6 Types of Stories to Collect to Resonate Deeper and Inspire Action
Although we don't always remember it, there's a difference between good stories and effective stories. This difference is often created by how clearly we answer three questions:
Who is it for?
What is it for?
How will we know if it's working?
These are arguably the most foundational questions for creative problem-solving, often called "design thinking." Any experience, message, or project, regardless of medium, can be designed in different or better ways to do its job. The question is, what's the job? If you know that, you can design your work more intentionally to do that job better.
Because while good stories may entertain or hold attention, only effective stories inspire action. And we need action to see results, whether that's changing someone's understanding or encouraging a response or sale.
What makes a story "good" is anyone's guess. I think there are some elements that apply generally, but exceptions always exist. That's because "good" is in the eye of the beholder. You and I could watch the same film and have opposing views as to whether it was "good." Who would be right? Both of us. Because it's up to us. Because "good" is subjective.
"Effective" is not.
Effective is about the intended effects of the story. So what are those? Did we trigger them? Did the story do its job?
Who is it for?
What is it for?
How will we know if it's working?
Be clear on the job at hand, then design your work accordingly.
Design thinking has been around for years, whether explored by firms like IDEO, practiced by startup product designers, or preached by Seth Godin -- often with those above three questions attached. And while the idea of designing ONE story is fairly accepted, I think there's a second layer of design we need to talk about today: your collection of stories.
The collection of go-to stories you bring with you anywhere you show up can, itself, be designed with greater clarity and purpose to yield the outcomes we desire.
Designing the collection itself is how we might elevate from telling a good story to being an effective storyteller.
* * *
I believe we need six different types of stories in our collection, and I learned this the hard way: by working myself to the point of total burn out.
From 2016 to 2019, I spent most of my time focused on building a public speaking business, fueled by my book, Break the Wheel. I felt such a calling towards those ideas and stories that I was swallowed whole by my ambition. This prevented me from seeing the structure of my work as clearly as I should have. It was all brute-force and gut feel for me.
I'd like you to avoid that mistake.
As an author, I knew I needed to develop and pressure-test my stories to earn a living. These were the keys to every project I could hope to create, since as an author, your ideas show up in many places, not just in your book. I wrote my newsletter. I hosted my podcast. I consulted brands. I offered small group coaching (still do). And I gave interviews everywhere I could to spread my ideas and spark change in the working world.
And that all makes sense. Because I was -- and am -- an author.
Very few things change what you are, forever, after just doing it once. If you want to be VP of Marketing at Acme Inc, you can only "be" that while you are in that job. Move on, and you're not that anymore. If you want to be a podcaster, well, you have to ship a podcast.
But if you have just one child, you ARE a parent. Forever.
If you publish just one book, you ARE an author. Forever.
We had our first baby in November 2018. I am a dad.
I published my first book just one month prior, in October 2018. I am an author.
The thing is, in this analogy, my book is not the baby. Instead, I feel like I have dozens of babies: my stories. The book is just some high-quality swaddling in which I could wrap them, keep them cozy, and carry them around with me. But the stories from the book spent most of their time existing outside that swaddle. They appeared in my newsletter, my podcast, my consulting and coaching. They appeared in the interviews I gave. Everywhere I went, my stories came with me. (Turns out it's a bad idea to leave either type of baby at home: literal or metaphorical.)
My product, as an author, isn't a book. Not really. It's a collection of stories. Death Wish Coffee. Merriam-Webster. Razor's Barbershop. Rare.org. The Independent (though sadly, no Trent Crimm). The pike and the minnow. Sally's Apizza. On and on the list grew.
Through sheer force (read: my ambition gobbling me up in exhausting fashion), I designed a rather useful collection of stories. I didn't know it at the time, but reflecting back, I stumbled into the exact right types of stories one needs in their collection to move through the world an effective storyteller.
If only I did so without the existential crises and bone-crushing burnout.
Which brings me to YOU, my dear reader.
Designing Your Story Collection
Squinting hard at my body of work, I see six types of stories waving their baby dumpling-fists in the air at me. (I hear you, and I agree: the metaphor ends here.)
We can design our collection of stories with greater intention to do our jobs better -- to inspire the change we need, regardless of where we show up and what sub-group of our audience we encounter. The collection should contain six types:
1. The Brand Story
This is the big mission, the overarching point-of-view that colors everything you do -- as an individual or for your organization. The brand story is the story that speaks very generally about your audience and the change you want to inspire in them. It's the most macro-level tale you tell, and while you might tweak the language here and there, you only have ONE brand story.
