Forget the Hero's Journey
About this episode
Matt Stone discusses a simple framework for storytelling that emphasizes the importance of feedback and actionable insights.
Matt’s back after time away for a family loss, and he returns with something useful: a dead-simple framework for building a story on the fly. He’s skeptical of the elaborate storytelling models making the rounds on LinkedIn — the Pixar method, the hero’s journey — because nobody actually constructs a story in real time out of those. What he reaches for instead comes from an unexpected place: ten years running high-impact feedback conversations with leadership teams. His insight is that feedback and storytelling are chasing the same goal — not just to be absorbed, but to inspire action. The shorthand is DAP: Describe, Appreciate, Prescribe. He walks through all three. Describe the facts to set the scene and invite people in — concrete detail is what makes a workplace a listener has never entered suddenly feel familiar (everyone’s stood at a water cooler). Appreciate those facts — the meaning, the judgment, how you felt, the insight you drew — which is where the real value lives. Prescribe what it means going forward, for you and for the person listening. Land all three and your audience can see themselves in the story and imagine acting differently because of it. Matt closes on…
People in this episode
Host: Matt Stone
Topics covered
- storytelling
- feedback
- business communication
- self improvement
- leadership
Keywords
- storytelling framework
- feedback conversations
- business storytelling
- leadership teams
- actionable stories
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- MattGPT
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