The Protagonist & The Narrator w/ Jonathan Adler

Today’s guest, Jonathan Adler, is an internationally recognized scholar in the study of personal narrative and its relationship with well-being. Jonathan is a professor of psychology at Olin College of Engineering, a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and a theater director and playwright. His work brings together the rigor of science with the wonder and mystery of art, to show how writing a narrative and then living into that narrative can shift the future for the better. 

Jonathan and Chris discuss: 

• What the science tells us about how storytelling and narratives work 
• Why humans tell stories, and the role these stories can play in transforming leaders and organizations 
• Why redemptive narratives, such as the American narrative about beating cancer, can be transformative—but why these same narratives can also do harm 
• How leaders can use storytelling to navigate narrative conflicts and create alignment around a shared vision of the future 

And much more! 

Transcript

Jonathan Adler  0:00  
Any personal transformation ultimately takes a storied form, whether it begins that way or not. Stories are how we create meaning and hold on to our lives. And we're not just the protagonist, we're also the narrator. We shape our lives by narrating them first to ourselves and then to others.

Chris Hare  0:18  
Welcome to the Storied Future Podcast, a show where I interview high performing CEOs, experts and innovators who have put new narratives out into the world and then use those narratives to shift the future. If you want to create a future where you're celebrated not only for what you've accomplished, but for how you've accomplished it, who you took with you and who you became in the process. You're in the right place. 

If you're the CEO or president of a seven to 10 figure company that's navigating transformation. I'd love to help I work with high performing leaders who believe in the power of storytelling and narrative design to shift the future, offer coaching, workshops, consulting and keynotes. And I'd love to book a call with you to learn about the narrative challenges that you're facing. You can reach me at Chris@thestoriedfuture.com. 

My guest today is Dr. Jonathan Adler. Jonathan is a professor of psychology at Olin College of Engineering, a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and a theatre director and playwright. He specializes in the role of personal stories and wellbeing, focusing on how individuals make sense of life's challenges, and how this shapes identity and well being. Jonathan is also the editor of Personality and Social Psychology review, and the Chief Academic Officer of Health Story collaborative. His work has gained recognition from major media outlets, including the New York Times, National Public Radio, the Atlantic and hidden brain. I first discovered Jonathan's work earlier this year, when I was exploring the academic research on narratives. I love how he brings together the rigor of science with the wonder and mystery of art, to show how writing a new narrative, and then living into that narrative can shift the future for the better. Jonathan and I talk about what the science tells us about how storytelling and narratives work, why humans tell stories, and the role that these stories can play in transforming leaders and organizations. Why redemptive narratives such as the American narrative about beating cancer can be transformative. But why these same narratives can also do harm. And finally, how leaders can use storytelling to navigate narrative conflicts and create alignment around a shared vision of the future. Let's dive in. Jonathan, thanks for joining me on the story. Future podcast.

Jonathan Adler  2:24  
Oh, thanks so much for having me.

Chris Hare  2:26  
So before we get into your story, I'd love I know you do a lot of work in identity, love to hear a little bit about who you are without talking about what you do.

Jonathan Adler  2:35  
So ironically, you're starting off this conversation about stories without asking for a story. That's actually really useful, because I think it'll help listeners feel the difference between what social scientists call narrative identity and social identity. So I think you'll see social identity is important, but it's kind of boring without the stories that go along with it. So without talking about what I do for work, I would say I'm a husband, a dad, a gay man, son, brother, uncle, friend, someone with very clear work life boundaries. These are incredibly important parts of my identity. But as you can see, without stories, they just sort of feel like checkmarks. So that's why stories are so important.

Chris Hare  3:22  
Yeah. So often, people can jump right into what they do and miss the core identity piece. Yeah, exactly. But I love that pushback and excited to dive into your actual story. You have incredible energy around what you do. But I would love to understand what's that one thing. So if you could just pick one thing that completely lights you up, where it's like, Time stands still. And you're just could do that thing for hours on end?

Jonathan Adler  3:45  
Well, actually lots of things to choose from, which is why I really love my job. I'd say, when I'm in that flow state with a writing where I feel like I really have something important, I want to say, and I'm enjoying the wrestling of saying it the right way. That's not to say I always love writing, sometimes it's a brutal slog. But I definitely have those moments where I just feel like, Oh, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm supposed to figure out the way to communicate that. That's

Chris Hare  4:14  
interesting to me, too. Because, again, I don't know you well, but seeing the creativity and the energy and the people connection. And story connection is so powerful. But then writing is also very alone, I should say, yeah, absolutely

Jonathan Adler  4:27  
can be in addition to my research background, I have a theater background. And so I always think about writing. For some audience. I always think about who I'm writing to. But yes, that act of writing is usually a solitary one.

