Challenging and Supporting People to do the Most Important Work of their Lives
Once upon a time there was data… and it didn’t change the world.
…and then there were stories…
Karen Eber has spent her career helping leaders develop the culture of their organisations. She has learn that stories are the foundation blocks of building culture.
“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”
Joseph Campbell
Someone has shared the documentary film “Finding Joe” on YouTube. It is a fantastic introduction to the life’s work of Joseph Campbell… who first articulated the common structure to mythological stories: The Hero’s Journey.
I don’t know how long it will be up… it is well worth a watch (I’m watching it up on my TV right now).
It is better to have a story to give meaning to what is happening in our lives than an explanation… because a story is richer… and gives meaning. What story are you telling yourself about Coronavirus? We can choose the story.
“If you bargain away your life for security, you will never find your bliss”
Joseph Campbell
The journey is a pattern of our our journey of growing up as human beings. We are called to adventure… and resist the call… until the right set of challenge, mentors, self belief comes into place… and we begin a journey of transformation > the journey from an unsatisfying life (lived in service of other’s values) to a fulfilling life (lived in service of a greater cause).
I’ve been reading the novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull with my 4 year old daughter over the last week… it is a hero journey… and it is prompting many interesting conversations with my daughter.
Take Our PollHere is a previous post of mine that describes in detail the journey…
Here’s an old video of mine where I describe the 7 steps of the Hero Journey:
Overcoming challenges and obstacles is what makes life meaningful. I hope your dreams and visions are big enough to be difficult.
“Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better”
Jim Rohn
This video is about superman. When superman was first developed as a comic book character, he was so strong and powerful that he overcame all obstacles easily. It was only when the authors made him weaker that the stories became interesting.
In our own lives, it is not the easy path that makes for a meaningful life – it is the hard path, and having to become a better, stronger, more resilient, more resourceful person that makes for a meaningful life.
If you liked this post on stories, you will also like What is a Story and 7 Steps to the Perfect story.
What makes them so effective in moving audiences to commit to action? Why is there currently an explosion of story courses, story gurus, business storytellers?
If you are reading this via email, you can watch the video on the blog: Why do Stories work in Persuasion?
We think of stories as a creative art form but within that creativity there is a lot of structure. The building blocks of great Stories are predictable.
I have written extensively on how to tell great stories, the shapes of stories, what is a story, 7 steps to a great story.
My TED talk is coming up to 400k views: “The Discipline of Finishing: Conor Neill at TEDxUniversidaddeNavarra”
I uploaded my first educational tips video to youtube in January 2011. I wanted to reach out to a wider audience than can come and attend IESE Business School in Barcelona or in Madrid, or those who read my blog.
Today, there are 77 short educational videos on the channel, and with 1.3 Million views, the channel has been a success far beyond what I ever would have expected.
My “Rhetorical Journey” youtube channel has now got over 16,700 youtube subscribers and over 1,3 Million views of the educational videos. The top videos are:
 |
 |
 |
I plan to continue to share short form video content via this channel. I will produce 24 new videos over then next 12 months.
Up to now I have only shared short tips or 5 minute segments of speeches. I have received many requests for more, and deeper, material.
I have decided to create a new channel that shares full speeches and full classroom sessions.
Many of you are happy with the short tips that I will continue to provide via the free channel.
This channel is not for everyone. This channel is only for those of you who want to go deeper into the material that I teach. I will be sharing at least one new long-form video each month.
There will be a number of free to view full speeches such as this one from The Leadership Concert in Romania. This set of speeches was delivered with a full orchestra and concert pianist.
The full leadership speeches and more available on YouTube Conor Neill Premium Content
Stories teach us to love, to forgive others, to be just and to strive for better than we have. Stories share and reinforce our values as human beings living together in society. In business, stories are the building blocks of culture.
Peter Drucker says “Only 3 things happen naturally in organisations: friction, confusion and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership”. A leader’s ability to share the organisation purpose in the form of meaningful stories is key to overcoming these three: friction, confusion and underperformance.
The 5 minute animated video below answers the question “What is a Story?” and gives 7 elements that need to be present to make a story compelling and motivating to the listeners.
At the very simplest, a story is:
An epic story is
The real depth of any story is not whether the character achieves the goal but who they become as they face the obstacles along the path.
How do you use these ingredients to find meaning in your life and business?
From a leader’s perspective, a story has to first develop a character that we care about, and we wonder what will happen to them.
Once we care, then something has to happen to force the character to show their hand. In real life, we don’t change unless we are changed by events. In the words of Soren Kierkegaard “the only precursor to change is crisis”.
So story step number 2: a crisis. Something that forces the character to commit to the goal. In Star Wars, Luke returns from the desert trip to find his aunt and uncle have been murdered by Imperial Stormtroopers. He commits to travel with Obi-wan to space.
We are now on the journey.
