Find Your Greatest Story
As every business leader and speaker knows, identifying a story that will work to unify your troops or sway your customers is easier said than done. More often than not, storytellers hit a wall, or fear they have nothing to draw on.
Enter Shawn Callahan, the Founder of Melbourne-based storytelling company, Anecdote, and author of the new book, “Putting Stories to Work.”
Shawn identifies as a sort of corporate anthropologist, helping companies hone in on their oral storytelling practices to initiate change within their organizations. He has also crafted tools and techniques to remember key stories, keep them fresh and engaging, and to replace them when they become tired.
Want to learn how to mine your personal life for engaging, motivating stories? Shawn is your man.
In This Episode
- How to uncover stories in your personal and professional life that will connect with your audiences
- How to catalogue stories using cerebral hashtags and create your personal story archive
- Shawn’s four story categories: connection stories, influence stories, success stories, and clarity stories
- How to keep your winning, go-to stories fresh and appealing
- How to tell the story of your strategy
Quotes From This Episode
“The great thing about oral storytelling is you have that ability to flex and bend depending who is sitting in front of you. It’s so important when you’re remembering stories never to write your story out. If you write it out, all of a sudden you think you have to tell it that way.” —@ShawnCallahan
“Jot down three things that have happened in your life that have made you the person who you are today. You have three stories.” —@ShawnCallahan (highlight to tweet)
“To me, good stories are about having great images that you can actually see happening. In fact, there’s a little bit of a hierarchy of stories. At the very bottom, stories are about things that happened. But good stories are about things you can see happening and a great story is when you can feel it happening. You get that emotional connection.” —@ShawnCallahan
“I don’t think you need to have a hero facing a challenge or anything like that to define a story. You just need something that’s about happenings, about events, where something unanticipated happens and you can get an insight from that event.” —@ShawnCallahan
“I believe that the best stories are the ones that you’ve got off the top of your head, the ones you can tell off the cuff when you’re in the middle of a conversation and someone says, ‘Can a small thing make a big difference?’ And you can tell a story that illustrates that, yes, it can make a difference.” —@ShawnCallahan
Resources
- Anecdote.com
- “Putting Stories to Work,” by Shawn Callahan
- Anecdote’s Storytelling for Leaders program
- Anecdote’s Storytelling for Sales program
- Comedian Louis C.K.
- Comedian, actor, and author George Carlin
- Storytelling Coach, Terrence Gargiulo
- “The Storytelling Animal,” by Jonathan Gottschall
- Watch out for Park’s upcoming Friday Blab Sessions
- Business of Story YouTube Channel and video tools
- BusinessofStory.com
- Park@BusinessOfStory.com