Chris Hare  4:41  
So if we fast forward to your first day of retirement, what is it you think that you'll be most proud of and how do you want people to remember you? I

Jonathan Adler  4:49  
don't actually see myself retiring in some dramatic way but sort of slowly weaning down my responsibilities someday? I think I envisioned sort of a gradual transition from my identity as a worker to whatever my identity will be after that, if I even need an identity after that. But since you frame this around retirement, again, I think I'll talk about that makes me think you want me to talk about work stuff. The truth is, the things that I'm going to feel most proud of, will also be about the kind of father I am the kind of husband I am, I hope that the ways in which my husband and I Shepherd our kids through the ups and downs of our lives will actually be the most salient thing to me, towards the end of my life. But in terms of what I'll be most proud of, and how I want to be remembered for my work, I mean, I can point to specific accomplishments that I know are going to endure in my identity. So like being the editor of a leading scientific journal, or CO writing an Off Broadway play, but ultimately, I hope that it's more my way of engaging, that sticks with me and with other people. I hope that I will take pride in my collaborative approach, my willingness to take risks, to follow ideas where they lead, rather than where they'll getting the most traction, that kind of process stuff. And

Chris Hare  6:11  
we can open the lens up, I sense that your person who is not work is over here, and life is over here. It's very much about integration, right? But so when you open it up further, what are your personal values? And then what's the future that you're trying to create? When you think about your kids, for example? Yeah,

Jonathan Adler  6:25  
I mean, kindness, for sure. We talk in our family about kindness as our number one family value. But in the journal that I edit, we have also explicitly articulated kindness as the guiding principle behind the editorial culture that we're trying to cultivate. I think a lot about the alignment of process and product that the thing you're trying to do, should align with the way you're trying to do it. I think a lot about equity and justice. I think both in my work, and in my family, I'm trying to create a future where our fundamental interconnectedness doesn't feel so at odds with our needs are real needs for autonomy and mastery, where those can sort of coexist. I

Chris Hare  7:11  
love that. So I'd love to understand your formative years. So if we rewind, where did you grow up? Where were you like, as a kid? And what did play look like? Well,

Jonathan Adler  7:19  
I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, which is a suburb of Boston, which is also where I live now. And we're raising our kids. As a kid, I was definitely always into imaginative play. So my younger sister and I would spend long stretches of the weekend in our playroom, we'd use her Barbies, or my action figures to act out these long, elaborate adventures. And I guess, it's also important that I was pretty sick as a kid, I was hospitalized a bunch of times. And that really sort of interrupted my developing friendships. So my sister really was my best friend until I was in eighth grade, then I sort of discovered theater, and that was a magnet into a whole new chapter of my life. And interestingly, it really was still about enacting the stories collaboratively, but in a really different way. It's

Chris Hare  8:12  
interesting, you're the, I think, the second guest on the podcast, who had the childhood sickness and going internally, and that was my experience as well, where I lived very much in my head, kind of imagining the future and creating all of these worlds. Did you think a lot about the future as a kid and what did you kind of imagine about it? Or were you very much in the present? No,

Jonathan Adler  8:33  
I think as a relatively privileged kid, I definitely believe that anything was possible. And I sort of knew that my job was to figure out what mattered to me and then to pursue that. I do think being sick a lot. And my struggles with friendships as a kid definitely impacted me. I think both made me more of an observer than I might have been. Otherwise, they help to tune me to the social forces that shape our lives. And I guess, although I didn't know it as a kid, I think being gay also gave me an implicit feeling of being different, which definitely sort of cultivated a lens through which I now understand the world. I know,

Chris Hare  9:15  
this may be impossible to recall, or over time, do you feel like you were able to kind of see what was going on? Or see like, Hey, this is not okay, the way you're being treated.

Jonathan Adler  9:25  
I think I developed this sort of dual consciousness where I was both in the flow of my life doing my life, but also sort of observing it and watching it from that sort of detached observer perspective. And I think those feel quite integrated now. But I think I've benefited a lot from the ability to take on both perspectives.

Chris Hare  9:46  
It's odd to me how the struggles that we go through can often shape almost what we do eventually in our careers, right. What I do is very much related to some difficulties early on and throughout my life. Right, but it's not that you would ever wish that on anyone, but it can be leveraged as a gift to help other people.

Jonathan Adler  10:06  
Right, right. I feel like in my life in particular, these challenges in the context of otherwise of privileged life, comfortable socio economic means not facing the brunt of systemic racism, things like that. That is a particularly potent recipe for both being set up to really be successful in life, but also to appreciate the challenges that other people who are less fortunate than you have faced.

Chris Hare  10:34  
So how did you get into storytelling and narrative? 

Jonathan Adler  10:36  
Well, as you can see, I've actually always been interested in stories, right? I mean, getting into theater as a kid was a key piece of it. So when I was in seventh grade, I got involved with a theatre company that doesn't exist anymore called Boston Children's Theatre. And there was a production of was a theatrical adaptation of The Red Badge of Courage, the sort of civil war story of a young kid, a teenager who goes off to war and gets really scared of the battle and ends up taking some blood from a dead soldier and wiping it on himself pretending to be injured so he can leave the war. In this adaptation for the stage, that main character was actually split into two, there's a teenager who plays the main character. And there's a younger kid who plays sort of his inner child who follows him around and they have dialogue throughout the play, and the other characters can't see him. And I was cast as in that child role. And it was a very large role, I was really intimidated by it, it was definitely the first big part that I had. But I also looking back on it now, I think that feeling that the character has of oscillating between being seen and not being seen, there's something that resonates that for me, now, there's a way in which that character is the voice inside the head of the main character. It's written with sort of a naive optimism about the world and naive curiosity about the world, and not sort of a punitive adult voice of consciousness kind of inner voice. And yeah, ultimately, I was a very anxious actor, I have done theater my whole life, I continue to do theater. But I do not like to be on the stage as the actor, I'm much more comfortable, either as the director or as the playwright. And I think that it back encapsulated in that role that being seen not being seen at the same time. That's a seed for me, as I think about my own life in theater.

Chris Hare  12:34  
And so moving forward, then how did you ultimately get into this field?

