Jamie Woolf & Christopher Bell: Using Stories to Inspire and Drive Change

Stories are a powerful tool for leaders to inspire and drive change, especially during times of uncertainty. A well told story engages your audience with authenticity and transparency and enables you to connect to their deepest emotions.

Jamie shares the Pixar formula for storytelling and show how you can use current or past events with a negative emotional impact as a ‘narrative springboard’ for crafting powerful leadership stories.

Christopher helps you explore what stories convey, how people receive stories, and what people do with the stories we tell them. You will gain a powerful  insight into how to craft better stories.

You already know the stories behind great companies. This session helps you understand why stories are so powerful. You will learn how to start telling stories that connect with your people, your company and your customers.

Slides

Transcript

Chris Bell
What’s up party people?

Jamie Woolf
All right. Hello? Is there a water?

Mark Littlewood
There it goes, you’re fine.

Jamie Woolf
Okay, my mic on? Cool. First of all, I just want to give a round of applause to this guy, and Jo and the team and Kirk. And they have been amazing. So round of applause.

Chris Bell
I’ve been to a lot of conferences, this is one of the best run, cleanest, most smooth conferences I’ve ever been to. So congratulations on that.

Jamie Woolf
So Chris is going to introduce himself in a moment.

Chris Bell
I’m gonna step off stage, I’ll see you guys.

Jamie Woolf
Get out of here. And so I was at Pixar for the last 12 years, I was the Director of Culture. And seven months ago, my co founder and I left Pixar and we started Creativity Partners. And Creativity Partners, really, in large part helps leaders to use stories to attract talent to onboard in an amazing, delightful way to build culture and to create connection. So why does it matter to have a culture where people feel connected, because we’ve all worked at organizations where there’s disconnection, especially now with remote work, where there’s disconnection, where there’s not trust, and when that’s the case, we don’t go above and beyond, we don’t do our best work. So we need that connection. We all know that we need to build healthy cultures. So one of the powerful things that story does is build connection, and then we’ll be talking about that. And the other thing that story does, see if the clicker is working today, is it inspires us to think and act differently. So we’ll talk about that in a moment. But first, we’re going to start where most stories start with the protagonist. And in this case, the protagonist is you. So I’m realizing I’m quite the dinosaur passing out paper, I’m going to nudge you out of your comfort zone. Because most of you don’t use paper and pen anymore. But today, you’re going to use paper and pen. And here’s what I’d like you to do is to think about 10 of your core identities. And these core identities can be mom, dad, spouse, teacher, coach, Republican, Democrat, Jew, Muslim, think about all of those things that make you you and write those down.

