Anniversary celebrations are often full of broad accolades about all the accomplishments that have happened over a period of time. But the problem is, these aren’t the things that define a program or organization. What gives an organization spirit and life is the people, the moments, and the relationships that are formed.
Since boilerplate promotional videos are the norm for many organizations, one of our first conversations with clients is often to help them think outside the box and consider a different approach. But in this instance, the Hart faculty knew their program was special and that simply creating a promotional video or surface-level celebration would not do it justice. They decided to invite 22 of their most successful graduates to come back to Duke for an anniversary celebration centered around sharing and connecting through stories. We worked closely with the them to incorporate storytelling into many aspects of the program – through live storytelling, small group conversations, and sit-down interviews. Our goal was to move beyond “success stories” and to focus on formative moments that each participant had, either during the program or stemming from their experience in the program later in life.
The Hart Program is built upon relationships. Anyone who has been through it will tell you that what makes it special is the four core faculty – Alma Blount, Tony Brown, Bob Korstad, and Bruce Payne (and after working closely with them, we see why). They each have their own unique approach to exploring and teaching leadership, but they share common values and common goals for their students. When we learned that these professors were essentially the spirit of the program, we recommended the idea to doing a “kickoff” video about them as a way to start off the weekend of storytelling. In this video, we focused on specific formative moments that influenced them and helped them on their own paths.
We believe the most effective ways to focus in on a moment is through the telling of a specific anecdote versus an example or list of events. Anecdotes have emotion, they bring us into a moment in time and immerse us in an experience. Like Ira Glass says, anecdotes can make even the most mundane story interesting.
Usually when we conduct interviews we never share our questions ahead of time because we don’t want people practicing their answers in the shower and delivering them in a rehearsed way. But in this situation we approached the interviews in a different way. Many of these people were going to share experiences that happened a long time ago, so we wanted to give them a chance to reflect a little bit before their interviews. We also coached them in advance on how to craft a story using anecdotes and reflections to communicate meaning and emotion.
This approach to an interview series was a bit of an experiment for us and we were thrilled with the result. The participants came to the celebration with incredibly thoughtful and reflective stories and it was an absolute pleasure to listen to them. To pull off 26 interviews in a day-and-a-half we built a team of talented storytellers (who all happen to be women) to help us capture all the stories. These interviews will be the foundation of an online “Story Quilt” that will feature stories from the last 30 years of the Hart Leadership Program.
(Left to right) Casey Toth, Julia Wall, Catherine Orr, Elena Rue, Michelle Lotker, and Kelly Creedon
You can see the kickoff video here: