Putting Stories to Work: Mastering Business Storytelling

Shawn Callahan, a sought-after keynote speaker, international business consultant and executive coach, works with global organizations such as Mars, Danone, Allianz, SAP, Tesco and Shell. He is the founder of Anecdote, the world's largest business storytelling company, where they help leaders and sellers around the world to find and tell oral stories with impact.

He's also the award-winning author of Putting Stories to Work: Mastering Business Storytelling.

Interesting trivia: this guy holds a bachelor's degree in geography and archaeology from the Australian National University. 

And Shawn loves giving away “the secret” to storytelling so much, that he even gets pulled aside at presentations to be scolded!

“He came up to me, grabbed me by the arm, pulled me in close and says ‘I resent what you’re doing here.’ Then he pulled me in closer and said, ‘Because you’re giving away my secrets.’” - Shawn Callahan on the power of story

Businesses: Collect Stories

Shawn works with businesses to not only tell stories, but to gather the stories within the organization that tell the entire story. He works with executives, leaders and managers to recognize what’s a story and how to retell it to potential clients, partners and employees.

Oftentimes, organizations are known by their leaders. We get to know leaders (and people in general) through the stories about them. Those stories define culture and drive emotion.

“There’s emotion there, and at the end of the day, we make decisions based on emotions as much as any clever reasoning.” - Shawn Callahan on stories in business

Sharing Key Insight

Stories are not about words, they’re about pictures. Storytellers get those taking in the stories to paint a picture in their mind. It’s a very personal moment. And while you can’t stay in those micro-moments the entire time, Shawn says telling effective stories really is all about going from moment to moment.

“You bring the story down to one moment, one small moment. That’s where the best storytelling happens.” - Shawn Callahan on telling an effective story

Connect with Shawn:

• Shawn’s Business Storytelling Training website Anecdote

• Shawn on Twitter

• Shawn on LinkedIn

• Putting Stories to Work - Shawn’s book

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