On building connection and culture through storytelling

Just 10 and if you don’t have paper, you can use your phones if you want to put it on your phones you can I see you guys don’t have anything so you can just think about it in your head. When you’re done, you can just look up give me a cue. I’m seeing a lot of heads looking up. Now we’re just waiting on Darrel. All right. So what I’d like you to do now is cross out five that are least core to who you are. Cross out five. Again, give me a cue when you’re done, look up. All right, now it gets harder. Cross out three. All right, hardest, yet, you’re gonna cross out one, and you’re gonna circle one, the one you circle is your primary core identity. Give it a shot. All right, what I’d like you to do now is you’re going to turn to a neighbor. And you’re going to briefly describe why and how you made the choice that you did between the two. Why did you make that choice? Why not the other one? How did you make that choice? So if you’re an odd number in your row, just get together with a group of three. briefly share, go ahead. Got the energy going? All right. Raise your hand if you need more time. Okay, good. So that’s shifted the energy in the room. Nice. All right, we’re gonna come back to this. But I am going to share a personal story. This is a personal story that I’ve never shared to a bunch of strangers. So we’ll see how this goes. It’s a story about Alzheimer’s. And given the amount of you in this room, you likely know someone have cared for someone who has Alzheimer’s. 6.7 million Americans have Alzheimer’s 1.1 out of nine of us will be afflicted with Alzheimer’s just to bring the mood down. And an estimated 1.2 million additional care workers will be needed over the next decade. And that’s more growth than any other single occupation. So these statistics aren’t a story, but some context. This is my mom, me and my mom. And I’m an only child and my mom was awesome. She was wickedly funny, smart. She was a school teacher. And she was artistic. She taught me to love art. And she started to show signs of of Alzheimers. And over 10 years, I watched her disintegrate. I started to change her diapers. I try not to flinch when she called me mom. And I started to feel like 20 to 25 calls a day. This was when I first started at Pixar. And I’m trying to hold down this job. These calls were not like, “Hey, Hi, how’s your day going?” These calls were brutal. They were paranoid, delusional, the caregiver would be freaking out, or my mom would be freaking out. My mom when she was healthy, her biggest wish was to not be put into an institution. She saw her mom die in an institution, it got to the point where I couldn’t find a steady supply of caregivers. I couldn’t hold my job and feel these 22 calls a day I started blocking her calls made me feel tremendously guilty. I put her in an institution, these institutions, even the best of them are really depressing places. And I felt a lot of guilt. And she died in an institution. So if there’s a silver lining to what was my nightmare for 10 years, it’s that I really feel like life is precious. I always did feel like life is precious. But life is precious. I don’t defer. I really try to think my calendar with what matters most to me. And so I will say that this makes me obviously really sad to share with all of you, I found myself almost about to cry. And the thing about my feeling sad telling the story is that you’re likely feeling a bit sad to to a certain extent. And what’s interesting about that, is how many of you have heard of mirror neurons? Raise your hand? Yeah, wow, a lot of you savvy audience. So what happens is our mirror neurons get activated. And you’re feeling to a certain extent, what I’m feeling if I was telling a joyful story, you would feel some joy. And what’s cool about this is the information that’s processed when your mirror neurons are activated, get stored into long term memory. So stories that have some emotional juice are memorable. And there’s another this is my mom is a grandma, she was an awesome grandma. And then the other thing that happens is our brains release oxytocin, which is sometimes called the empathy, hormone, and cortisol. And what happens when these hormones are released in our brain is that we’re inspired to think differently and act differently. So what that means is, if I were to ask you to donate to an Alzheimer’s cause after I shared the statistics, you’re far less likely to donate than after I shared this story about my mom. In fact, Paul Zak, who’s a neuro economist, did some really interesting studies showing that he could correlate the amount of oxytocin and cortisol in your brain with the amount you would donate. So these stories, if we’re looking about looking at stories in the workplace, we want to inspire people to think and act differently. That’s what story does. So, you might be wondering now, how this all relates to the workplace. I’m not going to share a story about Alzheimer’s in the workplace. Well, we want to activate our brains in this way in the workplace. And there’s a cost when we don’t have that emotional connection at work. There’s a cost of the bottom line. We don’t retain people, people find other jobs. We talked about that yesterday, and people don’t know feel engaged, they don’t feel loyal to the company. So we need to find ways to bring humanity and emotion into the workplace. What we have now is we’ve over indexed on the cerebral on the analytical in the workplace. In fact, I was just telling mark at break that I feel like we’ve extracted the joy and extracted the humanity out of the workplace. And now, especially with remote, it’s really difficult to bring that humanity back. That’s what story does. That’s what we need to do more of the workplace. So let’s think about how you can use story in the workplace. How you can even use story here at this conference. So one way is to build trust and connection, which we’ve been talking about. And I’ll talk about an example of how at Pixar, we unearthed our values through story and brought meaning to those values. So they weren’t just empty slogans. And we can also use story to inspire people when they’re going through turbulence when they’re going through difficult times. So I’ll give you an example. Pete Docter anyone know who Pete Docter is just curious. I won’t put you on the spot. He’s the Chief Creative Officer of Pixar. And he’s the director of Inside Out, Up, Monsters Inc, Soul, he’s a brilliant director. So he often shares a story with filmmakers who are just going through a tough time, it’s tough to make these films, it takes four years and people hit creative blocks.

