Analyzing political campaigns through the lens of personal storytelling
Read moreWhen I think back to the period leading up to the 2016 United States presidential election, one of my memories is exceedingly clear. That October, I was on a speaking tour in Latin America. Two weeks before the final vote, I was addressing a group of several hundred middle and top managers at Disney Argentina. The theme of my session was how leaders use
Hillary Clinton simply failed to build trust
Read moreMy plan to write about how Joe Biden could use personal storytelling to help him build trust with the electorate took a small and unexpected sidetrack this week. One of the podcasts I listen to, Recode Decode, has stopped creating new material for the summer. Instead, they are replaying some of their highlights—the most popular and engaging moments from the
Politicians and trust
Read moreMost of the time, I hesitate to bring up any type of political matter here, unless there is a compelling storytelling angle to examine. Interestingly, though, each time that I do write something touching on politics, it seems to elicit numerous and forceful reactions. As such, the last post was indeed true on both counts. Despite my original hesitation, writing
Searching for Joe Biden’s story
Read moreIt seems that every four years, history repeats itself, and something causes me to write about US politics. Of course, the recurring nature of this phenomenon has something to do with a forthcoming presidential election. At the same time, my perspective on such events is not at all political. So, just as I did when I wrote about Hillary Clinton
Story is simply the way we think
Read moreAt the conclusion of the previous post, I was looking back and reflecting on the early months of my doctoral research. In particular, I recalled my surprise at the large number of writers and researchers I encountered whose work pointed me toward a straightforward conclusion: human beings think in story form. In fact, when I began studying the theoretical aspects
All our thinking happens in story form
Read moreNearly three decades ago, when I began to focus on narrative as a subject of my research, I was truly surprised—and often intrigued—by some of the notions I came across. For example, the concept that story-based knowledge would play a central role in the decision-making of such people as doctors, helicopter pilots or fire fighters was something that seemed counter-intuitive to me.