What I love about this post is that VCs tell us directly what measures startups typically include that are meaningless, and what to use instead.

I've curated several top articles, and written my own post, on how startups tell their story when pitching to venture capitalists (VCs) for funding. These upgraded measures shared here are spot on, and a significant improvement.

I'm an avid watcher of Shark Tank. These metrics are the ones I see asked for all the time from the Sharks.

But these metrics are not just for startups and VCs -- they actually apply to many situations where you are trying to get buy-in for your project.

So take note and replace meaningless measures with more significant ones.

What a great article sharing research that correlates having meaningful conversations with personal happiness!

Meaningful conversations very often happen when stories are being shared. So there are questions at the end of the article to get a deeper conversation going. 

My take on these questions though is that they MIGHT generate a story, but it's not a guarantee. So you'll have to ask subsequent questions to actually get a story.

The easier step to take is to take these questions and actually turn them into story prompts. Take question #4: "What absolutely excites you right now?" A typical answer is "My project at work with our vendors." Now you've got to ask more questions. That takes work.

So make it lots easier. Turn it into a story prompt by asking instead, "Tell me about something that absolutely excites you right now..." A likely answer would be, "Oh, my project at work -- which is all about linking our vendors together -- is so exciting. I'm really stoked about it because..."

OK -- you get the idea. Try it out and experience the difference!

I received this email today from Story Corp with these short (1.5 - 3 minutes) powerful stories, reminding us of the principles of freedom, equality, fairness, and community.

"On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we remember his legacy as told by StoryCorps participants.

Dion Diamond, Simeon and Lawrence Cumberbatch, and Bessie and Taylor Rogers share their personal experiences with and inspired by the great Martin Luther King, Jr.

Click on each name above (linked) to listen.

Recording and sharing stories like these is what StoryCorps does best. Thank you for listening.

Warmly,
Your Friends at StoryCorps"

OMG, what a great article by writer Ella Saltmarshe on the power of storytelling for change.

She makes 3 frames for business stories: stories as light, stories as glue, and stories as web. When you frame stories like this, it becomes a lot easier to leverage them for any kind of change effort.

Saltmarshe goes into detail with the 3 frames so readers come away with a more in-depth understanding of how the 3 work. Within the 3 frames are additional subsets.

The article is published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, so you know the post has got substance. This is a powerful post you won't want to miss.

Want to know how to do great storytelling on your website? Well, using a parallax layout is one way and here's a post that lists the most effective 11 examples.

I'm periodically asked about telling stories on websites, so these examples should spark some ideas -- whether you use parallax or not.

While it's true that most of these examples are educational and not necessarily focused on business, that doesn't mean you can't make the translation. Think about one of your signature stories -- maybe your brand story about how your business got started and why, and then how that translated into a unique offering in the marketplace.

Hmmm....something to think about.

This review was written by Karen Dietz for her curated content on business storytelling at www.scoop.it/t/just-story-it. 

OK -- I like most of this interview with Sam Cawthorn. Except for his silly distinction between storytelling and storyshowing. It's a load of hooey.

Anybody who knows authentic storytelling knows that "story showing" automatically happens -- because when you are reliving your experience, you are conveying visuals automatically. Your audience can then see and experience what you did.

When that is NOT happening, you are sharing a simple series of events: I went to the store, I bought some break, I made a sandwich. That's not storytelling.

That being said, I do like the rest of what Cawthorn shares. He talks about leaders preaching instead of inspiring. Right on. 

He also makes a fab point that great storytelling is not about the content, it's about the delivery! Yet most people focus mostly on the content and forget the delivery. The result? Mediocre storytelling or an actual epic fail.

Read more and please -- just don't get hooked into his dumb "we've been told to do it wrong!" storyshowing stuff.

This review was written by Karen Dietz for her curated content on business storytelling at www.scoop.it/t/just-story-it. 

Truly, these are the worst pieces of advice ever given on presentation and influence skills.

Read this list and if you are doing any of them, stop.

And remember, if you are authentically sharing your stories, most of these 20 become worthless really fast.

