cultivating story richness: principles, practices and techniques

©2012 MAKINGSTORIES.net, Terrence L. Gargiulo, www.makingstories.net, [email protected] – 415‐948‐8087, pg. 1

CULTIVATING STORY RICHNESS Terrence L. Gargiulo, MMHS, [email protected]

Are you aware of any assumptions you may have about how to work with stories? Take a moment and consider what you regard as effective forms of communication. Are there certain principles you follow? Do you intend to follow these principles when designing communications with stories? Stories are rich in nature. This richness goes beyond painting a compelling picture. Of course a picture is worth a thousand words and a story is worth a thousand pictures. Details saturate stories with enticing shelves and drawers for people to explore. Yet this is just one form of story richness. Story richness also shows up in some surprising ways.


Stories encode information. That can be a double edged sword. One edge of the sword cuts through information clutter. Our stories make messages memorable and help us connect with each other. Messages become imbued with meaning. Yet this ability of stories to encode information can also slash us. Do we want to relegate our messages to duels limited to one way thrusts without parries and thrusts from our recipients? In our hands, do the layered, onion like tendencies of rich stories thrive with us as masters of their destiny? I’m afraid we have horrible habit of enslaving stories to operate in the same manner we work with other forms of communication.

It’s easy to deprive ourselves the deep richness of stories. Communication perpetuates a myth of striving for the Holy Grail of clarity. We are enamored with the illusion and importance of exactitude. Our messages must be precise and leave little room for interpretation. Anything less is a failure of communication; especially in business settings where tolerance for ambiguity is paid lip service but pushed beneath the surface. Be suspicious of good communication practices when working with stories. Does that sound preposterous? It may seem counter‐intuitive but there are whole different set of communication, learning and thinking rules operating with story‐based communications. Just as Newtonian physics account for how we interact with physical matter and quantum mechanical laws predict phenomena on the sub‐atomic level, good communication practices operate differently between traditional and storied‐based ones. Table 1 summarizes these differences.

TABLES 1: COMPARISION OF TRADITIONAL FORMS OF COMMUNICATION WITH STORY‐BASED ONES

More Traditional Forms of Communication Story-Based Communications Explicit – information is presented in a direct, precise and clear manner.

Implicit – information is encoded in packets of compelling and memorable nuggets.

Logical – information is organized in an easy to follow linear fashion.

Evocative – information is more emotional in nature and lends itself to less structured types of presentations (including non-linear threads that can be followed and navigated based on people’s needs and interests).


More Traditional Forms of Communication Story-Based Communications Controlled – information is structured to leave as little as possible to people’s interpretation.

Emergent – information is meant to trigger people’s experiences, personal associations, and linkages.

Sense Giving – information is used to minimize uncertainty by offering tangible and discernable chunks of meaning.

Sense Making – information requires people to generate more of their own meaning and in some instances may leave people feeling uncertain as to the nature of the information until they make sense of it for themselves.

Bear in mind both columns in Table 1 are critical to the success of effective organizational communications. It’s just we tend to think of stories as another tool operating in the first column; we need to understand that stories operate best when they act as stimuli as opposed to information containers. Stories achieve their greatest punch when they are used to create interlocking webs of meaning. A story used as a solitary chunk of communication is far less effective than when we find innovative ways to string associations of stories together. If one story paints a powerful picture what will several well integrated stories do, especially if we invite people to co‐create them with us? Think of story‐based communication strategies as cloud chambers in your organization…

Cloud Chamber ‐ apparatus that detects high‐energy particles passing through a supersaturated vapor; each particle ionizes molecules along its path and small droplets condense on them to produce a visible track (definition courtesy of www.answer.com)

It’s not as obtuse of an analogy as it might appear. Stories act as organizational cloud chambers. They create a space of dialogue and sense making. This “story space” is where people interact with each other’s stories in different ways. Some interactions might occur as people reflect and react to organizational collaterals peppered with stories, some interactions might happen when we create formal and informal opportunities for people to respond to the stories we use to incite dialogue, and still other interactions, once we have put the initial stories out there, will


happen without us doing anything whatsoever to orchestrate them. As stories elicit more stories by bouncing off of each other, organizational trajectories of meaning and understanding emerge. People’s actions provide a visible albeit subtle and ghostly trace of the impact of story‐based communications. Stories are not another lever in a machine. Machines or systems take known controlled inputs that produce reliable and consistent outputs. Stories are more chaotic. Once you stir up or perturbate the social fabric of individual nodes of sense making (aka the people in an organization) unexpected behaviors emerge. What is lost in control is gained in the propagating strength of the communication signal and the rolling waves of self‐directed behaviors it has the potential to create. Communications function less like instructions and more like picture frames waiting to be filled with collages of vibrant photographs.

