Esther Choy, Author at Leadership Story Lab

The One Category of Major Donors Fundraisers Can’t Miss

Before Covid hit, my family often traveled to Germany. There, we found “Asian” restaurants in many small German towns. I had to chuckle at the generalization. Did these restaurants serve East Asian food? South Asian? Chinese? Indian? Thai? I considered, too, how even the flavors, textures and colors of what gets called “Chinese food” vary…

3 Storytelling Secrets To Winning Major Gifts

Win major gifts for your college or university

Have you ever been surprised by news so positive, you had to pinch yourself to make sure you weren’t dreaming? Quite a few colleges and universities were in this position recently when they started receiving $10, $20 and $50 million dollar donations, all from a mystery donor. Finally, this past Tuesday, the stealth donor was revealed.…

When to Share an Embarrassing Moment

During a Q&A session in a seminar I taught at the prestigious Swiss Finance Institute, I had an embarrassing moment. The talk had been going well. In fact, when I asked my audience to exchange their answers to my “interactive questions” with someone sitting next to them, they filled the whole room with engaging discussions.…

Global Business Storytelling: Insights From 6 Countries

In 2016, I gave a talk on business storytelling in Switzerland at the invitation of the Swiss Finance Institute. The auditorium was packed. The audience seemed satisfied. But afterwards, one attendee approached me to say, “Storytelling seems useful, but it also sounds so much like some BS marketing ploy that Americans have come up with.” I…

Biden Used A Key Leadership Storytelling Tool To Unite America Against Covid

When facing a tough audience, many leaders fail to fully acknowledge that audience’s views. Sure, they might explain the opposing position. But usually they will quickly follow it up by saying “here’s why I respectfully disagree,” and then launching into mountains of data to support their own argument. That approach always fails. It was a relief, then, to…

7 Steps for Writing Business Stories Quickly

How do you begin to rebuild your company after your industry lost more than $35 billion in 2020 in the U.S. alone? How do you inspire confidence when your industry continues to lose $150 million a day? This is the challenge U.S. airlines face right now. They must spend money even while they are losing money,…

Tell Yourself the Right Story About the Impact of Your Work

All I dared to ask for was a quote. After all, I was approaching the Paul Sullivan, world-renowned wealth columnist for a newspaper many people recognize nearly as well as they recognize their own face in the mirror: The New York Times. I hoped Paul Sullivan would answer a few questions that would show others…

7 Storytelling Tips for Virtual Networking Events

That virtual networking event you’ve spent weeks planning is probably missing a huge opportunity. Online meetings fall into patterns that few of us question. But Eva Niewiadomski, founder of Catalyst Ranch, a creative meeting and event space in Chicago, has observed that it’s commonplace to squander the first few minutes of virtual networking events. “I haven’t seen…

Why Leadership Storytelling Revolutionizes Team Building

One of the many repercussions of the pandemic is the way it has destabilized workplace culture. “In a situation like this, everybody is in their little bubbles,” Cynthia Wang, a clinical professor of management and organizations at Kellogg School of Management, told Kellogg Insight recently, “and it’s hard to actually reinforce the shared values and goals of people…

4 Reasons Leadership Storytelling Matters Now

How do you convince a healthcare customer that your product can cover everything they need in order to capture and calculate daily Covid screenings for their entire staff? And not only that… to be able to visualize this data for their leadership? And then, in the end, to be able to share meaningful data with…