The show’s guest in this episode is Mark Carpenter. He is a serial storyteller. Telling stories since childhood, Mark leveraged his ability into a career in marketing communications and public relations and later as a college professor and corporate facilitator. His storytelling became even more purposeful and effective after researching and writing the best-selling book “Master Storytelling: How to Turn Your Experiences Into Stories that Teach, Lead, and Inspire.” Now, as a facilitator, consultant, and speaker, he teaches others what he learned in the process.

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How to Turn Your Experiences Into Stories that Teach, Lead, and Inspire with Mark Carpenter

Hey everybody, I am super excited to be here. And you might notice I’m not alone. Often I start my podcast and I am alone. And I’m talking about my own leadership. But today, I have Mark carpenter here with me. And he is a serial serial storyteller. And I don’t mean cereal, like you know, the thing you eat in the morning, but like, cereal, like he does it a lot. And he’s been telling stories since childhood. And he’s leveraged his ability into a career in marketing, communications and public relations. And then later as a college professor and a corporate facilitator, and he actually got so good at it, he wrote a book called Master storytelling, how to turn your experiences into stories that teach, lead and inspire and I invited him to come on at the beginning when I usually tell a story about my own leadership. And he says he can in real time, coach me to create a story today. So I am throwing myself on my sword to be his guinea pig.

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Welcome to the show, Mark.

Thank you so much. And I’m actually really excited to do this Melanie. I appreciate your courage, and bravery as we go on live to say, Sure, let’s just try to create something on the spot.

It’s just, you know, courage is not something that I have ever had. It’s a word people use to describe me. And I think I might just be crazy.

There’s a fine line, right?

Fine Line. You know, sometimes I’ve there’s been a couple of times that I’ve ended up in over my head and went, but this is not one of them. I don’t think so. I think it’s gonna be fun. I’m excited.

I think it’ll be great. So here’s how I want to start. I want you to think back on your week, Melanie? Yeah. Think back on some experience you had that struck a chord with you. You had some emotional reaction to it. It was either it was either funny, or it was enlightening. It was an aha moment. Or maybe it was discouraging. Or maybe it was one of those moments where it’s like, oh, no, I’m in over my head. Okay, can you come up with one?

Yeah, and it’s not gonna have anything to do with leadership. But that’s okay.

That’s all right. But does it? Is there a principle we can learn from that story? Yeah, I think so. I think so. Yeah. Okay. So start off with kind of what was the current state that led into the experience that gave you that Aha, or that emotional reaction?

Yeah, so we spent the weekend like, you know, we it was Memorial Day weekend, and we were at a camp where we’ve gone for the last 20 years. And we signed up this year to be seasonal campers and to share my friends bunkie she’s, she’s built this beautiful bunk. It’s got a queen size bed and a double bed downstairs and then a two queen beds in a loft upstairs. And really, there’s like, I don’t know, four feet. Like it’s, it’s like tiny, there’s nothing you do except sleep in the bunkie. And then there’s an outdoor kitchen. And it’s like from a it’s it. I mean, we sort of laugh because like, it’s like rich people camping at its finest. Like, like, we have a stove. We have a fridge, we have a freezer, we have a Nespresso, we have a milk frother like it’s ridiculous. And then, you know, I did a little fire camping, like it was fantastic. But so we signed up for this this summer. And I was sitting there with my son at the fire because it was cool. It’s still cool in Ontario. And he’s a singer. And he was playing his ukulele by the fire. And he just started voice lessons about two months ago. And the difference in his voice singing around the campfire was spectacular. And it wasn’t just spectacular. Like in one way, like it got more clear or there was more vibrato and those things are true. But also like he, he has all these best practices now like he takes his iPad and he’s got things downloaded. But then sometimes the iPad dies because like, we didn’t have power the first night say then he didn’t have a charge. So then he has these printouts of songs too. So that’s the best practice so you can play all those songs and he has all the chords for them and he can sing those. But then he also has these new best practices, which is if someone else sings the song, he can play the chords as long as someone knows the tune. So he’s got this so good. He doesn’t even have to know the tune to play the song and that was completely new and It was just so interesting to be watching him grow. And, and what I saw was he’s been singing for years, he’s been an international touring choir. But he’s been really starting to hone his skills as an individual singer. Okay, Was that enough? Like, that’s the thing.

