Q.west for good: Change leadership stories with Denise Withers

Creating narrative change is always tough, but doing it in the arts, where beliefs and behaviour are grounded in centuries of stories and tradition can seem impossible. You need to be able to weave a powerful vision, rich data and purpose-driven leadership together into a compelling story that informs and inspires change. And that's exactly what I talk about in this episode with Aubrey Bergauer.

As the CEO of Changing the Narrative, she uses classical music and the arts as a vehicle to create social and system change. Her work builds on her success as the Executive Director of the California Symphony, where she propelled the organization to double the size of its audience and nearly quadruple the donor base in less than five years.

A graduate of Rice University with degrees in Music Performance and Business, Aubrey's work and leadership have been covered in national publications including Entrepreneur, Thrive Global, Wall Street Journal, and Southwest Airlines and Symphony magazines, and she is a frequent speaker at universities and conferences across North America, including Adobe’s Magento, TEDx, Opera America, the League of American Orchestras, and Orchestras Canada.

In our conversation, she tells us how she combined stories and data to find new opportunities and engage both staff and subscribers in a new narrative for classical music. She also unpacks her leadership approach to finding, testing and building on small experiments that ultimately pay off big for her clients. And she shows us how having a strong, clear purpose helps her create a bold vision that makes it easy to win the support of boards and donors alike. 

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If you want to move hearts and minds, then you have to change the narratives that control them. But few people have the time, expertise or research to invest in the long game that is narrative change.

That's where Ellen Buchman and her team at The Opportunity Agenda come in. They run a social justice communication lab, where they work with partners across the continent to help them find new ways to change the stories that shape the world.

This past year, they published a powerful report, Shifting the Narrative, which analyzes six diverse case studies in narrative change to identify what works well and what we need to do better.

In this episode, Ellen shares their lessons learned, along with some of the core principles and practices behind their work. She also suggests three things that we can all do right now, to start to shift the narrative on issues that matter to us.

Join us for a rich conversation about both the strategies and tactics of narrative change - then be sure to check out The Opportunity Agenda's site to find out more about their work, including their Narrative Research Lab and Narrative Fellowship.  You can also check out their Shifting the Narrative podcast here.

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Science communication is a tough gig. You have to find a way to maintain accuracy and rigour while telling a story that people can relate to and remember. And it's more important than ever these days, as we work to combat the spread of fake news and misinformation on issues from climate change to the pandemic.

So what's the secret? That's what we find out in this episode with Johanna Wagstaffe.  She tackles this challenge every day in her work as a seismologist, meteorologist and scientist at CBC, Canada's national broadcaster. 

Johanna talks about the creative process behind some of her work, including the award-winning climate change podcast 2050: Degrees of Change, which combines future-focused interviews with climate experts with the fictional life of a 12-year-old girl in the year 2050.  By bringing some of the concepts and impacts of climate change to everyday life now and in the future, Johanna and her team helped transform the way we think about and plan for it.

We also explore the need to find a "heartbeat" for every story - some nugget or focus that triggers our emotions, by making the science or the scientist irresistibly human. And we discuss the responsibilities of scientists in the media to help translate complex concepts so that governments, citizens and organizations can make informed decisions for the future.

As a woman in media and science, Johanna brings a critical perspective to some of the toughest issues facing society today - and finds creative ways to help us understand them. Check out the full episode to hear her thoughts about how we need to advance science storytelling in the future – and follow her online here: https://twitter.com/JWagstaffe  here: https://www.instagram.com/cbcjohanna/ and here: https://www.facebook.com/johannacbc

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It's tough for us to shift our behaviour on big issues like climate change when all we ever hear is the same, dominant narrative. And that's a real danger in these days of media consolidation and takeovers. Yet, misinformation propagated by "alternative news" sites can be even more dangerous.

So how can we use scientific storytelling and independent journalism to help us find a balance? That's what we explore in this episode with strategic communications consultant, writer and coach, Denise Young.

For the past decade, she's worked internationally on changing the way scientists connect with policymakers and the media, mostly around climate change and sustainability. To do that, she draws on years of experience reporting on finance and markets across Asia, North America and Europe for Reuters and Agence France-Presse.

