Welcome to Our Blog

Contrasting perceptions need not lead to conflict.
Annette Simmons

Storytelling Moral Survival System: Part four

Storytelling Morals and Ethics for the Digital Age Obviously, the combined power of story and technology begs for a new code of ethics. The good news is that enduring myths “crowd sourced” moral lessons long before we coined the term, by incorporating centuries of listeners’ tales about what works, what doesn’t work, and how to

Read More »
Annette Simmons

Ten Games 8. Discrediting Game

Discrediting Game “He would sometimes use humor to put him down. He’d make comments like ‘Well let’s stay strategic here,’ and that implies that his comment was something less than strategic. We’d laugh, but you know, they were direct put downs.” “They would ridicule the sincerity of the fans of the new consultants. They would

Read More »
Annette Simmons

Episode #17 – Capturing Wisdom with Storyteling

Madelyn Blair’s company name Pelerei represents two root words that mean “lifting people up.”  She made up the name as a hidden reminder of who she is and why she is here.  Learn more about Madelyn’s books: Riding the Current and Essays in Two Voices. In Essays in Two Voices Madelyn offers a simple process

Read More »
Annette Simmons

The art of seeing the story…

Joe Dager of Business 901 and I begin by talking about the similarities between storytelling and art in this podcast. I promise to send out a new Story Factor Podcast soon. I’ve been writing and editing the second edition of Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins and there is so much I want to add!

Read More »
Annette Simmons

Episode #16 – Narrative Intelligence – thoughts from Madelyn Blair

The best part of this podcast may be when Madelyn’s husband shows up and gives her a bouquet of red roses for their 40th anniversary! But the rest of it is pretty good too. This week’s conversation begins as Madelyn Blair (www.pelerei.com) describes the idea of Narrative Intelligence.  She describes a quick process she recently used

Read More »
Annette Simmons

Episode #15 – More Moth Secrets from Lea Thau

Lea Thau, creative director of TheMoth.org for a decade (2001-2010), Lea teaches business people not so much how to tell personal stories, but  how to use the principles of storytelling to shape strategy, to roll out new initiatives, or frame business proposals.  However I learned most by asking more about her process at the Moth and

Read More »

Popular Posts

Paradox: Root Cause of Polarization

According to Pew research, disdain between opposing political parties in America has doubled in the last 30 years, coincidentally the span of my own consulting business, Group Process Consulting. My efforts to document true stories about these escalating conflicts inadvertently produced a set of oral histories across the years: Territorial Games (1997), A Safe Place

Read More »

Contrasts, Not Conflicts

 “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”  Groucho Marx Troublemakers erode trust faster than we can build it back right now. Yet, many of these “troubles” are invented conflicts that distort predictably contrasting values. It helps to know what to look for. And once

Read More »

Storyteller’s Confession: My Secret Mission

I’ve been trying to infiltrate the halls of power for decades. My secret mission is to increase the diversity of thought by teaching those without a voice how to tell their stories and by teaching leaders how to find and retell stories that broaden everyone’s understanding.

Read More »

Stories with a Moral Blueprint – part 8 of 8

We need a Magic School for Storytellers Thirty years before J. K. Rowling created Harry Potter, Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series imagined a magic school that taught apprentice sorcerers how to avoid abusing the power of magic. Le Guin points out early in the series that “even to light a candle is to cast a

Read More »

Stories with a Moral Blueprint – part 7 of 8

Truth in Storytelling When I wrote the first edition of The Story Factor twenty years ago, I began with the idea that people don’t want more information. They want faith in you and your positive intentions. I never suspected that two decades later we’d be discussing an explosion of stories that intentionally undermine this faith. Without

Read More »
Scroll to Top