TRANSCRIPT
Shawn: We're immersed in a world which is full of stories. You've got to be good at spotting them.
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Ariadne: From Ampliseed and Pollination Foundation, welcome to Inspiring Stories. This series makes space for conversations with leaders who inspire us on our pathway to an equitable and nature positive future. I'm Ariadne Goring, co-CEO of the Pollination Foundation, and we focus on bringing community to the heart of climate solutions.
Kirsty: And I'm your co-host Kirsty Galloway McLean. I lead Ampliseed, a global network connecting practitioners with a rights-based human-centered approach to building environmental resilience. The topic for today's session was inspired by a common theme surfacing across our member discussions related to shaping project narratives. Some of the questions we've been hearing are along the lines of how do we lift the profile of our work and excite others with our vision? How do we shape our project stories in a way that speaks to the communities we work with, and equally resonates with prospective funders? What's the best way to share our progress and stories of impact?
And that's why we're excited to bring to you today's episode, which comes from a Zoom originally recorded in October, 2020 with Shawn Callahan. Shawn's the founder of storytelling company Anecdote, and he's one of the world's leading business storytelling teachers and advisors. Shawn is joining us today to share what sparked his interest in storytelling for businesses and to share his insights and tips into how to identify a good story, how to remember it when you need it, and how to make it work for your organization and audience.
Ariadne: As Kirsty mentioned, this session was originally recorded as a Zoom presentation with slides. For podcast purposes we've edited the story to make it a standalone for you to listen to wherever and whenever suits you best. So we invite you to sit back and enjoy taking time out to listen to Shawn's inspiring story.
Shawn: Well, it's great to see everyone here today. I was having a listen to Mikaela's talk. That was fabulous. I loved it. I learned so much, especially about augmented reality. So I've got a question for you. She put out a tender for her development. How many people actually responded to her tender?
Zero... Zero... Zero. Alright, zero. Whereas this is the thing about stories, like he hadn't thought about Mikaela's talk. You hadn't thought about that particular little story that she'd told, but for some reason, stories stick in our mind and the facts which are embedded in that story are instantly memorable when you think about that particular scenario, and that's one of the great benefits of storytelling, that these facts come along with the story. It's not like, on the one hand you have the facts, and on the other hand you have the story. You actually put the facts inside the story. And that's what gives some of the great power of storytelling.
Now, I'm gonna assume that you're all advocates of storytelling. I'm not gonna give you the case for storytelling, or anything like that. Instead, what I'm planning to do is just give you some techniques, things that you can do to take the information and how you're communicating it now and translating that into a narrative format.
So that's sort of my plan. Actually, I just wanted to start with just sort of how I got into storytelling really. So my first real job after, you know, working at the Pizza Hut was to work as a research assistant at the Center for Resource and Environmental Studies. I was doing a degree in geography and archeology, and one day my lecturer walked past and I was reading a printout of an essay that I had written, and it was one of those, you know, old fashioned perforated paper sort of printouts. You know, the 132 character wide. And I'm sort of flipping through that and the lecturer walks past, he goes, Oh, Shawn , you know a little bit about computers. And I said, Well, I know how to write my essay on a computer, but that's about it. And he said, Well, a friend of mine, Paul Parker, he's looking for a research assistant. Why don't you head over there and you can start on Monday. Sort of thing. And I went, Oh, okay.
So off I went, got the job. And what it showed me straight away was this real interesting connection between the stories that Paul Parker would tell about the Daintree Rainforest and what was happening there versus the development that was going on and then all the data that was used to back that up. And it was this real interesting interplay between story and numbers. I must admit I didn't understand it back then. It was some time after that, before it sort of clicked for me that, this was something that he was doing in probably an intuitive way, I have to stay, but was actually having enormous traction for him, you know, in terms of getting things done.
But that sort of led on to me working eventually - because of the technology element - I ended up working for IBM. And when I was working for IBM, my job was to go out and collect stories from companies. So I ended up hearing literally thousands of stories. In fact, I'm still doing that. I just did a project this month or, or last month around collecting innovation stories from the geological survey here in Australia, and that was really interesting to sort of see how innovation actually works in that organization.