Jonathan Adler  12:38  
Yeah. So again, I've always been interested in stories. And I think getting into theater as a kid was a big part of that. And a lot of my friends did sports. And I always have thought that the story of sports is ultimately about winning and losing, right. So no matter how much the camaraderie of your team is central to your experience of sports, it's really impossible to tell that story without there being losers. But with theater, once you get past the audition process, it's really not a story about winning. It's a story about doing something together. It's about that belief that devoting hours of your time to collaboratively telling a story is the most compelling way. And most important thing that you should do, and that sharing that stories with others is the most important thing you can devote yourself to. And I really think that set me up to believe in the power of stories. So when I got to college, I planned to be sort of in either in English or history major. But I took this course called representations of mental illness and literature that was actually taught by a psychology professor, and it just absolutely hooked me. I did end up taking a lot of English in history, but I ended up majoring in psychology and minoring in theatre. And then when I discovered as I was graduating from college, the small subfield of research that I'm in now, I just knew I knew that was the thing for me.

Chris Hare  14:06  
That's interesting. We have a specific future in mind, and we're trying to write that future. And then there's something different, like for you, psychology that almost grabbed you. And it's like, no, come over here, right. And then that's propelling you. I love it when that happens. Yeah,

Jonathan Adler  14:19  
I was like, oh, it's the people behind the stories, not just the stories. 

Chris Hare  14:23  
And I like as well, especially when you think about not just psychology, but our whole existence is living and working together as a community. Right? Absolutely. And so that learning that you took from theater, I think is so critical, right? And especially when we think about not just the United States, but I'll pick on the United States, where it's very much about me as the individual and what I've accomplished, and we know that's really not the case. But then it ends up leaving us very, very isolated and empty honestly.

Jonathan Adler  14:53  
And one of the things that continues to draw me to theater is that many art forms are collaborative, right making a film In this collaborative, but what's so magical about theater is that even the performance is collaborative, because, by definition, you're there with a live audience. So this is a group of people who have decided to give two hours of their time to watching another group of people tell a story. Yeah, that happens with film. But these days, we mostly watched film, on our couch, with the people in our family, or even by ourselves, and theater doesn't work like that. So even the delivery of the art form is fundamentally about a shared process. And any actor will tell you that different audiences have completely different energy and change the performance. 

Chris Hare  15:38  
And so when you're directing, when are you happiest? Is it in the middle of it? Where you're seeing that live interaction? Is that at the end of it? What is that for you?

Jonathan Adler  15:46  
Oh, I'm never happiest during the performances? No, I'm definitely happiness in the early to middle stages of the rehearsal process where I'm working with the cast to really discover pieces of the play pieces of the character, have those aha moments that only come when you have a bunch of minds all trained on the same thing and trying to crack it together? And also that spirit of experimentation as you're trying to figure it out? I love that early phase of discovery in the rehearsal process.

Chris Hare  16:19  
So going on from there, how did you ultimately pick healthcare as your field for applying narrative?

Jonathan Adler  16:25  
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that my own experiences with illness certainly played a role, right? I mean, illness is an inevitable part of life for everyone. But I think it gives most people a sense for the pieces of life that we can't control. And I've spent a lot of my life feeling like I can't control my body. But the work in my field really reminds us that we're not just the main character in our lives, we're also the narrator. And so while we don't narrate our lives in a vacuum, we have some control over the story that we tell. And I think I've always found a sense of personal agency and taking the raw material of my life and making it into a story that supports my well being. And then also, having experienced the healthcare industry over my whole life. It's so horrifyingly fragmenting, it's no longer anyone's job to keep the high level picture in mind. So instead of being the integrated, whole people that we are, we end up being split up into individual organs, or cells or inflammatory processes. And I just feel like when we're already facing the inherent uncertainty and anxiety of illness, the experience of healthcare in America today only makes things worse. So addressing that challenge is really the primary mission of health story collaborative, which is a nonprofit that I've worked with for the past decade. And I think it just feels like healthcare is such a heightened experience for people when it comes to their identity, and a place where the system is doing such a bad job. 

Chris Hare  18:04  
What's interesting, too, because I think you're kind of putting your finger on also a myth that yes, often we feel very out of control when it comes to health care in the healthcare system or being ill. But then, in the business world, the myth is, I am in control generally. Right. But I think, to your point sickness shows us that we're not in control. Exactly. But we have far less control than we think.

Jonathan Adler  18:28  
That's right. And we all have that need to feel like we're have some control of our lives, some sense of agency to direct the course of our lives. And we do have some control over that. And yeah, I think health care and illness and healing in particular is a domain where, yeah, that's just laid bare for us. And we have to grapple with it.

Chris Hare  18:56  
So I know you write a lot about and your study is on narrative identity. Can you define that for me? 

Jonathan Adler  19:01  
Oh, sure. So in my field, we talk about narrative identity as the internalized, evolving story of the self that weaves together the reconstructed past, the perceived present, and the imagined future. And we tell these stories to give our lives a sense of unity, purpose and meaning. 

Chris Hare  19:23  
And how does fact or reporting on fact, fit into that? For example, when I tell you a story, the way that you respond in the way I tell it can shift, I think, how I recall it, and how I tell it, right? Oh, for sure. How do you think about that reporting, on fact, in the middle of stories that are shifting? 