What’s the takeaway from that experience?

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Well, this teacher, this one teacher, we finally got the right teacher. And he’s, and it’s like, there’s so many things when you get to the right teacher, like, sometimes you don’t know what you want to learn. It’s like, the music’s right. So that makes it better, because he’s not singing things out of his range. But then once you started singing in his range, you went back to some of the songs that were out of his range. And all of a sudden, those are in his range, too. So it’s like things that would stretch his range before he seems perfectly now. Yeah. And there’s like it. I don’t know, it’s like, I don’t know, the leaps that you can get from having the right teacher.

Yeah, that’s okay. You You told me that there wasn’t a business principle in that? Well, there are I mean, there. Yeah. And that’s, that’s the point that I like to make the experiences that we have teach us lessons, and they teach them in a powerful way. Now, if I was to coach you on that, I’d have you streamline it a little bit, and maybe leave a few extreme use points out, but you were doing this on the fly, because you were just trying to pull the experience out. But I think that that shows that we have day to day experiences in our lives, that can teach important principles, and lead people to change. And with just a little streamlining, you could take this experience of camping and show people getting the right coach, and implementing your own best practices can take you from one level to the next. Yeah, I think that’s right. That’s what I took away from your example from your story there.

And what I noticed is I hardly ever draw those examples to coaching. I think it’s sort of funny.

Well, it’s you you even use I maybe it wasn’t coaching, maybe you said he had to he had to have the right teacher, but it’s the same thing you’ve got. Because you in the right way.

Well, coaching and teaching aren’t the right thing. And also, my practice has been full for a really long time. Careful that telling too many stories.

But that’s a great point, too, is when you, you can sometimes decide this is the point that I’m trying to make. And then start looking back on your your life’s experiences and saying, What experience do I have that helps make that point. So you can work into stories that teach lead, sell and inspire in a couple of different directions? You can do it based on Gee, I had this experience, it had an emotional impact on me. What’s the lesson I learned, which is what we did. Or you can say, I need to teach this lesson I need to get this point across? What’s an experience that I had that can lead people to that point?

Well, I do think that there is something when you say, Coach, I do think there’s something so individual, and having someone walk with Him, to help him pick the music, to have him decide what he wants to do, to have to listen to his singing and give him individual feedback. That is why he’s able to leap so far ahead so fast. And I do think as his mother paying the bill, that it’s totally worth the investment. Yeah, there’s no doubt to me that it’s worth the investment.

And he may not even see you that quite as much as you do from the outside looking in. Because then a lot of times as you’re building as you’re growing in new skills, you see the struggle in the growth. But other people see the results almost faster than you do.

I think he’s feeling pretty darn good about good, I think, well, and he can feel it because you know, that changed voice where you hit an off note every now and then, especially if you’re in a high range as a young male voice, like those are just disappearing. And that is like there’s a real measurable here, which is also like in the best practice ranges that are measurable. There’s some real measurables here, which is pretty cool.

Yep. So there’s another great point in terms of business and leadership is what are the measures that show you’re progressing? Yeah, show you’re advancing. Yeah, that shows you’re you’re actually getting better.

Yeah. So now I want to know all about you like you. So you teach your your professor ring somewhere, where are you procrastinating?

A lot of times as you're building, as you're growing in new skills, you see the struggle in the growth. But other people see the results almost faster than you do. Share on X

I was an adjunct professor at Brigham Young University for 10 years in communication, and then the schedule, my schedule just got incompatible with, with trying to give my best to the students that was that was actually the thing that struck me is because I loved working with the students. But that moment when I said, Okay, I’m going to miss two classes in a row because of my travel schedule. And I said, that’s not fair to the students. That was the point that I said, I have to hand this off to somebody else. So I’m not currently doing that. But I do facilitation around master storytelling, we have a workshop that goes along with with with the book, and I do speaking engagements, and I do some other facilitations on some other content.

