Chief Change Officer - From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Two

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Chris Hare has helped big-name executives tell better stories. But today, the tables have turned—he’s the one sharing his story, and I get to ask the tough questions. In this three-part series, we break it down step by step: • Part 1: Corporate storytelling—how businesses craft messages that actually work (and when they don’t). • Part 2: The power of personal storytelling—Chris opens up about his own experiences and the most memorable stories he’s heard. • Part 3: Storytelling in action—Chris shares tools to help us develop our own narratives, and I put myself through the process (with a slight risk of emotional breakdown). If you’ve ever wondered how storytelling can shape careers, businesses, and even personal growth, you won’t want to miss this. Key Highlights of Our Interview: Rewriting Your Inner Cassette Tape “I find it helpful and more visceral to think about our personal narratives as a cassette tape—a tape that’s playing in our head that we’re constantly writing, rewriting, and adjusting.” Building One Authentic Narrative Across Multiple Worlds “A serial CEO I worked with wanted one narrative that connected his private equity, board roles, and yoga community. The result was an authentic narrative rooted in his true self that could be lensed across different audiences.” Proximity Blinds Us to Our Own Stories "We’re so close to our own narrative and stories that we don’t see the broader picture… if you’re building with Lego, you might not see that there’s a gigantic pile of Lego behind you." Changing the Inputs to Shift the Narrative and Change the Outcome “If you continue to put in the same inputs, things likely won’t change… One of the positive inputs I changed was I got into fly fishing, and that was part of changing those inputs to shift not only the narrative but the outcomes.” The Power of Raw Storytelling "Our stories are not always the really clean, really curated story that makes us look good, but that raw story that has the power to shift the future." Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Chris Hare Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. Experiential Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives Global Top 2.5% Podcast on Listen Notes World's #1 Career Podcast on Apple Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI 5 Million+ Downloads 80+ Countries

Hi everyone, welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. If you've been listening to my show, you know I bring guests from all corners of the world to share their stories. Through these stories, we dive into high-sight, insights, and foresight for you, the progressive-minded listeners who crave change. Whether you're navigating a career shift, a personal transformation like health challenges,

or driving change in your organization or community, there's something here for you. Today's episode has a unique twist. I'm interviewing a storytelling expert to share his own story. My guest, Chris Hare, is a strategic narrative advisor and coach for companies like Amazon and Microsoft, guiding leaders and executives with his approach called Atomic Storytelling. His method breaks down complex stories into their cool, resonant elements. In this three-part series, we'll his expertise in helping businesses craft compelling corporate story and understand the connection between story and narrative. Today, in part 2, we'll look at storytelling for personal transformation as Chris shares some of the best and worst stories he's ever heard.

He will also open up about our own stories and narratives. And here's a personal confession. I told him one of his exercises might just make me cry. I'll also be sharing my own experience with another exercise, highlighting both its challenges and insights. So let's dive into the second chapter of Chris's story. So far, we've covered a lot about narrative and storytelling in a business context. But as you mentioned earlier, narrative can also play a powerful role at an individual level, for leaders, for people in career transitions,

or even entrepreneurs building a new venture. My next question naturally is, how do we apply narrative and story to individual situations? narrative and story to individual situations. Could you walk us through some examples to help illustrate this? I found it in the young people listening might need to go to Wikipedia and look up what a cassette is but I find it helpful and more visceral to think about narratives and our personal narratives as a cassette tape, a tape that's playing in our head. We're constantly writing and rewriting that and adjusting that. This is the future I'm creating or this is what's happening in the present or this is

what happened in the past, and we fuel that with stories. So I'll give you a few different practical examples. So one, I have this one CEO that I work with, he's a serial CEO and board member, and Chicago MBA, go Chicago, I know you're a fan, Chicago MBA, McKinsey consultant, when he came to me and said, it was, how do I, I have one narrative that I use

with private equity, another that I use with venture capital, another that I use with board roles when I'm interviewing. And then I've got my hippie yoga community and my nonprofit work. And what I want is one narrative. So yes, on the business side, how do I attract more board opportunities without me having to pursue them? How do they come to me?

So that was the outcome that he wanted. And I've become wise enough to know that I guarantee a process and I guarantee deliverables, but I won't guarantee an outcome because I've seen over and over that these narrative shifts that neither one of us could predict often, almost always happen, right? So with him, when we were done his narrative, he now has one narrative and an authentic narrative at the core of who he is that came out of his yoga practice, but it can now be used and lensed across each of those different audiences.