Jonathan Adler  19:42  
I mean, it sounds to me that you're asking about the role of truth in storytelling. And I guess, I would say that stories are not about truth. That's not what they're there for. So in the sort of grandfather of this field of reason Jerome Bruner talks about there being two modes of human cognition, which he gave very cumbersome titles to, he called them the paradigmatic and the narrative. And the paradigmatic mode is the mode of science. That's the mode of testable hypotheses, and fact based argument. And the other mode is the narrative mode, which is the mode about meaning. And so yeah, if you want to know sort of what really happened, asking someone to tell you a story about it is not the way to get at it. Certainly we know that from the research on eyewitness testimony in the courtroom, which is incredibly persuasive to jurors, and incredibly unreliable, because our memories are just not built that way. I can talk a little bit about why our memories are not built that way, if you're interested, yeah, that'd be great. Okay, so let's think about why we have memory in the first place. So memory is not there are so we can hold on to every fact doesn't happen. If you think about our evolutionary history. If you walk by a cave and a bear jumps out, it actually doesn't help you that much to remember that cave. And that bear, what you need to remember is that dark places might hide danger. That's much more adaptively useful to you. And so if we could only hold on to the past, exactly as it happened, it wouldn't be that useful to us. What we need is to hold on to the gist of our memories. And so the slipperiness of memory is actually a feature of the system. It's not a bug in the system. 

Chris Hare  21:33  
So then how do you can you talk to me some about the research that you do, where someone could say, hey, these narrative and storytelling conversations, these might be squishy? Right. Can you talk about how you balance that and what the research says?

Jonathan Adler  21:46  
I think I'd say two things. First, is I would say, Yeah, you're right. The stories that we tell about our lives are not scientific products. They're not about testable hypotheses. They're about what life means to us. And we need a different mode for thinking about that. But second, that doesn't mean that we can't use the tools of science to study them. So I like to always bring up this quote. So the eminent evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, defined humans, as primates who tell stories, right? So stories are the tool that evolution has shaped for our species to navigate our complex social niche. And we can collect stories and understand what's going on in them using the tools of science. But it's also absolutely vital to remember that science isn't the only method for understanding our stories. We also desperately need the rich, humanistic and artistic traditions for making sense of our stories and amplifying their power. So it's like, which kinds of questions do you want to ask about stories? Both are valuable?

Chris Hare  22:49  
Can you then share I'd love to hear an example of from your work of how narrative has transformed a person's mental health and the work that you do there? Sure.

Jonathan Adler  22:58  
Gosh, I have lots of examples. I think the most succinct one, and one, which I've already published is the story of a woman named Sandy. So this was a study that we did about 10 years ago now, but her story is always stuck with me. So in this study, we got a bunch of people who said they would like to see a psychotherapist, they contacted a major outpatient clinic to say I'd like to see a therapist, these were all adults, they were all looking for individual therapy, but for a huge variety of issues and ultimately enrolled in a huge variety of treatments. And what we did was before they started their treatment, we got their stories, and we measured their mental health using standard questionnaire based methods. And then in between every session again, we collected their story. And we measured their mental health using standard questionnaires. And what that allowed us to do was to look at what was going on in the story, and then actually to quantitatively plot the trajectory of different themes in their stories alongside their mental health. So Sandy was the example that I use for illustrating the sort of mean finding in that study. So Sandy was actually the youngest person in our sample. She was just a teen when she came to the clinic. And she had been through two brief and unsuccessful courses of group and family therapy, and she was experiencing depression and some eating disorder symptoms. And in the first story, she told before she started treatment, she had this line where she said, I've sunk low enough to depend so much on other people. And you just got this sense of a person who was just passively being batted around by the whims of the world. And so she goes along through I think it was, might have been 12 sessions is my guess. And by the story that she tells at the end, I looked this up so I could get the quote, right, she says, I feel enlightened and inspired and encouraged and empowered for greatness. And it's just hard to imagine a more dramatic trance formation. There's some of this sort of add a lesson to Why'd I miss to it, which I kind of love about that quote, but we see is this drastic change in what psychologists call the theme of agency. So this is a theme that captures the way that you portray the main character in your story, ie you. And again, are you sort of in the driver's seat of your life are you being tossed around at the whims of fate, and again, no one is actually fully in control of their lives. So these are stories, these are themes and stories. And what we saw on sandy stories, this dramatic increase in agency, and that was representative of the overall sample, what we found looking across all the participants in the study is that over the course of therapy, people got better that's well established result in the psychotherapy literature. We saw these increases in agency across participants. But then we also found that changes in the narratives actually came before changes in participants well being. So we actually titled The paper living into the story, because it was as though people narrated a new version of their lives, and then lived their way into it. 

Chris Hare  26:10  
Got a really cool picture, as you're talking was of you directing a production, and how you're directing those folks will in her case, she's directing her future self, to your point, right. That's a beautiful picture. The other thing that jumped out at me, which is kind of it's a word that keeps popping up this season of the podcast is trajectory. Right? So that's something that you imagined could actually see as that trajectory improving over time. But also, she kind of, in some ways, spoke it into being or kind of said, This is what's coming right, and then then lift it, that's cool. Exactly.

Jonathan Adler  26:42  
It's cool. When you look at the graphs, you look at the line that marks the trajectory of well being, and you can see it gradually going upward, not super linearly, but going upward. And same with the theme of agency. And you can't just by looking at the two lines next to each other tell about their temporal relationship. So we use these sort of sophisticated quantitative modeling techniques to look at the relationship between the slopes of the lines, and that's where it comes out. And we can run the models, different ways to see is it the narrative is changing first or mental health is changing first. And what we found Yeah, was that the story has changed before mental health changed.

