Start with Storytelling: A Masterclass

Wes Johnson: Welcome to the EDUCAUSE Rising Voices podcast, where we amplify the voices of young professionals in higher education. I'm Wes Johnson, and I'm joined by,

Sarah J. Buszka: I'm Sarah Buszka.
Did I forget my name today? I don't know!

Wes Johnson: Holiday brains already here. And we're your co-hosts for the show. We're also members and friends of the edu, college Young Professionals Advisory Committee, also known as ypac. What Up? Ypac. And today we're going to be talking about the Art of Storytelling. Shout out to Outkast. It's like that now. It's like that. Now beyond the fact that this is a direct steal from Outkast, Sarah, why are we talking about this with young professionals today?

Sarah J. Buszka: Yeah, we're talking about storytelling because it's an essential skill. And a lot of times on this show, we've been bringing folks in and sharing stories and talking about things that are important to young professionals. And now that the show has been going on for just over a year now, congrats. We're thinking, Hey, what are some essential skills that we should really be talking about to young professionals and helping them learn as they grow in their careers? And storytelling is one of those things that I've heard my entire career, but I've always kind of wondered, how do you do that? How do you do that? Well, what does that even mean? And how does it help me in my career? How can it help me even in a personal sense as well? And so I think a lot about Simon Sinek as just a researcher, author, communicator, and he talks a lot about the importance of storytelling as well.

Sarah J. Buszka: And I'll quote him because he says, for any great communicator or leader, storytelling is an essential skill. Stories allow us to visualize, empathize, and connect in ways that statistics never could. And think about it too. I mean, sometimes when you're hearing folks, even for our world in technology, if someone says, Hey, there was a data breach or a ransomware attack and 5,000 endpoints were impacted, your brain is thinking, okay, that's a number, but you're not really connecting to it. Whereas if you told that as a story and said, Hey, there was a ransomware attack in Shelly Smith's lab and all of her research is being held and now she has to pay 2 million US dollars, what do I do? Right? Different areas of your brain are engaging in lighting up, even when I frame the same thing in that manner. By the way, that was a completely made up story.

Sarah J. Buszka: I'm practicing my skills right now. Oh, you're doing good. Thank you. Shell research. That's the whole point. I mean, it's an important thing to be able to do storytelling, keeping it accurate, of course. But sometimes we really have to engineer stories and narratives as well to really help us get the point across. And something I really want to talk more about, and we'll get into it with our amazing guest here momentarily, is the downside of not doing storytelling well is that folks can be frustrated and then end up creating their own narratives and messages that fill in the gaps and actually can undermine what you're trying to do. So that's why storytelling is an essential skill. We don't want that to happen. And as young professionals trying to make it in your career at such a formidable time, learning how to story tell will really help set you up for success. So with that, I'm going to pass it over to Wes and introduce our esteemed guest for today.

Wes Johnson: Yes. So we are joined by the amazing, phenomenal Faye Snowden. She gave us the honor and pleasure of joining us for today's episode. So I really am looking forward to this one. So Faye's entire career has been focused on the information technology field, starting with private industry and later in higher education where she has spent 24 years serving in various IT leadership roles. I'll insert that. I have the honor of working with her regularly in one of her roles today, and she's phenomenal. Thank you. Her storytelling skills are honed as the award winning, award-winning folks author of the Killing Series. Flametree Press, I believe is the ones who released Thank You, featuring Homicide Detective Raven Burns, A Killing Rain. The second book in the series was selected as one of crime reads best gothic fiction books of 2022, and won Gold in the Forward Indies Book of the Year awards. It was also long listed for the Crime Gold Dagger. Her short stories have been an, I cannot say that word, so

Faye Snowden: I know. Apologized. Yeah, that

Wes Johnson: That's why we're dealing with these riders in Office two, best of anthologies. Her goal is to help IT professionals use the power of story to move it organizations forward and higher. Ed. Faye, again, it is a pleasure to have you on. Thank you so

Faye Snowden: Much. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. So this is great.

Wes Johnson: Of course. So we're going to start with our first question for some maybe the most important question. So I'm putting all the pressure on you. Faith, what is your superpower?