Creativity, storytelling, and personal growth

So the story he shares is that he was making Inside Out, how many people have seen Inside Out? Oh, wow. Wow, almost everybody. That’s so cool. I was gonna explain to you inside out is but for those few of you who don’t know, Inside Out, Inside Out is a story of a girl and the protagonists, the character, the characters are our emotions in her head. So Joy is a protagonist, the girl’s a protagonist. And so he’s making Inside Out, and it’s three years in, and he feels like he is not cracking this story. It’s just there’s something that’s not right. He calls the creative process. Inevitably, you hit this tunnel of despair. It’s like a dark tunnel where you just can’t find your way out. And so he often takes hikes. So he hiked for like three hours. And on this hike, he started to think about how sad he was going to be when he quit Pixar. He was like envisioning handing his resignation, notice. And he was thinking about who he would miss, and the sadness and it came to him that Sadness needs to be paired with the character Joy, rather than for three years, they had paired Fear, with Joy. And this cracked it all open, because the one of the big lessons of Inside Out is that you have to feel sadness, you can’t run away from sadness, because then you won’t feel joy, you have to feel all the emotions. So what he says after sharing this story is, “I want to normalize the creative process for all of you. You’re gonna if you haven’t already, you will hit that tunnel of despair. You’ll hit creative blocks, and it’s normal.” I feel it, you will feel it. And I remember one time he shared this to a group of emerging directors, they weren’t yet directors. And they, after Pete left, just were buzzing about, “Oh my god, Pete feels this?” He also by the way, talked about how he always feels imposter syndrome. So he shares this emotional story with vulnerability. And he always says you can’t share a good story without emotion. So he, he really embodied that. The other way example I want to give is bringing meaning to your organization’s values. How many of you have organizational values in your company? Almost all of you, okay. It’s hard, isn’t it to not have those values be empty slogans? Yeah. So what we did at Pixar is we actually codified our values by first asking for stories. We we asked hundreds of people at Pixar, what is a time that was quintessentially Pixar and inspires you to work here? And the stories came tumbling out. We had rooms of people so they were sharing stories, laughter crying and we use all of those stories. And we codified all of those stories into four values. And one of my favorite stories that came out quite a bit was the people who worked on Coco went to Mexico City for the premiere. And they talked about how they talk to Mexican families about how they hadn’t never seen themselves represented on film like this. It felt authentic. It felt like a really good representation of what they feel prideful about, about their culture. That was a huge win for Coco. In fact, Coco was like number one in Mexico for many months. And the value that that became is that we tell authentic, relatable stories. So now the value is not a slogan like we link them to those stories. So what what we’re going to do now I’m going to put you back on the spot, we’re going to go back to that first exercise and add something to it. So every Pixar movie, and most movies that you’ve seen most books that you read, have a very simple Foundation. And that is the three act structure: Act One, Act Two, Act Three.

Act One, you kind of engaged in, which is, who’s the protagonist, what’s their world. This is from Act One. At the end of Act One, what happens is an inciting incident. So in my story, the inciting incident is great childhood, single mom, me and my mom love each other, and she gets Alzheimer’s. Pete story is he’s swimming along three, three years into Inside Out, he realized it’s not working, inciting incident, then Act Two, that’s where all the shit happens. It’s all the complications, all the conflicts, all the challenges. And that’s where you’re on the edge of your seat, there’s an arc to the story. And Act Three is where there’s some sort of very satisfying transformation, there’s a lesson learned. So now back to you. You’re gonna think of a pivotal moment in your life that was challenging, but it informs who you are today. And you can use the core identity that you thought of in that exercise, or you can use another one, my core identity is probably being a mom. But the story I told was, from my daughter identity, so think about which identity, you want to tell this story. And I like you to just think about that individually. If you want to jot down ideas or just reflect in your head, what is a pivotal moment in your life that was challenging, and informs who you are today. So take a moment to think. All right. Now, again, turn to you could turn to the same people that you did the identities exercise with, and very briefly, two minutes, tops for each person. Share what was that pivotal moment. You can start with act two, we don’t need to hear the Once Upon a Time. Start with Act Two. What was challenging? What was the lesson? What was challenging? What was the lesson? All right, go ahead. All right. I’m gonna stop you there. If you, I love how I can’t stop you. This is all right. If you did not have sufficient time to share your act two and act three, then your homework is to find that person and have that continued discussion. It was really quite wonderful to see the connection in the room. And now it is my delight to bring Chris come on up, Chris. I love this guy.

