Story Intelligence: Master the 7 Powers of Story

Stories can take us to different places and times and empathetically engage us in alternate emotional realities. In this module, we explore the neurological roots of story in the human experience, and the cultural role that storytelling plays in everyday life.

Stories can seduce our brains in unique and powerful ways. In this short lecture, we explore how they do this and the implications for what we call "reality."

Humans have been transporting others with their stories and tall tales since the beginning of human history. We believe this form of story is at the heart of play, especially for adults.

The Tall Tale is a story form that has been around forever, and you can find variants in almost every culture. Perhaps because America in its early days was so much bigger than the life that Europeans knew, people here could easily exaggerate the size of a fish or the remarkable feats of the local population. Europeans would believe these tall tales and share them with everyone on the home continent.

When considering the Power of Story to Transport us and others, what are the implications of this phenomenon in every aspect of our lives? We'll explore this question in this lecture.

This lecture lays out the rudiments of powerful story creation and telling.

All of us are swimming in communication modalities and messaging from multiple sources. How can we best discern what's true? How can we best impact others with our communication? Is there a way to leverage the power of story to become more effective?

This physiological phenomenon helps us to understand how stories can persist and become difficult to dislodge in our consciousness

Our neural wiring predetermines the amount of attention we can pay to others. The other determinant is the degree to which what the other is saying is engaging. That's where storytelling comes in. Stories bind tells and listeners together unlike any other form of communication.

Story is the most powerful communication tool to open us to the plights of others.

In this lecture, we explore the tenuous relationship between story and truth.

How do we best engage audiences when we communicate? One way is to build suspense into our stories.

How can we use the power of story to influence how others think about important issues of the day? Or even persuade them of an alternate perspective?

Frequently we attempt to persuade people with data and numbers, believing the more facts they have, the more likely they are to come over to our way of seeing things. Unfortunately, data tends to have an inverse impact on changing people's minds--they are more likely to double down on their pre-existing position.

In the entertainment world, there's an old saying: Audience is King. People creating content for sale recognize that their stories must hit home with their audience. And if they don't, the audience will provide instantaneous feedback by leaving the show or sharing their negative experience with others. The same is true whether you're a company CEO, a marketing executive, or a nonprofit fundraiser attempting to convince people to donate to your cause. If employees, consumers, or philanthropists can't connect to your story, the consequences can, in many cases, be catastrophic for your organization. Spend time profiling your audience and the stories they are living in before you dive in to create a story to engage their interest.

How can we best influence decision-makers? Is giving them all the information enough? Or is it counterproductive in many cases? Will a good story often suffice when there are mounds of data to back it up?

How can we start a movement? How do we get large numbers of people to be inspired to take action to make a difference in the world? It turns out that a well-constructed story that appeals both to their hearts and minds is the answer.

Often, stories can have unintended consequences. When people pushed a narrative that migrant children brought here when they were very young were innocent and should be afforded special treatment under the immigration laws, others concluded that if they were innocent, their parents were not. They should be vigorously pursued and forced to return to their home country.

Leaders must master the art of storytelling. This along with the following videos detail the different kinds of stories that leaders must learn to tell.

A leader's and company's origin story is an invaluable narrative asset for engaging new staff and reminding seasoned staff why they do what they do.

In traditional oral cultures, values are transmitted through the power of stories. There is still no better way to reinforce a company's core values than through the stories leaders and team members share.

We tend to plan for the future by making exhaustive lists of things to do. This becomes even more pernicious when it comes to strategic planning. There is a more effective way, and it involves developing robust stories that better capture the nuances associated with complex realities and business challenges.

Customer Success Stories not only point the way for your sales and operational team, but they can be remarkably effective sales tools.

There is no better way of enculturating new team members than through stories that explain how we do things.

Sam Magill works with leadership coaches around the world in their search for understanding the complexities of their work with clients. This work, Coaching Supervision, was new to North America when he brought it here from Europe and the UK. He is seen as a pioneer and senior voice. He will retire from his leadership roles at the end of 2021. In this first of a four-part interview, Sam describes what he calls the poetics of coaching. He sees the coaching encounter as a living experience that shares many of the properties of what occurs when we encounter a painting, a work of art, or the symbolic images that emerge from a poem.