Faye Snowden: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. That is so funny. I always say that when I come on podcasts and stuff like that, that I am not a practicer. I saw the questions. This is really off the cuff. I think I have two superpowers. My first superpower is seeing a goal or a dream of someone that they have and helping them bring that into fruition to make it real. And to also part of that same is use the things I've learned in my career through the different trainings that I've had and their credentialing, and actually taking that set of knowledge and applying it in a practical way. I know that sounds really boring, but I'm a project manager by trade right now, and so I always say, we make your dreams come true. So I know it's kind of corny, but that's what I tell my team. So that's one of my superpowers. And the other one, I really think it is storytelling and writing. I resisted for a long time saying that that was a skill of mine because in our society it sounds kind of pompous, but I think that I know how to tell a really good story. And that's my second superpower. Yeah.

Sarah J. Buszka: Well, very apropos then to have you on our show with your superpower being storytelling.

Faye Snowden: Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome.

Sarah J. Buszka: Well, maybe just diving right into it. I'm curious, how do you define storytelling?

Faye Snowden: Well, that's a great question because it's invisible to us in a society, right? Because it's all over. And so it permeates everything that we do that we don't see it. So when you really look at it and make it plain, then you can't help but seeing. So to me, storytelling is a way of understanding the world around us. It also helps you connect to others. And then it also helps us, like I said, connect, build bridges. So to me, storytelling is, think about it that you're out with a whole bunch of friends and they, you're at a bar, it's kind of noisy. You got one friend kind of acting up and dancing, and another just kind of checking out the scenery, or we used to call it scenery in my day, by the way, checking out the scenery and somebody goes, oh, oh gosh, lemme tell you what happened.

Faye Snowden: I got to tell you a story. And when you say that, everyone just kind of calms down, kind of sit down. You could feel the whole table lean in because they want to hear that story. It's about taking what's in our world that challenges us and try to make sense of it. And it convince you it can move you forward. It can take you backwards. It can make you believe things that are not true. It's a very powerful mechanism for getting what you want as an individual done. So I am reading this book. I said, Faye, don't talk about all the books you're reading. They don't want to hear that. But I am reading this book, I would call it a long, epic poem about the middle passage. And one line in there that really got me was the author went about what happened during the middle passage and slavery and all that. He says, oh, the GREs will be busy for centuries to come, meaning that these oral storytellers are going to have to be able to pass down that history to future generations. That's another thing that stories do to us. It shapes who we are on a macro level.

Sarah J. Buszka: That really does, I love how you framed it also as a process of sense-making too. I really like that. That's a really kind of tangible way to frame it, because I think to your point, it can be an elusive thing. It's something that it's around us so much like air, we breathe it in every day, and we don't really think much of it, but it really does impact all of us. And I like that framing, sensemaking,

Faye Snowden: Storytelling

Sarah J. Buszka: Is sensemaking.

Faye Snowden: And then some people may say, well, if it's not important, especially fiction, it's just fiction. But like I said at the poster, I did a session at edco, a poster session, and one of the things I brought up is, remember Upton Sinclair's The Jungle? That book changed the way we do meat packing in this country. So it's really important to a society. Yeah,

Sarah J. Buszka: And in that book too, I mean, I still think about that whenever I hear that title. I have a visceral reaction because I think Upton Sinclair was able to really produce that, produce an emotion of folks produce horror, the sheer horror of learning about what the meat packing industry was like. Then it generated enough fear for this entire country to change how we approach it and think even about that industry. So it's a great example.

Wes Johnson: Yes,

Faye Snowden: Yes, yes. Yeah.

Wes Johnson: So then Faye, given that you've been an author, I imagine even longer than you've been in it, which we mentioned earlier, 24 years. I'm curious then. So how do you approach storytelling as an author versus as or currently you work in program and project management and it, are there any differences? Are there very clear things that you pull from one into the other? Does project management ever influence the author side, or does it work ever influence the other way? I'm curious.

