Ep.35 – Sorry, I Will Start Telling Better Stories. Guest Mark Carpenter.

Hey listeners, welcome to Leading with Curiosity. My guest today, Mark Carpenter, got his start in marketing communications and public relations.
He was a college professor, corporate facilitator. His book, Master Storytelling, turning your experiences into stories that teach, lead, and inspire, have led to this super fun conversation today where we explore the power of storytelling, the intent, the neuroscience of it, and its ability to build trust within the team and helping people just like coaching does come to their own conclusions and lessons.
Yeah, we had a lot of fun exploring these different avenues and it was a pleasure as Mark Carpenter, author of Master Storytelling, how to turn your experiences into stories that teach, lead and inspire.
You can find him at www.master-storytelling.com.

@11:19 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Thank you so much, Nate. I’m just thrilled to be here with you. As I’ve listened to a couple of the episodes of your podcast, there’s a couple of things that really resonate with me.
The first is in that intro that everybody just heard about how the command and control style of leadership is dead.
When I first heard that on your podcast, I was jumping up and down for joy. And other people see that the same way that I do.
And the other statement is gonna be on the outro that everybody will hear in a little while. And that is about how our brains behave differently when they’re invited or encouraged to think rather than told to listen.
And that resonates with my heart because I totally believe that. And that’s why I’m in the world that I’m in and teaching people how to use storytelling as a way to teach, lead, and inspire, because that’s what’s gonna encourage people to think.
And it gets us past that command and control style of leadership. So thank you for the work that you’re doing and for setting the foundation that I think is fantastic.

@12:28 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
Thanks, Mark, your master storytelling, your book, I can see the cover over your shoulder. We’ll link to it in the show notes.
I see this light bulb exploding. Let’s go there right off the hop here. The difference between receiving instruction or receiving info from a document or in a course to turning it into a story, what is so compelling for you about it?

@12:51 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
And one thing you can’t see from this distance with the cover of the book is that little light bulb there.
It’s a bunch of people.

@12:58 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
It’s all made up of little people.

@13:00 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
And so it really ties into how our brains work and how our brains think. That idea of inviting people to think rather than telling them to listen, story will do that, think about this, have you been around little children very much, you ever been around like a toddler, an entire career of it for a while?

@13:24 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
Yeah, go for it.

@13:25 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Yes. Okay. Okay. So what’s like the one question you hear all the time from like four or five, six year old kids, what’s the, what’s the one word question that always comes out?
Yeah. Say it again. Why? We are a curious species. Nobody tells little kids to ask why a lot. They come curious.
And so that invitation to think that invitation to make the connection to yourself stays with us. And so as we tell stories, that’s another invitation.
for people to go to that question, say, why would that be important to me? What does that have to do with me?
How does that relate to my life? So as I’m sharing with you, one of my experiences that I learned a lesson from, you’re making a stronger connection to that because you’re connecting it into your experiences and how you learn.
And that’s much more effective than me telling you to act this way, because you’re connecting it back into you and how that relates to you.
So that’s one of the powers of stories. That’s why we picked this cover because it’s about people and it’s about the way that we think.

@14:40 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
You know, I’d love to explore the fine line and we agreed we’re going to use me as an example just to be a bit vulnerable and pick this apart.
And pick this apart. You know, in coaching, working with leaders, we have to learn. When they tell a story, we’re.
careful about not making it about our story. And then suddenly we’ve hijacked the conversation and it’s going back the other way.
So this is not to be confused with, oh, yeah, I got one for you. This is more the delivery of information.
So as a leader, let’s take me. I’m extroverted. I can be wordy. What are the pitfalls or blind spots that I need to be careful of in trying to deliver a story that will help teach, lead and inspire?