In this second of a four-part interview, we explore the value of conversation and its Latin roots in Conversare, which means to turn together.

In this third of a four-part interview, we explore what it means to become embroiled in a client’s story and what we can learn from the painter George Seurat about creating distance in our professional relationships.

In this last of the four-part interview, we explore how coaches can use their native story intelligence to enhance their work and how this knowledge can help them to flexibly change perspectives in order to gain deeper insight.

Liesl Ulrich–Verderber is CEO of Ever Widening Circles, a global positive media company with 6 platforms created to prove that it is still an amazing world.

By the age of 27, Liesl was also the founder of three of those media outlets aimed at elevating goodness and progress for us all: an education site EWCed, an endeavor to improve business and healthcare culture at Amazing World Media, and most recently, the Conspiracy of Goodness Network, a personal and professional growth platform where people who value and work in goodness can connect, collaborate, and change the world together.

Her intention is simple: to celebrate the quiet wave of goodness and progress going on all around us that almost no one knows about and open a new era for us all by changing the negative dialogue of our times.

In this first of a four-part interview, Liesl discusses the media's profound influences on us. Most of it is negative. In this first of a five-part interview, Liesl discusses how she has chosen to focus on sharing stories of people solving the world's biggest problems. While these kinds of stories don't command the headlines of our newspapers or the lead on the nightly news, they do chronicle people's slow and positive progress to fill this world with positivity and goodness.

In this second of a five-part interview, Liesl shares some of the most moving and impactful stories on Ever Widening Circles.

In this third of a five-part interview, Liesl shares with us her work with EWCed and how they are helping teachers to use media stories to engage students with learning and stimulate their curiosity about the world around them. Perhaps most importantly, this work is opening students' eyes to explore different narratives about themselves and what is possible with their lives.

In this fourth of a five-part interview, Liesl shares with us her work to create a Conspiracy of Goodness to provide people around the world doing good work a platform for networking and support. The Conspiracy of Goodness is giving these people who often labor in obscurity a place to tell their stories, share their problems and challenges, and provide each other resources to achieve their goals and dreams.

In this last of a five-part interview, Liesl explores what it means to be a young business person and leader, and the importance of a leader's narrative to their success.

You'll notice we didn't say "teach." Much of what I have learned about using stories in education has been from Paula Underwood, a descendant of the Oneida people. In her tradition, learning was the highest value. And they understood that it was impossible to teach anyone anything, but if we understand what their learning edge is, we can enable them to learn using stories and the power of reflection.

Our capacity for language and our brain’s development are inextricably linked. It turns out that "story" plays a significant role in the development of both.

Stories are ultimately about characters who suffer either good or bad consequences due to their actions. When children grow up hearing stories and being read to, they internalize the consequential narrative structures in their own thinking and appraisal of their actions.

The Oneida people were obsessed with preserving their traditions, culture, and stories and devoted enormous resources to enabling learning.

Who Speaks for Wolf is a seminal story about a people who learn how to learn using the power of story.

Story combined with the power of reflection, becomes a perpetual motion learning engine.

For adults story can also play an instrumental role in their learning and personal development.

The Oneida developed millennia ago a systems approach to understanding the world. You can easily apply their methodology to everyday challenges and issues.

In many African cultures, they developed a unique tradition of using stories to confront individuals and groups with complex ethical issues.

When you can reframe both successes and failures in the light of learning, even the most abysmal failure can be redeemed and seen as a worthwhile experiment.

Often, embodying a problem through movement can reveal new insights. This methodology was developed by the Oneida. Give it a try to address a challenging situation in your life.

Dr. Terry Deal is the founder of the Terrence E. Deal Leadership Institute at the University of La Verne and is a renowned leadership expert, author, and international consultant, having taught organization and leadership courses at Stanford, Harvard, Vanderbilt, and the University of Southern California. He retired as the Irving R. Melbo Clinical Professor of USC‘s Rossier School of Education and now consults for a wide variety of organizations, including businesses, hospitals, banks, schools, colleges, religious orders, and military organizations worldwide.