So I get to hear lots and lots of stories and one of the things that I guess I learned from that, is that the stories we tell in organizations are not beautifully crafted, well structured, amazing stories. They're all kind of like tiny little anecdotes, just real life examples of the things that are going on and unfortunately, a lot of people who are talking about storytelling are sort of cribbing their expertise from Hollywood and they're saying, Oh, you need to do the hero's journey and do these amazing plot structures with turning points and denouments and all that sort of stuff.
Well, stories in organizations just don't look like that, right? The stories we tell are just like I say, these small things, and if you start to tell those big overwrought stories, people start looking at you going, There's something going on here. Right. They feel uncomfortable. They feel suspicious.
Whereas what they just want to hear is you just sort of say, Hey, look, I had this interesting example the other day, and oh, this is what happened. That's kind of the sort of story that people are looking for in organizations, so I'm gonna help you find and tell those types of stories. That's my interest.
That's not saying that those big stories can't be told. I certainly have used them for bigger set pieces, if you like, in organizations and, you can sort of use those bigger structures for strategy stories and we'll touch on that. But the real meat and potatoes is these small stories that I think we should all be able to tell and have in our back pocket.
Now, I think to do it though, you sort of have to get into the habit of storytelling. Now, some people already had that habit, right? I have a theory about this. I think the people who have the habit already are surrounded by people who tell stories. So they've learned it by osmosis. But if you haven't had that, you sort of have to build up that skill and I think it's a bit like brushing your teeth. You have to have a trigger that sort of goes, Oh, I need to brush my teeth. It's usually walking into the bathroom. Obviously you do the action, brush your teeth, and then you get a benefit. And the benefit is the fresh minty taste of freshly brushed mouth, I guess.
Now storytelling is a bit the same. The trigger is when you find yourself being very opinionated about something, "I think", you know, and you go off on what you think and give your opinion. You have to start to catch yourself doing that and go, Oh, what's an example I can give? That's all what storytelling is, it's just examples, right?
And so once you've think, Okay, I've got a need to tell an example. Often you don't have one. Oh, I can't think of a single example. That's when you gotta go and look for one. So when the next time you go off on that opinion, you can sort of say, "and let me just give you an example... just two years ago...". And then you launch into that little story and that's what gives that capsule of information that people remember, they feel, they get inspired to take some action.
Of course, the benefit you get when you share a story is the response from your audience, right? People lean in... Actually, I'll tell you what it works really well is when they tell your story back. That's when rapport really actually happens. So they're the benefits. That's the immediate thing you get back by sharing a story. So that's a habit. So I've got a bit of a process I take people through to build this habit. Just some things you have to think about in terms of your own sort of personal journey and using stories in this sort of systematic, purposeful way that we're talking about here.
The four steps that I like to talk about and help people with is, First of all, you gotta discover stories. I mean, stories are floating past us all the time. You know? Like we're immersed in a world which is full of stories. You've gotta be good at spotting them. You've gotta be going, Ah, that's a story.
Oh, I could tell that story. And so you have to start to notice stories. Secondly, you have to have some way to remember these stories. And funny thing is, is when someone asked you to tell a story, they said, Oh, Shawn, can you tell me your favorite story? I nearly always just go blank, I can't think of a single story as soon as someone asks you to tell a story.
But if someone sort of says, You know what? Can small things make a big difference? Immediately little stories pop into my head, and it's because you're sort of attached to, and I'll show y ou how we do this, is you're attached to certain themes and ideas and it's amazing that stories are there. You just have to have the right thing to trigger them.
Of course you gotta share these stories, lots of different ways of doing it, different types of stories to share, and we'll talk about a couple of different story patterns. And I, and I'll get you to build one of the story structures, help tell the story of the knowledge network. I thought that could be fun.
And then finally, you can't tell the same story over and over again. I mean, you get bored of it yourself. So that's one thing. And that shows eventually. Also, if you've got the similar audience, no-one really likes to hear the same story over and over again. So we wanna refresh them. We wanna keep new stories out there.
Anyway, so that's my kind of plan. Okay, so let's get into discovery, because this is the foundation, this is really where we need to start with anything we do around storytelling. I guess the first thing to think about the discovery element is what I would say is what I call spotting stories.
I'm gonna share a little framework for spotting stories. Cause you have to be able to say, Yeah, that's a story. No, that's not a story. And unfortunately, a lot of people are talking about stories at the moment. It's become the idea of the moment, but they're not actually telling stories.
They're saying things like, Oh, we've got this fabulous story. Our story is about conservation and making a difference in the world, that's the story. And then they sit back like they've just told a story. Right? And you know, you don't get any of the, those marvelous benefits of memory and emotion and inspiration unless it's actually a story, right?
I remember going over to Virginia to do some work with a company over there and they'd spent quite a bit of time building a story bank, right? So they collected, videoed, all these people telling stories, and when I arrived they wanted to show me their story bank. So I sat down and the first story that came up was where three people sitting on a couch.
And they're looking at the camera and they're saying, Oh look, this company is a fabulous company. It's really, the people here really are looked after. We have great, healthy options in our cafeteria. We can go down there anytime to grab, a bite to eat. And, and, and we got this great 401K program.
And anyway, they, they talk like that for, I dunno, probably three or four minutes, and everyone's looking at me like, "Look at our story. Isn't that a great story?" And I had to say, sorry that these are not stories. They had all these film clips and none of them were stories. So that's why we really need to be good at spotting them.
So here's the framework, right? First of all, a story nearly always starts with a time marker. So as soon as you hear someone say, Oh yeah, just the other day or two weeks ago, Oh, actually the last time we got together, or back in 1983, as soon as you hear a time marker, there's a good chance you're about to hear a story.
What's the archetypal time marker that we all know and love?
Phil: Once upon a time.
Shawn: Thank you, Phil. Absolutely. Now, highly recommend you don't use that in any business setting. I find that I'll send you in the wrong direction, but that it's exactly the same thing, right? You wanna start off with a strong time marker.
And if it's not a time marker, sometimes it's a place marker. Of course, if you're Star Wars, it's long, long time ago, and a galaxy far, far away, right? So they're going for both: time marker, place marker. You know, you can start a story by sort of saying, Oh yeah, we're in the boardroom. And Sarah walked in, right?
So that's the beginning of a story. The next thing in any story is that stories are made up of events. They're not made up of opinions, they're not made up of viewpoints, or concepts. They're made up of "this happened. Then that happened. Then this happened", and I drew it this way because good stories are made up of events that sort of have a bit of a shape to them.
Like I remember the guys from South Park were talking about how they put together that animation and they would say, they would look at their storyboards and they would look at each frame and they would ask themselves, What's the word that just pops in their mind in between the frames? So this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened.
If it's an "and" they delete those frames. Because it's boring, right? There's nothing really happening. It's just a set of events, one after the other. The two words they're looking for are, "but", and "therefore". This happened. Oh, but then that happened. Therefore, that happened. Oh, but then that happened, right?
So all of a sudden you have some "up and down" in your story. We love up and downs. We love starting off high. Going low, coming up high again. I'm not saying you should make these things up, but you should be looking out for stories that have these shapes because they make for great stories.
Someone asked, you know, what makes for a compelling story? Well, one of them is things that go up and down, you know, lots of buts and therefores. The third thing that you're sort of listening out for to sort of see whether it's a story, is that stories have people. Well, tell me, what's the indicator?
What do you hear when you have people in your story?
Diego: Dialogue.
Shawn: Dialogue. That's a good one. There's two things. Dialogue is one, and we'll talk about dialogue in a moment, Diego, that's great. But the other thing we hear are people's names, and it turns out we actually love people's names in our stories.
We much prefer to hear someone's name than a role. Sometimes we're trying to protect privacy and we say things like, "so we had a field worker who...", and then you tell the story and you keep on saying "field worker". Well, for some reason that doesn't engage us half as much as to be able to say, "Vanessa".
And even if, say, if you have to protect privacy, you just sort of say, so, uh, Vanessa was one of our field worker and this is what happened to her. By the way, that's not her real name. Anyway, so Vanessa, Vanessa does this and Vanessa does this, and Vanessa does this, and by the end of it you're going, Gee, I hope Vanessa's okay.
Or, oh my God. Gee, Vanessa did a great job, right? We don't care if it's her name or not, but we much prefer to have a name. So these things are giving us indicators as to whether it's a story and these things have to be there. If they're not there, then it's not a story, but there is one thing that. Is missing that has to come out, right?
So if I could tell you something now that has these elements and you can tell me whether you think this is a story or not. So I got up early this morning and I got myself my breakfast and organized myself, had a shower, sat down in front of the computer, ready for today's presentation.
What do you reckon? No, no. Definitely not a story. If it is, it's like the worst story in the world, right? And it's because all stories have to have something that's unanticipated. There has to be something in the story where we go, Oh, I wasn't expecting that. Oh, that's interesting. Now, of course it doesn't become a business story unless you have a point.
Right. So that's the difference between the stories that we sit down with our friends at coffee and we are just chatting away. Oh, what did you do on the weekend? Oh, this really interesting thing happened. You know, we tell those stories. That's all about social cohesion and bonding and getting to know each other. It's sort of entertainment stories.
When you're sharing a story to business leaders, they need to know what the point is. Otherwise, they get a bit restless. If you launch into a story and you don't have a point, they sort of go, Oh, what's going on here? I need to know why I'm listening to this. So, of course, the first thing I want everyone to start to do is become a bit of a story collector.
By the way, where would you say are some of the places you would find stories? What are some of the good sources that you've seen so far in your experience? Dani is saying in the field. Yep. Absolutely. By the way, the ones you see in the field, they are so powerful because they're about the things that are happening here and now.
Right. And they're from your first person perspective, which again, adds another level of authenticity to your story. Other sources? Well, of course we read lots of stories. Or, from other people. Absolutely. They're telling, telling stories. Books that we're reading, things that are happening to you. Like, you are in a story yourselves, right?
Lots of stories happening to you. So what we need to do is just get into the habit. When you hear a story or come across something you just wanna jot it down. Now, I don't want you to write out the whole story though. I don't wanna write it out like you have to have the skills of Hemingway to craft this story.
Cause you won't do it. You won't have, people don't have the time for that. And also, writing and crafting a story is quite different to what I'm talking about, which is oral storytelling. And in oral storytelling, it's best just to write a couple of dot points, enough information for you to remember that story, to be able to tell it.
Again, that's the story journal. But the other thing that, to get good at this, just to get your ear in for stories, is to listen to podcasts that are very story based. I saw this wonderful thing on the news. There was about this language professor in the US who decided he would teach himself how to speak Arabic in nine months.
And he was wanted to speak it fluently in nine months and he didn't take any Arabic lessons and by nine months this guy was in Saudi Arabia. Speaking fluent Arabic. And the way he did it was he got native speakers to just talk to him, never speaking English at all, talk to him in Arabic by just taking picture books and just describing what was in the picture books.
And his point was is that language is acquired. It's not learnt. I dunno, how many of you have ever tried to learn a language by learning it, by the grammar, you know, and going through all that, how hard that is to translate that into spoken language. Whereas the way we learn a language is through acquisition, having the language around us.
That's why when you move to a country where they've got a different language, that's when you're immersed, that's when you learn the language. You know, your rate just goes enormously. I think the same is true for storytelling. It's a language-based skill. So one of the things you want to do is surround yourself with stories, and that's why spotting stories become so important as.