@15:31 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Yeah, I think the biggest, well, I’ll say this. All the little pitfalls that we get into in storytelling basically come back to one core thing that people don’t get clear on.
And that is the point I’m trying to make? What is the intent of my telling this story?
And I’ve seen this with leaders. They’ll stand up in front of a group and they’ll say, let me tell you this great story, this great experience that happened to me.
And they’ll go on and on and on. And on with the story and you get to the end of it and you go, okay, it was kind of an interesting story, but what’s the point?
What do I, what do we take away from that? And so being crystal clear about what is the point that I’m trying to make here.
And so I think about this, I’ll go back to your coaching business as your coaching leaders, and maybe they will say, well, I’ll, I’ll throw it back to you.
What’s one of the things that they struggle with to get their teams on board about? So maybe one of your clients comes in and says, boy, I’m having a hard time with X with my people.

@16:32 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
What might that be? Well, you know what it’s, you’ve already said it without saying it. What’s the intent? Helping leaders beginning with the end in mind, rather than just jumping into the pool and be like, are we, are we swimming?
Are we lounging? Are we scuba diving? Before I jump in the pool, where am I, where am I going?
And where, where are we, where are we headed with this? Yeah. So yeah.

@17:00 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
And so think about storytelling along that journey. Storytelling can take people on that journey, but you have to know where the end is.
And so one of the common mistakes that I see people make, I call it that they don’t land the plane.
They take off on their story. You talked about being an extrovert, and I think this is the challenge that extroverts face in storytelling, is they want to share every single detail of the story.
But some of those details aren’t really relevant to the end point. They might be interesting along the path, but if they don’t really get you to where you want to go, you’re just kind of flying the plane around looking for a place to land.
And so if you know where you’re going, you’re going to go a little more in a straight line to get to that end objective.

@17:46 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
My wife is going to make me re-listen to this episode because one thing that she has identified that I have possibly inherited genetically and environmentally is
Sometimes if we change the metaphor to a branch of an evergreen tree, of a fir tree out here in in British Columbia, to get to the end of the branch sometimes we, my father and I for example, context.
And my wife says I am so confused about what you’re talking about and I don’t think this story is ever going to end.
I see you nodding, some of the listeners on YouTube see you nodding. What sense do you make of that pitfall?

@18:37 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Well you’re self-identifying. One of the pitfalls is very common and that is very common. And part of it comes from the type of story that we’re talking about telling because we’re not talking about telling an epic tale.
We’re talking about it telling a story based on a real experience that actually makes a point that you’re using to teach, lead, sell, or inspire.
I think we get into that wandering off into the extraneous branches because that works great when you’re sitting around telling stories at a party.
When you’re sitting around at a family gathering around the dinner table and you’re you’re swapping tales about things that have happened to you.
Those are fun little details to have in there. Right. But when we’re trying to make a point, they get in the way.
And it’s just like your wife identified. She’s like, I’m distracted by these these little things. Why was that in there?
What what’s the point of bringing that there now? I’m actually going to turn it around because we’re talking about you as a type as an archetype tier who’s more of an extrovert and who likes to share those things.
You get the same problem with people who are a little more introverted, who get anxious about getting to the end of the story.
And they forget that there are key components along that story that are going to help make their point. But the problem is the same one.
If they aren’t clear on the point that they’re trying to make, they might jump to the end of the story without getting to.
relevant details along the way that are going to help make the point that they’re trying to make. It’s the same problem, it’s just a different manifestation of the problem depending on the personality.

@20:16 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
What would you say to a person that skips to the end too quickly in terms of helping them improve their ability?