Faye Snowden: Yeah, all of that. I will say, not to the extent you would think, does the IT side influence the author side? I did do a couple of workshops for my author friends about using technology more realistically in their stories. So I've done that, but I don't plan. I'm a, if you saw me write a book, you'd be like, what the heck are you doing? And you're never allowed to manage money with the projects. Again, I drive everybody crazy, but I think the way that storytelling and my authorship has influenced my IT work is that I think that a lot of things that we do in IT is we forget that it is, in a sense, technology is about people. It's not about that shiny object or that I have my 2-year-old grandson, and he always goes, wow, he always says that. And that's what I see.

Faye Snowden: A lot of it people, they just interested in the shiny object. But if you connect that to storytelling and how technology has really changed people's lives, how it has shaped, it's created a new language for us. And I'm not talking about technical jargon and acronyms. I'm talking about a new language for how we talk. I'm going to chat you, I'm going to text you. Can I slack you? But in the end, at the end of all that, it's always about people and it's never the technology itself. So I think that if I wasn't lucky enough to be able to write fiction and other things, I don't think I would have that I think would be in the wow cool category with my grandson. But I think that authorship helps me, keeps me grounded in that. Does that make sense? Yeah,

Wes Johnson: Absolutely. Absolutely does. It makes me think a lot of conversations on your point about technology really being about humanity in that at the end of the day, a lot of the things we're doing is just replicating and scaling up things that were just basic regular human functions. I mean, the internet itself is literally just probably built a lot on human desire to connect. And this was a ability for us to connect on a grand scale. And then to your point, point, it created brand new little brand new language. We take that for granted, but we've created new words and they only exist because we created the internet and then we created social media and we created chat rooms and all this other stuff, BRB, nothing. Now we all know what that means. Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. So then what are some of the key elements of a strong narrative, and then how can we apply them in a professional setting?

Faye Snowden: So that's a good point, and that's why I really wanted to do the poster session because everybody talks about tell our story, but nobody really talks about, and I know at edco I learned that there are a few people that are looking into this, but how do you do that? So to create a strong narrative, the first thing that you have to do is kind of the key elements. The first one is to make it relevant. So make it an it is not necessarily what I would think about in my books, but right in it. When you're telling a story, you need to understand how you want your audience to feel after you tell that story. So it needs to be relevant. And then you also want to make sure, and it also needs to be relevant to any data that you're presenting. I used to say that you don't want to make something up, but I'll get to the other key elements.

Faye Snowden: But it has to be true to you, and you have to feel comfortable telling it. You have to be comfortable in your own skin telling that story. And then the other thing that's really important is that the stakes have to be high. So stakes, I mean, one of the reasons that I write murder mysteries, I probably could have written what they call literary fiction. But one of the reasons I was at a panel, I said, well, and I was in a whole bunch of other mystery writers, and they're like, why do you write murder mysteries? And I went, because I'm lazy.

Faye Snowden: My six co panel is lazy. But in a murder mystery, the stakes are already high. What can be higher than a dead body and a perpetrator that you need to catch to restore order to society? That's already high. But when you're telling a story to your audience in it, you need to make sure that the stakes are high. Don't kill anybody, but make sure no blood on the floor. The other thing is that there needs to be conflict. There needs to be something that the character really, really wants, and there are barriers standing in their way. They can't get it. And then the other thing is that I always use an it clear playing language, no jargon and that type of thing. The other thing that it needs to do is engage the senses. We talk about in the poster session, I have something on there about your brain on story and your brain on facts, your brain on facts.

Faye Snowden: Only two areas literally light up the area for language processing. And the other one I believe is language processing and comprehension. I believe the two areas that light up, but on your brain on story, your whole brain lights up. It's like your visual, the cortex that's for your visual, your auditory cortex, sense of touch, your sense of smell. Everything's kind of lights up. And then it feels like if you do it right, it'll feel like that you're actually in the story, the listener. And so I always say that you're watching a horror movie or a really good movie, and you're looking at it and you kind of grab your partner's hand or jump on the couch that shows you that that's a good storyteller that actually brought their listener, viewer into the story with them. That

Sarah J. Buszka: Happens to me every time.

Faye Snowden: Yeah,

Sarah J. Buszka: My palm sweat too, if I'm watching, if I'm listening to a good story even. And it's that riveting.