Thank you, Dave Mac, for writing such a great piece. Hear me clapping, and laughing.

OK, this is a deep post -- but well worth it if you are into storytelling creating successful change. As a leader, share it with your organizational development folks, but also understand it yourself so you can be more effective.

In fact, you'll probably want to bookmark this entire site. There are tools to explore and more insights to read on the link between storytelling and change.

One of the reasons I like this post is because it also talks about language. The language we use in our stories is important. Using generative language is a must. Generative language creates forward movement. Get more insights on this by reading the post.

I also like the notion shared here of mapping stories collaboratively in your network. It's an incredibly valuable tool because then you know because the stories act as bridges to other groups, divisions, and worlds where you need to go and have impact.

The site also shares a simple network mapping tool. Yay!

My only quibble is that the article focuses on stories as sense-making tools when instead they are meaning-making vehicles. Sense making is "Oh I get it." Meaning making is, "Oh, now I know how this is valuable, or now I know what to do." That's a huge difference, and meaning making is a way more desirable outcome.

Dig in here for accelerating your leadership and change skills.

“Emerging findings in neuroscience research suggest why inspiring and supportive relationships are important — they help activate openness to new ideas and a more social orientation to others,” says the author of this article on the neuroscience of leadership.

What's the connection to storytelling? Storytelling is how you build these relationships and activate openness to new ideas, etc. In fact, storytelling is the #1 method for realizing all 3 points listed below.

When you read this article, you will learn about how findings in neuroscience are revolutionizing leadership in areas like,

1. Building resonant relationships
2. Impacts of emotional contagion and empathy
3. Stimulating socialness and engagement through the Positive Emotional Attractor (PEA)

Insights such as these move us away from the much-touted “results orientation” leadership to a “relationship orientation” leadership.

Bottom line: research shows that for change to occur (personal or organizational) leaders need to: 1. arouse the PEA first; and 2. arouse the PEA sufficiently such that it is about three to six times more frequent in the discussions than the Negative Emotional Attractors. Good to know.

Learn about all of these -- what they mean and their implications for successful leadership -- in this review of scholarly articles. Love the citations :)

This blog post is chock full of great advice from 23 sales experts. I and 2 other esteemed business storytelling colleagues are featured. 

If you want more sales, if you want story tips to increase sales, then check out this piece. Story on!

"At the very basic level, we see that businesses don’t have a concrete business story to tell," says Shlomi Ron in this article on Visual Storytelling. And that's the crux of the matter.

Ron goes on to share a lot about how to construct visual stories and the mistakes business make in their visual storytelling. And there's great news about the primacy of print and the marrying of visual with print media.

That being said, it's scary how good we are getting at knowing how to sway people. As always, there are upsides and downsides, and it behooves us all to be more aware of what we do, and what is being done to us.

This robust article to dig into.

Love the points made in this article about how to nail a presentation every single time. Points like:

1. Your presentation is a dialogue and conversation
2. It's a relationship you have with your audience
3. It's not about you, it's all about your audience

There are solid tips offered that you can take action on. 'Gotta love that.

Now, how cool is this -- a periodic table just for business storytelling! Check it out. It's very helpful to think through the story you want/need to tell.

Go read the article, and then here's the direct link to the table:

https://www.storytelling-techniques.com/

I've known Lou Hoffman at the Hoffman Agency for a while, and congrats on the award! I'm very pleased the periodic table is now available for all of us. Thank you for your contributions to business storytelling Lou.

Use this tool and story on!

This review was written by Karen Dietz for her curated content on business storytelling at www.scoop.it/t/just-story-it. 

What a powerful piece from Harvard Business Review (HBR) with some astounding stats about the sorry state of leadership and management in organizations.

It's eye-opening

Businesses are confronted with enormous pressures these days to transform themselves digitally, find new business models, sources of revenue, and be innovative. It's going to be doubly hard to do so if your organization is experiencing any of what the HBR post is talking about.