Dr. Deal has written forty books and over one hundred articles and co-authored book chapters concerning organizations, leadership, change, culture, symbolism, soul, and spirit. He co-authored sixteen books, including the best-selling Corporate Cultures with A.A. Kennedy, Managing the Hidden Organization with W.A. Jenkins, and Reframing Organizations with Lee Bolman.

Dr. Deal earned his B.A. from the University of La Verne, M.A. from California State University Los Angeles, and Ph.D. in Educational Administration and Sociology from Stanford University.

In this first of a four-part interview, we explore with Terry the importance of story and myth within organizations and schools. They may not have the title, but every organization has a chief storyteller, and they play an instrumental role in preserving and perpetuating the culture.

In this second of a four-part interview, Terry explores the role of story in leadership and how their reliance on rationality and failure to recognize the power of story, myth, and ritual can often severely limit their effectiveness.

In this third of a four-part interview, Terry discusses the importance of symbolic frames in understanding organizations, and how story powerfully infuses this way of seeing. He also shares the lessons he learned in his first career as a cop, and how that led to a lifetime of learning about what makes for effective teaching and the need to re-story education.

In this final segment of a four-part interview, Terry discusses the role of fiction in education and leadership, and how he is bringing its instructive power into his Leadership Institute.

Dan Apple, PhD, is the founder and President of Pacific Crest since 1983. Having worked with higher education since 1985, Dr. Apple has visited over 2,000 campuses and facilitated over 1,000 faculty workshops, Institutes, and Learning to Learn Camps with thousands of students. He is regarded as one of the foremost experts on Process Education™, devoting time to authoring papers and books, leading workshops and Self-growth Institutes, and spending hundreds of hours consulting each year to improve key educational processes. His latest books include Learning to Learn: Becoming a Self-grower and A Professional’s Guide to Self-growth.

In this first of a five-part interview with Dan Apple, he explains why the underpinning philosophy of Process Education is revolutionary and a key to self-growth.

In this second of a 5-part conversation, Daniel Apple explores with us what it means to learn and grow and the role of stories in this process.

In this third of a five-part conversation, Daniel Apple shares with us insights into the distinctions between assessment and evaluation and how this distinction impacts our story of possibilities

In this fourth of a five-part interview, Daniel Apple explores with us the distinction between developing knowledge versus capabilities, and we explore the story of education and the changes that need to happen in higher education if it is to have a meaningful role in our future.

In this fifth of a 5-part conversation, we explore with Daniel Apple two distinct visions for the future and how the stories we tell will determine the world we’ll live in in the coming decades.

In this power of story, we explore the many ways that story can be used to make sense of our life experiences and to live more purposefully.

When we begin to see our lives as a story, new avenues for meaning-making unfold.

Stories impact beliefs and world view. While we all want our stories to be genuine, authentic, and verifiable, the "truth" is often hard to discern when it comes to personal stories. Two siblings growing up in the same household may have entirely different narratives about their parents and things that occurred during their upbringing. Is one story more true than the other? Does "truth" matter, or perhaps there is something more important to pay attention to here?

Being able to understand our life through the lens of story is a fundamental skill and crucial to personal growth and self-understanding.

There are four types of reminiscence importance to physical and mental health.

Instrumental reminiscence focuses on reflecting on past successes to enable you to have the resilience to face current challenges.

Suppose you think of your life as a book, with chapters for each significant event that informed your personal growth and development. In that case, it becomes important not to exclude major sections simply because they were painful or regrettable. They, too, have to be recognized, embraced as part of your journey, and integrated into the whole story.

Passing on our values and life lessons becomes an important developmental task as we move into our 60s and 70s. Have you preserved your life's lessons in stories that can be shared with the next generation?

Robyn Fivush is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Psychology and Director of the Institute for the Liberal Arts at Emory University, where she has been on the faculty since 1984. She received her PhD from the Graduate Center of The City University of New York in 1983 and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California at San Diego from 1983 to 1984. She is a Fellow of both APA and APS. Her research focuses on the social construction of autobiographical memory and the relations among memory, narrative, identity, trauma, and coping.