Faye Snowden: Yeah. Yeah. So I would just say, make it relevant. Make sure there's high stakes. Make sure you engage the senses. The other thing is that there needs to be transformation. So how has the world changed or how has the main character changed at the end of the story? And if your main character or the world didn't change, why are you telling that story? But I would say not that, but I would say that why didn't they change? So there has to be some type of transformation at the end of the story

Sarah J. Buszka: Story. I love this. And something actually really interesting also about your poster fa, which I'm hoping you can also touch on, is you talked about the hero's journey as well as a foreign mechanism of persuasion. And something I didn't know and really took away from this is that the hero is the audience, not you or your service. I would just love if you could talk more about that, because that reframing was really transformational for me.

Faye Snowden: So for those who don't know, the hero's journey was actually, I would say discovered by a man named Joseph Campbell, who was a, he calls himself a teacher, so he was a teacher, a mythologist and a whole bunch of other things, just an extraordinary human being. And he studied storytelling from cultures all over the world and found out that stories followed kind of the same narrative arc. You have your hero in this ordinary world. I'm drinking my coffee, being pulled out bed because I don't like getting up in the morning, rolling around, putting on the eyeliner, and then all of a sudden they get a call to adventure, which in the end, they can't ignore until they leave this ordinary world and they go on this adventure and to find something, a quest. And through all types of trials and tribulations and my book, I call it Let the Shenanigans Begin. They eventually get the prize and they bring it back, and they change their whole world. They change themselves. The matrix is really, really, once you see this, I'm saying you cannot unsee it, but the Matrix is really, really a good example of the hero's journey. And no, I got off on that. And what was the, oh, how can we, oh, the reframing. Yes, yes, yes,

Sarah J. Buszka: Yes, yes.

Faye Snowden: So the reframing in tech, we in tech love, I have never, I've been and 24 years in higher education and I was all over the place in tech before then. This is my only career. And I see we love wearing those capes, man, we love putting on that Superman cape or that tying that towel around us with our kids and grandkids doing jumping off the couch. And I saved the day I am hero. But what you have to realize is that if you are using technology to enable innovation and enable your organization to move forward, or enabling them just to do their everyday things better, faster, better and faster, and less money, reframing your users, your customers, your clients as the hero. So you can't wear the Cape anymore. You're not the hero. Your client's the hero. And what you have to find out for your client or learn about your client is what's going to get them to go on that call to adventure. What's going to get them to answer that call? So the reframing there is understanding what they desire, what's their deepest desire.

Faye Snowden: I say deepest, but what do they want? Why can't they get it? How can you build the roadmaps and help them get what they want? So it's kind of just really getting to know your stakeholders. Now, if you're a project manager or have experience in project management, you say, well, Faye, you just took the whole thing about stakeholder analysis and all that whole thinging. Now you're just coming up with this new framework about telling the story. Well, to learn, do stakeholder analysis, I have to sit in an eight hour class listening to a sage on the stage, tell me how to do it. If I am doing it with a storytelling framework, I already know how to tell a story. I already know how to already know that my character wants something, and now I got to go find out what they want and how am I going to give it to them?

Faye Snowden: I already know all that. So I don't have, that's just a way to kind of jumpstart getting to know your audience. And then another thing is that storytelling has is that connection that it creates between you and the narrator and the audience as the listener of that story. And both your brains are lighting up the same way and you're mirroring, and that's just a deeper connection to your stakeholders as well. But I think one of the things we have to do in ideas in those crisis situations, sure, play the hero, put the cape on. But when you're doing a huge project or something like that, you need to realize that the people that you need to get to move, they are the hero of your story.

Sarah J. Buszka: I think that's the quote of the episode.

Faye Snowden: Yeah, there, it's,

Wes Johnson: So we're done, mic, fellow writer, the songwriter, in my case, the Hero's Journey, when you brought that up, I think we were in the first time I heard you talk about it was in Next Leaders Fellowship, I think before I think you brought it up, which was awesome. If you just around face, sometimes you just get nuggets. She tells stories all the time, kind of naturally, which is great. But the heroes during thing is real interesting because there's a lot. First hip hop is also about a monolith. So there's a lot of different styles. Some folks absolutely put the cape on, and it's all about them, and they're the story and is braggadocious, and that's what we want to do. Humans, we like doing that sometimes, but there are storytellers that if you don't dig into it, it may seem as if they're just talking about them.