Chris Hare  27:20  
So when I think about the stories, I tell myself, what's the difference between that story and kind of the overarching narrative? I think you refer to them as master narrative that shapes my overall trajectory.

Jonathan Adler  27:31  
Well, so master narratives are different than that. Okay, I guess I'll think about those three pieces then. So the little stories that I tell this narrative identity, the story of my life, and then the master narrative. So I think I see the little stories that we tell every day as sort of parts of the whole, right, we're always translating our experience into narrative. And those little stories become candidates that might show up in the broad story of our lives, we think about narrative identity as the integration of the little stories, or it's like the architecture of our identity that holds all the individual parts together. And then in my field, we talk about Master narratives as the dominant cultural narratives that are out there. Those are often implicit, and they can be invisible, but they're very powerful. So certainly, in the illness literature we talk about, well, I'll save that for later. I know, we're going to talk about redemption later. And that's a good place to bring that up.

Chris Hare  28:27  
So what are some of the big master narratives that are out there in the world with some examples? 

Jonathan Adler  28:31  
Yeah, there are so many master narratives, again, we think about the sort of textbook definition of a master narrative is a particular cultural storyline that is accessible to a particular axis of identity. And of course, we all have many axes of our identity. So there are master narratives about gender, about race, about nationality, about science, you could even think about over generations, families having particular master narratives. I'll give you one example now and then maybe we'll loop back to it later. But there's really beautiful work illustrating the ways in which the theme of redemption, were scenes that start bad and good is an American master narratives. So there's this book by Dan McAdams, who's a psychology professor at Northwestern called the redemptive self stories Americans live by and he sort of interweaves a study of midlife American adults with a treatment of the broad sweep of American history. And over and over again, we see stories of redemption, just sort of peppering the American story. And in my work with medical patients redemption shows up a lot. Because when bad things happen, we expect people to be able to spin positive stories about them. And so we often talk like if you get cancer, that sucks, and that's hard. But then there's a particular kind of story you're supposed to tell about your cancer, right? Cancer ad fighter, or cancer showed you how much people love you. And if you can't tell one of those stories, it's kind of a double whammy. Now you have this illness, and you're not telling the kind of story that people want to hear about that illness that has its own challenges associated with it. So there are consequences for deviating from cultural master narratives. 

Chris Hare  30:23  
Yeah, there's very much I think you've talked about how narratives work for us in some contexts and others, they don't work for us or work against us or harm us. Exactly.

Jonathan Adler  30:33  
We live in this narrative ecology, right. We're born into a world where there are already stories about us even before we're born. And so we are always grappling with the relationship between the stories that we receive about ourselves and the stories that we want to tell about our own selves. And our own individual stories are always in dialogue with those broader cultural narratives.

Chris Hare  30:55  
So how does telling your story transform you? And then how does telling it to others? And then hearing yourself tell it? What's that effect. So

Jonathan Adler  31:03  
I would argue that any personal transformation ultimately takes a story to form, whether it begins that way or not. Right? Stories are how we create meaning and hold on to our lives. So our experiences always ultimately take the shape of a story. And we play not just the main character in our lives, we're not just the protagonist, we're also the narrator, we shape our lives by narrating them first to ourselves and then to others. And stories are also essential to culture. So all culture change, also takes the form of stories at some point, communities get formed through shared stories, social change happens through intervening in the stories that constrain our lives and our vision for the future. So again, I think, no matter how people approach the process of personal transformation, stories are going to play this key role. And sharing those stories of others is what enables culture change, by putting out a story of, hey, it doesn't have to go the way you thought it was gonna go. It could go this way. That is how cultural change happens.

Chris Hare  32:10  
Which is fascinating, right? Because if you think about the greater good, if I'm just me and isolation, but if you're thinking about the greater good, by me, choosing whether it's out of fear, or by someone else suppressing me, by me not telling my story, that's actually society, or my family, or whoever is not getting the full benefit that they could get from me being here. Right? Absolutely, absolutely. Which from a inclusion standpoint, when I think you would very much want to create a culture and an environment that allows people to explore those stories tell those stories, right?

Jonathan Adler  32:44  
That's exactly right. Yeah, I think our futures are constrained by the limits of our imagination, a big part of this slippery ness of our memory system is so that we can take bits and pieces of things that have happened, and reassemble them into futures that we haven't actually lived out. Also, there's a wonderful literature on what's called the function of fiction. And the question is like, why are humans drawn to stories that they know are not true? And the answer is because it adds to the repository of ideas that you can draw on, as you're trying to imagine your own future. So indeed, from an equity and inclusion perspective, the only way that we make pathways for people is to put stories of other people out there to let people say, Oh, that is a possibility For me. my story could include a chapter like that also. 

Chris Hare  33:36  
So if I don't like the future that I'm creating, or the trajectory that I've been on, how do you advise that I shift that through my narrative? Yeah.

Jonathan Adler  33:45  
So the first is through awareness, right, and a realization of, hey, the story that I'm telling is not working for me. And then also awareness that you're not just the main character in your story, you're also the narrator. And then awareness that the way that you tell your story really does matter, and that you can work to revise it. So we can get into some of the research on different ways of telling stories that tend to support well being. But I do think just that awareness is the absolutely crucial first step. So mostly what we look at in stories are the themes, the way people go about narrating their lives. Those themes are often not super presents in people's minds, they might not say, I am telling a story, low agency or whatever. And there are dozens of themes for which there's quite a robust science behind them. And I can talk about some subset of them if you're interested in but it's usually paying attention, not so much the content of people's stories, but the way that they tell them the themes. 