Chris Bell
Thanks. Hi, everybody. Okay, so here’s my favorite thing about telling stories. My favorite thing about telling stories is this. Storytelling is learned behavior. Storytelling has learned behavior. And because storytelling is learned behavior, that means, number one, I can teach you how to do it. And number two, you can get better at it. It’s my favorite thing about telling stories. So what I want to do with you is I want to talk about mechanics. Because I’ve been walking around this joint for a day and a half now. And I’ve been talking to a lot of people. And here’s what I’ve noticed. And I’m gonna say this with all the love that I have in my heart. Most people, not just here, but in the world. Most people are really good at talking to other people, and not very good at telling stories. And I’ve been talking to a lot of people who have done a lot of talking to me, and haven’t heard all that many stories. Stories are not a mystery. Stories can be put together like Legos. And so today, we’re going to put our Legos together. And I’m going to teach you how to put those Legos together to form something really simple, really cohesive and that looks really good. That’s my goal. Okay, so before you leave here today, before you walk out of this auditorium, my hope is that you’re going to have a solid story that you will be able to tell other people this afternoon, in this space, at lunch, at dinner tonight, as you’re networking. It’s a story about a really important protagonist, protagonist, Jaime has been trying to get you to think about for the last half an hour, that protagonist is you. And today, we’re going to learn how to tell a story about you. A good story about you a story about you, that improves your business relations, a story about you that helps people understand what it is that you do a story about you that helps people understand what’s important to you. So how are we going to do that? Well, let’s talk about what makes a good story. What makes a good story? Making a good story is a formula. And because it’s a formula, you can learn it. And because you can learn it, you can get better at it, as I said. So what makes a good story? Well, the first thing that makes a good story is we got to have a great character we can root for. That character doesn’t have to be a person. As we’ve talked about, emotions, can be up can be a character, a bird or a squirrel can be a character. Your software program can be a character, your business can be a character. But we just need a great character we can root for, someone we can get behind. The second thing that we need, in order to tell a really good story is we need to have a great structure we can easily follow.