Wes Johnson: A lot of rap is the story is they are the main character in that they're telling their story. Just like what you described, it's someone who grew up in some kind of situation and they speak to the conditions of those circumstances. Sometimes it's that they grew up in poverty, sometimes it's because they grew up in harder areas. Sometimes it's because they grew up with mental health challenges or whatever the thing is, and then they just tell their story out there. But the actual hope is not to just tell, this is what I went through, and I hope you like it over rhyme and beat. But it's like, I hope that you connect because I'm trying to speak to something that I think is a shared experience across humanity, and I think there's a community out there that feels like they haven't been heard in this space. And I want to speak to my, so you go to the show, and a lot of times you're hoping that someone in the crowd comes up to you and says, I really resonated with that thing you said Yes. So yeah, I just wanted to call out that strong similarity there.

Faye Snowden: And that's another thing stories can tell and can do is that you're not alone, right? Let's say that we're trying to implement, well, I always brought technology, but even in stories, some of the greatest stories when I was a teenager, I loved Tony Morrison's books because her books told me that I was not alone, right? Yeah. I'm not alone in this. I grew up in Louisiana, spent some of my early, early years in California, but my formative years in Louisiana. But that southern aesthetic that the way your parents are, that it was poverty, it was the racism and that type of thing. And it was so wonderful reading the Bluest Eye, because the Bluest Eye, I don't get too emotional. And then also the Tar Baby and all that stuff, and sung a Solomon and just reading that she was like a Rio to me. I mean, reading that story is just, and knowing that you're not alone, and I think that's what rap does with a lot. You actually build a team through it. I think about Kendrick Lamars, they not like us. They're not like us. And then all the things he brings into it, right? All the history, all the, yeah. Yeah. That's a good one.

Wes Johnson: Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah J. Buszka: I love that. We quoted this song and mentioned the song on the show. Thank you, Faye. I knew I could count on you to be amazing, and you are

Faye Snowden: What actually brought me to that song. I don't listen to a lot of, I'm still stuck in the songs 30 years ago, but it brought me to that song was The Feud between him and Drake. I was like, what is going on? And then I listened to that song and started, I listened to the episodes. What's that story? That's a power story. I'm like, what happened between you two? What's going on? And so, yeah. Yeah. That's funny.

Sarah J. Buszka: Yeah, you don't even know these people, and you were just compelled to figure it out. You listen to this music, you actively seek out the song, and you actively seek out news to learn more about a situation, about two people that you don't even know. It probably will not know personally,

Faye Snowden: Right? Yeah, exactly. And have that relevance. The stories need to be made relevant and have that relevancy where they started off as friends, and Kendrick was an admirer of Drake's, and then they just busted up. And how many of that has not happened to us where we know a person and are not the person that we thought they were. And it kind of helps you with your own life too, with somebody say, you're not alone. You're not alone. Aspect of story.

Sarah J. Buszka: And that brings us back to your first point, Faye, which was storytelling is sensemaking. And I think that's another, a great example of us trying to make sense of things by watching this other feud happen very publicly. We ourselves are doing some sensemaking through our own conflicts and feuds that we might have in our own life by watching that one. And it's a way to connect, even if it is about a feud or a song that we all have to listen to and becomes the song of 2024, right? Right. I mean, we've done some global sensemaking together in that, and it's powerful.

Wes Johnson: Yeah, it is. It is it. So knowing how powerful it is, Faye, someone comes to you, young, professional or otherwise, and says, I want to get better at this. I'm not very good at storytelling. What's the first place I could start to get better at telling a story?

