II. An employee, or
III. Are running a business - as a solo entrepreneur, as a for-profit company or even a non-profit organization.

In this first of a series of articles, I’ll talk about how storytelling can be used to improve the quality of what you offer - thus making you more likely to thrive during an economic crunch. In the next two articles, I’ll talk about how storytelling can make you first an economical and, second, a “tasty” choice.

I. For the Professional Storyteller

If you are a professional storyteller, being “nutritious” means being sure that your telling is excellent.

All else being equal, people will always choose higher quality. But in hard times, when their money is scarce, people will be even more picky about quality. Storytelling that might have gotten by during boom times will no longer suffice.

Therefore, if you apply yourself to improving your telling, you will have a better chance of being one who continues to thrive during these times.

To improve your telling, you need three basic things:

First, you need opportunities to tell at different levels: rehearsal buddies who will listen for your sake (not for theirs) as well as practice performance audiences, so you can season your stories before you bring them in front of a paying audience.

Second, you also need information. You need to have a clear idea of what the issues of storytelling are and the options for approaching them in your own distinctive way.

Third, you need skilled helpers. You need helpers to supplement the energy and skills you have available for your business. And from time to time you need help from a coach who is more experienced and can offer you perspective on the places where you are stuck.

II. For the Employee

If you are an employee, the product you need to sell is yourself. In a business that may be shrinking, for example, you want to be so valuable that you will not lose your job. Further, if you find yourself without a job, you want to be so attractive to other employers that you’ll be able to get one easily.

If you’re looking for a job, storytelling is your best friend! First, don’t go into an interview until you’re clear what story you want to tell about yourself. What’s the narrative of your own career? What incidents demonstrate your strengths? Second, what stories do you want to elicit, to learn about your prospective employer? Would you like to know stories about the company’s values, or heroes, or successes or struggles?

Storytelling is also a skill that can make you more qualified. The job descriptions of many (if not most) employees include inter-personal activities, such as communication, leadership, conflict management, customer service, supervision, sales or persuasion.

Storytelling improves your effectiveness in all inter-personal skills. You will be a better employee if you know how to elicit people’s stories, listen to stories, find stories to tell, shape stories, and communicate stories effectively.

Regardless of job description, though, all employees become more valuable when they have interpersonal skills. For example, suppose that two workers have the same technical skills and work at the same rate, yet one of them gets along well with colleagues and is able to communicate the aspirations and the visions of a project and to inspire others. In such a case, you can guess which worker will be fired last and hired first!

You may be thinking, “But I work by myself in a very technical field. What does storytelling have to do with improving my value to my employer?”

As it turns out, even if you are a computer programmer or a financial analyst, you need imagination. Even though the bulk of your work may be writing code to accomplish a given task, say, or analyzing numbers that have been handed to you, the reason someone wants that code or those numbers analyzed is to meet a need.

At some point, the excellent programmer, the excellent analyst, or the excellent technician of any kind needs to take an imaginative leap to understand what needs to be done or how to do it best. And storytelling is the premier tool for developing your imagination quickly, easily and at little cost.

III. For the Business Owner

If you are running a business, either by yourself or as part of an organization, you have certain key tasks. One such task, of course, is sales and marketing, which, in turn, is key to staying afloat in a recession. As it turns out, the stories you tell in your sales and marketing presentations help determine the sales you get!

What about improving the quality of your products and services? You need excellent communication among your staff, near-universal buy-in to the company vision, and persuasive presentations to your suppliers, partners, and even board of directors. As it turns out, storytelling is a key method for improving all of those!

In the end, you are dependent on the satisfaction of those who pay you and your company money. In that sense, you are primarily in the customer service business.

Trying to maintain customer service without excellent storytelling is a little bit like trying to dig a hole with your bare hands: You can do it, but it’s so much easier with the right tool. Storytelling is a way to elicit experiences (successful and unsuccessful) from customers and employees. It’s a way to train employees. It’s a way to remind them of the importance of customer satisfaction and to celebrate their achievements.