Denise introduces us to the concept of perspective, talking about the difference between the so-called "objective" voice she was trained to use as a journalist – what she calls "the view from nowhere" – and the need to have an opinion or stand in order to be heard, as we see in much of today's communication work.

Our conversation also explores ways we can all use the power of narrative to explore ways to address climate change, as she shares the work and findings of the Climate Narrative Circle project she ran with her colleague Stina Heikkilä.

Plus, she shares one scientist's work to address this very issue, in her discussion of Dr. Kimberly Nicholas' new book, Under the Sky We Make: How to Be Human in a Warming World.

Find out more about Denise's work, read her newsletter "The Zeroist" about climate and finance, and check out her podcast, "New Climate Capitalism".

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It can be nearly impossible to get people to take action on big issues like racism or climate change – until it affects them directly. Looking at fuzzy satellite photos and trying to imagine what will happen when the sea level rises isn't very interesting or exciting for most people.

But in recent years, a perfect storm of technological advancement and design know-how has created an opportunity for us to create simulations that allow people to actually feel what it's like to be in a wildfire or flood. And that's a game-changer for communities. By combining the latest virtual reality tools and drone technologies, Dr. Juliano Calil and his team at Virtual Planet Technologies are creating 360 VR stories that allow planners, politicians and the public to experience potential future scenarios and test out possible solutions.

In this episode of the podcast, Juliano shares the story of his work with several communities across North America as they try to figure out how to respond to the predicted impacts of climate change. He describes the "punch in the gut" he felt when he first saw a real neighbourhood flood from sea level rise in VR, and shares the surprise response of community members when they see themselves in his stories.

He also talks about the challenges of this kind of future storytelling, bringing an equity and justice lens to climate adaptation planning, as we start to realize the implications for those who may lose their homes, their livelihoods and their family histories in the coming decades. 

3D, VR and drone technologies have historically been a bit too awkward and expensive for municipalities to consider in public engagement work. But recent breakthroughs in the tools themselves, combined with Juliano's extensive expertise in this field are finally putting these kinds of simulations within reach of local governments and environmental NGOs.

To find out more or see Juliano's latest production, "Wildfire Explorer", be sure to check out Virtual Planet Technologies. 

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"The future does not exist. It is not some destination out on the horizon waiting for us to show up. It is ours to create. The journey to better tomorrows begins with the stories we tell ourselves about what is possible." – Joe Tankersley

Most of us struggle to imagine a future that is significantly different than our world today. Yet, using storytelling to explore possible future scenarios as a way to inform vision, purpose, and strategy is one of the cheapest and most effective ways for leaders to build resilient organizations. Just look at the success of future focus companies like Disney, Apple, and Tesla.

So why don't we use future storytelling more? Mostly just because we don't know how.

That's why I'm so excited to have Joe Tankersley on the show. Joe is a futurist, filmmaker and former Imagineer who helped Disney build strategic foresight right into the heart of their organization. These days, he works as a futurist and storyteller, combining his skills to help organizations design and implement strategic narratives to shape their future. His clients include multinational corporations, major foundations, and community-based organizations.  Recent projects have explored the future of the workforce, retail, sustainability, public health, creativity, and ageing.

In this episode, Joe shares some incredible stories about how he helped bring strategic foresight into Disney and how they used it to imagine and build their future success. We also unpack some of the challenges of doing this kind of work in a corporate environment. And discover how the process of engaging people in exploring the future can be just as valuable sometimes as the actual story produced.

Tools like futurism, strategic foresight and scenario planning have been around for decades now. But it takes the right mix of creativity, vision and rigour to be able to use them effectively. Joe brings all that and more to his work, and I know listeners will leave this episode inspired to put what they just learned to work to "imagineer" a better tomorrow for themselves and their organizations. 

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One of the biggest reasons change initiatives fail is that we assume people are a blank slate when create our strategies and interventions for them. We just expect them to realize how brilliant our big ideas are and buy into them.

But the reality is that almost everything we think, say and do is controlled by an existing set of narratives, about how the world works and our place in it. So, what we often fail to realize is that you can't change someone's beliefs or behaviors until you change their narratives.