Beware of applying the rules of traditional communication to story‐based ones. This is evidenced by how people plan written and oral communications with stories. Are stories being outfitted to carry key messages? Are stories being reduced to the simplest strongest message to drive home points? Is the effectiveness of a communication judged on the basis of how well the key messages are carried by a story? Unless we are concerned with passing on morals, stories are always more focused on listeners than they are on tellers. We tell stories to incite other stories.

Stories work because of their imprecise nature. Imagine stories as a bag of a variety of wild flower seeds. Listeners and readers are like the fertile soil anxious for new seeds. We reach into our bag and grab a handful of seeds. What flowers take hold and what flowers ultimately bloom are unpredictable. Our job as story communicators is to unleash possibilities. The specifics of our messages and their significance are decoded by receivers. In keeping with the garden metaphor, meaning emerges by attaching itself to the personal trellises of experiences.


Here’s another analogy. Stories are like DNA. What a miracle. Life asserts itself in twisting bonds of paired building blocks that are responsible for expressing everything we know as organic life. From simplicity emerges complexity. Even the process of transcription cannot be reduced to a singular repeatable event that yields the same result each time. As DNA copies itself variations and mutations occur. Even when exact replication takes place morphologies are expressed in the phenotypic expression of a DNA code base as it is actualized in the environment.

At their core stories are about meaning. It’s impossible to separate sense making from sense giving. We entwine fragments of our understanding of the world in stories. These stories inhabit our conscious and unconscious awareness. The control afforded to us by stories in the form of fueling our understanding is at best a doorway or a handle to opening a door for someone else. We offer our sense making to others in the form of stories – sense giving. For us it’s seamless; we experience this cycle of sense giving and sense making as one act of creation. As good story‐based communicators we must fight our natural tendency to forget that others are responsible for their sense making.

Stories engage and invite sense making with others. With story-based communications we are not prescribing meaning with stories. Nor are we seeking compliance of understanding. We are seeking people’s commitments.

Stories engage and invite sense making with others. With story‐based communications we are not prescribing meaning with stories. Nor are we seeking compliance of understanding. We are seeking people’s commitments. This commitment will be evidenced in their unique reconfiguration of the message in personal terms. In other words something new is created. We are not Xeroxing or copying our communication in the same way as a computer chip might be implanted in one device to another to achieve equal performance.


What does this mean then for how we incorporate stories into written and oral communications? Cast your story net wide. The strength of your story‐based communication can be assessed by examining the number and type of “story‐connections” contained within it. Story‐connections refer to the presence of story forms found in your communications. See Table 2 for a working list of story‐connections. Table 2: Working List of Story-Connections

Type of Story-Connection

Guiding Question Value of Story-Connection*

1. None Does my story stand alone? 0 2. Analogical Does my story contain other sources of imagery?

a. Analogies b. Metaphors c. Allusions d. Similes e. Clichés f. Humor

4 3 4 2 1 2

3. Embedded Stories Does my story contain other stories within it? 5 4. Linkages Does my story reference or point to other stories

within it without these stories being fully expressed? 4

5. Bridges Does my story contain a collage of stories woven together? This differs from embedded stories since the stories are collapsed or shortened. They are more skeleton-like in nature. Anecdotes are an example. (see Chapter 17: Story Collaging)

5

*Note: On a scale of 0-5, where 0=no value, and 5=the greatest value. This checklist is meant as a guideline. It also contains my biases. I am not a fan of standalone stories. Not because they are not effective but because we trick ourselves into thinking we are being effective story communicators when we whip out single stories with clean beginning, middles and ends that spur our listeners to actions.

We trick ourselves into thinking we are being effective story communicators when we whip out single stories with clean beginning, middles and

ends that spur our listeners to actions.