This idea of founding your company philosophy in a corporate policy of customer-centered storytelling is used at highly successful companies from Nordstrom’s to Metronics. If you’re not using it, you’re missing a key opportunity for improving the quality of your business.

Steak and Green Vegetables?

Regardless of the kind of work you do, storytelling skills increase the quality of what you offer.

Said another way, storytelling is a fine food for hard times. In fact, it has the top nutritional value of lean meat and fresh green vegetables.

Can storytelling also help with the other two problems of expense and flavor? I’ll return to those qualities later, each in a future article.

]]> http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2008/12/06/storytelling-your-life-line-in-a-recession/feed/ http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2008/11/20/why-story-listening-makes-you-thankful/ http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2008/11/20/why-story-listening-makes-you-thankful/#comments Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:27:45 +0000 Doug Lipman http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/?p=41 It’s not too hard to be thankful when things go great. But in hard times, thankfulness requires some outside help.

That’s when it especially pays to listen to stories. Story-listening tends to make you grateful, no matter what is happening, in part because it reminds you that happy endings can follow difficult trials.

More than that, I believe that listening to good stories makes you grateful because it first assists you in feeling positive about yourself.

Ten Qualities You Gain Through Stories

Story-listening helps you feel all 10 of these:

1. Powerful

When someone tells you a story, you can discover your ability to imagine the sights, sounds, and feelings the story evokes. You effortlessly re-create the story’s images in your mind. In time, you learn that you can imagine anything in the world - and much that has never been. What power!

2. Rich

Maybe you’re not rolling in money, but you can afford to listen to stories. You don’t need a television or a cable subscription, just another human to tell you a tale. Further, you never run out of new stories. Even better, you’ll be reminded of your own life experiences, which are, after all, a form of wealth you can never lose.

3. Brave

Having faced dangers and adversity - often of (literally) epic proportions - with the characters in a story, you renew your determination - to do better than the evil characters who must be foiled in the end, to face obstacles rather than run from them, to be the one whose actions save the day. Armed with stories, you have new strategies for prevailing and, therefore, are more willing to take on challenges.

4. Refreshed

Stories awaken your senses. When you imagine the scenes of a story, you call on your internal ability to see, hear, and feel. You leave the foggy world of abstraction and anchor yourself once again in the palpable details of scene, character, and action. Further, you leave your own cares behind for a while and can return to them after the story with a new perspective.

5. Connected

When you listen with others, you share the experience with them, even as each listener’s experience is unique. This creates a sense of tolerant connection among you. Further, when you listen to stories with those you love, you may be prompted to tell stories to each other. This draws you closer, as you entertain and instruct each other by sharing the personal experiences that you find fun, beautiful, or moving.

6. Cosmopolitan

Stories let you travel to many lands - without going through airport security!

7. Independent

Storytelling requires no equipment, special facilities, or dependence on foreign oil. When you make a habit of enjoying stories, you realize that you can live a full life even without your television, computer, and video games.

8. Wise

Through stories, you walk in another’s mocassins without getting your feet muddy. You identify with characters, experiencing their points of view and thus increasing your compassion. Further, you learn new ways to act on values and new consequences (both positive and negative) of human decisions.

9. Environmentally Responsible

Storytelling is eco-friendly, humane entertainment. It creates no pollution, adds to no landfills, and harms no animals!

10. Happy

What makes you happier than surviving, with a story character, a life-threatening experience, hopeless situation, rejection, failure, or near disaster? What makes you more hopeful than a series of well-deserved happy endings?

Together, This Adds Up to More

As important as each of these ten qualities may be, they add up to something even greater. After all, who has more reason to be thankful than one who is blessed with power, riches, courage, alertness, human ties, world travel, independence, wisdom, environmental prudence and happiness?

The moral of this tale? Listen to more stories. You’ll be thankful that you did.

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