So now it's an authentic narrative that he can use when he's with his yoga community, but when he's talking to Goldman Sachs about a business they just acquired, he has that narrative lens. And then he has stories from his experience to support that narrative lens. There's a CEO that I just recently finished working with, and I thought this was going to be my first ever failure. And so this is somebody who has a remarkable story. It's like it could be a movie easily.

They were miserable in their role and they were sick of telling the story and said, Chris, I want a new story. I want you to help me create a new story and I want to exit my company. And it was fascinating. So in terms of my process, we do future visioning, but not just talking and thinking about it, feeling it.

So I put them in that space in the future where they feel that. And then they're also feeling the choices that they've made across their career, good and bad. Cause my goal is not to burnish their reputation or that's not my initial goal is to pull out all of the realities of what happened and how that impacts them, how that makes them feel for better or worse. And then we do storytelling across their lifespan, going all the way back to when

they were a little kid, and I look for patterns and energy there. So I'd done those two steps with this client and it wasn't succeeding. And I thought, okay, this is going to be my first ever failure. And then we did the third part of my framework, which I call Atomic 360s. And there interviewed people who knew this CEO for, in some cases, decades. So it was the executive team, his employees, his friends who had known him and seen him for a long time, other CEOs, board members, et cetera.

And I still can't believe what happened. Like when he heard the impact that he had on these people's lives and how he changed the way that they see the world, changed the way that they run their businesses, et cetera, it literally changed everything for him almost overnight. To the point where he went from completely miserable, I'm going to sell my company, to I'm going to stay in this company until I retire. I'm teaching myself my new narrative every single day, and I'm learning to be content and happy where I'm at.

He's now expanding to other geos, which will at least double his multiple when he exits. But the thing for him was, and this was a bit scary to say this to someone, but I said, I'm not going to give you a new external narrative. You don't need that. You have all these extraordinary stories across your life.

So those atomic stories are the fuel. And the way that you synthesize those was like, I'm not going to be happy in these roles or I'm never going to be happy. I have to go to the next thing to find that happiness. What we actually need to do is synthesize that and make different choices and uncover a new narrative, which is actually, if you go deep where you're at, that's where you're going to find the contentment and happiness.

And so it's actually rewriting the internal narrative versus the external. It sounds like you're visualizing each story or Lego brick as a piece of who you are, such as experiences, skills, moments, and memories you've collected over the years. Maybe you've filled a specific narrative with those bricks, a scripture you've told others and taught yourself for a long time. By working with someone like you or learning your method, it's like I'm reorganizing those those bricks in a new way, rearranging them to create a fresh, evolved narrative. So even though people might say, wow, this is the whole new Vince, it's still me, using the same foundational pieces, I'm just combining them differently. Highlighting new connections and themes is like building a new structure.

But every piece is part of my story. Just re-imagine. I love that. So the one thing I would add to that to in my mind make that analogy work incredibly well is you. So you're the one that's building with those bricks. So if we look at just the bricks on their own,

that shows us a static structure that's made up of those stories. So I 100% agree with that. And then you are the dynamic piece of that. You are the one who comes in and assembles those pieces from your past to assemble those new potential futures and that narrative. So I just want to zoom out our pullout slightly so that it definitely incorporates you in the energy that you bring, because that's what we do is really, we're shaping those pieces from our past.

So yes, absolutely love that analogy. My own sense of self-awareness has grown over time. Now I talk to different people like entrepreneurs who say, oh, I know myself better than anyone else. And they have a lot of confidence in their own self-awareness. But telling our own story, crafting our narrative, or even deciding which breaks to use and how to arrange them isn't that easy because we all have blind spots. So my question for you is what are some common blind spots or barriers that make telling

our own story or building self-awareness so challenging and why is it helpful to bring in someone like you to help with this process? Yeah, so I think part of it is distance, our proximity. So we're so close to our own narrative and to our own stories that we don't see the broader picture. So if you're building with Legos, you might not see that there's a gigantic pile of Legos that's behind you. All right. Or that you could order more online or here's another way to assemble them that you might not have thought of. Absolutely. I had one leader that I worked with.

They just started talking and they'd done a lot of therapy, but they'd also gone through a huge spiritual transformation because of all the work that they'd done. Once I put them in the right environment and had the right framing, everything just flowed out. But the next piece is that especially in the business world and when you talk storytelling, I generally don't believe what people say, this is my most important story or this is my narrative, because I've seen so many times that generally the narrative is there, but it's hidden. And so my job is to put you in a space to where we can uncover that.