Chris Hare  34:48  
So you work at Olin College of Engineering, and you teach storytelling there. Can you talk a little bit about your role there, but then also some about the work that you do and what you're proud of there?

Jonathan Adler  34:59  
Yeah. Sure. So I co-direct the story lab at Olin, where we have both internally and externally facing work So briefly, externally, we tend to work with clients that range from other colleges and universities, including we've done work with presidents of universities and members of boards. We worked with nonprofits, we've worked with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, some work with companies. And in that externally facing work, we are usually doing one of two things, we are either producing stories labs, where we work with people from that organization, to tell really compelling stories, and then perform them for people in the organization. And we also run workshops on how to tell stories and how to work with your own story. So if anyone is listening and is interested in bringing us to your workplace, please reach out. And then internally, every year we run two story slams at Olin, so one where we work with students to help them tell stories about key moments in their lives. And then another where we pair those students stories, with stories from faculty and staff, it's really important to us to demonstrate that everyone has stories that matter, and that with coaching, anyone can tell really artful stories?

Chris Hare  36:17  
And what are some resistance that you run into? Where I imagine someone's very dyed in the wool engineer, and you're like, No, we're gonna get creative over here and tell the story, what are some of the resistance you encounter? But then also, is there a breakthrough story? 

Jonathan Adler  36:31  
Yeah, it's funny, we have really seen this as an initiative of cultural change. My colleagues that I work with running the story lab, and I really see stories as a tool for cultural change. And we have taken that on and not the easiest context, right? Engineering is not the place, you might start doubling down on the power of telling the stories. So yeah, I mean, I think the resistance we find is more one of benign neglect, like, oh, stories, that's nice. People like coming to the stories lands, they're fun events and stuff like that. But I think what people don't realize is that they are really powerful engines of culture. So for example, we our students story slam every year, we run it at our big admissions event, where students who are interested in the college come to campus and do a bunch of things, and we run it there. And we do it, they're very much on purpose, because we have an audience of people who are trying to figure out what is this place about, and the stories that we share are not all happy, happy colleges, the best place ever, and I'm always happy. And those are boring stories. So we try to tell real stories. And what we have found is that more than anything else over the last 10 or so years, is that the story slams have been a real engine of recruitment for various minoritized people. So students of color, LGBTQ students, students with disabilities, they really resonate with the stories that they hear at these lambs. And because they see them on such a public stage, it makes them believe that Olin is a place where they can thrive also. And I'll give you one small example of this, there are so many stories that stick with me, because stories are like that they're sticky, but one that will always have sort of a special place in my heart was a student of ours, Antonio Perez. So Antonio was a first generation Latino student who had never been on stage before and was really nervous about telling his story. And one of the reasons that it sticks with me is that Antonio actually broke our first rule, which is the story has to be about you. And Antonio made clear, I can't tell my story with also telling the story of my roommate who dropped out of college, and my parents who are the only reason I was able to come to college in the first place. So we worked with him on this sort of multi vocal dialogical story. And it was so beautiful. And it had such a profound impact on the audience that through a series of connections, and Tony was actually invited to sit on a panel at the National Science Foundation about advancing equity in science, sitting next to a college president and a college Provost, just the three of them. So for us, that was a real example of the power of stories to get people's attention and to bring about culture change. 

Chris Hare  39:28  
And how much when you're guiding them and teaching them how much is it bringing frameworks and structure of this is how you build a story, versus the world I live in. And what I love is really people know how to tell stories. It can be really messy, right? So I'm curious where you fall on the messy versus fractured spectrum. 

Jonathan Adler  39:47  
Definitely on the messy side. My colleague that I work with has a PhD in English and I tap my theater side. We both definitely believe everyone has stories. Everyone can tell stories. It's The human adaptation. That's what we do all the time. The difference is translating the sort of messiness of the stories that we tell every day into art. And that takes coaching and practice. And everyone can also do that. But we lean much more into our creative writing, and sort of performative theatre sides. In coaching those stories, we try to really listen for what's there. What are the seeds of there? And how can we lean into that. So again, I'll give you one example. This was for a story slam we did for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, we were working with a engineering professor, who, in the early stages of our working, her story was all over the place. And we were trying to make sense of it. And finally, she said, Oh, by the way, I have ADHD. And we were like, Ah, this all makes sense. Now, let's do that. Let's have the form of your story be all over the place. So it started, like, I leave cups all over my house, and my husband can't stand it. Oh, and I do this really interesting work on macrophages, and Obama. And then about a third of the way through the story. She was like, I have ADHD, the experience you've just had of me bouncing all over the place is the way I live, but it's also my superpower. It's what allows me to see connections between things that other people don't have. So we love sort of meeting people where they're at seeing what's already going on for them, and then sort of elevating it in an artful way.

Chris Hare  41:32  
So we touched before talked a fair amount about the redemption piece. But I'd love to understand just a little bit more about redemption versus contamination or contaminants and narrative.

Jonathan Adler  41:42  
Yeah, sure. So again, redemption and contamination are some of the key themes that show up in people's stories. And redemption. Stories are stories that start bad and good. And contamination stories start good and bad. And it's important to remember that all lives have good and bad in them. So this is really about where you draw connections, where you parse the chapter breaks of your lives. And we find that stories that have redemption in them tend to go along with good psychological well being and contamination tends to be pretty bad for people's well being. 

Chris Hare  42:16  
And you talk about the fact that narrative is the nexus between self and society. What do you mean by that? Yeah.