The shortest possible version contains three parts (what I often call the One Simple Story): status quo + tension + resolution. Some kind of starting state for your audience, which then gets disrupted by unknowns or conflict or questions, which then needs a resolution (i.e., your vision for something better for your audience).
The “brand” story of my work around Break the Wheel sounded like this:
STATUS QUO: We don't want to be average. We want to be exceptional. We want to do our best. As a result, we search for best practices.
TENSION: But best practices are really just average practices. They're what works in general or on average, or else they're taken from one specific situation and applied to yours — never quite matching exactly enough. Best practices are “good enough.” And we’ve become great at good enough. There are just so many best practices. If we don’t have an answer or an idea, we can just find and follow everyone else’s. And so can everyone else. Yes, it has never been easier to be average. So what does it take to be exceptional? Figure out what makes you an exception. Finding best practices isn’t the goal. Finding the best approach for YOU is. So how do we do that?
RESOLUTION: Stop acting like experts and start acting like investigators. Question best practices, hone your intuition, and incorporate firsthand details into your decisions. Make more contextualized choices. Stop clinging to the general, conventional wisdom out there. Because while experts know absolutes, investigators rely on evidence. To find it, they set aside the generalities and blueprints and rely more on their intuition -- literally, the ability to intuit the world around them from first principles. Stop acting like experts. Start acting like investigators.
That's the brand story -- though in this case, the brand was my book, or really the body of work which included my book (what I might call my Break the Wheel’s "IP").
I’d ask you: What’s YOUR brand story? What is that big, overarching story of the change you seek to create for your audience?
What are you here to do for others and why?
2. Personal Story (aka Personal-Lead)
Like the Brand Story, you only really need one Personal Story. It is, in brief, your story.
The more you evangelize your ideas, the more you'll hear things like this:
"So tell me about yourself."
"How'd you get here?"
"How'd you get into this work?"
"What is your backstory?"
Too often, we make it up on the spot, or else we don’t know how to turn our stories into anything gripping or relevant to others. So they sound like grocery lists, recited bullet by bullet, like it’s a chore. And don’t even get me started on all the up-speaking at the end of each sentence:
"My career? Let's see, um...
I started at Google?
Before working at a startup? That's where I switched from sales to marketing?
I learned a lot there, and then decided to start my own company here in Boston? After which...”
I'm sorry, are you telling me something or asking me?
Then the story ends...
"So, uh, yeah! That's me!"
So, uh, yeah! That's boring!
Careers are fascinating journeys. Why can't we describe our own as such?
This is a choice. We can learn to tell our stories better. When promoting Break the Wheel, I would lead with the frustration that fueled my book -- because it fueled ME.
"My career? Oh, I mean, today I'm a disillusioned marketer, because I both created and have been forced to endure so much crappy content. Which is weird, because we don't have any desire to publish average junk, yet we do a ton of average work — in any job, not just marketing. But really my march towards disgruntled marketer began in my first job at Google..."
I'm not recounting the stops in my journey. I'm recounting the journey. What tension did I experience? What through-line ties it all together?
Tell THAT story about yourself. Forget about sounding impressive and sound interesting. Achievements don’t make something interesting. Tension does. Big questions, emotional through-lines, driving missions, unknowns you wanted to investigate, and changes you wanted to create in the world. THAT makes your story compelling. The hard-won lessons. The moments of doubt before the triumphs.
Tension.
Said another way: a story. Your Personal Story.
Complementing your end-to-end story are smaller moments from your work and life. I call those:
3. Personal Anecdotes (aka Personal-Supporting)
Your Personal Story is the story of you. Your Personal Anecdotes stories involving you. These are more specific moments that help you make more specific points. It’s not your entire backstory though.
That's why I call Personal Anecdotes "Personal-Supporting." They quite literally support larger points you’re making in that moment, which themselves support your larger Brand Story — i.e. the change you want to create in others.
In my case, I might mention my time at Google briefly in my overall Personal Story, but if someone asked how I’d recommend others think about hot new trends in their jobs, then I can pull out a Personal Anecdote from my time at Google too. This helps me address that one specific question about trends.
