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.