I did a fun short video on this topic that you might enjoy checking out:

http://vimeo.com/11369444

Let’s not make the mistake of equating movie story‐making with organizational story‐based communications. While there are lots of principles of storytelling to learn from the makers of great films there is so much more. I am not disparaging the importance of the dominant hero journey’s archetype or any other archetype that is inevitably bound to show up in story making that pervades film making, but I am asking you to look deeper for other possibilities that might be eluding you. Going back to the chart, notice that standalone stories are given a value of zero. Even a short story collapsed into a few sentences, or a 25‐30 second oral story can contain other story‐connections within it. Go through the exercise of noticing and counting the number of story‐connections in your communications and in the communications of others. This is one way we can begin to become more purposeful in increasing the effectiveness of the story richness in our communications. Try not to become overly concerned with definitions of these story‐connections. The weightings provided in the table are not meant to support a mathematical calculation or algorithm. The column in the table is labeled as, “Guiding Questions.” Story‐based communications invite us to be reflective in all phases of the process, including the design of our messages, their delivery and our discussions with others. I have always thought of communication as a reflection of thinking. Writing is a perfect example. I know that if I have a done a good job of thinking through what I wish to communicate then the writing proceeds easily. The writing is an artifact of my thinking.


One could argue that writing stories falls into a different category. I don’t disagree. I believe a survey of any of our favorite novel writers would reveal a wide variety of writing methodologies and techniques. So I do not want to suggest that there is only one way to craft our storied messages. I will assert the importance of learning to become more facile with story thinking.

Story thinking activates the power of imagination in parallel with analytical thought processes.

Here are some questions to understand what I mean by story thinking…

Can you project your imagination into a novel domain of experience? Are you able to rapidly construct representations of what you hear? When you read a novel or listen to a story your mind naturally paints a picture for you. Strong story thinking involves proactively flexing our imagination into a space of meaning being generated by someone else. Think of it as a space ship docking to a station. Like the space ship we are in the vacuum of a novel space that is foreign and in some cases potentially hostile to us. Can we project ourselves with our intentions and imagination to enter someone else’s frame of reference?

Examples of the application of story‐thinking for business communications:

Demonstrating and articulating understanding of the impact of change on stakeholders

Introducing a new product or service

Strategic planning with future scenarios

Are you able to move from your personal current state of awareness to a new one? A mark of strong story‐thinking is the ability to suspend our present state of mind and enter a new frame of reference. Doing so may even be in direct opposition with our cherished set of values, beliefs, world‐views, attitudes, understandings, opinions, or desires. The benefit of story‐thinking is that none of these personal constructs have to be either negated or abandoned.


Stories flourish in mediums super‐saturated with paradox and contradiction. Consider a dream… In a dream you can fly and swim at the same time… or see a person who is your mother and your sister. While in a dream state of consciousness these occurrences are perfectly reasonable and possible. Story‐thinking pushing the boundaries of language and logic based thinking in very similar ways. Stories turn on our minds into parallel processing nodes of an organic massive super computer plugging us into states of being greater than our own.

Story‐think can be applied to the following types of business communications:

Employee engagement that makes authentic room for the experiences and ideas of others

Managerial and leadership messages

Articulation of new organizational policies and practices How quickly do you interpret a pattern of thought or emotion by finding a similar one from your own experience? Life is made of up of relationships. I’m not referring just to the people we love and care about. Relationships instantiate the infinite set of interlocking webs of meaning that define our lives. These story‐based webs of meaning are like carpets constantly being unfurled for us to walk on. Just as new, thin tributaries of byways break away from a flowing, raging body of water, so do our experiences. One builds upon another where meaning emerges in a dance of relationship.


Picture a three level chess board where a piece on the bottom level can impact a piece on the top level.


Project briefings

Team meetings

Performance management conversations

Do you step into an analogy, metaphor or story framework (i.e. characters and situations) and use it to manipulate new and existing ideas? Stories are props. Pretend is not just play. What happens when you pick up a toy crown and place it on your head? Your persona is interrupted to take on the part of being a king or queen. A whole world is fabricated for us to manipulate and maneuver around in. We are the most elaborate virtual reality generators. In William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, there is the famous line, “the play is the thing wherein I’ll capture the conscience of the king.” Hamlet knows he can reveal the guilt of the king if he commissions the performance of a play that mirrors the murder of his father. He is inciting the coherence of internal and external realities.


In business communications we strive to create compelling structured containers of inquiry. There are like chemistry beakers of reactions. People mix and react with our elixirs to release potential energy.