And how have you been experimenting in your work in your life, like, in COVID? And coming out of COVID? What are you experimenting in your world right now?

Well, as you might imagine, there’s so many different stories, I could tell that, that go along with that. And I love the title of your podcast is the experimental leader. Because storytelling, there’s a lot of experimentation, they have to do with that, where you have to have to try things out. And I’m doing a webinar a little bit later today. And there’s a story that I’m planning to tell, well, I’ve told it out loud to myself a dozen different times, trying to get it just right, and trying to smooth that out. A lot of times people think, oh, storytelling is one of those things that either do naturally or you don’t do. And it’s not it’s a skill, like anything else, that you that you learn. And you learn a lot by experimenting. And by practicing. And by by hearing what it sounds like, and looking into the eyes of the people that you’re telling the story to, to help you get better. Is quickly the the origin story around the book. I, as you said in the introduction, I’ve been telling stories all my life, I got to a point where I had helped someone else write a book. And I said to my wife, gosh, I want to write my own book now. But I don’t know what the topic is. And she looked at me is only someone that close to you can and said, oh, oh, I know what it is. And my response was, how can you know if I don’t know? That doesn’t make any sense to me? He says, no, no, you need to write a book about how you take everyday experiences, and turn them into stories that teach important principles and lessons. And my first reaction to that was, that’s not a book. That’s just what we do. It’s just what people do. Yeah. And she said, No, no, no, I know you do it naturally. But you need to quantify how you do it, so that other people can learn how to do it, too. So I started floating that idea by people and they’re like, oh, yeah, that’d be great. I’d love to see something like that. And that convinced me that put me on that path. And I found that I did a lot of things naturally, but not as deliberately. And so in researching the book, I think there was a lot of things that came out that said, I can do this more intentionally, to get good results instead of accidentally getting good results.

That’s really interesting. When I was thinking as you were talking, I was thinking, Hmm, I wonder what he thinks about the tangent? Because I know I can find myself on a tangent. I know that I often listen to people tell stories where they find themselves off on a tangent. What do you have to say about tangents?

That’s one of those things that comes when you experiment practice, you find out which things are tangents in the in the key thing is understanding. What’s the point that I’m trying to make with this story? Because then you can look back on the experience, and you can say, this is an important detail. This is an important detail. This is not. Yeah, that’s a tangent. And then you can drop that out. But you can’t really identify clearly your tangents. Yeah, you don’t know. What’s the point that I’m trying to make. I’ll go back to your story that I that I threw you into the deep end on.

A tangent, sorry.

The stories that have the most authentic impact are the ones where it's, let me show you how I made a mistake. Share on X

Yeah. If I was just thinking you’re probably looking back right now and saying, Oh, that was a tangent that was attended that was because you weren’t clear exactly on what direction you were gonna go with it. on where your end result was. If you retold that story with an end result in mind, I guarantee you there will be things that you would edit out, because you’d see them as tangential to the real point.

Well, and since I’ve got you you know, free for consulting because You’re on my podcast. I do this sort of a hoc each week. And I do take people sort of on a little mental journey with me. And it’s a relationship, but I’m not super. I don’t tell I don’t have a lot of, like all over the place. I don’t think in my stories, it’s fairly linear. How important it is, is it for me to perform, as opposed to talking?

Yeah, I think that’s a great point. And one of us, you don’t want to get so rehearsed on it, that it feels like, Oh, you’re reading to me a script? Yeah, this experience. And you’ve probably seen that happen. You’ve probably seen people…

I hate it. Yeah. I hate rehearsed questions on podcasts where they ask every guest the same thing, where I hate all of that I like a real, even if it’s bad, I like a bad unrehearsed podcast is for rehearsed one.

