Notes from the Storytelling Coach

Kurt Rosenberg, director of Witness to Innocence, just emailed me a link to a short video featuring some of the folks I had the privilege of working with last spring and fall.

Here’s a remarkable statistic: when a Witness to Innocence speaker appears before a group, Kurt always does a simple survey of the audience, asking them to write their position on the death penalty before hearing the speaker and then after hearing the speaker. In this way, he has a non-scientific way of tracking how many minds are changed.

Knowing how deeply held beliefs in favor of the death penalty are, what percentage of pro-death-penalty listeners would you expect would change their positions after one speaking event?

1%? 5%? 10%?

Actually, 20% of the listeners who came to the event convinced of the rightness of the death penalty change their minds. One in five!

The right story, told sincerely by the right person at the right time and place, can, indeed, change the world.

Here’s the clip from ABC News, covering an Alabama conference featuring Witness to Innocence members, some of whom I have coached:

Five incredible storytellers are at my house right now, taking the Building a Doorway for New Storytelling Customers workshop. (In the picture, left to right: Cynthia Changaris, Debra Ballou, Meg Gilman, Brian Hetherington, Teresa Whitaker.)

Meg Gilman let me describe her work her as an example. In the workshop, she decided that she loves the challenge of difficult audiences so much that her doorway will be for people who need an entertaining, educational speaker for a difficult audience. “Bring them on!” says Meg. Another participant suggested the title “Presentation Impossible” for Meg. Still another, “Speaking Commando.”

The process of helping each participant build a doorway has been exhilarating. For the first day, we focused on noticing – and accepting – who we are as tellers, as marketers, and as self-employed business owners. What do we each have energy for? What things do we need help doing? What forms of communication energize us? What is the current state of our five-ring communities, of our relationships with those who need our work and who support us?

Then we helped each person decide on a group of people that she or he wants to develop more relationships with. For example, Meg wants to attract those who work for an organization, have been given the task of hiring a speaker or trainer, yet feel that they have an “impossible” or “difficult” group. Since Meg loves varied audiences, varied topics, and lots of challenge, this is a perfect choice for her.

Next, we helped each person imagine a “doorway” for inviting those people into relationship. A doorway is a structure you have created for beginning or advancing your relationships with those who support you financially or otherwise. (Read more about doorways.) For example, Meg’s new doorway will be an email newsletter about (the phrasing will change before launch) “Ways to Make Your Organization’s Speaking or Training Event Succeed – In Spite of a Difficult Audience.”

Finally, we have the work to do of holding each other accountable for carrying out the construction and maintenance of our doorways. We will use the phone and the internet to keep in touch, offer assistance and encouragement, and notice where our plans need to be tweaked in order to succeed.

My personal take-away from this workshop has been the energy generated by focusing the group’s attention on the needs of one member – and then listening intently, asking clarifying questions, brainstorming about the benefits that person’s work provides, and then listening further to the member’s reactions. As this process is repeated, the member has felt empowered around marketing and the group has also felt empowered.

Work like this is too difficult to do alone. After all, it involves describing ourselves as others see us – no matter what internal voices try to undermine or distract us from our value to others. But a compassionate group can be guided to make this work efficient and fun. Having lived this process for three days so far, I too feel surrounded by empowerment. Together we can accomplish what might overwhelm any one of us!

Just came back from Brother Blue’s wake. Jay and Linda O’Callahan drove up with Pam and me from Marshfield to a funeral home in Cambridge, MA. It was bitter sweet to share memories of Blue on the drive up.

Saw scores of storytellers at the “visiting hours.” I would have rather seen them at a party than a wake, but it was my first time to see them at all since I moved back from OK. Hugging so many and saying heartfelt hellos was grounding and delightful.

Ruth Hill (Blue’s wife) was magnificent, shaking hands and talking to each person in the line to view Blue’s casket. In death, even though I had never seen him so still, Blue’s spirit was still evident. I could have cried for an hour.

So today was an affirmation of storytelling community, combined with the irreplaceable loss of Blue. Even after he “blew away” (his term from long ago), though, he brought us together in celebration of story and life. 

One of Blue’s gifts was to be able to summarize a person’s unique qualities in a phrase or two. I will always cherish what he said to me every time we met: “Look at him,” he would say to the world in general, with his arm on my shoulder. “He was born ancient and wise. His spirit is 10,000 years old!”

If that’s true, Blue would know. His spirit must have been even older. He seemed like a natural force, like water seeping up through rocks or like sunlight insisting on finding its way into the dark corners of a forest.

A force like that never really stops. Perhaps on its own, perhaps through those of us who were touched by him, his spirit must surely still be at work, dancing through the landscape of dreams, the oceans of stories, the quiet waters of our lives.

I have worked with a teller well over a year, helping him hone his next CD. It’s a personal story, close to the bone, and so it has required extra work to make it work. I have helped him:

• Determine his MIT (“Most Important Thing” – the main idea for the project, and for each story);
• Find and select the images required to make the MIT work for a listener; and
• Come to terms with the emotional content, so that he could both think better about what to include and also could tell the stories well, using the tones of voice that each section requires to be moving rather than overwhelming or flat.

So far, this is familiar ground for me as a coach. It takes time and creativity on both his and my parts, but it doesn’t break new ground for me.

Listening to a demo

But the surprises came when I had him make a “demo” recording, so that I could both hear the entire project all together and also play it for others, to get their reactions.

My other listeners panned the result. Oh, no! As I listened to their reactions, I went from, “Oh, I’m so glad I played this for you!” to “Oh, I have really misled this teller. I feel terrible.”