@20:23 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
One of the things that we teach in the Master Storytelling book and in our Master Storytelling workshop is a little structure to help you get there.
First you get clear on what is the intent, what’s the purpose of the story that I’m telling, and then we have a little structure that helps people set up the beginning of the story to get the current state, to get enough information that people know where they stand right now.
That’s the part that’s going to bring people in and say, oh yeah, I can relate to this because of these things that happened in my life.
And then you have to have some piece of conflict. There has to be an inciting incident in there where something goes awry.
Something gets in the way of a goal that you’re trying to accomplish. And then there has to be some kind of change that happens to you at the end, where you either accomplish the goal because you did something differently, or maybe you failed to accomplish the goal, but you learned what you should have done, which then becomes the cautionary tale that you can share with other people so that they don’t have to go through the same struggle that you did, because they’re gonna learn from your lesson along that way.
And so it’s just keeping in mind those components along there, that I’ll drive to that end goal that we’re trying to get to, that when people start crafting their story, they can say, what are the points that are necessary to help get to that end point so that I’m actually having the impact that I want to teach, lead, sell, or inspire with this story?

@21:50 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
Mm-hmm. Setting an intent, some sort of conflict, and some sort of change that might be a success, or it might be an epic fail.
both can be useful.

@22:01 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Yeah. And not even epic fails. It doesn’t even have to be an epic fail. Because a lot of times people are like, ah, I don’t want to, especially in leadership positions.
They don’t want to stand up in front of people and share their epic fails. Well, it doesn’t always have to be an epic fail.
Sometimes it can be just a little bit of a stumble along the way. I tell a story sometimes, and it’s designed to teach the point that we create our own emotional state by the way we think.
And it’s a story about one day when I was driving to the airport and I looked in the rear view mirror and there was a police car behind me.
And so what’s my immediate thought that that police car is going to do behind me?

@22:45 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
They’re going to pull me over.

@22:46 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Pull you over. So I got bugged. I got annoyed because I wasn’t going faster than other people. And so then I thought, well, okay, maybe they’re not going to do this.
So I pulled over a lane. Well, the police car pulls behind me. Well, what does that do to my thoughts that?
that they’re going to pull me over, just reinforces it. So this starts building and building and building, and I’m thinking, fine, just pull me over already.
I’m building up my argument that I’m going to have with the police officer in that situation, and I’m about to turn up to the airport.
I turned to the airport. He goes the other direction. And I realized in that moment, Oh my gosh, I worked myself up all by myself.
There was nothing that that police officer was doing that led me to that. They were just trying to get to where they were trying to go.
And I created all that negative emotion inside of myself, by the way, I was thinking. Now that’s not an epic fail.
It didn’t ruin my life because I did that, but it’s a learning moment where I go, boy, slow things down a little bit and don’t jump to the worst conclusions.
And this is a great lesson that we can pass on to other people.

@23:54 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
I like that the story ends where nothing happens. And that’s the point. And the assumptions that you were making along the way.
Okay, I like that.

@24:02 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Yeah. And the change that happened. It’s about the journey and the process. Yeah, and so we talked about the change being an important element in this.
And the change was me realizing, oh, I didn’t have to do that. That was totally unnecessary for me to get emotionally worked up over something that I had no need to get emotionally worked up about.
And so it’s a little change, but it’s there. It’s there at the end, because there wasn’t any conflict. I was making the conflict inside my head.

@24:37 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
Coaching Hat just went to, you know, asking a client, tell me a story of a time where things didn’t go away and this emotion came up in you, right?
Yeah. And what can you take from that experience moving forward? So taking their own story and turning it into a fable, creating a lesson out of it and also.
So tell me about a time that you handled it really well and juxtaposing those two. So yeah, from my world, it’s getting my clients to tell the story.
It doesn’t even have to come from me.

@25:11 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Yeah, oh, absolutely. And from your perspective, from a coaching standpoint, let’s say that I’m your client. I’m a leader who has a problem because the people in my team aren’t trusting each other.
And maybe they’re not trusting each other because they’re jumping to conclusions about other people’s motives and why they’re doing what they’re doing.
Well, that would be a great time to say, well, let’s think about a time where maybe that happened to you and you found out where you were wrong.
And if I was your client, I might go to, oh, there was this time I was driving to the airport.
You say, okay, now you’ve got a great illustration that you can give to your people that shows the problem with that way of thinking without telling them, listen up, you gotta stop thinking that way.
Yeah. The story is going to lead them there. It’s going to encourage them to think about that rather than telling them what to think.