Joseph Campbell speaks of this moment as the Portal to Adventure. Often the character will have approached this portal a few times in the past, only to turn back at the last moment. Something happens to push them over the edge. It might be a mentor that says “things will be ok for you”. It might be a love interest who says “do it for me!” It might be a coincidence that the hero reads as divine message saying “it is you”.
The adventure begins. Often a few easy victories give the hero (and the readers) a sense that this is going to work out well.
In an interesting story, there are positive turns and negative turns. In Homer’s Odysseus, the hero makes amazing progress towards his home using the magic of the wind that the Gods gave to him in a bag. Joy. Progress. Then, the crew open the bag to see if they can get home even quicker. Opening the bag is a negative turn. The uncontrolled wind escapes from the bag and blows the ship way, way, way back far, far, far away from home, even further than from where they had begun.
The positive turns allow us to keep the reader engaged and hopeful of the final outcome.
If it comes easy to the hero, it’s not an inspiring story. There needs to be challenges. The dragon represents the difficult obstacles that must be overcome.
The negative turns allow us to develop the character of the hero. Kurt Vonnegut says “Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.”
The trials and tribulations, hopes and dashed dreams continue for a while. We are watching the hero gather resources, make friends, identify enemies, trust those that are not worthy of trust, disobey those that should really have been obeyed – make a mess out of easy situations, and just pull it together to make it through the difficult challenges.
Then, the novelty wears off and the hero realises that they don’t feel like they are making progress. I am reminded of the feeling when I sail between the coast and an island. When I set out from the shore of Australia to sail to the Whitsunday islands, at first the coast behind me got rapidly smaller – I felt like I was flying out to sea. Then comes the interminable middle. The coast is no longer shrinking, but the islands don’t seem to be getting any bigger. All I know is that wave after wave is hitting my boat. I stay in this state for hours. Then, all of a sudden, the islands rapidly grow larger and larger.
In the interminable middle, the hero must find a way to overcome self doubt as well as the many obstacles that block the path to the goal.
We then reach a point of disillusion. This is the point of abandon. The hero is tired, has lost sight of the original goal, feels like they are making no progress.
The hero wants to give up. It feels pointless to go on.
Again, in good story, we need an external cause that pushes the hero to one last push. It might be a friend that reappears and supports. It might be an evil enemy doing something that is double the despicable of anything he has done before. It might be the loss of the hero’s closest ally. It might be the death of the hero’s mentor (remember Obi-Wan sacrificing himself to Darth?).
The hero, this time without hope for themselves, having lost their own ego reason for taking up the original mission takes one last push – and this push is enough to break the deadlock of the interminable middle and open up the return home.
The hero has achieved the original goal. Prometheus achieves stealing fire from the Gods and returns to the world. Luke and his allies blow up the Death Star with a last, final, spiritually enhanced missile (“just like shooting swamp rats back home!”).
The hero returns to his village, to those that knew him before his journey.
Sometimes the return is the most challenging. The hero has become a very different person though the obstacles they have overcome, but their mother and father, their brothers and sisters still see the old version of the person. It takes tremendous effort to get the old friends and family to see the new person and let go of the old person.
In a movie, we leave the cinema with a sense of closure, that a full cycle has finished. In a book we finish with a sense that the universe has been restored to a new point of equilibrium. In real life, we realise that this epic story is just a tiny sub-plot in a bigger and bigger story. In real life, the meaning is not designed into the events by an author, it is we ourselves who must create the meaning that can fit the events of our lives and give us the feeling that it is worth waking up again and experiencing more tomorrow.
This then, is a story:
Hero + Goal + Obstacles + Resources + Friends + Enemies + Learning and Growing to become the person that can succeed
“We think of stories as a wildly creative art form but within that creativity and that diversity there is a lot of conformity. Stories are very predictable. No matter where you go in the world, no matter how different people seem, no matter how hard their lives are, people tell stories, universally, and universally the stories are more or less like ours: the same basic human obsessions, and the same basic structure. The structure comes down to: stories have a character, the character has a predicament or a problem—they’re always problem-focused—and the character tries to solve the problem. In its most basic terms, that’s what a story is—a problem solution narrative.” Jonathan Gottschall
From structure and plot to heroes and characters, your story must have 7 elements in order to engage the audience. Here’s an infographic from the Content Marketing Association that visually defines the process of storytelling:
Click the image below to view a larger version.
Source: Visual Portrait of a Story, adapted by Ohler, J. (2001) from Dillingham, B. (2001)
Kurt Vonnegut is an American writer (1922-2007) famous for his satire and humour in the face of desperate circumstances. He has a wonderful theory on “the shapes of stories” – which he presents in the 4 minute video available below.
In his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story:
Thanks to Alex Rister on her blog Creating Communication for originally sharing this video. If you click through to her blog, she also shares an infographic with a summary of Vonnegut’s shapes of story.
As a further glimpse into the mind of Kurt Vonnegut and his views on writing, here are 7 rules for “writing with style”:
