Notes from the Storytelling Coach

The name we give to our helpers influences what we expect from them. Do we want them to direct us? Teach us? Criticize us? What should be our helper’s goals? Is the helper more of a parent or a midwife? What name fits the idea of supportive, respectful helping?

Further, is this idea of a helper adaptable to fields other than storytelling? And is coaching something that will evolve or can we now describe it now, once and for all?

Seven minutes, fifteen seconds

Episode 4 of the Storytelling Coach Podcast.

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In 1979, I decided to praise a student storyteller rather than criticize her. This led to a search for how to teach and coach storytellers and, ultimately, for how to use what I had learned that day to assist others in the burgeoning storytelling movement. Eight minutes, thirty-nine seconds

Episode 3 of the Storytelling Coach Podcast.

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How a student turned me into a storytelling coach. My choice was between my father’s approach to teaching and what I had experienced in school. Ten minutes, thirty-eight seconds

Episode 2 of the Storytelling Coach Podcast.

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Do you want to learn to coach others? Do you want to be an informed consumer of coaching for yourself? In either case, you need to understand what makes coaching work, and how a coach can support your creative thinking – not substitute the coach’s thinking for yours.

Back in 1995, I wrote the first (and still the only) book on coaching storytellers, The Storytelling Coach: How to Listen, Praise, and Bring Out People’s Best.

Now I am recording the entire book, in segments that are 5 to 10 minutes long. I will make these recordings available each week as episodes in this podcast. I estimate that it will take nearly two years (94 episodes) to record the entire book.

The first episode, “A New Kind of Helper,” is attached to this post. Please subscribe, to be sure not to miss an episode.

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!

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.