How to Start Finding Useful Stories

David Hutchens: Story Dash

David Hutchens helps leaders find and tell their stories. He works with leaders around the world to find, craft, and tell their most urgent stories for the purpose of creating shared meaning, preserving culture, disseminating learning, and speeding change in organizations.

He has taught the Storytelling Leader program at some of the most influential organizations — and he’s written many books, including the Circle of the 9 Muses and The Leadership Story Deck. He is the co-creator with longtime friend of the show Susan Gerke of the GO Team program. He's also the author of the new book, Story Dash: Find, Develop, and Activate Your Most Valuable Business Stories…In Just a Few Hours.

In this conversation, David and I discuss how to find stories that you can use in your organization. We reflect on the reality that we both hear many leaders say to us: “How do I find the right stories?” David then shares the key principles and steps that every leader can take to surface and curate the best stories.

Key Points

The “Us At Our Best” taxonomy is what it looks like when are are delivering with energy and excellence. A recent Southwest Airlines story is an example of this.
Find the area the area of your work where you need to influence the emotional system.
Trust stories about small moments. Don’t attempt to create an epic drama of huge importance. The best stories are individual incidents that send a bigger message.
Formal story mining can be done alone or as team building. Institutionalizing practices like story sharing can help this happen regularly and naturally.
When informally collecting stories, listen for time, place, and person as signals that a story is beginning.