Here, I'd tell the story of when Google AdWords rolled out a new feature called Sitelinks. As an account manager, I was expected to pitch my advertiser clients on the idea of switching on this feature. Once switched on, it would add four additional clickable links to their search ads. It was positioned as a best practice in search advertising.
Makes sense right? More clicks to the ads would mean more revenue for the advertiser. Except ... my clients were small businesses. At that point, around 2008, many small businesses had just decided to launch their websites, and so my clients didn't have that many pages worth visiting on their site. They were poorly optimized to drive sales. So while Sitelinks succeeded in driving more clicks, it just drained my clients' ad budgets faster without the corresponding lift in sales. Sitelinks thus drained their budgets without the corresponding sales to justify it, and so small business clients started angrily calling my team. And when I flagged this to the leaders of our department, what did they say? "Turn off Sitelinks until you fix your site"? Nope! They said, "Get them to adopt Google Analytics."
Google was laughing all the way to the bank, while I sat there sick to my stomach.
Why were Sitelinks the new trend? Why were they the "best practice"? Because Google wanted them to be.
Just because we're doing what's new and trendy doesn't mean we're doing what's best for US.
[End of Personal Anecdote.]
To this point, I’ve suggested you design your collection of stories to include one Brand Story, one Personal Story, and a few Personal Anecdotes. It’s tempting to stop here, and maybe that’s okay. In only telling your own story, pressed through the lens of a larger mission, you can be an effective communicator. But I think you limit your impact.
I think there’s a chasm between being a personal storyteller and being what I call an unthinkable storyteller.
It's easy to see how your own stories can be both good AND effective. They're yours. You've internalized them, and you can tell them with ease. Even if you can't, it only takes a little bit of practice to bring a personal story to life. After all, you lived it.
The difference between a personal storyteller and an unthinkable storyteller is the unthinkable storyteller can internalize ANY story. They can tell stories about others as well as, or even better than, their own stories.
This opens up a world of possibility, and it allows us to become even more effective at the work than if we stopped with personal storytelling only. Each of us is only so relatable to so many people. Each of us only did or achieved so much in our lives. And while the power of personal stories is immense and the number of stories we can find in our lives far greater than we realize, if we can't move from personal storyteller to unthinkable storyteller, it’s far from the only — and, I’d argue, the most effective — way to tell stories.
That brings me to arguably the most important type of story to add to your well-designed, purposefully curated collection:
4. Lead Stories
Unlike the Personal Story (aka Personal-Lead), your Lead Stories aren't about you. You're not the protagonist. You aren't even present in the story. But it sure as hell feels like you were there, watching it all unfold.
Lead Stories are end-to-end illustrations of what it looks like when the audience succeeds. If as the author of Break the Wheel, I was running around the world urging others to question best practices and think for themselves more often, inevitably their next question would be, "Who's done this?" It’s here I’d pull out a Lead Story from my bag.
Who’s done this? I'll tell you who: Mike Brown, founder of Death Wish Coffee, the world's strongest coffee.
To tell that or any other Lead Story is to effectively tell the audience, "I have a vision for you. Here's what it looks like when that vision becomes reality."
I've told the Death Wish Coffee story more than any other single story in my life -- including the stories about my life. It's also had a greater impact on my work and my audience than any other story, including those about me.
I'll take this one step further, too: not only is this story not about me, I am not the first person to tell it. I'm one of several, if not dozens, to share Mike's story. But nobody shares it the same exact way as I do. Because I’m not just trying to share a good story. I’m trying to share an effective one. That means I need to add or omit the right details and moments (i.e. story beats) to emphasize the specific points I’m making. I need to add my own personality quirks, and little jokes or storytelling “bits” I rehearse and weave into the narrative. I’m not a journalist reporting the story. This is creative nonfiction: a subjective retelling of something that really happened.
I found a good story. I built it into an effective one. In doing so, it can serve as a Lead Story for all things Break the Wheel.
Once I did that, it's like my eyes were opened: I could do this with ANY story I find! And I could go out and FIND other stories, not just think about my own.
(BTW: Of all the places I’ve gotten to tell the Death Wish Coffee story, by far the coolest to me was a brand client approving the idea for the pilot of a docuseries which I was honored to write, co-direct, and host. Find that version of the story here.)
* * *
Lead Stories are the crown jewels of the collection. They're the ones I'd proudly put on display in a glass case for all visitors to enjoy. If the front door into my ideas and ecosystem is a Brand Story, then the first exhibit I want on display when you enter is a Lead Story. I’ll let my own Personal Story take a back seat. It’s less effective.