Storytelling techniques and elements for personal and business growth

That three act structure, the reason we give you that three act structure is because that is the way that you have been socially, cognitively and emotionally conditioned to receive a story for as long as you have lived. Three act story, as we talked about in the screenwriting business, we get a guy, he climbs up a tree, we throw rocks at him, climbs down from the tree and has learned how to dodge rocks. Three act structure. Okay, so that’s a great structure that you can easily follow. And the third piece that you need to tell a really great story is a great purpose we can attach to, a great purpose we can attach to. What is the moral of the story? What have we learned? Our hero has learned how to dodge rocks, but what does that mean for him? And if you have all three of these pieces, you will be able to answer that age old question of “What does a listener want out of your story?” Because guess what? A story you tell to nobody is not a story. It’s just you talking out loud to yourself. So we have to think about our audience. We have to think about who’s hearing this story, and what do they want to get out of the story that we’re telling them. So what does the hero want from your story? Or What does it what does the listener want from your story? Well, the first thing the listener wants is a hero. Which just happens to be a great character we can root for. A person listening to your story, they want obstacles, they want to know what happened. They want exciting adventures. And when there’s exciting adventures, when a hero has to overcome obstacles, that gives us stakes. What’s at stake? what’s going to happen if the hero doesn’t get what he wants? something bad, something terrible. Now I’m invested. Now I want to know what happens next. I want there to be dramatic climax, I want to build towards the hero when the villain coming into contact with each other. I want Luke Skywalker to fight Darth Vader. I want that. And when I get there, and our hero has that final battle, and our hero triumphs, our hero experiences victory, then together as an audience, we can go on the happily ever after. That’s what we want out of a story. That’s what we want out of our movies. That’s what we want out of the books that we read. That’s what we want out of the stories that we listen to. We want that arc. We want that hero to go through some stuff and come up better on the other side. So if we’re going to tell a great story, and if we’re going to have these elements in our story, then there’s a really precise way that we can do this. And that’s why you have pencil and paper, because we’re going to do it right now. So how do we tell a solid story? We asked seven questions. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to think of that protagonist. And I want you to think of that pivotal moment, that moment where you had to do something else. Now, if all this time you’ve been thinking of like, a really personal thing I think you wouldn’t use at work or think you wouldn’t share with colleagues or something like that. Think of something work related. Think of something business related, a pivotal moment in your in your business life and your work life. Where you decided to do something else, maybe that’s you decided to start this company, maybe it’s you decided to work in a different field, but whatever. Think of something business related, okay. Here’s the first question I want you to ask, I want you to say, Who’s the hero of the story? Who’s the hero of the story? Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s this piece of software you’re working on? Maybe it’s your whole business. But who’s the hero of the story? What do we care about in this story? Go ahead and write that down. Who’s the hero of the story now keep in mind, this is not the this is not the SATs. I am not your English professor. I’m not coming out there to read these. So it only has to make sense to you. Right you only have to make sense in your head. So if you want to use initials if you want to just use it what doesn’t matter because nobody’s going to read them to you. Who is the hero of the story? Second question I want you to answer what do they want at the beginning of the story, what does the hero want? Why did you start this new career? Why did you create this program? Why did you start this business? What does the hero want? Third question What happens if they don’t get it? This hero wants something real bad. What happens if they don’t get it? I happen to be a classical rhetorician by trade. I study and teach the art of rhetoric, classical rhetoric. And Aristotle always says. “If you really want to make something hit home should always appeal Thanos, not fan Thanos like but like Thanos. That is the inherent mortal fear of death. So if, if your story is and then we were all going to die, those always hit the most right? Was always hit the hardest. Not every story leads You can’t be like, we didn’t take the trash out until we were all gonna die. Like, you have to you have to be careful with that one, but you can use it. What happens if they don’t get it? Fourth question, I want you to answer what’s in their way? Because every person who ever wanted anything, there was always something that was between them and that thing. You weren’t the only person trying to ask out your wife. You weren’t. You weren’t the only person trying to get into that program, you weren’t the only person trying to design this thing. There’s always something in your way. A lot of my story starts with so I was broke. And because that’s an obstacle, money is often an obstacle. So what’s in your way? Next question. How do they overcome that? How does your hero overcome the thing that was in their way? What did you do to get around it? Or over it? Or in my case, many times through it. I tend not to be an over or around guy. Which doesn’t always work in my favor. I will tell you a lot of stories of where just hit it harder is not the correct strategy. They overcome it. And then and then the darkness. And then what led to victory? Your hero had an inspiration, a way to get around the obstacle, and something led to victory. What led to victory? What led to the big win? And finally, and I promise you, this is the most important part of the story. It’s the most important part of the story. What happened next? And then what? How was the world different? How was the life different? How were things different? What changed? What did we learn? How did we become something else? And if you can answer these seven questions, you can tell a story. And if you can answer these seven questions in three minutes, you can tell a great story. See on your phones so I’m gonna give you a second. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Let me tell you story.