Couple of the podcasts I like: this American Life, Freakonomics, Sway, The Way I Heard It, Malcolm Gladwell's podcast. Anecdote has actually just put out a podcast. We've got about 70 episodes. When I say just put out, it's a couple of years now, but we share a new story every week and just talk about how you'd use it.
So if you wanna build your repertoire of stories, that's another good spot to listen to them and build up your story bank. So remember I just wanted to share one technique for remembering stories. Then we'll get into building or crafting a story together. I think.
So if you wanna remember a story, so you've just come across a story. You go, Wow, that's a great story. I'll give you an example. I did some work for the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority, and we did this big conference of all of the community leaders cuz they were worried that they weren't sharing knowledge between the different parts of the recovery.
And so we thought, Okay, well maybe we can connect them together by sharing stories. There's this lovely idea, which is the shortest distance between two people is a story. And so we were sort of building it on that basis. So I asked the chairperson, Christine Nixon, who used to be our police chief here in Victoria, can you tell a story to set the scene, the fact that we're gonna use storytelling?
And she went, Oh, I've got one. She said a couple of days after the fire ripped through Victoria, a company that makes spectacles - OPSM - put caravans out in the fire-affected areas for anyone who had broken spectacles or needed anyone to look at their eyes. And so in this one little town, it was called Narbethong a couple walk up to the caravan, an elderly couple, and the woman's complaining of grit in her eye.
And they walk into the caravan, they look at her eye, they clean it out, it's all good. They then turn to the husband and sort of say, Is there anything we can do for you? And he goes, Oh no, I'm fine. He says, Look, I'm clinically blind anyway because of diabetes, but look, nothing you can do about that. And they said, Oh, well, so when was the last time you had a checkup?
He said, Oh, probably about seven years ago. Seven years ago. Oh no, it's too long. You have to get checked up and there's all sorts of different procedures, etc, they can help out in this area. Anyway, they organize him to go and see an ophthalmologist. Turns out for his condition now there's a technique that will actually help him recover some of his eyesight.
He does it, has the operation. He gets like half of his eyesight. And as soon as I heard that story, I thought, Oh, I wanna be able to tell that story. Right? That's a nice little story. And, and so this is the technique. Once you find the story, go and share it with a colleague, you know, a trusted colleague who you can tell the story and ask this question, What is this story about? What's the point or points? There? Usually many points you can draw from this story.
So my colleague, Mark, he said two things. He said, and excuse the language, but he said, "even in the shittiest situations, good things can happen". I went, Okay, that's a good point. The second one he said was, "Look, it's so important for corporates to get involved in the recovery process and help communities".
So anyway, we start to have a conversation about what this story means, and what you're doing is you're really getting to understand the story. Then if you tell that story two or three times in the next few weeks, that story will be in your mind. Forever. And I have to say this is, it is uncanny because then what happens: six months later, you haven't even thought about that story, you're in a meeting and someone says, " can small things make a difference?" And you go, Well look, actually I was doing some work for the Victorian... It will just pop into your mind, you know, like the topics. If someone would sort of say, how important is it for corporates to get involved in community actions?
"Well, I was doing this work for V...", you know, it will just be there for you. But you gotta go through that process of understanding the meaning of the story, really thinking about it and then telling it a few times. And in your telling, you gotta have some details in that. We'll all have different views of what that couple looked like, but that doesn't matter.
You need to be specific enough so people can see those images. Because stories are about pictures. They're not about words. Pictures is what we're after. And there's a couple of little details. Like I said, it was in a little town called Narbathong right? And it's these little details. And you know the Christine Nixon, I used her actual name. Christine Nixon was the lady who told the story.
And what that does is it creates credibility for your story. Like if I just sort of said, "Well, there was this woman, and we went out somewhere in Victoria", the listener is sort of going, Yeah, did this really happen? No, they, they start to wonder. So you gotta have a few details.
Don't overdo it, right? Don't swamp it with details, but you gotta have a few details to make it, credible. Righto. So what I wanna do is do a quick exercise around the clarity story, because I think this is the sort of story structure that people use over and over again. I find, and let me just quickly describe that too.