But I also like the 4 ways the author discusses as ways to remedy the situation. Narrative skills increase #s 1, 3, and 4. Read it and then get your game on.

This review was written by Karen Dietz for her curated content on business storytelling at www.scoop.it/t/just-story-it. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking over significant parts of storytelling. Here's how:

In this post, Jamie Carter writes for TechRadar about the 5 different ways AI is doing storytelling.

There's everything from apps helping you to write better based on AI's natural language processing, to creating emotional arcs that now accurately predict emotional engagement. Read more in Carter's article.

It's happening now -- and fast. Movie makers and news organizations are using AI today. Marketing professionals are catching up fast, if not already there. 

So if machines are taking over both functional (story structures) and emotional areas of storytelling, where does that leave humans?

AI can be a great assist in storytelling. But people will still have to stand and deliver. Oh, wait...is that a robot up on The Moth stage??!!

This review was written by Karen Dietz for her curated content on business storytelling at www.scoop.it/t/just-story-it. 

What a sorry state of affairs for leaders and organizations. The original title of this post is targeted to content marketers and CMOs. But when you read the post, you see it's really an indictment on storytelling and leadership for the entire organization, not just marketing!

And frankly, it follows my experience over the last 20 years. Tons of companies and leaders tout their storytelling. But it looks -- according to this article -- on all talk and little action. And they've got the research to prove it.

Why is storytelling not being adopted by organizations -- even though it is the one skill that can remedy at least 5 critical areas in business? As the research says, it's because:

1. It's not part of the culture or mindset
2. Storytelling is a new skill set
3. It's not measured or documented

That is so accurate!

Want results in sales, employee engagement, an inspiring vision that people believe in, a Teflon culture, and incredible leadership? Then up your storytelling game and quit fooling around.

This review was written by Karen Dietz for her curated content on business storytelling at www.scoop.it/t/just-story-it.

Thank you to Edoardo  for writing this post!

The author's points are spot on. His main points are that presentations are about the audience -- not you. Yet the bulk of presentation trainings are designed to be ALL about you -- how you stand, look, speak, gesture, the slides you show, the font you use.

But the truth is that successful presentations are totally focused on the audience -- who they are, what they care about, the dialogue you have with them, and the empathy created. Not you.

As the author points out, the only person you can make look good is the person in the audience. Even if it's an audience of hundreds.

Edoardo doesn't mention the critical need for storytelling in your presentations, so you know I'm going to add that in. For every major point in your talk, make sure you make it with a story.

Go read the article for stellar insights and what to do. Then craft your next presentation taking these steps and with this shift in attitude. You will notice a huge difference.

This post by Kevin Cashman at Korn Ferry discusses the 8 pathways to leadership mastery. He makes the point early on that we personally tend to measure leadership mastery by external items: revenue, profit, new product breakthroughs, cost savings, and market share, etc. All good.

But the core question is: where do the external results come from? From internal factors within the leader that must be mastered.

To answer that question, research ensued and 3 internal competencies emerged:

1. Courage and authenticity (to include vulnerability, openness, integrity)
2. Influence (communicating in ways that inspires others)
3. Enduring value creation serving multiple groups (self, team, org, family, society, world)

Building these 3 competencies means walking 8 paths. Four of these paths involve storytelling skills: 

1. Personal mastery: courage, authenticity, awareness -- being courageous and vulnerable to share your authentic stories; using your own stories for personal awareness and development
2. Story mastery: leading with inspiration -- by sharing your stories, and sharing the stories of others
3. Purpose mastery: leading with why -- the best way to share the "why" is through a story. Sharing stories of others fulfilling org/personal purpose and their "why"
4. Being mastery: leading with presence -- storytelling isn't the only element to building presence, but it is a key one. Modeling who you are through the stories you tell and the actions you take is powerful.

Read the post for the other 4 paths (all great info and insights!) and start putting a plan together for 2018. You'll be glad you did.

Sign up for my newsletter for updates about my 2018 Story Strategy session.

This review was written by Karen Dietz for her curated content on business storytelling at www.scoop.it/t/just-story-it.