From childhood to professor to Hollywood

I’ll tell you a story about a guy. A guy who started off as a kid, as most people do. This kid, this kid was born in northern Colorado and when I was three years old, my family moved to Denver. And I grew up in Denver, played in the snow. I, you know, went to elementary school, junior high high school, all in Denver. And I was a pretty happy kid, for the most part. Had a pretty happy childhood. My parents were great parents. I had a really good brother and sister, my brother and sister. I have twins. They’re three years older than me. It was a really fun time growing up. And I filled my days with my two great loves the thing I love more than anything in the world, someone who had dinner with me last night. And you know what I’m talking about. My first great love is comic books. And my second great love is animation. And these are the two things that I wanted to do more than anything in the world. I just wanted to grow up and be someone who got to do stuff with comic books and cartoons. That’s all I wanted to do. And so by the time I got to college have a game plan for how to make that happen. I went to college, and I learned how to become a screenwriter. And I got my Master’s Degree in Screenwriting. I went to San Diego State, I got my Master’s Degree in Screenwriting, and I went up to Hollywood to become the next great television writer. And I got to Hollywood. And I said, “Please, can I have a job?” And everybody said, “Nope.”. And I was sad. I was a sad dude, hanging out on a sad beach being sad. Am I then girlfriend now wife said to me, “I can’t marry you like this, you’re a mess.” So we need to figure you out, meet figure out what you’re going to do next, because this is not working out. So I’d always love school. But I always love to learn. So I went back to school, and I got my PhD. I got my PhD in Media Studies, because I figured if I can’t make television, I’ll spend my life talking about it. And so I did, I got my degree of Media Studies, I started teaching. And eventually I became a tenured professor in the state of Colorado. And I thought, that’s just what I was going to do with my life. I was just going to be a professor. And it was going to be cool, because I really enjoyed the work that I did. And I really enjoy enjoyed my students. And I was studying the thing that I loved most in the world. I was studying superheroes. And I was writing about superheroes. And I was teaching about superheroes. And it was great. And in 2015, I had an opportunity to give a TED talk. So I gave a TED talk about the one thing I know more than any other person I know, superheroes. I gave this talk about superheroes. And I left the venue. And I felt really good about myself and I went on with my day. And then TED, the organization said, We would like to globally feature that TED talk. And I said, I don’t know what that means, but cool. And what it meant was they were going to put it out to their 19 million subscribers and put it on their airline network. And all this other radio network and all this stuff and my talk went viral, hit the millionaire’s club, 1.3 million views. And I started getting really interesting phone calls. One of those phone calls was from Jamie Woolf at Pixar. Who said, “I saw your talk. I really liked it. Would you come out here to Pixar and talk to us?” And I said, “Sure.”. So I went out to Pixar. And I gave a talk in the studio. That’s me, That’s Jamie. I gave a talk at the studio. And I said, Here’s what I think about the films that you make. Bye and then I went home. And they called me back and they said, “Hey, will you come out here and do that again?” And I said, “Sure.”. And I went out there. And I did that again. And then I went home, and they said, “Hey, would you come back and do that again? And oh, by the way, while you’re here? We’re starting to work on this movie. It’s called Onward. Would you like to talk to the director and, and be a part of that?” And I said, “Sure.”. And I started talking to the director, and I got to work on Onward. And it was really cool. And while I was working on Onward, they’re like, “You know what we could really use your help on? Would you like to be a part of the story team for Soul?” And I said, “Yes, I would love to be a part of the story team for Soul.”. And I went to a meeting, and I sat between Daveed Diggs, and Pete Docter, and I said, “What the hell is my life?” And I and I did that for a little while, and it was really, really great. And then I got a call from a company called Sky Dance Animation. And they said, “We’re looking for a Chief Diversity Officer, would you like to be that?” And I said, “Yes, I would.” And I stopped being a professor and I moved to Los Angeles, and I worked on a film called Luck. And I worked on a film that comes out next April called Spellbound. And I worked on a television show that comes out next summer called WondLa. And I did all of this really great stuff. And I thought I was gonna be a professor. But I learned that your shot doesn’t always come when you think it does. And if you’re patient, and if you believe in yourself, and if you know your worth, eventually other people will know your worth too. How’s that story constructed? My mom’s pretty proud of me too. How was that story constructed? Really easily. Once upon a time, and every day, until one day, and because of that, and because of that, until finally, and every day since. Seven sentences, seven easy to follow steps to tell a story And here’s the great part about this. It maps on to all those questions you just answered. There’s your hero, there’s what the hero wants. There’s the obstacles. There’s what happens when they don’t get it. There’s what the inspiration was. That’s the victory. And that’s the happily ever after. You’ve already answered the questions. