Stories Are Sticky
Once upon a time when we were young our parents and teacher told us stories to pass on information. Long ago the oral history of nations was shared the same way.
Many of us blog for our businesses. Blogging allows us to share our expertise and our knowledge base. It can give us a podium on which to stand and deliver our message to the world. Don’t go there. Podiums make lecturers.
We might like to learn, but few folks like to be taught.
Great teachers share stories, and in that way, pass on what they’ve experienced. They follow the writers’ rule of “show don’t tell,” pointing out examples that bring home ideas and lessons that are meaningful in ways that principles alone could never illuminate.
I want to know how you know what you know so that I can be sure what you’re learned will work for me.
It’s my experience that telling stories lets people find their way into a situation or an idea without a wall of information between. Stories entertain without being intimidating or intrusive. We can see how to apply good story without feeling that we’re being judge for what we may have done wrong.
Stories are a sticky way of teaching and learning,
Share a story about how stories have helped you.
Liz Strauss
Find out about working with Liz.
Alister Cameron makes four solid points today in his blog post on Social Media. The strongest take away was his no holds barred approach to defining links.
- Links are only valuable because people click on them. But they are valuable because people DO click on them.
I would add to that. The value of a link that is not clicked on is a negative value. It takes space and is a missed opportunity for a link that might be useful to readers. A frivolous link also has negative value. Readers click and it wastes their time. So I recommend that you Think before you link.
- Comment numbers are a more accurate measure of you success than the number of visitors you receive.
I would add to that if you are engaging your readers to the point where they comment conversationally, i.e. interactively responding to what is said both in the post and within the comment box, then they are probably also talking about what they read after they leave your blog.
- . . . there is such a thing as Blog Rage. . . . And the real villain is probably an overabundance of testosterone combined with too many hours of inactivity sitting in a chair blogging!
One more case in which the solution is to breathe.
- Finally, building relationships is about trust. So determine to become an expert on how trust works online. People will trust you when you are credible, consistent, considerate and cooperative. They will trust you when they see other people trusting you.
I might add that people trust you when you’re willing to trust other people. Why not be first?
Relationships are the key to business and the business of blogging. They are the key to any social endeavor. Learning to communicate with fluency and comfort is as much a part of being comfortable with ourselves as it is with interacting with others — it’s from a base of self awareness that we know how to respond to the actions around with grace and respect.
Liz Strauss
Behind every Successful business is an Outstanding Manager. — PVM
See also Work with Liz! at Successful Blog
Today Michael Stelzner announced the Top Ten Blogs for Writers.
I’m pleased and honored to say he included this blog and comment at position 4.
Liz Strauss’s Successful-Blog: This blog has some amazing insights into the craft of writing.
But, I must say Mr. Stelzner list is incomplete in that it could not include his own blog.
Keep this in mind when you check out the entire list.
Michael A. Stelzner’s Writing White Papers Blog THE blog by the man who wrote THE white paper on white papers and then wrote Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged. There’s a reason his newsletter has 20,000 subscribers.
Always deal with the best.
Thank you, Michael.
Liz Strauss
I once saw a t-shirt that said, “Give me ambiguity or give me something else.” To this day I regret that I didn’t buy it. Ambiguity is the centerpiece of most knowledge work. Black and white, off and on, toggle switch decisions are easily programmed.
That leaves the decisions that require judgment to people, not machines. The inherent problem is that judgment calls get called differently based on the person who faces the decision and what that person brings to the table.
The outcome will be a result of the decision — without regard to the person who made it.
That fact is stressful. It means I am held to the same standard as folks who have much more knowledge and experience than I might ever have.
Leadership: Turning Ambiguity into Motivation
To be a leader, one can’t flinch at decisions. A leader has to look through the gray to evaluate a path. Effective leaders do that with confidence and success. Here are some ways they accomplish that.
- They understand the goals of the organization and test decisions against how outcomes might support those goals.
- They understand the priorities for their team and use them as decision-making tools.
- They frame gating questions that would make or break the decision, i.e. they look within a decision to find which parts are indeed black and white.
- They check history for data on similar decisions and their outcomes.
- They check their own experience — have they made this decision before? How did it turn out?
- They gather information from widely diverse sources in a limited amount of time, evaluate it, and use only what they need to make their decision.
- They continuously test the outcomes of the decisions they make so that any decision limited risk.
All of these actions, habits really, lower the stress of ambiguity in making decisions. When leaders use and model them, teams pick them up as standard procedures in problem solving. Flexibility in thinking and testing assumptions becomes the norm. The ambiguity becomes a positive motivator rather than a stress factor in the environment. Team members learn how to be leaders in the process.
Liz Strauss
Behind every Successful business is an Outstanding manager. –Perfect Virtual Manager.