@26:02 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
And the story becomes the metaphor which lowers the defensiveness of the situation versus Mark, you were making so many assumptions yesterday in the meeting about Dave.
It’s like, no, Mark, remember that time you drove the airport and that police car was following you? This is kinda, this seems like it’s kinda one of those.

@26:22 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Yeah. Yeah. And I’m much more open to accepting that because I can relate to that experience. We love stories because we live stories, but we all let, what is our life but a collection of little stories all strung together in these experiences.
And so I can relate to that better. So not only will I remember it better, I’ll trust it more because of that relatability.
And then from a leadership perspective, I will actually trust you more as a leader because of that relatability that this story creates between us.

@27:01 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
When we can use metaphor or story, it’s a top shelf level of intellect, really. It’s deeper and there’s more trust there because it’s a little bit abstract, right?

@27:14 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Yeah, well, and part of it has to do with some of the brain science around storytelling too, that when you hear a well-told story that has characters you can relate to, as the listener, you get an increase in oxytocin in your brain.
This is the trust hormone. And so, because I can relate to your story, I can relate to your experience, suddenly we become more alike than different.
And I trust what’s coming from you more because of that chemical reaction that’s happening inside of me as well.
And so, there’s some great science behind why that actually works and is impactful. Back to your foundational point about command and control leadership is dead.
When we stand up in front of people and say, okay, here’s the facts. the figures and the data and the process, and you do this and you follow this.
That chemically, that doesn’t do anything for people. It puts them in a very dull, neutral, neutral or lower state.
But when I can say, this is what we need to do, and here’s why, let me tell you the story of what’s going to happen when we do.
Well, now I’m connected with that. I’m engaged with that. I remember it better. I trust it more. But there’s all sorts of these positive impacts that come from teaching and leading with story rather than just command and control.

@28:37 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
Let’s stay here on the, on the brain science and the neuroscience a little bit, because that is compelling for, for, for many people.
And in the outro, the brain behaves very differently when encouraged to think rather than told to listen. No, no, no, it actually does.
Right. It actually does. That’s not, that’s not an outro. That’s a neuroscience statement. That in coaching, when a client arrives at the conclusions that they need to on their own versus a consultant telling them what to do.
A team member arriving at their own conclusion after hearing a metaphor, a fable or a story. There is actually, as you described it, that release of the trust hormone, a chemical reaction that deepens the trust and the trust being the foundation of Patrick Lenzione’s five dysfunctions of a team.
It actually starts here, doesn’t it? This is the foundation. I imagine in change management when things need to be different, that’s scary for a lot of people.
Yeah. Where are you picking up that I’m laying down?

@29:48 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Yeah, I’m picking it up all over the place. There’s great research done by Uri Hassan. I always forget which university he’s from, so I’m not going to try to state it because I’ll probably state it wrong.
But he did this great tracking with functional MRI and had a storyteller and a story listener, and he tracked their brain functions as the storyteller was telling the story to the listener.
And what he found was at the beginning, they were just kind of randomly going around. And as the storyteller started to tell their story, the listener started tracking in their brain patterns right behind the storyteller.
But the farther the story went along, the closer those two got.

@30:28 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
They were tracking that.

@30:29 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Wow. To the point that they were almost in sync with each other as the listener started anticipating where the story was going.
I’m telling you that story about driving to the airport and the police car behind me, and you’re going, oh yeah, I can see the emotions building up.
I can feel that building up with you. And all of a sudden our brains start tracking a little closer together.
Think about that from a principle standpoint as a leader. As you’re trying to get people in sync, telling them to get in sync.
is probably going to be less effective than leading them there with a great story that teaches the principle that you’re trying to get across.