And so where the kind of the mass media conversation around storytelling can be, can create even more challenges as we think like the hero's journey, for example, oh, I need to take this framework and Chris is asking me about to tell my story and I've got to fit it into this framework. And I actually want the opposite. I actually create what feels like a fairly chaotic environment when I'm asking for stories. And it may feel all over the map. I've had people that don't believe me or don't trust me about why I ask certain questions. But my goal is for you to collide with stories from your past that you've forgotten about,

that you don't value, that you don't think are relevant and synthesize those because they are a critical part of what made you you. I have this one client who the first time I met him before we were working together, he told a colleague of mine, I met Chris, I really liked him. I'm like, oh man, this guy's great. I would love to work with him. And then he started asking me all these questions and I'm like, what, oh man, Chris doesn't get what I do. These are crazy questions.

So this isn't going to work. And then we got to the end and I was like, holy cow, Chris gets me. Right. And so the point being is it's really about what are those elements for the past that we can uncover and then use those to shape the future. And generally they're not at the level that you've processed, like the level that you've gotten to. It can be far beyond that. So I have a client that I just recently finished working with and his story will be published at some point. He is an M&A advisor and lower mid-market or small businesses.

And his whole thing is coming into businesses that look really good on the surface. There's a lot of wealth locked up in the business, but the business has a ton of chaos. And so he comes in and fixes that chaos and then helps them maximize their value and eventually their exit. Most prolific storyteller I've ever worked with period to the point that I mean it almost my brain can handle a lot. It almost melted my brain. But what was interesting is where we got to his narrative is discovered the story when he was a kid. His favorite thing to do was when after it would rain, he would hike for miles to get to the creek with his friends.

The water was high. Water was essentially like chocolate milk and there's sticks in there and there's trash in there. And he would spend the entire day cleaning it up, taking the trash out, taking the sticks out, getting the water flowing the right direction. That brought him so much joy. The only thing that brought him more joy is when the next rain would come and wreck it again and he got to do it all over again. And so that's what I showed him, it was that's the pattern for his entire life that he's followed over and over again. And he goes into these chaotic situations and he's followed over and over again and he goes into these chaotic situations and he's this calming peaceful presence and he knows how to get that creek flowing the right way in a way that brings life and peace and better financial outcomes. So that creek became core to what his narrative was. So

for him that's grounding and centering and that's a story that he can tell. But then also you have to pull it all the way through to the business outcomes that it drives. So it's, okay, great. We have this really compelling and emotional narrative, but now how do we pull it down into the pillars of his business and the outcomes that his customers want to drive. But again, that was a story that he told and never saw it from that perspective. And not realizing that is a part of, that flows through him, it's a part of who he is now.

Over the years, you've worked with so many people and have seen firsthand how they tell the stories and craft the narratives. So what's the worst story you've ever heard? Yes, there's a lot of bad ones out there, but I think I'll pick on myself. And for this part gets a bit, it's from a really challenging part of my journey. So in 2015, when I worked at Amazon, my mental health was in a really bad place and I nearly

took my life. What was interesting in retrospect is there was something that happened to me and I remember going to work the next day and believing that I was stuck in this situation that I was this I won't go into the situation but I was stuck in this situation. And there were some days where I was commuting up to three hours round trip in the dark in the rain in the Seattle the terrible Seattle weather that we have. And I was in this place where I was stuck. It felt stuck in this job. I felt stuck in my car. I had chronic pain and I had a terrible situation at work.

And so what happened is I would repeat over and over again. I started to repeat, I'm stuck. I'm stuck. I'm stuck. And I would do this for Hours every week and it became a mantra you talk about the power of a mantra Usually it's a positive mantra. This was a negative mantra so I would repeat that in that so that Story was the thing that happened to me that precipitated this and there were a bunch of other stories. And that tape that played in my head, that narrative was, I'm stuck. And then one day, tragically, I saw, I drove past a car of a gentleman who had just died in an accident.

And all of a sudden, so that was a story, all of a sudden, my narrative internally became not I'm stuck, it became I'm going to die. And so I would repeat that narrative over and over again. And I remember falling asleep in traffic one day, almost falling asleep. And then I remember almost swerving into a truck. And I'm like those kinds of things. And those little tiny stories

would keep reinforcing this narrative to the point that actually took me to the edge where I nearly took my life. I know it's heavy, but that's part of why I believe in this work so much is because those, the way that we take those stories and synthesize them can be very high stakes. So like in that moment you might, for somebody else, so you're in that situation, it might not hit you the way that it hit me and you might synthesize it in a different way. But that story, absolutely the worst story I've ever heard or told myself.

For you to be where you are now, living the life you want and helping others do the same, you must have transformed your own narrative from a difficult place to a much better one. Before we ask the next question, I'd love to hear if you're open to sharing how you managed to break free from a narrative that was holding you back. How did you go about breaking it down and then recomposing it into something much more empowering? As a creative person, when I went to Amazon. One of my clients, who was the director at the time, became the VP there.