The clarity story pattern has four parts to it. Essentially, you sort of say, "Oh look, in the past it was like this, and then something happened. So now we're doing this. So the future can be like that." It's just a very basic story structure. Great for change. It's actually the best use for it is when people are asking, So why? Why are we doing that? Well, let me tell you why we're doing that. In the past it was like this, and then something happened, and then we're doing this. So the future can be like, And they are. Oh, okay. That's why we're doing it. So it answers that why question. It's great for any change that's going on.
There was just one last thing I wanted to share with you. That was on the refresh side. Like when do you know when your stories have run out of steam? I guess a couple of different things. When you've told it many times, when you've lost interest yourself, if it no longer makes the point, sometimes you've been telling this story that makes a point and then something happens in the world like Covid or whatever, and all of a sudden your stories don't make the same point that they used to make.
They do lose impact again, with changing environment and other things that are going on. You really do have to have new stories, some new stories. When you move to a new organization. I worked with a general manager who was heading over to New Zealand from Australia to run the company over there. And all he had was Australian stories and I said, That's gonna drive the New Zealanders crazy. They don't wanna hear Australian stories, you gotta have New Zealand stories. So he went on this tour around all their plants and he just filled himself up with New Zealand and they just loved it, you know, because it was a form of respect really, to say that he cared enough to learn their stories.
And when you're changing roles, you know, sort of a new identity, like if you've come from, I start off in a pure technical role and you know, computer programming and you sort have to have different stories when you go from there to, you know, sort of behavior change type role. So that's another time to start to share new stories.
Ariadne: Thank you Shawn. As you were talking and sharing your stories today, I had this visual in my mind of being a child with a bug catcher. When I was a kid I remember being given a bug catcher for one of my birthdays, and we’d go out into the garden and try and catch butterflies and bugs. Then we’d put them into these little containers, and we’d research them to find out what the bug was, or look at the butterfly’s markings, and then we’d let it go. And I feel a bit like storytelling is like capturing these little stories and putting them in your books and remembering them and researching them and then letting them go out into the world. So thank you, we appreciate your time and expertise and inspiring us to be great story-tellers.
Kirsty: That’s such a beautiful visual, Ari. And yes, thank you Shawn from me as well. I’m often tempted to try and convince people with logic and argument, but I know from experience that a compelling story is a far more powerful connector and I’m always in awe of those people that I think of as natural storytellers. That’s why I love how Shawn has broken down the process of finding and shaping stories into such simple and practical advice. Distilling that story pattern into elements like “In the past it was like this, then something happened, so now it’s like this, and in the future it will be like that” – it’s simple, and easy to remember, but also very powerful.
I know that my greatest weakness is remembering the great stories I hear, so I’m definitely going to follow Shawn’s suggestion of setting up a journal to capture stories to help strengthen my own storytelling skills.
Ariadne: Yes, thanks Kirsty. I really think that stories have the power to shape the world, but insights drawn from catalytic initiatives - they don’t spread on their own, they really do need to be caught – like butterflies – and understood, and communicated in a compelling way - particularly if we want to use them to inspire changes in behaviour.
At Pollination Foundation we’re really passionate and believe in the power of story to create change. Crafting authentic and captivating narratives that weave data with storytelling is so essential to the success of all our initiatives, and for this reason we are designing a StoryLab project to work out how project outcomes can apply in other situations. Our hope is to collate an invaluable resource of knowledge that captures change and impact over time, so others can take up the ideas with confidence. If anyone listening and interested in our approach, then do reach out for a conversation with us, we’d love to hear from you. And we'd also like to close today with a special thanks to the BHP Foundation whose support makes this work possible.
If you're interested in hearing more about nature positive inspiring stories, we'd love to have you. So please do subscribe to the Ampliseed podcast series or head over to our website to learn more about what we do. And thank you to all of our listeners that have joined us - we hope that you've learned a little bit more about storytelling today, and that you're inspired to harness the power of storytelling to support your own work.