Well, I’ll use the example that I used earlier, where I’m preparing for this webinar this afternoon, where I’m going to tell this specific story, I had this little thought I had to write out notes to myself. So I remember the key points and then went, No, no, I’m going to get too rehearsed. If I do that, I need to just get clear on this is my point. And these are the key elements along the way to make that point. And by practicing a little bit, I’ll be able to do that. But I’ll still sound natural, because I’m just telling the story. I’m not, I’m not, I’m not reading a script, or to use your word giving a performance, I’m actually telling the story in my most authentic self.

Well, then let’s tie this to leadership. So like, I’m not a performer. I’m here not to entertain. I mean, I hope I’m entertaining on occasion. But I’m also here to help people think about their own leadership about the leadership they see about the world and leadership in it. So I don’t really want to, you know, do a tap dance or, you know, shiny, you know, I don’t want to throw shiny coins around, I want it to be a dialogue. So in that, what, how would somebody use stories for their own leadership purposes?

Yeah, and I think one of the one of the best ways is to think about the real, authentic stories where maybe you’ve even made a mistake. Yeah, a lot of times in leadership positions, we think, Well, I have to put myself up here on the pedestal to show people I am the leader, I am, I am the perfectionist. And so we try to find stories where we’re the hero have all of our stories. But the stories that have the most authentic impact are the ones where it’s, let me show you how I made a mistake. And what I learned from it so that you can learn from it, without having to make that mistake yourself. I’ve heard the expression before wise people learn from their mistakes, but truly wise people learn from other people’s mistakes. And so that’s the essence of leadership. Let me help you learn from some of the mistakes that I’ve made, so that you can get better. And a lot of times leaders hesitate to do that. Because they don’t. Well, it’s vulnerable. Yeah, they don’t want to come across as I’ve had failings, but it’s that vulnerability that actually makes you look like the stronger leader. It makes you look like someone who can be open and accessible to people, and who has learned from their experiences and from their past, and they’re willing enough to share that with other people.

Well, I think, too, I had a salesperson on their first day once tell me, hey, you know, I’m kind of scared, you know, that I won’t get sales or whatever. And I was like, Hey, meet you. Why don’t we tell you, you know, and it’s like, it’s not that I’m so good. You’re, you know, top down. It’s like, Hey, let me tell you, you know, we’re all scared.

That example is a great opportunity, where you can say, oh, yeah, boy, I feel the same thing all the time. In fact, let me tell you about an experience where I was really scared. And because the client reacted this way, that just ramped up my fear. And this is what I did to get through it. And I actually now have a really great relationship with that client. Now, of course, I’m not even telling a story there. I’m just just giving you the type of story. It could be. But that’s an opportunity as a leader, to not just say, Yeah, I’ve experienced that too. And tell them that you experienced that. But show them in the form of the story, that I’ve experienced it and this is what I’ve done to overcome it.

About Is there any use for I’m just kind of, you know, looking around in my mind for where I could see possibilities for stories. How any possibility is freezing stories in performance of valves with bosses or, you know, as you’re trying to describe your performance over a year, I feel like that’s a place that gets really, you know, one dimensional that might use could use a few more dimensions.

Yeah. And I think that’s, I think that’s an excellent opportunity to, to use a story to illustrate. For example, maybe you’ve got a an employee who’s, who’s not performing that, look, let’s pick a performance issue. They’re not meeting their deadlines. Okay. So this is something that you you want them to work on, in their in their next performance section, where you can tell a story about how I know when I missed the deadline, one time, it had this impact on another person that I wasn’t aware of. And that actually damaged my reputation for a time with the organization. I don’t want you to have to experience that. I want I want you to be seen as the person that people can rely on in meeting your deadlines is going to help you to be able to do that. But you could share an experience about the value of meeting deadlines, the importance of that, not just to me as the leader, but to them as the worker, and to their co workers, their peers, that can help inspire them to do better, that will stick with them. They will remember that better than hey, you need to meet your deadlines.

