Unleashing the Power of Your Story by Dr. Steven P. Ober

Our lives are full of stories. They are so much a part of who we are and what we do that we often don’t notice their presence. This book focuses on our deep personal stories, how we can know them more clearly, how they help us, how they limit us, and how we can learn to see them anew and create even more powerful personal stories ... stories that empower us to reach our highest aspirations.

Our lives are full of stories. They are, like the air we breathe, so much a part of who we are and what we do that we often don’t notice their presence.

Stories are the bases of our movies, television, books, communication, work, religion, humor, conversation, and thinking. They are the primary way we pass our experience, wisdom, and foibles from group to group, generation to generation. And, most powerfully, our stories are a reflection of who we are at our core – as individuals, and as a species.

Stories cover the whole gamut of human experience, from our descriptions of the universe, e.g. the Big Bang story, to expressions of our deep inner selves – our core personal stories.

While taking the whole range into account, this book focuses on the latter, our deep personal stories, how we can learn to know them more clearly, how they help us, how they can constrain us, and how we can, if we wish, learn to see them anew and create even more powerful personal stories ... stories that reflect not only our life experiences, but empower us to reach our highest aspirations for the future.

Stories are critical for leaders. Every leader has a deep personal story, a systemic story that shapes his/her patterns of leadership. And, recent work in leadership and leadership development suggests a new answer to the age-old question, “What makes a leader?”

We have searched for, among other things, common traits, patterns of behavior, and core competencies that characterize leaders. But, we are discovering that what makes the most powerful leaders, the authentic leaders, are not necessarily common abilities or ways of behaving.

What makes the most powerful leaders is that they live/operate, consistently, from who they deeply are. Put another way, they live in congruence with and become the masters of their own personal stories.

This book is intended to help leaders, coaches and others learn to become clear about their core, and to live from it creatively.

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About Dr. Steven P. Ober

Dr. Steven P. Ober is a senior practitioner in Executive Coaching, Leadership Development, Organizational Learning and Change, and Executive Team Learning. He has worked successfully with senior executives and managers at multiple levels in high tech, business and industry, health care, government, and education. The focus of Dr. Ober’s work is helping individual executives, executive teams, and their organizations achieve outstanding results in complex systems, especially in periods of major change.



Steve developed and successfully uses a powerful approach to coaching, Creating your Leadership Story, that enables leaders to make deep, lasting improvements in their effectiveness in short periods of time. This book, Unleashing the Power of Your Story, makes Steve’s approach available to all readers--whether they are executives, managers, professionals, or simply people who want to grow and develop



Steve was a Vice-President and Partner at Arthur D. Little, a Principal at Innovation Associates, and key member of the ADL Strategy and Organization Practice. Currently. he is the President and Principal of Chrysalis Executive coaching & Consulting.



Steve has led sessions on Human Systems Consulting at national conferences and has been a member of the American Psychological Association Society of Consulting Psychology, the Society for Organizational Learning, the Organization Development Learning Group, the Boston Facilitators Roundtable, Coach Source Connect, and he is affiliated with the Institute of Coaching Professional Association.



Dr. Ober has authored numerous published articles, professional guidebooks, and book chapters, including:



“Interaction Archetypes: Keys to Group Difficulty and Productivity,” The Handbook for Working with Difficult Groups, Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 2010.



“Lies about Learning Organizations,” Lies About Learning, American Society for Training and Development, 2006.



Encouraging Enrollment, Personal Stories as a Vehicle for Change, Prism, 2000



Creating Business Results through Team Learning, Prism, 1999.



Achieving Breakthroughs in Executive Team Performance, Prism, 1999.



Steve is also a regular contributor to the Authenticity Consulting Free Management Library Leadership blog (see link below),



He holds a BA and MA from Baylor University, an MTS from Harvard, and An EdD in Organizational Studies from Boston University. His clients have included: Boston Consulting Group, Inland Paperboard and Packaging, Microsoft Corp, Monitor Group, NASA, Time-Warner, US Steel, and the Royal Bank of Canada.



Steve is known for his collaborative approach; his frankness, openness, and honesty; and his ability to unravel very difficult individual, team and organizational problems.



If you would like to learn more about leadership story work or systemic approaches to leadership, feel free to call or email Steve (see contact information below).



Steven P. Ober EdD

President: Chrysalis Executive Coaching & Consulting

Affiliate: Systems Perspectives, LLC

Office: PO Box 278, Oakham, MA 01068

Home: 278 Crocker Nye Rd., Oakham, MA 01068

O: 508.882.1025 M: 978.590.4219

Email: Steve@ChrylasisCoaching.org

Website: www.ChrysalisCoaching.org

Leadership Blog: http://managementhelp.org/blogs/leadership

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