Esther Choy, Author at Leadership Story Lab

Been An Underdog? Tell That Story In Your Next Presentation

Some of the world’s most successful people started out near rock-bottom. There are the stories of John Paul DeJoria sleeping in his car at the time he cofounded Paul Mitchell Systems hair care with $350 he borrowed from his mom. And there are the stories of unemployed single mom J.K. Rowling writing drafts of Harry…

An Easy Template for Telling Your ‘Overcoming The Monster’ Story

Industrialized countries throw out about $680 billion worth of food each year, and this waste releases the greenhouse gas methane while it rots. Many organizations, like the consumer goods company Unilever, are working to find solutions to address the “monster” of food waste. When Unilever learned that nearly 400 million pounds of pumpkins go to…

Leadership Is Hard. Crafting Origin Stories Shouldn’t Be

There are as many stories as there are people, but the most compelling stories in business can all be boiled down to five basic plots: stories of origin, rags to riches, rebirth, overcoming the monster and quests. All of these plots are crucial for a leader’s toolkit, but perhaps the most basic and essential are…

Storytelling Techniques To Maximize Your Summer

At the start, three months of summer sounds like an extravagant amount of time. Yet at the end of it, many of us will find ourselves asking, “Is summer really over? What have I done?” Every year, we seem to prove the saying right: “The day is long; the year is short.” Here are two…

Give a Storytelling Presentation That Connects

It was the day before their big presentation and the R&D managers had a problem. Their team had compiled a 62-page study on the company’s new product (not counting the appendices!). From this study, they had built a PowerPoint deck with 41 slides and teeny-tiny text. Would the managers be able to cover everything they…

Empathy Is A Skill. Here’s How to Apply It.

An interview with Michael Ventura, author of Applied Empathy. After enduring an unpleasant experience, figuring out how to improve upon it comes naturally. However, improving upon something you’ve never actually experienced is much harder, as Michael Ventura of the strategy and design practice Sub Rosa learned. Several years ago, General Electric asked Ventura and his…

High-Achieving Leaders, The World Cup Offers Crucial Lessons

Flowing beer. Check. Die Mannschaft jersey. Check. Saving our voices to root our hearts out for Germany’s national soccer team. Check. Earlier in June this year, my family and I were sitting in a suburb outside Stuttgart hoping and expecting Germany to make history during this year’s World Cup. Germany did make history at…

How Neuromarketing And Leadership Storytelling Captivate Audiences

In early Greek theatre, disapproving audiences sometimes threw stones at the performers. In those days, “knowing your audience” could mean saving your skin! No wonder the Greeks are famous for the art of rhetoric, making use of every tool at their disposal for understanding their listeners. Today, as leaders seek to engage audiences, they must…

Become a Better Leader with 3 Summer Reads

Summer offers a chance to catch up on much-needed reading to refresh and recharge your leadership. Unfortunately, summer is also short and reading lists are long. That’s why I scoured lists of books and then my team and I selected three summer reads that helped us look at life and work in a whole…

Get a Crash Course in Leadership Storytelling With These 5 Quotes

Leadership storytelling is the intentional assertion of your point of view. How do you master this leadership skill effectively and efficiently? In my book Let the Story Do the Work, I provide tools, templates and examples to help leaders sharpen their business storytelling skills quickly. The leadership storytelling quotes below all played a role in…