I knew my job was to keep thinking clearly about the teller’s work and avoid getting stuck in my own feelings, of course. So I kept at it with my test listeners. After they had had their say about all the things they objected to in the recording and the few things they liked, I asked them to listen to me describe the important story that the teller has to tell.

Because it’s a long and somewhat complex story, it took me quite a while to talk it out. Fortunately, my test listeners stayed with me. At the end, I said, “So, do you like the story I just described? Do you see it as a worthy story?” They answered “yes” to both questions.

Interviewing the Listeners

Then I went on to ask, “What is missing from the recording you heard and disliked, that would get across to you what I just described?”

Now it was my turn to listen and to ask clarifying questions of them.

After another 40 minutes, I had a list of what the listeners felt would be needed to convey the story at hand. It included things like:

• Close to the beginning, show that the teller has survived the traumas of the story intact, so we won’t worry whether this is just a catalog of horrors.
• Give us a few scenes to show how, during the traumatic events, the teller managed to cope some with the horrors (so that the “survival” will be believable).
• Add a few light-hearted moments along the way, so that listeners can “come up for air” from time to time.

Looking down at that list, I had a surge of hope: in earlier drafts of this project, nearly all those points were covered. I made a list of scenes (that the teller had omitted himself) to suggest re-inserting in the recording. I made another list of scenes currently in the recording that could be omitted or replaced. I also noted which items from the list might require new scenes to be created.

Now I feel confident that, in our next coaching session, I can make positive suggestions that will help the teller both meet the objections of my test listeners and also realize his goals for the recording.

Lessons for Me As a Coach

What does this experience teach or reinforce for me? First, that, after extended work on a project, I can become so familiar with the stories that I lose perspective and fail to notice what a new listener will perceive.

Second, that getting the help of test listeners isn’t always as simple as asking what they like and what could be better. Instead, it can involve a two-way process where, after I hear their initial reactions, they listen to me—and then I coach them to put their reactions in a form that would be most helpful for the teller.

What about you? Have you had similar experiences as coach, as teller, or as a test listener? Please add a comment to describe them.

I’m in Philadelphia, coaching a unique group: eight men who have spent time on death row. Each was convicted of a crime they did not commit and sentenced to death. Each was exonerated and released. Now they devote time to telling their stories around the U.S., helping the campaigns to abolish the death penalty. (Photo: Delbert Tibbs, poet, writer, and death row exoneree)

Kurt Rosenberg is the head of a group called Witness to Innocence. A long-time “abolitionist,” Kurt noticed how anti-death-penalty activists talked about the stories of those wrongfully convicted of capital crimes, but also how the exonerees were seldom given a chance to tell their stories themselves. Witness to Innocence now runs a speaker’s bureau of death row exonerees.

This is my second time working with Witness to Innocence members. Both times, I have been impressed by the courage and conviction of these men, who – after the life-shattering experience of wrongful conviction and incarceration for many years of their lives – have done two difficult and admirable things:

1. Created new lives for themselves; and
2. Devoted themselves to preventing such things from happening to others

I have also been impressed by how fiercely they look out for each other. I joked last time, “Welcome to the world’s only support group for death row exonerees.” They feel a safety and comradery among each other that they hold precious. And they know how abandoned and vulnerable each of them has felt in the past. So they joke and tease each other – but they have each other’s backs.

I wish you could hear all their stories. They are moving and convincing. They are narratives of great injustice from society and its law-enforcement officers, judges, and elected officials. At the same time, they are moving narratives of persistence and intelligence in the face of circumstances that would make many of us “roll over and give up.”

I have had the honor to coach people around the world and in many walks of life. Helping these “ordinary people with extraordinary stories” clarify and hone their stories is, I believe, the greatest honor I have had.

After four and a half years in Oklahoma, I have returned to Massachusetts. (Photo: the view from our deck, in our new house in Marshfield)

The time in OK was wonderful. I learned a great deal about storytelling from the fine folks in the heartland. I learned about waiting calmly and patiently. I learned about connecting with everyone I came in contact with.

Now that I’ve come back East (admittedly, to the small town of Marshfield, not to the densely populated towns adjacent to Boston, where I lived before), I’ve found that the people here have many of the same lessons to teach me!

Do you know the story about the traveller who asks a local, “What are the people like here?”

The local asks back, “What were the people like where you came from?”

The traveller says, “They were mean and ignorant.”

The local says, “Well, you’ll find them to be much the same here.”

Then another traveller asks the same question. The local asks back, “What were the people like where you came from?”

The traveller says, “They were kind, open, and smart.”

So the local says, “Well, you’ll find them to be much the same here.”

Knowing that story, I’m abashed to learn that it has applied to me all these years! Going from Boston to Oklahoma, I found the people in OK much nicer. But now that I’ve returned, I see that the people here are just as nice!

Telling a story doesn’t mean that I’ve actually learned from it yet.

I’m here in Jonesborough, TN, working with the International Storytelling Center as well as the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), a division of NASA.

JPL is developing an educational unit, to help students and teachers who feel uncomfortable with science have a successful learning experience related to space exploration.

I have recommended that the JPL folks integrate storytelling into the process in four ways:

1. Info-telling: Storytelling for conveying information. How to learn about the solar system in a way that is engaging and memorable.
2. Story Harvesting: Storytelling for eliciting information. How to learn about your community by interviewing people who live near you.
3. Story Shaping: Storytelling for shaping your own understanding of your ideas or experience.
4. Story Thinking: Storytelling as an entry into a rapid, non-linear mode of thinking.

Can you think of other ways that storytelling might be used in such a project?

Welcome to the Storytelling Coach web log (blog).

I will post:

1. Questions and answers about storytelling, coaching, and the marketing of either.
2. Observations from my coaching sessions and workshops.

Please add your comments to any post!

Doug