Quarterly and end of the year reports

All‐hands on meetings

Are you able to draw new connections and insights by working in a story structure? Stories enable very abstract and non‐linear thinking with much greater speed, depth, and accuracy than other forms of thought processing. Our minds can jump around. We enlist a cast of prior experiences. These constructs become attached to the trappings of our playful, wandering imagination. There are crescendos of possibilities. When we are not encumbered by moving logically from one thought to the next our mind can jump around. It’s not the same sort of erratic jumping that takes place with disordered chaotic thinking. Rather our mind like a grain of sand in an hour glass passes through the thinnest point of focus to open up into a fertile realm exploration. Story‐think can be applied to the following types of business communications:

Interviews

Focus groups

Utilizing the principles of story‐thing the richness of your story‐based organizational communication will increase. It’s an art. It goes far beyond the tempting over simplification of believing we can grab a single story from a collection and insert it into our message. The good news: we are all natural storytellers. With a little conscious effort and the application of the counter‐intuitive principles explored in this chapter you will be surprised at how effective you can be.


Summary of Five Key Tips for Stories in Written Organizational Communications

1. Audit your communications for story richness. Look for

ways to add more story-connections (see Table 1).

2. Adjust the language and types of stories used in your communication to match the interests, experiences, and passions of your audience.

3. Use stories to generate questions in readers rather

than pass along messages.

4. Be vulnerable and authenticate. Dare to throw caution to the wind.

5. Remember more is less and less is more. Rely less on

the facts and completeness of your message. Tease the imagination of readers. If necessary string together rich word pictures to provoke possibilities. As long as you clear with your readers there is nothing wrong with using fictitious scenarios or vignettes. When you lack stories or time to elicit them this is an effective technique for incorporating stories in your communication.

Stories occur in spoken form all the time. For the sake of this chapter we will focus on formal communications. I will use a recent speech I gave as an example.


RECOMMENDED

CASE STUDY An Analysis of a Storied Approach to Crafting Influential Verbal Messages Forty years ago I found myself at the first of many interesting educational crossroads. New to Monterey, California my family searched for a school for my sister to attend. After a brief stint in one of the public schools my parents enrolled Franca at Santa Catalina School. It was an all‐girls school from Pre‐Kindergarten through High School run by Dominican nuns. Somehow the school decided it would entertain a wild and crazy idea: start boys in the Pre‐Kindergarten. Maybe they needed revenue, maybe they were curious; I honestly don’t know what precipitated the change. I found myself invited to be one of the few, one of the proud, and one of the lucky boys invited to partake in this great experiment. Turned out they really liked us boys. Each year they kept deciding to let us stay another year. By the time we got to fourth grade they decided we could stay for good. However, we were to be the first class to graduate from eighth grade. This year, the school asked me to commemorate that decision and honor me by giving the lower school address commencement address. The Challenge… While I am asked frequently to do keynote addresses, I’m not a huge fan of them. It’s just hard to touch people. Perform, impress, command attention, wield pulpit power and create passive hope for people are opportunities offered by keynoting. I hunger for the intimacy of inciting insights that comes from facilitated storytelling. As a general rule, I set the value of keynoting very high, ensuring that only the most serious clients engage me in this way. I also almost

http://www.scribd.com/doc/16720751/Breakthrough-Communication-Asssessment-Tool


always insist on being given other opportunities to work with some of the member of the audience in a different setting other than the plenary address. The commencement address for Santa Catalina School was for students, parents, teachers and administrators. How could I hold the attention of a diverse audience? Could I create a fertile space of imagination to offer some tangible gifts to aid them on the next leg of their journey? How would I make it be about them? Could I avoid clichés, hype, and platitudes? Would I be able to minimize perfunctory pomp and circumstances perpetuated by this genre of speech? How would I be fun and serious at the same time? Would I have to keep my message super simple with only one or two key take‐a‐ways or could I tackle a complex set of concepts? And could the whole address be done completely with story forms employing my authentic voice? The Approach… Despite my familiarity with the school I wanted to hold the graduating students in my heart. Whether or not my clients realize it I probe client engagement requirements and stakeholder perspectives with the natural power of story. I elicit stories. Call me wedded to my storied ways, but I don’t know any other way to quickly infer patterns in complex systems. This might seem counter‐intuitive but when faced with the speed of business in today’s environment stories are the fastest and most efficient vehicle for analysis and communication.

