Ira Glass on the power of anecdotes

Posted by  Shawn Callahan —March 3, 2007
Filed in Anecdotes

Ira Glass in a public radio producer and host of This American Life. In this video Ira describes the anecdote as one of the two basic building blocks of a story. He also demonstrates how compelling an anecdote is to listen to regardless of the information being conveyed. It’s one of the reasons why we like to listen to stories.

The second building block is time for reflection. While Ira is commenting on crafting a story, we use a similar construct in our work when we conduct sensemaking workshops which give leaders an opportunity to see patterns in a number of anecdotes and reflect of their meaning. This proceeds the act of designing interventions.

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About  Shawn Callahan

Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on:

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