Nobody know this better than Dr. Hans Hansen from the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University. He "accidentally" joined a team that used narrative change to save dozens of lives, by transforming the way sentencing works for capital offences in Texas. Simply by changing the "norms" or narratives that guide the behaviour of different actors in the legal system, they reduced death penalty sentences by a whopping 90%.

In this episode, Hans shares his story and the model they used, which can create narrative change for individuals, organizations or social systems. A big part of this work is finding ways to make the existing narratives we go by visible, so that we can deconstruct them - then develop new narratives to replace them.

If you have an example of how you've used narratives to enact change, Hans would love to hear from you here.  And make sure you pick up a copy of his book, "Narrative Change: How Changing the Story Can Transform Society, Business, and Ourselves", to get the full story of the incredible journey he and the team went through as they worked to do the impossible in Texas. 

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Storytelling experts often say that we need to make sure our stories for change have an enemy or a bad guy in them – because it's easier to get people to fight against something than to get them to fight for something. But what do we lose, when that becomes the way we spend our entire life? Our humanity.

If we want people to change, we have to first discover our shared values – what we want more of – and rally them around that. And that's what I talk about in this episode, with author and journalist Andrea Collier.

Andrea has written countless articles and stories for publications like O the Oprah Magazine, Woman’s Day, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Greater Good, Plus, she's authored two books - Still With Me... A Daughter's Journey of Love and Loss and, the Black Woman's Guide to Black Men's Health.  She also tells stories on platforms like the Moth and Contently.

In this conversation, Andrea shares what she's learned about telling stories to move people, to affect the way they show up in the world. By tapping into her lived experience as a Black writer, mother, wife, daughter, and change-maker, she's able to help leaders learn how to be more authentic in their work and in the stories they tell.

See some of her work here, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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We all struggle with making change, whether it's figuring out what to do after you graduate – or how to slow global warming. And while there's no shortage of experts out there who say they can help, there are very few who have a proven model for human change that's empowered thousands of people be their best over the last 20 years. That's why I'm so excited to share this interview with Dr. David Drake.

As the founder of Narrative Coaching and Integrative Development, David's worked with some of the biggest organizations in the world, like Nike and PwC; trained more than 20,000 practitioners, and; written more than 60 publications on coaching.  He's dedicated his entire life to the art and science of change, and brings a depth of clarity and knowledge to this challenge that few others have.

In this episode, he shows us how narrative coaching works, explores the key issues that hold leaders back, and shares insights for how to start to tap into the power of stories to make change in yourself, your team and your culture. 

You can find out more about David and his work by visiting The Moment Institute, which is the home of his practice, and reading  his best-selling book on Narrative Coaching.  

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In recent years, it's become clear that we can't keep doing business as usual. The costs to our people and the planet are just too great. But what and how do we change? That’s what a small and mighty group of businesses called B Corporations is trying to figure out.  And that's what I explore today with two leaders from the B Corps community, Jennifer Kongs and Veena Harbaugh.

As a founding partner of Bark Media, Jennifer and her colleagues run B The Change, the storytelling platform that supports B Corps and B lab, the organization behind the movement. She works closely with Veena, who’s the Marketing Director at B Lab, to help everyone in the B Corp community develop and share stories about their successes - and sometimes failures - as a way to grow their collective reach and impact. 

As you'll hear from our conversation, stories play a critical role in fostering learning and innovation inside organizations, and across the B Corps community. Recently, they've also started to play a bigger role in helping B Corps come together to tackle some of the toughest and most damaging narratives in our culture that stop us from tacking action on critical issues from climate change to racism.

In addition to sharing practical and actionable examples of how stories support this work in this episode, Jennifer and Veena also tell some pretty compelling stories about the power of the B Corp movement to inform and inspire a new way of balancing purpose and profit to use business as a force for good. That includes discovering ways to tell stories even if you don't have a dedicated comms person and tips for finding stories across your organization.

If you want to know more about how B Corps work or just be inspired by their stories, you can find out more and sign up for their fabulous newsletter at https://bcorporation.net.

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