Jonathan Adler  42:22  
So we all live in this narrative ecology, right? There are stories told about us before we're born, stories about other people like us in our culture. And so our individual stories are always in dialogue with these broad cultural stories that exist. And indeed, the only way to intervene and change broader cultural narratives is through what gets called counter narratives. You putting out your own individual story that in some way, complicates or repudiates, or engages in unexpected ways with the broad storylines that are out there. So narrative is both the medium of identity and the medium of culture, which is why I talk about narrative as the nexus of self and society.

Chris Hare  43:09  
So do you feel like it could just be because this is my world, and it's my self interest as well. But it seems like we're hearing a lot more about narrative these days. But do you feel it's accurate? And then why is that? I do.

Jonathan Adler  43:20  
This idea is certainly not grounded in scientific research, at least not that I know about. But I think our interest in stories is really about the fragmentation of our lives these days. On the one hand, we are being called on to narrate ourselves all the time, social media is one key example. But a tweet is not a story. And so we're sort of bombarded with these little fragments of different people. And if narrative is the human adaptation, we are ironically in sort of a language saturated world, but a narrative impoverished world. So I actually think we have a hunger for stories these days.

Chris Hare  44:05  
So in what ways do our brains process and think about stories differently than just an information dump? Right or a list? Yeah, so

Jonathan Adler  44:13  
I mentioned this a little bit before this idea that there are these sort of two modes of human cognition, the paradigmatic which is sort of the domain of science and facts and the narrative, the role of stories, neither of those modes is better than the other and neither is reducible to the other. They're just different and we need both. But stories are very persuasive. And there was this fantastic set of 15 studies published together in one manuscript in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science a year or two ago. And the authors found that people believe that facts are essential for sort of earning the respect of people who don't think like them. They were particularly interested in political conflict, but that what they found cross all these studies was that sharing personal experiences about some political issue was actually much more persuasive in earning the respect of people who are sort of your political adversary than just sharing facts with them. And we see this over and over. criminal attorneys are much more successful with juries when they paint compelling narratives than when they just list facts. And there's research on this in the sort of philanthropy world where stories are much more successful at eliciting philanthropic donation than facts are. So stories are very persuasive. 

Chris Hare  45:36  
So one of the challenges that I run into is that when I'm working with leaders on narrative, they can define it 100 different ways. I had a meeting with a C suite leader once and I asked him just for fun, like, how do you define narrative, and they define it like three or four different ways, right? But when you go outside of business, it's very clear when you hear there's a narrative on the news, you get it. And it's very clear, we all get what it is, but then we get into that world. And that's just a matter of curiosity. Curiosity for me, of the I don't know, if you have any responses to that.

Jonathan Adler  46:07  
You mean about the slipperiness of the definition of narrative? 

Chris Hare  46:10  
correct. 

Jonathan Adler  46:11  
Yeah, I mean, it doesn't surprise me because it's so ubiquitous, right? Again, if we think about narrative as the human adaptation, this is the thing we do all day, every day. So it's not surprising that people have different takes on it, the sort of classical definition that gets used in my world, is narratives are about human or human like characters. And I'll start over, there's going to be a bunch of jargon that I will unpack but the sort of classical definition that gets used in my field is narratives are about human or human like characters, and the vicissitudes that mark their action over time, right. It's about characters trying to do something over time. And a list of facts is not that a scientific hypothesis is not that. But a story is that a story is about a character trying to do something in relationship with other characters over time.

Chris Hare  47:02  
So if you are advising a CEO, that's nude or a role, or leading a massive transformation, so we're thinking, digital transformation, or energy transition, etc, what would you tell them about the role that the overarching narrative plays, but then also their own story plays in that.

Jonathan Adler  47:20  
oh, I actually would argue that storytelling is the only tool that they have, that anything else they do, whether it's analytics informed, or you technology informed, it's going to end up as a story in someone else's mind. So they ought to be thinking about that story in a proactive strategic way. The analytics may tell you something, analytics do not produce a story, they produce information. But to convey that information in a way that's actually going to be persuasive to someone, it's going to take the form of a story. And even if you don't present it, if you just present a bunch of pie charts, and whatever, your audience is going to weave it into a story in their heads. So you might as well get out in front of that and figure out what that story is,

Chris Hare  48:01  
I loved when I was at Amazon, everyone loves talking about how oh, we're data driven. And I say that all the time. And last season, I interviewed the former VP of Amazon Marketplace. And what was fascinating is what the data showed was that their entire business and the future of their business was resellers, bringing resellers onto the platform. And that was it. And so their entire strategy was based on that. But when he started connecting with actual humans and sellers, and specifically, I think traveling to Brooklyn, what he found was there were second third generation immigrant families who maybe they started out selling or repairing vacuum cleaners 60 7080 years ago, well, now the kids are creating or selling their own brand of vacuum cleaner bags, for example. Right? So they're brand owners, and it's this whole new category. But if you had only been looking without the human stories, and without the relationship, if you were just looking at the data, which was the case, they never would have seen that those brand owners are now responsible for probably 10s of billions of dollars for Amazon. Right. But that was that was hidden. Yeah.

Jonathan Adler  49:12  
And then that becomes a really important intergenerational story in that family. Like, look how the same thing that grandpa used to do, it has become the thing that now I do. 

Chris Hare  49:22  
So we'd like to think that if we tell a good enough story, and if it companies do this all the time, if we tell a good enough story, everyone will rally around it. But the reality is, there's going to be a lot of a lot of conflict, right? So the CEO, is definitely responsible for translating the business strategy into a narrative and they're responsible for being effective in driving that outcome. Right. But they're going to run into a lot of roadblocks. Can you talk a little bit about that narrative, collision and counter narratives that can happen? 