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to take the answers to those questions. And I want you to write seven sentences once upon a time, and every day, until one day and because of that, and because of that, until finally, and happily ever after. And I only want seven sentences because I want you to be able to do it in three minutes. Seven sentences. By the way, I’m totally divulging industry secrets This is how every film you’ve ever seen got started it’s what’s called the Story Spine and it’s the first thing you learn when you get a degree in Screenwriting. Now I am going to do the one English professor thing that sometimes I do as a Media Studies professor which is I’m going to give you one minute and 30 seconds, so write fast. You already answered the questions so now you’re just turning those answers into sentences. The great part about this is once you know the story is fine. You don’t have to uhm and ah I don’t know where someone asks you. What do you do? What’s your business? Well, once upon a time. And then and because of that, you got it right there at your fingertips. Then you’re not just talking, you’re telling a story. And believe me, you want to release the oxytocin in somebody’s brain. Hit him with a once upon a time. We love stories. As a culture, it’s how we pass information on from one generation to the next. It’s how we literally keep civilization going through the stories we tell. As a folklorist, I can tell you, if you want to understand civilization, you don’t go to their technology, you don’t go to their history, you don’t go to their wars, you go to their art, their music, their literature, their entertainment, it’ll tell you everything you need to know about a culture. Why? Because stories are how we get it done. So here comes my favorite part of the session. My very favorite part. Let’s tell each other some stories. Gotcha sevens sentences, you got your seven questions answered. I would like you to turn to a person maybe the person you’ve been talking to the whole time or maybe you turn the other direction and you talk to somebody new. But either way, let’s tell each other some stories. Once upon a time, what do you got? Go. Clap once if you can hear me. Clap once if you can hear me. Clap once if you can hear me. Clap twice. If you can hear me. Clap three times if you can hear me. Clap twice if you can hear me. Here is the wonderful thing about a story. Once you get it started, it’s hard to stop. Once you get somebody on a roll, it’s hard to stop. You want to tell your story, you want to hear their story. That’s the magic of storytelling. Here’s your homework from your professor. You got the whole rest of the day, and we bout to go to lunch. I just gave you a really powerful tool to meet a new person. So your challenge for today is take your seven sentence story, your three minute story. And they’ll tell it to somebody new. They’ll sit at lunch with somebody and say, Hey, tell me a little bit about yourself. Tell me a three minute story. And they’ll tell you there’s and let me tell you mine and you tell yours. That’s how you make a connection. That’s how you use this in a practical way. We wanted to give him something practical, something you could walk out of here and be like they actually gave me a thing. This is the thing I wanted to give you. Three minutes to change your whole perspective, three minutes to change your life. Three minutes to maybe meet someone who can do something for you. Or you can do something for them. You could be of service, you could connect your businesses, you can make a plan to talk later. Or maybe you just meet somebody new and cool somebody you just really vibe with and enjoy talking to. However you use this story is up to you. But fact you now have this story. At least you now know the difference between telling a story and just talking. Right? At least you know the difference between using the power of storytelling to become a better leader to become a better representative to become a better person than just walking around saying hi to folks. It’s nice to walk around and say hi to folks too. But each one of us is a storyteller. We all have a story to tell. And now you have a tool to help you tell it. I want to bring my partner Jamie out here. One of the most wonderful people you will ever meet in your whole life. Jamie Woolf, and my name is Chris Bell. We are Creativity Partners and emBELLishment Consulting. We would love to talk to you we’re gonna be here the rest of the day. Please enjoy the rest of your conference. Have a really wonderful time.

Jamie Woolf

Co-Founder, CreativityPartners

Jamie Woolf co-founded CreativityPartners in 2023 to work with leaders and their teams to unlock the roadblocks that waste their time and energy instead of harnessing innovation. 

Prior to CreativityPartners, Jamie was Director of Culture & Learning at Pixar Animation Studios for over ten years and even has an entry in IMDB. She’s worked with companies including Kaiser Permanente, Telecare Corporation, Levi Strauss, and the University of California to elevate organizational performance, leadership effectiveness and manage culture change efforts.

Jamie is a certified coach through CoachDiversity and holds an MS in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. She enjoys playing tennis and hiking though not simultaneously.

More from Jamie.

Dr Christopher Bell

Associate Professor, University of Colorado

Dr Christopher Bell is a creative producer and affiliate Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He specializes in translating the ways in which race, class, and gender intersect in different forms of media into engaging and realistic character design, character development, and world building. Recognized nationally for his expertise in the area of children’s culture, he also teaches and publishes in critical analysis of popular culture, rhetorical theory, representation theory and the history of mass media.

Christopher is a TED speaker and David Letterman Award winning media scholar. He plays the ukulele and collects super hero action figures including thousands of Transformers toys.

More from Chris.

More on Storytelling in Business.

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