@31:11 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
For the listeners who have been following other episodes, we often talk about being aligned, helping teams get aligned so that they can collaborate in sync, getting the listener and the speaker in sync, getting the team in sync.
I mean, there’s a synonym, right? Helping people get aligned so that they can then go and do the thing that they’re about to do.
I really liked that. And my little branches, my offshoots, I imagine might fragment that MRI. The listener is starting to lose track of where we’re at.
And so those brain patterns are getting out of sync if I’m not careful, right?

@31:53 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Yeah. And I love the connection you just made with that little branch analogy that you were looking at earlier.
If our brains start to get in sync, and then you start going someplace that’s not. Actually taking us down the path that we’re trying to get to all of a sudden that synchronicity is going to lose.
It’s going to, it’s going to get lost. We’re going to lose that connection with each other and to have to bring them back.
And so that’s, that’s part of the point of really being clear on what’s the point that I’m trying to make and what’s the straight line path that’s going to get me.
There.

@32:23 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
So let’s use metaphor, continue with the metaphor. If send, if the story is getting the water in the branch to the tip and suddenly my tangents in my story start to divert the water down the wrong branches.
The offshoots, the water gets stuck in those branches. Cause it’s being enforced, you know, by more and the water doesn’t get to the end of the branch, the desired end, the intent, the intent was to get the water to the end of the branch and instead we spread it out on all these different branches.

@32:57 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Yeah. And, and I’m a great metaphor geek. I love metaphors and things like that. So just following along that line, how do you make sure that that water goes straight down the line in that branch?
Well, you got to prune the tree. So you’re going to prune off that extraneous information so that your path is more direct to get to the point that you’re trying to make.

@33:19 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
There’s, I don’t know where the title is here, Mark, in the episode, but my takeaway is right there, connecting story and metaphor, your example, as the leader in this situation to the neuroscience, back to the metaphor.
That’s, uh, that’s going to stick with me. And I hope there’s a listener out there for whom that sticky as well.
That Oh God, now I’m getting into puns. If I’m talking about SAP on the sticky case, we’re not going, we’re not going to puns, no, okay, we’re leaving that out.
Okay. So I have a question. I tend to do the thinking. for the story listener sometimes, i.e. I tell the story and then I tell them the lesson in the story.

@34:08 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Yeah. One of the things that we teach is the power of questions in stories. And so we tend when we’re telling stories say, oh, I’ve got this great story.
Let me tell it to you, start finished, and I’m going to get you all along the way. But think about the power of pausing and saying, have you ever had that situation?
Or have you ever been in a similar situation to that? Because now all of a sudden you’re in your own version of that story rather than end it with me.
And then getting to the end and say, what do you take away from that? What do you learn from my experience there?
Or what do you learn from that example that I was trying to get there? Now, the danger you run, sometimes people say, but what if they come up with an answer that I didn’t expect or the answer that I wasn’t trying to get to?
Well, I think that’s okay. You can let them know. Yeah, I think that’s a great lesson to learn from.
Now let me tell you what my lesson is, and it’s gonna connect those two lessons together for them. As they’re thinking about that.
We have a whole chapter in the book around asking good questions as you’re telling stories to help draw people in and bring them in.
So it’s not just your experience they’re listening to, they’re basically standing beside you. I was talking with somebody a couple of weeks ago who was a big baseball nut and loves baseball.
And I was telling this experience that I had coaching a tee ball team when my son was six years old.
And I finished the story and we talked about the lesson of it and he looked at me and he said, I felt like I was standing right next to you there on a baseball diamond.

@35:47 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
I was right there with you.

@35:50 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
That’s the power of story is that you’re putting people into that story with you. And that’s what makes it so memorable.
That’s what makes it so sticky for them is because. their brains have connected into their life experiences and their backgrounds so that they’re making that story their own.

@36:12 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
I added my facilitator hat on here for a second and I thought you know that question might be useful after the story.
Now turn to your partner and share with each other what resonated in the story might be a safer play in the there’s room for both right there’s room to hear from the room and there’s time to let people do their own thinking before they hear from from somebody else as well because it’s going to might mean something slightly different to each listener which is which is also useful.