“Storytelling is a safe space for creative thinking, negotiating differences, and establishing commonality. Storytelling empowers the speaker and improves communication through speaking and listening. Stories are the most efficient way of storing, retrieving, and conveying information. Since story hearing requires active participation on the part of the listener, stories are the most profoundly social form of communication.” – http://www.makingstories.net

I had a few data points about the graduating class and other stakeholders. I filled these in with a couple of informal conversations with teachers, observations of the students leading up to graduation day. I also scheduled an hour meeting with the principal. Where care is present stories flourish. The shortest distance between two people is a story and stories beget stories. During the meeting a wealth of stories surfaced. More importantly without me overtly asking the question, “what gift (ideas) do you want to offer these students to help them succeed?” a clear concentration of three major themes emerged. These were judgment, compassion, and mercy. Armed with the gifts and a feel for the students both as individuals and as a class I was equipped to craft my message. The Story Architecture of the Message… Two days after my meeting with the principal while sitting on the soccer field watching my son’s practice I conceived the following architecture for the talk in my notebook:


FIGURE 1: Story Architecture for Talk

This sketch from my notebook and the story architecture will probably make more sense if you watch a video of the talk:


Figure 2: Screen Snapshot of Commencement Video

http://vimeo.com/24981140

Let me try to decipher the drawing of my talk’s architecture from Figure 1:

1. After the formal alphabet soup introduction of credentials quickly use humor to create credibility of a personal nature somehow related to the students and audience. Get them immediately involved in the talk. Do this with humor and a quick anecdote. In this case I had a fun and fluid self‐effacing bridge to construct between us.

2. Quickly make the talk all about them. Create a rapid interactive collage of small moments and anecdotes that highlights things about the students.

3. Layout a roadmap for the rest of talk. Five stories will be used. Three stories comprised the students’ gifts for their journey (judgment, compassion and mercy). On either end of the three gift stories were two stories. One to illustrate the results of failing to invoke these gifts and the last story for showcasing the impact of when all the gifts are working together.

4. Short interlude of scenarios of when and how these gifts might be necessary. I start with an example of the daily application of these gifts in my life as a father. Then I offered situations the students are likely to experience in the next leg of their journey.

5. Return to humor I used in the opening of the talk. While being funny, lace it with a serious message in a song that connects with the gifts shared.

6. End with two brief quotes that support and segue into a closing image and metaphor.


I was very purposeful in deciding what kind of stories to use in the talk. Variety and diversity are important. I feel stories need to be from many different domains and genres to cast the story net as wide as possible. It can be easy to become too narrow or focused in what kind of stories we tell or how tightly encoded our driving messages are embedded in the stories. Let me say a little more about this idea of working too hard to couple our message with our stories. I look for a pattern of themes. If I can tag a story with a word closely related to one of the major themes I am trying to communicate that is good enough. I do not need a story that is a perfect illustration of my message; quite the contrary. I want stories that are just a little fuzzy. Allow people to use their sense giving telescope to bring the story into focus. Let your listeners go in the direction most needed by them in the moment. Leave it rich enough that there is lots of room for them to wander through the patterning of stories to uncover new threads of meaning. There’s something else wonderful that happens when you work with collage of stories (for more help with creating collages of stories for your communications see Chapter 12). The stories begin to attach themselves to each other. For example, I did not architect the triple place of music in the talk – it just happened. There is the musical reference at the beginning of the talk, two of the student anecdotes involve music, the story of Emmanual Jal the hip hop artists and then my closing song. On the one hand there is nothing extraordinary about this phenomenon since it’s just what naturally occurs with stories. It also helps that I come from a musical family so I am naturally drawn to musical stories; yet every time I see stories work their magic I am grateful and humbled by the experience. Here is how I selected the type of stories to use at the various points of my talk:

Personal History (in my opening humor) – first a small piece of shared experience that I had with them and then move to a quick scene of my longtime affiliation with the school

Student Anecdotes – things I observed and learned about the students – to establish them as the heroes of the talk, to demonstrate care and listening

Personal anecdote of a time I failed to access the virtues of judgment, compassion, and mercy and a simple expression of regret

Two movie stories – popular archetypal movies (Lord of the Rings and Star Wars) to share the gift of judgment

Story from a book – Gregory Boyle’s book, Tattoos on the Heart, for the gift of compassion

Historical Story of Major Personality – a story about Pope John Paul II for the gift of mercy


Life Story of Contemporary Young Personality – share the story of the young hip‐hop artist Emmanuel Jal to show what it looks like when the gifts of judgment, compassion, and mercy are all working together

Scenario Stories – these are rhetorical questions that paint a scene of daily opportunities for judgment, compassion, and mercy to manifest themselves, start with the personal then move back to students