Faye Snowden: The first place you could start is understanding the fact that you already do this, right? And think about, and I'm thinking about this really deeply right now, and so this is not just a flip answer off the top of my head, but to think about the situations where you have told a story that has captivated others, or when others have told you a story and don't think, well, you could that I've captivated you. And then kind of study what made the story captivating. My son, who's a great storyteller, and I always tell him he should go in a politics because he's hilarious, will get up. And one of the things he does is he'll mimic voices and he'll do the actions. He'll get up and act it out. But what captivated you about it? The second thing is to, especially in it and especially in the professional world, is to think about what stories you are willing to share and those that you're not willing to share if they're personal, it's okay if you don't want to tell a personal story about yourself to get your point in it across or to move your IT stakeholders or whatever.

Faye Snowden: You can do things like imagine a world and then build a story. You made it up at the beginning, Sarah. That's perfectly acceptable. The other thing is to, after you've done that, I would just read, kind of think about, maybe read some things or do some research on the craft, what makes a good story, the elements of a good story like you asked Wes, and there are also podcasts that you can listen to that are, the Moth is a great one. This American Life, though it's not is a great one as well. And start listening to other people tell stories. And to me, those are all fun ways to learn how to tell a good story. Then after you've done that, maybe do some look at the craft. Like I said, look at the craft. Read a few, read the Moth book. There're all kind of books out there on storytelling, but you know what I'm going to say next?

Faye Snowden: You know what I'm going to say next, practice, practice, practice. And start with a low stakes, low stakes story. Tell it to your friends. Tell it to your mom and dad. Tell it to your buddies at the bar and just start and then practice, practice, practice. And then if you're going to do it in it, you really need to make sure you're connecting it. You need to understand why you're telling the story and what the way you want your audience to feel after the story. But for a young professional, just starting out, those are some of the things that I would do. And some people would say, oh my goodness, I am too shy to do all that. Or I can't just act as if and try to do that because it'll really change your whole outlook, your career, how people see you. Scott Galloway, and I think you said Simons, I can't say said the same thing, is that I guess Scott, somebody asked Scott Galloway, what will you teach your, what's one skill that you think your boys should have? And he says, they're probably surprised at it and say, oh, they should know how bits and bytes work. Fine, on and off and all that. He said, what he said was the power to tell a good story, because that's a really good skill to have. And even, I know we're probably going over, I'm sorry if we're going over, but remember that show the Fish, Eddie Murphy movie, where all I think about is the guy eating the fish trading places.

Faye Snowden: Who was at that plate? His counterpart, I forget. I remember him eating the fish at the Christmas party. I forget, there's a scene in that movie where Eddie Murphy or the character wins over the very crochety kind of stockbrokers or the people that were perpetrating the fraud upon him. But when he won those people over, when they were looking at whether or not they should buy pork belly stock or whatever, and then he told the story about how that family was worried about money and didn't know where they're going to get. And he went into this whole kind of story and the people that he were trying to impress, he goes, oh my God, that's good. You're right. And then they sewed or bought or whatever and made a whole bunch of money. So that's the power. That's an illustration of the power of storytelling. Not the fish. Not the fish. You're, you watch that movie, do the fish scene. It was hilarious. But when he told the story about why they should do a thing with their stock. Yeah,

Sarah J. Buszka: That's really good. And we've covered a lot of ground today, Faye, I feel like for our audience listening to this episode, they're going to get a crash course in how to do storytelling, and it's specific and applicable to technology in higher education. So with that in one minute, can you give us maybe one takeaway or key message that you would like to leave this audience with to wrap up this episode?

Faye Snowden: I would get into story and it will open your eyes. Get into story.

Sarah J. Buszka: Get into story. You heard it here, folks, get into story. Thank you so much, Faye, for joining us. If you're okay with it, we'll share a link to your poster that you had at Edika with our episode too. Sounds great. Thank you so much for joining us, Faye.

Faye Snowden: Are you welcome. Thanks for having me. It's been fun.

Wes Johnson: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Rising Voices, a podcast from EDUCAUSE Review. This episode was produced by Gerry Bayne, Chris Bradney and Joseph Coddle. With help from Ryan Lattie. Our music is from Wes Johnson.

Sarah J. Buszka: Please find us on the EDUCAUSE Platform, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us.

Wes Johnson: Also, email us at Rising [email protected].