But why?
Simply trying to inspire action in others by telling your own story is like saying, "It's possible because I did it. I'm proof." That may be true. But in that moment, you aren’t the audience. You are the teacher, the storyteller, the performer. Maybe you’re the person with a big audience. And for sure, you are a bit removed from others, no matter how accessible and warm you are. You're on the stage, on the mic, in the video. In their minds, thanks to these conditions, you are automatically not them. But guess who is? Mike Brown. Lisa Schneider. Anthony Berriola.
The characters in a Lead Story.
Why are Lead Stories more powerful than Personal Stories? Because we no longer talk about what it looked like when we did it. We start showing them what it’s like when people like THEM did it.
They see themselves in the Lead Story far more so than our Personal Story, just by virtue of us being present as the storyteller, the leader, the performer.
"Who's done this?"
"People like you."
That's the job of the Lead Story.
After the Lead Story, they’ll think, “Great, I see what it looks like now, but … how do we do that too?”
This is where the next time of story we need in our collection becomes most effective.
5. Supporting Anecdotes
Your Lead Stories are similar to your Personal Story. Both are end-to-end tales serving to illustrate something. But Supporting Anecdotes are like Personal Anecdotes. They serve to teach more narrow things, answer specific questions, or highlight specific pieces of a methodology or framework.
(Quick aside here: I know "anecdote" often means a very short example or story. Your Personal Anecdotes and Supporting Anecdotes might be short, but they might not be. I just wanted to stop saying “Story” after each and every category in the list of six, so I went with Anecdote. They are, after all, playing “smaller” roles than the lead stories.
For instance, I can tell the story of Merriam-Webster's brand transformation end-to-end, as a Lead Story. But I can also tell it (and mostly do tell it) as a Supporting Anecdote to teach the first part of my decision-making methodology inside Break the Wheel.
The first part of the method is to ask questions about the biggest variable which best practices do not consider: you. Yourself and your team. Here, I tell Merriam-Webster's story, but I don’t just report what happened. Instead, I emphasize the work of Lisa Schneider, the brand’s chief digital officer at the time.
When I interviewed her, she very quickly told me that, in trying to evolve their brand from boring to exciting, she had told her team, "We're too bland on social media. But this isn't who we are as a team. Enough is enough. Let's show the world how fun and relevant we are."
When on a stage or a podcast, to use that story as a Supporting Anecdote, I wanted to highlight the fact that motivating better work starts with behavior change, not metrics. So make the behavior change the goal, and the metrics can be used not as goals but as ways to evaluate your progress towards your goal — towards your behavior change. Lisa seemed to understand it, but to drive home the point in the story, I needed to both emphasize and dramaticize what were ultimately just a few sentences in our interview.
You see (I might say to the audience), what most leaders do when it's time to improve our results is they anchor us to things that are pretty uninspiring... like numbers. Most people like Lisa would have said, "Let's grow followers 50%." Meh. You're not inspiring anyone. Or how about this? "Let's go viral." Oh my gosh, are you kidding me?! This is 2022! We know better! That is NOT a strategy. Hashtag-NO!
But not Lisa. She said, us, together, as a team, "Let's show the world how fun and relevant we really are." This is a great example of an "aspirational anchor."
[And here, I would teach the concept from my book very briefly, before showing what happened with Lisa's team following that goal aka behavior change aka aspirational anchor being set.]
To make it a true Supporting Anecdote, I needed to develop the story in a specific way. I emphasized and dramaticized a specific key moment to prove the point. Before that moment, I would also build up just how boring the brand really seemed and how much they struggled to cut through the noise on social media. This raised the stakes. It made the tension greater. It gave the audience more questions. (“This is bad! How in the world are they going to succeed?” Because of course, the audience knows the end of the story is some form of success. I need to make the path TO that success seem difficult — as difficult as the audience’s own path seems.)
Brand Story.
Personal Story.
Personal Anecdotes.
--- [chasm to becoming an unthinkable storyteller] ---
Lead Stories.
Supporting Anecdotes.
Five types of stories, intentionally added to the collection. But there's one more we'll need to truly become the most effective communicators possible:
6. The Skeptic's Story
Some people listening won't get it or won't want to get it. They'll be skeptical.
Some interviewers you encounter will push back on your ideas.
Audiences are full of doubters. Individuals are full of bias and fears. And inertia sits between us and the actions we seek from others.