Cool. Yeah. And I was actually thinking of managing up when I asked the question, but that’s really cool. I was thinking of, you know, sending in, like some short stories or telling some stories about successes. Yeah, hey, I was able to do this. And it was, you know, it was late at night on a Friday. And Bill and I, you know, we ordered pizza, and we got the one with the pepperoni. And it was really delicious. And that gave us the fuel to stay till two. And then we met the financial budget deadline. And it was really good. Like, whatever it is just like the you know, those stories, I was just noticing there was an opportunity for that, because I’m always like, Hey, make sure your boss when you’re doing your performance about make sure you tell them something, but I was just noticing the opportunity for story.

Absolutely. And I love where you went with that, because you’re hitting kind of the three main points that we emphasize in telling stories you give give the current state, here’s the conflict that came in. And then here’s the change. And so using your example, yeah, we were working on this project, we knew the deadline was coming up, this emergency happened or something went wrong. And so Bill and I ended up staying late, we were getting a little frustrated, we ordered pizza, and we were able to plow our way through it by doing that. And as a result of doing that we came up with this result. Very often in those performance conversations, we say, well, we got this result. And it’s like, well, yeah, okay, but you were supposed to quit your job. You did your job, don’t pat yourself on the back too hard for that. You show the challenge that you overcame to do that, that has more impact. Those conversations to me are very similar to job interviews, job interviews is a great place to use storytelling. So that when somebody when someone asks you that that age old question that everyone hates to get, what’s your greatest weakness? Instead of trying to answer that with something to show that your weakness is actually a strength, tell them a story about a weakness that you’ve had and how you’re overcoming it, and what that’s doing for you to move along that path. And then that’s going to be more powerful and more memorable to the person that you’re talking to.

My son, the same one who plays ukulele and sings. We went on a college tour recently. And we were he’s a swimmer, too. So we were meeting with all these college coaches. And he’s been doing a lot of coach calls and stuff. And the first one. The coach said, said, Tell me about yourself. said, Well, I’m a swimmer. He’s an introvert, and he’s a little shy.

So there’s another great example of Melanie. I know, no, that question is gonna come. I know. So we were working on it. So yeah, what’s the one minute story you can tell?

No, we did five things. We were like I was like, you can pick from the five things. Yep. I like to play chess. Because it’s all there in front of you and you can problem solve and I played chess with my grandfather who has dementia but he can still beat me.

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The story right, you see that all of a sudden makes him more memorable.

Is interesting right now. Number one, just with his grandfather. There you go. He’s a nice kid.

Yeah. Well, and it has huge impact, too. I remember when my daughter was in college, she was trying to get a fairly exclusive internship that was a paid internship. And she knew there was a lot of competition. And so she and I were practicing, answering the questions. And I encouraged her, I said, Okay, instead of just answering that question with information, tell the story. And so we started practicing the stories that she would tell around each of those. She went to the interview. On her way home from the interview, she got a call and said, everybody wants you, there was a bunch of different organizations that were that were a part of this. Everybody wants you and we want, so we got you. So as she she got the internship, be six months into this internship. She was in a meeting. And one of the people that interviewed or was there. And they were, I don’t remember what the topic was, but they were on some topic of discussion. This lady turns to my daughter and says, Tell that story you told in your interview, about how you work through this kind of problem. And my daughter’s like, wait, you even remember that. But that’s the thing. Stories help people remember, important information important points.

Totally one and what so I, we had these five things. One was, he makes the best grilled cheese and I made him practice the steps. Because I was like the next question 100% of the time, when you tell them, you make the best grilled cheese you’ve ever tasted, is how do you make that grilled cheese. So I made him walk through the steps that he gets the bread from our local farm CSA. And it’s sourdough bread with seeds. Like I made him practice it, right. But it’s like all those things are. They’re all so powerful and memorable. For everyone forever, like you remember that kid forever on my, on my kids recruiting site for swimming. I stuck a video up of him singing in from front of his high school at the talent show because all the kids are like crazy cheering for him. That tells a story without words that they like him. Yep, it’s marketing. Like, marketing. They love Him Who doesn’t want the kid that all of his classmates love.