@36:41 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Well and there’s times when you’re telling a story to a larger audience where you can’t even get that level of interaction.
I mean if I’m a business leader I’m standing in front of the entire company and I’ve got 500 people out there who are listening to me I may not want to stop and get responses from a bunch of people as to what they were what they were thinking but I can ask it as a rhetorical question and as
Same impact by asking that rhetorical question, say, okay, where are you going with this? What, what do you learn?
What do you take away from this? Yeah. Give them a pause to think about that. Say, here’s my big takeaway, but now they’ve already internalized and they’re open to the lesson that’s coming out of that.
The heat of this, this goes back to the human brain being curious. When we are asked a question, our brain wants to answer it.
Our brains die in to answer that question. And it just, just, just try that with somebody sometime, you know, ask them what, uh, what are the last three meals you ate?
Well, I’ll say right now, right now, your brain is trying to go to, what did I have for lunch?
What did I have for breakfast?

@37:44 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
What did I have for dinner last night?

@37:45 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
You, you, it’s almost like you can’t stop it because our brain is naturally curious.

@37:52 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
Mm-hmm. What do you say to the leader who overuses story? Where people say, Oh, here it goes again. Here he goes again with another one of his stories.
What’s the art of this?

@38:08 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
I’ll go back to the same, the same core problem that I brought up earlier. Is you’re not being really clear about intent.
If you’re overusing story, you’re probably using story for everything, for everything you just in your natural conversation. So that’s probably not doing it with intent.
And so use it, use it for the purposes you need to use it for. You don’t need to tell a story about every little thing.
I mean, if, if there’s an adjustment in a time for the meeting to start, Hey, we’re going to start at three o’clock instead of two o’clock.
Well, you don’t need to tell a story around why it’s changing from, from two o’clock, from two o’clock to three o’clock.
You can just tell the information. And so, yeah, you’re right. It can be overused as any skill, as any good skill.
It can be overused. be thoughtful about when do I need this to teach, lead, sell and inspire? And so if you think about those things, teach, lead, sell and inspire, this is when you use story.
You don’t use it just to convey information, can be used to convey some information, but you want to really have that goal out there.
Teach, lead, sell and inspire. That’s why we use those words all the time.

@39:25 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
Yeah. It’s like if the story is a machete, making sure that that machete is super sharp. So you only need one swing every now and then, versus going into that jungle with a dull one and just whacking the hell out of every piece of green branch that you see.

@39:41 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Yeah. And I can carry that analogy farther too, which is that as you keep using that machete, what’s going to happen to it?
It’s going to start getting a little dull, right? Right. So be intentional about thinking in how you use your stories, because if you overuse the story too much, it’s going to.
get dull with people and people and we go, oh, yeah, here goes that same story again. We all know that one.
We know that from family interactions where you have that one family member, maybe it’s that crazy uncle who’s like, oh, there goes the uncle again.
He’s telling the same wild story. And all of a sudden it starts losing its impact. And so think about how and why you’re telling that story and just keep focused on having a good intent, a good purpose that you’re using the story for.

@40:31 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
Yeah. Being intentionally just said that being intentional, having the intent, this is calculated. This is prepared. This isn’t always just off the cuff.
This is pruned, the branch has been pruned in advance, not while you’re in the tree.

@40:50 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Yeah, I’m sorry. And I didn’t mean to interrupt you there, Nate, but you can tell I get excited about this a little bit.
And it’s that intentionality that makes the storytelling that we talk about. different than just telling a story sitting around the dinner table.
And those are great. They have their place. But when we talk about storytelling, particularly in a business setting and as a leadership tool, we’re talking about intentionally using it to help you meet your goals, to help you accomplish your purposes, to help you lead your team, and not to help manipulate your team, but actually lead them where they need to go so that they can succeed and they can be successful.
That is leadership. It’s when you’re using the tools at your disposal to help your teams be more successful. And storytelling is one of those tools that’s there, it’s available, that probably is underutilized in leadership settings.