Jonathan Adler  49:52  
Yeah, I mean, so again, I see bridging that narrative divide is sort of the only way towards reconciling different visions. This. So thinking about the characters and their motivations, the ways in which the themes or storylines that these characters enact, those seem like the essential tools for overcoming disagreement. And indeed, you can get locked into really intractable stories than I think finding commonality in character motivation theme. That's the only way out of that intractable situation.

Chris Hare  50:28  
And I think what's been really interesting for me to discover in my narrative work is the I guess conflict and drama that values create, right? So if I'm willing to cut corners, and compromise my values, there's not a lot of story there, the story might be I make money faster, right. But in the end, where the most compelling stories are, is when I have values, for example, integrity, that's applied in a certain way, and I won't compromise on that. And therefore, I have to do something else, which produces some cases, I had a client who said, Okay, we are part of the supply chain, and the way that we behave, and the way that we price our products has to serve our retailers, so that we don't put them out of business, right. So we could cut corners in the short term, it would put them out of business, which ultimately harms us, but it's also the wrong thing to do. So then all you're left with is innovation or partnerships or other things like that, right. So one of the ways they do that is actually partnering with one of their biggest competitors, right. And so you're helping the competitor when you're winning as well. But you're also helping the ecosystem. Right? And so that, yeah, and values in a sense, I had a meeting just yesterday with the senior leader who said, we actually don't have a mission, vision or values or strategy or company was like, Whoa, that's yeah, good luck. But yeah, that's been really fascinating to see, as I've heard it defined as values are the things that you're willing to either suffer for, or pay a price for in some way. Right?

Jonathan Adler  52:04  
Yeah, right. Right. Yeah, you have to be about something. I don't know what that company with no vision, mission, strategy or values is what? You're just a money making machine and actually not a value. Yeah, right. And even if it's not working, but I would argue that is a value, there are always values at play, even if you haven't explicitly articulated them. So your behavior will reveal what your values are

Chris Hare  52:28  
100%. So I know well being is super important for you. It is for all of us. But I'm saying in terms of your focus, how can a leader promote a culture of greater well being? 

Jonathan Adler  52:40  
Yeah, well, I think leaders play a huge role in shaping the narrative ecology around them, whether that's a company or a community, or a country. And so the way leaders narrate their lives implicitly conveys what's acceptable for other people to do in narrating their own lives. So having a sense of humility, acknowledging that the story you tell about your life might not work for everyone or might not be equally available to everyone is a huge step in supporting a leaders communities. And I think making space for personal storytelling and participating in that work oneself is a huge step. So the president of my college, Gilda Barrett, vino has worked with me and my colleague in the story lab on telling a very vulnerable story from her own childhood, of racism and resistance. And she has told that story to both our college community, but also to other organizations that she leads, I see that as real evidence of investment in powerful cultural change.

Chris Hare  53:50  
It's fascinating, too, because there's this push pull of sharing, what's the right amount to share? Right, yeah, and the right environment to do that in. But I've also seen people who have come from being one of my guests, I used to work with him. And I told him that he used to be an automaton. And people were terrified of you not because you were mean, but you were just a machine, right? Yeah. But now I've seen you transform. And one of the things he shared was that by telling his story that's actually in hearing his story that's actually transformed him, and to become more empathetic, etc. Yeah, to your point, the humility piece is also something that really struck a chord when you said that, but that's something I'm seeing over and over again.

Jonathan Adler  54:35  
Yeah. And I really think leaders benefit from some coaching and how to do this because you're right, it can go wrong. Stories are a powerful thing because they don't only work for good. And so yeah, over sharing or sharing inappropriately or sharing, too vulnerably in the wrong situation. Those things can all undermine your agenda just as much as not sharing enough can it And I also think that we can all do this. We're all quite competent storytellers. And yet there is something in particularly high profile positions, to sharing not just with authenticity, but also with some artfulness to it. There is a difference between just telling I had this horrible thing happened to me in my life, and telling that in a way that transports other people into that experience, and lets them feel along with you to see the transformation that you've experienced on the other side, people can shut down when you just talk at them. And so there is some art to doing this in a persuasive way. And I think we all live in our stories. So we sort of forget, what are the parts that no longer feel super vulnerable to us? Right? So some coaching around how to do that, I think, and also to elevate the artfulness is really useful. Well,

Chris Hare  55:55  
Jonathan, thanks so much. This has been an absolute blast. Really, just such a privilege to learn from you. And I'm looking forward to continuing the conversation.

Jonathan Adler  56:03  
Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

Chris Hare  56:07  
Thanks for joining me for another episode of The Storied Future. What part of Jonathan's story did you find most impactful? Did anything shift in how you're thinking about your future, and how you're thinking about your narrative about how you want to tell your story? Find someone today and tell them your story. Because when we tell our stories, it can change us, it can change others, and it has the power to change the future. And that's it. Please subscribe, leave us a review, and be sure to visit TSFpod.com for information about Jonathan and his work, for show notes, and to check out other episodes. The Storied Future Podcast is a production of the Storied Future LLC. Produced and edited by Ray Sylvester. Audio engineering by Ali Ozbay and theme music by The Brewz. your host is me, Chris Hare. Learn more about how I help leaders use the power of narrative to transform themselves, their companies and their industries at WWW.the storied future.com.