Marshall P. Duke, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Psychology at Emory, is Editor in Chief of the Journal of Family Life and author of nine books and more than one hundred articles focusing on the family and other social learning networks. He is a member of the core faculty of Emory’s Center for the Study of Myth and Ritual in American Life (MARIAL) and a Senior Faculty Fellow at Emory’s Center for Ethics. Over the years, he has appeared on Good Morning America, the Today Show, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. His work has been written about in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Parents Magazine, and Time Magazine.

In this first of a 4-part interview, Robyn and Marshall share with us their decades-long research exploring the impact of intergenerational narratives on children’s self-esteem and resilience. They discuss the centrifugal and centripetal forces impacting families today and how critical storytelling is for our children’s well-being. Now, more than ever, families need storytelling to weather the changes besetting our society and our world.

In this second of a 4-part interview with Robyn Fivush and Marshall Duke, they elucidate the kinds of stories our children need to hear and how small, everyday stories can greatly impact our children’s development. They explain why these simple stories provide children a context for knowing who they are, how to live, and how to relate to the world around them.

In this third of a 4-part interview with Robyn Fivush and Marshall Duke, they explain the psychological mechanism at play when we hear a story and how it allows us to make analogous connections that give children the ability to build a moral framework of behavior and give them a sense of their place in time and history.

In this fourth and last part of the interview with Robyn Fivush and Marshall Duke, they explore the concepts of ascending and descending family storylines and their relevance for families today as they face the Pandemic. They also emphasize the importance of family rituals that create symbolic containers for the cyclical nature of life.

What is the core story at the heart of your life, calling you forth to grow and experience the wealth of all that life has to offer? Identify that and you will be following a path that leads to deeper fulfillment.

We often think of past events as being set in stone, when in fact, it's not the events themselves that have hardened like concrete, but rather the stories we tell ourselves about those events that have become rigidly defined and intractable. Be open to a new story, and watch how possibilities begin to replace what appeared to be something that could never be healed or resolved.

Stories of the past can become wired into our brains and reflected in our consciousness. Understanding this process is the first step to finding approaches to unwire ourselves from a limiting story about the past.

Here we introduce you to a new model for viewing difficulties and the stories we attribute to them. Learn to see how the conclusions we often attribute to events is what stifles our creativity and vision for new possibilities.

Establishing social distance from our stories and experiences is a key step in transforming difficulties and painful events.

Recontextualizing is a key to seeing traumatic events from the light of story’s power.

Here we explore how every event in the past can be transformed through story.

Mastering storylines will enable you to create new stories regardless of circumstances.

Here we demonstrate the efficacy of transformative stories in real-world applications.

Can a simple story transform the entire trajectory of a major organization? Here, we tell the story of the World Bank and how Steve Denning discovered how to use what he came to call a SpringBoard Story to engage the bank to see a new broader mission for its services.

Seth Kahan heads up Visionary Leadership and is an executive strategy consultant and author. He works directly with CEOs on large-scale change and innovation initiatives. He is well known for his work conceiving, designing, and executing grand challenges and big and bold goals that attack socially intractable problems by developing systemic alliances with multiple organizations and activists. He has worked with Royal Dutch Shell, the World Bank, the Peace Corps, and many other organizations, including over 100 professional societies and trade associations. His first book, Getting Change Right, was a Washington Post and Denver Post bestseller. His subsequent books include Getting Innovation Right and Visionary Leadership.

In this first of a four-part interview with Seth Kahan, he shares his history with the World Bank and the development of the SpringBoard Story with Steve Denning.

In this second of a four-part interview with Seth Kahan, we explore how the pandemic has accelerated the evolution of organizations, opening up possibilities and a unique inflection point that can allow a new story to emerge.

In this third part of a four-part interview, Seth Kahan discusses the power of an inflection point in your organization's story. It's an irreversible trend that can positively impact the way you relate to your customers.

In this final segment of our interview with Seth Kahan, we explore the breadth of ways that story impacts all facets of our existence.

Can we effectively engage people with transformative behaviors that change their health?

Storytelling can in fact change attitudes and behaviors of entire societies, if applied appropriately.

As President of PCI Media, Meesha has an unwavering commitment to education as the fundamental means to empower people to realize their undeniable human rights and create lasting cultural change. As the first woman and person of color to lead PCI Media, Meesha is passionate about ensuring that PCI Media’s work fully embodies the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In 2015, Meesha produced #ISurvivedEbola, a global public health campaign. The campaign saved lives by empowering over 10 million people to take measures to protect themselves and others from contracting the deadly Ebola virus.