@41:46 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
A couple more questions for you, Mark. As you’ve shared this book and as you share this work with people in the world, what is the…
What has surprised you?

@42:03 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
Wow, that’s a great question. And I, it’s hard to come up with the answer of what surprised me as I shared it, because most of the things that came to the surprises were the surprises I got in creating it.
And to me, some of the biggest surprises I got in creating it was the brain science behind it. And how it’s there.
Intuitively, we know story works. We know story is impactful. But when I got into the research and realized there is brain science that says why this happens and why this works, and it’s real, that opened my eyes.
And I would say that as we share that with other people, that’s an aha for them as well, that there are reasons that the story works.
The other thing I’d say is the more that I open this up to other people, the more they come back with ways that they’ve used stories that I hadn’t thought of.
I was talking a few months ago with a sales professional that we’ve worked with in master storytelling. When we talk to sales professionals, I think of it mostly in terms of, as you talk to your clients, what’s the story of the product, not just the features and the benefits and the facts about it and the pricing and all of this stuff the company background or how it was developed, but what’s the story that they can relate to that shows the benefit to them that the client can connect to.
Well, he mentioned to me, I have used storytelling and talking to my manager. So when I have my monthly calls with my manager to see how things are going, instead of just saying, well, this client has delayed their sale and this client’s gonna do something different, I tell them the story.
I say, this client’s delaying because they’ve had this experience and this experience and this experience and they wanna make sure that they get this right.
And as I lay out the reasons, my manager is much more open to some of the. Challenges that I’m facing rather than just giving the manager information.
And I thought that was fascinating. I had not thought of that as a way to use story in sales, but for this sales executive, this is really important to him and it worked really well.

@44:18 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
Nice. Nice. Final question in writing this book, launching the business and sharing your message with the world, what has been the biggest impact on you personally through all this?

@44:40 – Mark Carpenter (Master Storytelling)
The biggest impact is the word we keep coming back to in our time together. And that is intentional. It’s being intentional about looking for experiences that can teach, lead, and inspire, and then crafting them intentionally into stories that can.
And so it’s being very deliberate about that, not just, oh, there’s a story that maybe randomly popped up, but really looking in my life for those experiences that can be good stories to teach, lead and inspire.
Like just yesterday, I had an experience where I was leading a trainer certification and the last part of it was that all the participants had to teach back a portion of the content.
Well, as we were gathering up for the day, one of the participants looked at the trainer guide of the other discipline and they had post-it notes all over it with all sorts of notes and directions on what they should say for their segment.
And this person said, oh no, I didn’t make that many notes. And I said, do you need that many notes?
I don’t know, but that looks like such a good idea now. And I thought about that and I haven’t really crafted this into a good story yet, but there’s a key point there.
The thing that I said to her is, You do you. There are so many different ways to do this.
And that’s the same way with storytelling. There’s a structure to it, but we’re all going to do it a little bit differently.
Now, if I wasn’t intentional about looking around my life for stories that teach great lessons, I probably would have missed that moment.
And so that I think is one of the biggest takeaways that I’ve had and that I’ve applied for myself is to just be really intentional about looking for those moments that teach great lessons.

@46:33 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)
Great final remarks. We’re going to leave it right there, Mark. Thank you for joining us. Listeners, I hope you enjoyed that candid conversation with Mark Carpenter, author of Master Storytelling.
You can find the book and Mark at masterstorytelling.com. Master Storytelling.com, that’s master. dashstorytelling.com. He’s based in Utah. What a great guy.
And I so appreciated his time. And my biggest takeaway there was making the connections to between the neuroscience of storytelling and the trust, that trust hormone as trust being the foundation of everything that we do as leaders in all the roles that we play in our lives.
Thanks for listening.