Category Archives:
Storytelling in Business
September 11, 2013
Storytelling in Business – The Iceberg Moment
Life is filled with obstacles and challenges. No matter how much you plot and plan, stuff happens that you think is not supposed to happen. Your car breaks down; a cop gives you a speeding ticket; or your boss micro-manages everything that you do. These are obstacles that prevent us from doing what we were […]
May 21, 2013
Tell a Relevant Story by Doug Stevenson
There are all kinds of stories: long and short, dramatic and comedic, business and personal. Some stories are big dramatic stories with strong emotions and powerful lessons. Others are smaller stories that simply illustrate a lesson learned from a moment in time. While all stories are not equal, all stories can be appropriate, relevant, and […]
May 1, 2013
Make an Emotional Connection
Make An Emotional Connection I get asked the question time and again from my clients: “What is the magic formula for creating an emotional connection with an audience? Is simply telling a story enough?” When stories are properly constructed and performed, they contain the key elements needed to create an emotional connection, but it’s the […]
February 12, 2013
The Healing Power of Stories by Doug Stevenson
Over the last 16 years, while working with hundreds of people on the telling of their stories, it has become clear to me that storytelling can be a healing process for the storyteller as well as for the listener. This happened to me personally just last month. I participated in a local evening of storytelling […]
November 5, 2012
A Little Nuance Goes a Long Way
In retrospect, I now realize that my first 25 speeches were basically about getting a feel for being at the front of the room. During my next 25 speeches I started to focus on what I had to say and how I wanted to say it. It took another 50 or so speeches before I […]
November 5, 2012
Tap Into Your Genius Brain
After leaving college, I took my first acting class at the famous Second City in Chicago. It was an improvisation class, and my first experience with improvisation. I thought it was a waste of time. What I didn’t understand at the time was how improvisation forced me to tap into my “genius brain”. I later […]
May 29, 2012
The Top 3 Mistakes Speakers Make
Why is it that speakers have such a hard time translating the passion they feel for their subject matter into passionate presentations? What gets in the way of their natural enthusiasm and spontaneous energy? a technical problem? a poorly-designed speech? a lack of confidence? Over the years, I’ve been contracted to help hundreds of aspiring […]
March 13, 2012
Using Corporate Storytelling to Drive Change
The year was 1998. I was in Lincoln, Nebraska at the Cornhusker Inn just down the road from the University of Nebraska. I was traveling the country with my keynote: The Positive Power of Change. This particular event was the annual meeting of a mid-sized tele-communications company. I had been hired to speak at the […]
January 10, 2012
Corporate Storytelling – Eloquence and Language
I grew up with a father who was in love with words. His reverence for language, pronunciation and proper diction was an annoyance to me as a child, but a gift to me as an adult. I remember the way he would read aloud a passage from a book or a poem. He had a […]
September 19, 2011
Corporate Storytelling Skills – Third-Person Story
by Doug Stevenson – Creator of The Story Theater Method for Storytelling in Business I always advise my corporate and private coaching clients to use personal stories whenever possible. Personal stories establish credibility by letting your listener know that your wisdom comes from your life experience, rather than from reading the latest book. Personal stories […]