In this first of a four-part interview, Meesha traces the roots of edutainment and how the insights of a TV producer, Miguel Sabido, have altered how we think about producing social change around a host of crucial issues facing the world.

In this second of a four-part series, Meesha explores how PCI Media came into existence and how they took the ideas of Miguel Sabido and scaled them to address real-world change.

In this third of a four-part interview, Meesha illustrates how PCI Media is applying this "story" technology to address various issues facing Mozambique and demonstrates how just changing the conversation around an issue is the first and perhaps most important step in changing hearts and minds.

In this fourth of a four-part interview, Meesha explains how PCI Media developed the "I survived Ebola" campaign and how their work significantly changed the story on the ground during a pandemic.

Dr. David Drake works with organizations that want to re-invent how they serve people and communities to create a more inclusive and sustainable future. He has been a leader in the field of Narrative Coaching, is an author, and has dedicated his life and career to standing in third spaces — as someone who is (1) a grounded practitioner and a visionary thinker, (2) dedicated to the scholarly and the shamanic, and (3) the founder of three bodies of work and someone who savors the moment.

David founded and runs the Center for Narrative Coaching & Design. The firm specializes in developing new narratives and coaching/change capabilities using integrative methods. His current research interests focus on using attachment theory and applied mindfulness in developing people and using narrative design as a scalable change model.

In this first of a 5-part interview, David explores the importance of talking about things that matter and his development of Narrative Coaching that emerged out of his focus on identity as the root of all change.

In this second of a 5-part interview, David explores two foundational pieces of Narrative Coaching--thresholds and the importance of radical presence on the part of the coach.

In this the third of a 5-part interview, David explores a new approach to transformation that he calls Integrative Development, which combines training, coaching, and organizational development into one practice.

In this fourth of a 5-part interview, David David explores the role of mindsets in behavior change within work environments. He asks a fundamental question: If you want to change something, what would have to be different about your story?

In this fifth of a 5-part interview, David turns his attention to the importance now more than ever of reinventing our narratives to create the world we want to live in.

Writing about difficult experiences can remove the sting of hurt and allow us to see them in a new light.

Our world is filled with strife and conflict. Political polarization even cuts through families, making it nearly impossible at times to come together. The Power of Story to Unite is about navigating through these troubling divides to find a place of community and connection.

Often, conflict begins at home. If families cannot resolve persistent conflict, how can we expect the wider body politic to do so?

The roots of divisions between peoples and nations have a long history. Understanding how this began can provide clues for how to remedy what looks like an inherent facet of human nature.

This is a continuation of the discussion of how hatred and mistrust entered into human affairs.

When we are embroiled in a conflict, it turns out that reframing the disagreements in the context of a new story can liberate us to make changes that shift the nature of the conflict.

Changing our story about the "other" can profoundly change us and the potential for relationship and growth.

Changing someone's mind, much less their heart, is a tough affair. Most of us fail miserably when attempting to convince another of our point of view. But if you understand the power of story, there are opportunities to use its power to shift others' perspectives on important issues.

Just knowing another's story can transform them from enemy to friend.

When the Hutus brutally attacked Tutsis in 1994, they slaughtered almost a million people within the span of weeks. Yet, thirty years later, Tutsis are miraculously welcoming back into their communities Hutus who were convicted and jailed for decades. The story of how that happened is instructive as other groups who have a history of hatred grapple with creating a better future.

Can the power of story help us address global issues of strife, many of which have persisted for decades or even centuries?

Listening well requires discipline and a willingness to put aside our own agenda to focus on what the other is saying. In this video and its Part II companion, I explore ideas developed by Paul Costello that can improve the way we all listen.

In this second discussion of listening, we continue to explore ideas Paul Costello developed that can improve how we all listen.

