Learn Malcolm Gladwell’s Most Valuable Storytelling Tool

Malcolm Gladwell is a 56-year-old Canadian living in New York City, a runner who loves cars, and probably our most popular public intellectual. Except that he isn’t really a public intellectual, he’s a storyteller. That’s how he describes himself, a storyteller. I’ve been a Gladwell fan for a long time. According to my reading journal, […]

Why Personal Stories Help you Connect with your Audience

In the fall of 2014, I gave an orientation for new international staff at the Dutch university I worked at. In designing the program, I called on 5 years of experience teaching Intercultural Awareness and more than 15 years of experience living abroad. By then, I had lived in 6 countries on 3 continents. I […]

How to use personal stories in professional presentations

I wrote this article on a writing retreat I took a couple of weeks ago. It was my first writing retreat and I used some new technology. I wrote the first draft of this blog post in a hotel room, talking to my computer ! I felt like a fool, at least as foolish as […]

Self-Editing your Social Media

Everyone’s on social media and some people seem to mix the personal and the professional fairly willy-nilly. It’s not just Hollywood stars showing us their kitchens but also entrepreneurs posting gifs of themselves dancing with their babies. The personal and the professional are more intertwined than ever these days. If you’re posting on social media […]