Given all that, it’s not enough to speak to the converted or the almost-convinced. Yes, the first five types of stories in your collection can help sway the skeptics implicitly, but sometimes, you need to address their objections more plainly.
The Skeptic's Story begins with exactly that: a person or team who didn’t buy into the change you’re prescribing.
We may not need a brand new story here if we can mold something from the list above to fit, but for my work around Break the Wheel, I liked using the story of Starbucks entering China for the first time. I remember giving a talk at a conference, where afterwards, an individual walked up to me and very politely said to me, "I get that everyone else's best practices aren't specific enough for my brand, but I'm not so sure that our own internal playbooks aren't enough. We've been seeing good results after all."
This person worked for a large global brand. They have lots of money and even more data. Their playbooks were smartly developed and widely used.
It would have been easy for me to take an extreme stance, either saying, “Yes, you’re right. My ideas don’t apply to you,” or, on the other extreme, “No, you’re wrong. My ideas apply to you too. You just don’t see it.”
Instead, I tried to merely open the door to them considering my ideas as possibilities. I addressed their skepticism through story to highlight that possibility of change. I'm not right or wrong. I don't know this definitively will work inside every org. But you remind me of a story…
So I might reply, "Yanno, that's totally reasonable pushback. That reminds me of how the execs at Starbucks approached China when they first tried to break in."
Starbucks were masters at spreading to new markets, even those with lots of coffee shops and chains already present. They competed and won using the same approach: hire top talent, people with higher level education than most coffee shops attracted, by providing employees with great benefits and perks. Starbucks had found that smart, happy, confident baristas create the best customer experience. So they’d over-invest in talent because it was a way to win on customer experience. That was the strategy, and they used the same tactical playbook to execute it across the globe. It worked well.
Except in China.
There, their established best practices fell apart. They couldn't attract nor keep that same high level of talent they’d employed elsewhere, and as a result, their customer experience suffered. They struggled to spread through the country as a result.
This initial pain caused them to finally stop acting like experts with blueprints under their arms and start acting like investigators instead. They started asking better questions. And here's what they found: the problem was their employees’ parents.
At the time, China limited each family to one child. That limit, combined with the norms of Chinese culture and family values more broadly, meant that parents took very active roles in determining their children’s career choices, especially early on. Parents in China didn't see how working for a coffee chain was at all worthy of their family name. So Starbucks did something that would have been viewed as radical in other places. They decided to offer benefits to the parents of each barista. They created an annual event for the parents, too, who were treated as stakeholders and saw (and contributed to) the vision of the brand in China.
Starbucks went from struggling in China to adding more locations there than anywhere else in the world.
And why? They were willing to question their own playbook, their own best practices.
What might have happened if they did that sooner? If being an investigator was prized more than being an expert? What would growth have looked like then, and how much more successful would they be now, if corporate employees were encouraged to ask better questions, instead of convince their bosses they knew all the answers with their precious playbooks?
"So yes, Skeptical Friend, by all means rely on the proven playbooks at your company. Just don't let them grow stale. Even when a best practice comes from our own situations, inevitably, as time passes or new variables arise, that best practice stops being the best. It's not sufficient to act like an investigator up front, find the playbook, then go on autopilot. This is about embracing a mentality shift which creates constant improvement and innovation, not just once, but consistently. Because there are always new variables to consider, and when we get overconfident in our playbooks, we don't consider them."
* * *
Who is it for? What is it for? How will you know if it's working?
Each individual story can be designed to do its job better. We know that. But each of us can and should be developing a prized collection of stories, too. In doing so, we elevate beyond the flat language so often found around us, to better hold attention, resonate with others, and inspire action. And just like the single story, the collection itself can be intentionally designed.
I learned the hard way, almost by accident, thanks to a frenetic few years. I hope you can experience the same benefits more proactively and much more calmly.
Develop your brand story -- that big, mission-level narrative.
Craft your personal story, and a few supporting anecdotes.
Raid the world for stories that aren't your own but could be told your own way, internalized as if you were there.
And don't forget about the skeptics.
Six types of stories, each with a purpose. One powerful collection, purposefully designed.
Like my actual kids, I've learned that effective stories take sacrifice, time, and a lot of work to develop. And of course, my stories have something else in common with my actual kids, now that I've gone through this experience as a storyteller:
I just can't stop talking about them. 😊