Paul Costello's understanding of story came first from his study of sacred texts and his encounter with fellow Australian Michael White and Michael's school of narrative therapy. Paul is the founder and director of Storywise.com and the Center For Narrative Studies. Since 1995 he has been researching new ways to unleash the power of story and apply it to some of the most challenging issues of our time that focus on people at war, often due to ethnic differences. He has supported the peace process in Northern Ireland-Ireland and tackling the Israel-Palestine conflict. Paul lives and works in Washington, DC, and has written a narrative guide to elections called the Presidential Plot. He currently directs a local AmeriCorps program called Project CHANGE which supports struggling students in the local school system.

In all his work, Paul is both a teacher and a student, insatiably curious to learn and unlearn what stories can and cannot do. His most recent interest has been to understand story less as performance and more as a principle of design that underpins memory and is the map for meaning-making. He is writing and teaching more and more about the principles of narrative design (POND) and inviting people into a whole new way of thinking about stories as the power for change that is never more needed in our world. As long as warring peoples cling to the old stories filled with anger and the desire for vengeance, there is no room for reconciliation or possibilities for creating peace. But when people focus on creating a new story about the future, possibilities for reconciliation open up. 

In this first of a five-part interview, Paul shares how his early work with Catholic and Protestant students from Northern Ireland and Ireland led to profound insights into how to work with the power of story to create transformative change.

In this second of a five-part interview, Paul discusses how it’s not enough just to change the story. We must be prepared to act on the world to create space for a new story to emerge.

In this third of a five-part interview, Paul discusses what he terms Story Maps and how he has learned to use deliberate story design in every endeavor to ensure greater success.

In this fourth of a five-part interview, Paul examines an essential component for change—story listening and how it’s not the story you listen to but rather the story you listen through.

In this last of a five-part interview, Paul discusses his fascination with presidential politics and the narratives that candidates weave to successfully get elected and govern.

We typically think of storytelling as a retrospective affair, but it may be the case that all of our brain's work to catalog past experiences is in service of a prospective function of the brain designed to help us plan the future and anticipate what's coming at us from around a blind corner.

It turns out that our imaginations are powerful engines for anticipating the future and actually improving our performance. This is borne out clearly in early research on using the imagination to improve the performance of basketball players when shooting baskets. But the results are confirmed across a host of other human endeavors. Seeing the future before we act can enhance our performance.

Harnessing the brain's prospective capabilities can improve our performance across a host of modalities.

At times, knowing that our actions will have negative consequences is not a sufficient deterrent for us to continue to act in a way that will destroy our future.

We all need a future. Without a future, the present can become a bleak landscape. Just by imagining a better future, we are empowered to act to improve our circumstances.

How do we innovate in the face of daunting challenges? In this component of the course, you'll learn from one of the lasters of Positive Deviance--an approach to identifying solutions that people in small niches are experimenting with. This approach to change will alter how you see problems and you'll begin looking for the quiet innovators in your midst who have already solved the problem.

Arvind Singhal, Ph.D., is the Samuel Shirley and Edna Holt Marston Professor and Director of Social Justice Initiative at The University of Texas at El Paso, and he was appointed (since 2009-2010) as the William J. Clinton Distinguished Fellow, Clinton School of Public Service, University of Arkansas, and Professor 2, Inland School of Business and Social Sciences, Norway. He has published and researched widely on the positive deviance approach, and taught courses and implemented workshops on the positive deviance approach for educators, health practitioners, and business leaders in several countries of Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

In this first of a four-part interview, Arvind shares the story of how a chance meeting with Jerry Sternin completely transformed his thinking about how to best spread innovations.

In this second of a four-part interview, Arvind shares how he was involved in the early applications of positive deviance to a host of other challenging issues, such as reducing MRSA infections in hospitals.

In this third of a four-part interview, Arvind discusses how common cultural stories often obfuscate solutions to difficult societal problems.

In this last of a four-part interview, Arvind discusses how changing narrative frames can take us to places to see possibilities that we would never have seen on our own.

Companies like 3M have begun recognizing that traditional tools for strategic planning fall short on several fronts. Thinking narratively produces better results in approximating the complexities of the business environment and prove to be more effective in predicting the future.

We need the power of story more than ever, and we need people worldwide to become educated about this power and to see how stories can be used to empower us but also to enslave us. Those who master this art will learn to assert authority over their personal narratives and see ways to use the power of story to heal all that afflicts the consciousness of humankind.