Story as Music – sing a short song to introduce humor

Story as metaphor and image – setup an image that encompasses the three gifts that relates back to the students as heroes, start with two quotes end with vivid word picture

A Few Tips… I have a confession to make…I never practiced this talk and I went to the podium with no notes. All I had was a pair of shorts that I wore when I was in Pre‐Kindergarten at Santa Catalina. Sure, I had told two of these stories in another venue but almost all of the material was new to me. What I did do is spend a lot of time reflecting and visualizing the story architecture of the talk. I also spent a considerable time holding the students in my heart. Here are a few tips you might find helpful:

Try not to get bogged down in style. I know what my strengths are. I am genuine, warm, intense, energetic, and personal. Each person has a distinct and beautiful footprint that animates their style. One thing that does transcend style is selflessness.

Care about what you have to say and care about the people. The rest is very individual.

Work to make stories in all their forms a central part of how you understand your message, craft your message and deliver your message.

Think in terms of collages of stories. Avoid single stories. There’s a place for them and I am not recommending you abandon great stories with visible arcs, surprises, and tensions. Lots of stories orbiting your talk pull people into the gravity of your message.

Delivery matters but not as much as you think. If you get caught up in the ground swell of stories you are sharing and your audience, you’ll be surprised at how an effective tone, color, and character emerges.


Don’t work so hard to script these things. Anchor yourself on a few key phrases at pivotal moments of the talk and imagine yourself delivering these.

EFFECTIVE STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES

Technique Description Voice

Your voice brings a story alive. Think of your voice as an instrument. Instruments are played with dynamics (i.e., sometimes loud, sometimes soft). Animate the stories you tell by varying the pitch, tone, and

volume of your voice. Use your voice to guide listeners. Emphasize key words,

phrases, or details. Change your voice to represent characters in your story. Insert brief pauses and other rhythmical speech variations.

Repetition

Stories are filled with repetition. These patterns help listeners remember a story and reflect on it later. As a result of repetition, listeners are more actively involved because they are anticipating a recurring theme or pattern. Repeat descriptive details. Select vivid and multi-sensorial words and reuse them

throughout your story. Give listeners a vocal or bodily cue before repeating a

pattern.


Participation

Stories are more engaging when people participate. When you tell a story, do everything you can to involve your audience. The result? People will listen more carefully and get more out of the story. Customize the details of your story to fit the group it is being

told to. Allow listeners to fill in descriptive, non-critical details of a

story. In your story, use the names, facts, and characteristics of

individuals in the group. Include in the story comments individuals have made during

the session. Weave recent events into your stories. Incorporate repetitive elements and have your listeners fill

them in. Use rhetorical questions.

Body Language

A story is told with the voice and the body. Have you ever watched a good mime? Body language can communicate more than words. Make eye contact with individuals. Develop special gestures and postures for story situations

and characters. Act out parts of the story. Use props. Move around the room as you tell the story.


AUTHOR BIO

Terrence L. Gargiulo, MMHS is an eight times author, international speaker, organizational development consultant and group process facilitator specializing in the use of stories. He holds a Master of Management in Human Services from the Florence Heller School, at Brandeis University, and is a recipient of Inc. Magazine's Marketing Master Award, the 2008 HR Leadership Award from the Asia Pacific HRM Congress, and is a member of Brandeis University’s athletic Hall of Fame. He has appeared on Fox TV, CN8, and on CNN radio among others. Highlights of some of his past and present clients include, GM, HP, DTE Energy, MicroStrategy, Citrix, Fidelity, Federal Reserve Bank, Ceridian, Countrywide Financial, Washington Mutual, Dreyers Ice Cream, UNUM, US Coast Guard, Boston University, Raytheon, City of Lowell, Arthur D. Little, KANA Communications, Merck‐Medco, Coca‐Cola, Harvard Business School, and Cambridge Savings Bank.

Web: http://www.makingstories.net Video: http://www.vimeo.com/user2343092/videos

Blog: http://makingstories‐storymatters.blogspot.com/ Twitter: @makingstories

Email: [email protected] phone – 415‐948‐8087

THREE STORY SKILL BUILDING PRODUCTS YOU MIGHT BE INTERSTED IN… eBook – Building An Index of Personal Stories: A Simple Guide to Mining Your Stories eBook – Story‐based Communication Skills Self Development Exercises Assessment Tool ‐ Story‐based Communication Skill Assessment Tool

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