He would always talk about inputs and outputs. And it used to drive me nuts because it's a creative person. I'm like, no, I just want to envision this future and do creative things. But it really is that. It's inputs and outputs. But the challenge that I had was the inputs and how I synthesized them. In my case, one, you do have to hit, I shouldn't say hit rock bottom. I think that's part of it in some cases, but you need something that Fletcher at

the Ohio State University, narrative scientists, and what he talks about as a plot twist. the Ohio State University, narrative scientists, and what he talks about as a plot twist. So there needs to, something needs to happen to create a shift to shock you out of your way of thinking at times, give you a vision of a new possible future. So for me, a part of my narrative was also very much blaming other people. Now, to be fair, I had a terrible manager. I had a lot that had happened across the course of my life, but I had taken all of that and said, I would claim that I took responsibility for my life, but I would

blame others for the things that happened to me. I had to get to a place and in 2020, my marriage almost ended. My wife and I are now back together, But to get through that, I had to completely rewrite my narrative and go from blaming others to taking responsibility and shifting so that to view a different future. My wife and I, for quite a long season, would actually say, here, we found it helpful to actually voice, and I would encourage listeners to do this as well, voice what the narrative

is. So in our case, it was, here's the narrative of what I'm believing about you in this moment, or I'm believing about the situation. I know it's not true based on this new future that we're creating, but this is what I'm feeling and believing at this moment. It really is, how do you create new inputs? And so if you're in a place where you move into, whether we're talking business situation or personally with mental health, if you continue to put in

the same inputs, things likely won't change for you, but for me, one of the positive inputs that I changed was I got into fly fishing. And so that put me in the energy of the river. It put me in all the movement and all the creativity that goes into that. All the analyzing the river and trying to figure out where the fish is. But mostly just for me being in nature, right? That was a part of changing those inputs so that I could shift the not only the narrative but the outcomes of that narrative. Absolutely. The quality of the output is directly tied to the quality of what you put in.

The better the input, the more authentic and accurate the outcome that makes perfect sense. Now, let's lighten things up a bit. You've told me about the worst story you've ever heard. Let's flip the script. What is the best story you've come across so far? Yeah, so I'll reframe the question slightly to the best story I've ever felt. And to set that up, actually, I want to, before I get there, I want to, you talked about the fact of your very rational approach.

And I love the perspectives that someone who's wired like you versus someone who's wired like me, because I'm indefinitely be more on the other side of the spectrum and how do we integrate those. But her nini Abara tells this story about a CEO that she coached. And this woman went from being, she was an engineer and she was elevated into CEO, things were not going well with her team. She was driving the board crazy and was just incredibly rational.

And so one of the board members said, coached her and said, you need to be more human, try telling a story. And her response was very angry and she said, no, that's manipulation, why would I tell a story? It's all about the facts. It was interesting that Herminia said to her when she coached her was, and this woman said, I'm being authentic to who I am as an engineer.

And what Herminia said was, you're being authentic to the version of you that got you here. If you want to succeed in this role, there's a different version of yourself that you need to step into and be authentic to that version of yourself. And so it doesn't mean you change your values or your morals or anything like that. But growth is very uncomfortable, right? So I like to think about growth as bespoke shoes or the experiment of trying on different pair of shoes. So if you have the best cobbler in the world, make a pair of shoes for you. It's not guaranteed that they're going to be super comfortable when you first put them on.

They might be incredibly uncomfortable. So when we, Bernina talks about experimenting with different possible selves, when you try on those different types of shoes and wear them, they might be uncomfortable for a week or two. But if it's the right one, eventually it will fit you perfectly. Just wanted to respond on that. In terms of the best story that I've ever felt, it's actually tied to the worst story, it gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.

So when things were at my worst, I'd been on disability leave and I went back to Microsoft. So I was at Amazon, went to Microsoft, went out on leave. And when I came back, I had a new manager and the best manager I'd ever had. And he had tattoos all over his arm, Pearl Jam tattoos, the band. I'd never been a fan of Pearl Jam back. I didn't like them. And I thought I live in Seattle.

