Once upon a time. . .

Earlier this year, I spoke at a "storytelling" workshop to a group of enthusiastic fund development and communications professionals.  The organizers of the event were the good folks at the Bob Schieffer College of Communication, Texas Christian University.  

I found my assigned topic intriguing:  “Awe & Aww: Storytelling to Motivate Impact and Engagement.”  What I shared were some basic principles of telling a story that either fills hearers with "awe," as in shock and awe, or "aww," as in puppy dog warm and fuzzy, good vibes. 

Here's a summary:

1)  Your story must always be true.  You know, rooted in reality.  No composites drawn from various experiences.  No embellishments.  Just the facts, please, but with great heart and emotion!

2)  Look for and journal seminal stories that arise from "breakthrough moments" that typically provide and define your organizational narrative long term.  These are tales that define your culture. If you know anything about CitySquare, you've heard the name Josefina Ortiz.  If you don't know her story, email me or, better yet, read my book, The Wealth of the Poor.

3) Gather up stories along the way--those ordinary instances that reflect your organizational culture.  These are the day-to-day events that align completely with the essence of your work and endeavors.  They reflect the state of your enduring soul. Your journal or your Outlook calendar should be full of these. 

4)  Be HONEST about your FAILURES.  All is not goodness and light!  Along the way you and your team blow it.  Include the negatives with the positives.  Keep it real.  Telling the truth always works.  Ask me sometime about our landscape company and our teenage summer program crew and buying and selling "grass"! 

5) REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT! Always be ready with a story, no matter how many times you've told it.  Great stories are more than worth repeating.  Telling stories again and again create the power that fuels movements and real solutions.

There you have it.  And, good luck with telling your powerful tales from your important work. 

To understand, see the history. . .

More than a month. . .

Should there be a Black History Month in the U.S.?

Some would answer "No."

Filmmaker Shukree Tilghman among them, sets out to end Black History Month with his film, More Than A Month. The film will be seen on PBS in February during Black History Month. 

View the video below.  Read the backstory on Tilghman's work here.  Tell me what you think.

Richard Dreyfuss on public education in civc life

So, history can be "managed," can't it?

Last week the Texas State Board of Education adopted a textbook content plan for all social studies students in the state of Texas.  You can read the report on the Board's action published in  The Dallas Morning News here.

The article and, even more, the actions of the board drive home a point about the writing of history that seems to escape many of us. 

History is always interpretation. 

The notion of historical fact remains largely mythological by definition.  At best, history is the craft of cobbling together various sources into a story that then can expect to be challenged by other historians with additional sources and new interpretations.  This process of give and take, peer review and intellectual refinement and debate is the stuff of the profession.  It provides cause for conventions and symposiums and professional meetings.  It provides content for various historical journals.  In the battle we discover the professional concerns of serious historians.  Of course, non-historians can enter the fray as well, as evidenced by the action of the Board of Education whose actions were admittedly more political than historic in any sense. 

Still, there is no such thing as an objective historical narrative  or the definitive version of any historical event, period or epoch that we can rely on without healthy skepticism or continuing challenge. 

Further, the historian's own social context, her own life history, his educational experiences and her personal values all will enter the process of "doing history."  Great historians labor to overcome the adverse affects of outside influences, but pure interpretative analysis just doesn't happen.  Sources must be chosen, evaluated, reject or included.  The result:  the latest historical interpretation to be read, appreciated and critiqued for the good of an on-going quest for better, more complete understandings. 

Historians like John B. Boles, Howard Zinn and David McCullough, to name only three, know (in Zinn's case, sadly, "knew") this reality.  Historians spend their lives working their sources to discover and craft a story that we can dig into, gain insight from and use in the living of our own lives. 

While the recent actions of our State Board of Education leave an awful lot to be desired when it comes to the source choices they made, it should not surprise us that they chose.  That's just want historians do.  Even non-historians, like our state Board of Education, make such choices, in this most recent case with a political and value agenda to promote. 

Speaking of choices and sources, be sure and read what my partner Rev. Gerald Britt wrote about the Texas textbook plan.  I think you'll appreciate the choices he makes and the story he tells.  To read what he has to say click here.