But it’s authentic marketing, too. Yeah, it’s not to your point. It’s not hype. It’s not overly rehearsed.

No one’s saying anything about. Yeah, yeah, it’s all right there. It’s, but I hadn’t thought about I had when I had him do those things. I was preparing him for an interview. But we were telling stories. So it’s fun to hear that that’s what we were doing. I love I love that. That’s what we’re doing. This is very fun. Um, how do you take care of yourself? How do you do self care? When you’re out there in the world? How can people tell stories? Like when you get really tired and your tongues in the dirt? What do you do to care for yourself?

Master Storytelling: How to Turn Your Experiences into Stories that Teach, Lead, and Inspire

Oh, wow. So my main response is, I might my therapy is on my piano. And so I find times to just play the piano, I can get lost in that and lose track of time. But that’s my separation, my therapy to just just to do some music like that. When I’m on the road, and I don’t have access to the piano, it’s just listening to music and walking, being outside, getting getting out in the open air. I live in Utah, right at the foot of some mountains. And so I love being outside and outdoors to just enjoy that. Get some vitamin D from the sunshine. And that’s those are the things that I do to help take care of myself.

Cool. And where can people find you Mark?

You can find me on Facebook and LinkedIn and look for Master Storytelling on Facebook and LinkedIn. You’ll you’ll find us there. Our website is master-storytelling.com. Not the word hyphen, but the little dash hyphen that you put between those two words, which is critically important. And I always love to give something back to the people who are listening in. We have a couple of free things on the website. But I’d also like to offer to your podcast listeners a free copy of the ebook of master storytelling how to turn your experiences into stories that teach lead Inspire. So if you just go to our website, Master hyphen, storytelling.com and then slash forward slash podcast gift that will get you there. Now that’s a hidden page because it’s only open to the people that listen to your podcast. You So mastermind storytelling.com/podcast gift.

Great, thank you so much. It has been such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for being here.

It’s been my pleasure being with you, Melanie, thank you for all the good that you’re doing.

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Well, it was great having mark on the show. And, you know, it’s been really interesting. Talking to him, I really love this idea of story, to illuminate the good and to also come out and talk about the things that that didn’t go so well. It’s, it’s really important to have a way to share our vulnerability through story. I really want to challenge you to come up with a story that you can share your vulnerability, we don’t always have to do that. In the moment. I think leadership, we know that as leaders, we’re supposed to be vulnerable. But we don’t always have to do it right in the moment. So I really challenge you, if you’re leading, I want you to come up with a story that’s a safe vulnerability. It doesn’t have to be a vulnerability. That’s like your most tender spot. But think of you know, a story or two that are ways that you overcame adversity that could be shared with your team to help them know that you overcame adversity in some way so that you can pull it out when you need it. I also want to give you one of our cheat sheets that helps you understand leaders and what they struggle with. It’s our reactive cheat and you can get it free at reactive cheat sheet dot experimental leader.com. And it really goes into a lot of the leadership styles that I talked about in my book can be really helpful in both identifying your own reactive cheat sheet reactive leadership styles or toxic leadership styles and those of leaders around you. He gives you some helpful hacks for those those toxic leadership styles and and I just want to encourage you to go out and have a fantastic week. Go experiment!

 

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Mark Carpenter

Mark Carpenter is a serial storyteller.

Telling stories since childhood, Mark leveraged his ability into a career in marketing communications and public relations and later as a college professor and corporate facilitator.

His storytelling became even more purposeful and effective after researching and writing the best-selling book “Master Storytelling: How to Turn Your Experiences Into Stories that Teach, Lead, and Inspire.”

Now, as a facilitator, consultant, and speaker, he teaches others what he learned in the process.

When he’s not training, speaking, coaching, or creating new content, Mark is likely hiking or snowshoeing in the mountains near his home in Utah, playing the piano, bragging about his grandchildren, or writing children’s books.

 

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