An award-winning expert on organizational storytelling, Thaler Pekar works with visionary leaders to build and sustain cultures of excellent communication – cultures in which people can effectively speak and listen to each other, and to their audiences. For 20 years, she and her team at Thaler Pekar & Partners have advised leaders on strengthening trust, alignment, and influence through speaking, listening, narrative, and story. Working across sectors, Thaler delivers her four trademarked communication processes; produces multiplatform media; and develops oral histories and story collections.

Recognized by both the BBC and the Smithsonian Institution as one of the world's leading experts in applied narrative, Thaler has delivered keynote speeches on five continents to thousands of people. Her influential work on the ethics of working with story, participatory narrative, story elicitation, and persuasive communication is featured in seven books.

DOCUMENTARY: Lifting Up What Works®️: An Oral History of the First 22 Years of PolicyLink documentary

BOOK: Lifting Up What Works®️: An Oral history of the First 22 Years of PolicyLink

The Atlantic Philanthropies communications compilation of oral histories

Thaler Pekar & Partners' Narrative Garden®

"What Will Replace the Hero's Journey?" - SSIR essay

Quotes:

"Things are constantly shifting our perspective, our wisdom's growing, and ideally the stories are polyphonic."

"A great leader, a great communicator, can tell a story that connects the past, the present and the future, and creates spaciousness for what comes next. It's sensical. Great storytelling is placemaking, meaning making, sensemaking, and it invites people to see themselves in the future that's being created."

"I don't think of legacy as what's left behind. I think of it as what is carried forward."

"One thing about legacy is the danger of a hero narrative and just shining the light on one person, when there are other people in the shadows. And in fact, you're creating those shadows if you're shining the light just on one person."

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.  

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.