Like I tried to like them in the nineties. I tried to like them because they were cool and I couldn't. So I asked him, tell me about your tattoos. And he said, it was 1991. Said I was driving across Michigan. He called his mom and found out that his dad had just passed away. So he turns around and drives three or four hours home

and he's listening to Pearl Jam on the radio and one of the songs was the song Alive. It's this really haunting song, beautiful song. He listens to that the whole way home and Pearl Jam has become a part of his healing and healing journey and so he told me this and so because he told me that story it didn't make me like Pearl Jam But I thought okay. I'm willing to give it another try So I tried listening them again and put on the song alive Everything changed in terms of my perspective about that song

So all of a sudden I went from disliking them to being open to listening to this song All of a sudden it became an anthem for me. And I remember driving down the road past the place where I, this is at least how I envision it, past the place where I nearly took my life and seeing that song at the top of my lungs. And that became healing for me because of the story that he told. Fast forward to last year and around September or October I come across this video of the lead singer of Pearl Jam Eddie Vedder From years ago, and he's talking about that song alive, and he said that song Didn't mean what fans have come to believe that it means when I wrote that song it was an

F you to my dad he said when I was 12 or 13. When I wrote that song, it was an F-U to my dad. He said when I was 12 or 13, I found out that my dad wasn't actually my dad and my parents had been lying to me. That was filled with bitterness and anger and it became a curse to me. But what ended up happening is fans believed it was a song about life and freedom. Over the years, as he heard it, he started to be open to the fans' interpretation. And eventually he completely changed his belief about what the song meant. And he said, as soon as I believed what the fans believed the song meant, it literally broke the curse and I was free. It's right? So it's like how incredible is that? That narrative was completely

shifted for him. Two weeks later I go and I tell my daughter, okay let's go to the record store and her best friend goes with us and we get there and I said okay here's the deal everyone only gets ten10 and we'll see who gets the best album, so that means you obviously have to buy used. So we'll see who gets the best haul. So we go in there, we dig through for vinyl and it was complete failure. None of us gets a record.

So we said, oh, let's go to the bakery down the street. So we're walking across the crosswalk, the sun's going down. And I said, there's an album that I actually forgot that I want to get. And so why don't you all go to the bakery and I'll meet you there. So I walked back inside the record store,

I walk upstairs, and Eddie Vedder, the lead singer of Pearl Jam, is standing right there digging for vinyl. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. So internally, I thought I should go say hi to him. And I had something internally tell me, you need to go tell him your story. So at first I was like, he doesn't want to be bothered. He just wants to be a normal person.

And then I thought, no, you need to tell him. And then I thought, okay, that's not him. And I heard him talk and I'm like, yeah, it's definitely him. So I go over and I thank him for his music and chickened out and shook my hand. And then again, the voice inside said, no, you need to tell him your story. So I go over and I thank him for his music and chickened out and shook my hand and then again the boy inside said, no, you need to tell him your story. So classic Chris, always that I say things to create some drama, I started out and I said, I never liked your music.

And the look was pretty funny. But I have a story to tell you and I proceeded to tell him the story that I just told you. It was this unbelievable moment. He just gave me this huge hug, and it was like electricity went through my body. And it was this crazy full circle moment where you go all the way back to 2015 and my manager telling this story, then you go back to 1991 and Eddie Vedder telling this story through his song. And then here we are in 2023 and this guy who wrote this song that he sang back in 1991 is giving me a hug and it's like healing running through my body. What I tell people on my podcast, what I tell clients, what I tell other people is that's the power of storytelling.

Is that when we tell our stories, yes, it can change our companies. Yes, it can change the world, but it also changes us. We have to tell our stories and not always the really clean, really curated story that makes us look good, but that raw story that has the power to shift the future. I love what you said about real, real stories, about the struggles, the pains, the real journeys that people experience. And I totally agree, and that's exactly what I do on this show.

Authentic stories resonate deeply because they reflect the full spectrum of life, not just the highlights. So for those listening who might not have direct access to professional guidance, what can they do to craft and shape their own stories? Whether they are in career transition, facing personal challenges, or just feeling stuck, what would you suggest as essential steps for creating a story that truly resonates with who they are? Yeah, so there's two very practical tools that I recommend. And if it's helpful, I can share a worksheet with you

that walks through these that you could share with your guests. But the first exercise is what I call the movie theater. And so then I have people visualize that movie that plays is actually not the blockbuster, it's actually your life playing. And your career, not just your career, but your entire life.

And one scene after the next play and the good, but also the bad, the people that you brought with you, the people you left behind, et cetera. Just now we look at storytelling for personal transformation. for personal transformation, as Chris shared some of the best and worst stories he's ever heard. He also opened up about his own mental health challenges. Then tomorrow, in part 3, he will introduce tools we can use to develop our own stories and narratives. And here's a personal confession. I told him one of his exercises might just make me cry. I'll also be sharing my own experience with another exercise highlighting both its challenges

and insights. Come back and join us tomorrow. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.