Richard Stone

Strategic Partner, Chief Storyteller

Richard Stone is a nationally recognized speaker on the power of story and its applications in business, healthcare and education. He got his start nearly 30 years ago developing story-based training programs for team building and leadership development and has been a leader in work on the healing effects of narrative reminiscence. Currently at StoryWork International, a partner of Turknett Leadership Group, Rick is focused on using the power of story to assist leaders to transform their organizations and their approach to leading, infusing their work with deeper purpose and meaning. This partnership allows for the exclusive offering of a suite of programs to serve the leadership and organizational development including The MasterStory Experience, MasterStory for Organizations, StoryCamp for Leaders, Story Envisioning, Story for Teams, and Storytelling for Non-profit Fundraising.

Career Highlights

  • For a Fortune 500 Company: Developed a story-based leadership development program for managers all the way up to C-Suite leaders
  • For a Hospice Organization: A developed national training program to teach staff and volunteers how to facilitate the life review process for patients and their families
  • For Military Hospital Operation: Led the team that worked with the hospital’s leadership to design the processes to ensure maintaining the highest level possible of patient engagement and satisfaction during the merger with another healthcare system from another branch of the military
  • Healthcare Training: Developed StoryCare, an online training resource for healthcare professionals and students to engage in story-based simulations to improve teamwork around improving patient safety
  • For Large Healthcare Organizations: Development of an experience design pathway to assist this system to develop a “remarkable patient experience”
  • Regional Pediatric Clinics: Developed a collection of stories that embodied the organization’s core values which was then used for training, orientation and recruitment purposes
  • StoryWork International: The development of a transformational program for business and organizational leaders to enhance their potential and the engagement of their teams to make a world-class impact
  • Governmental Training: Developed a story-based envisioning program to assist branches of the Federal Government improve their strategic planning
  • For a System of Clinics: Developed a collection of stories that embodied the organization’s core values which were then used for training, orientation and recruitment purposes
  • For a Technical Organization: Developed training program to teach its members how to better communicate technical, scientific information to non-technical decision-makers and audiences
  • Game Development: Developed an award-winning board game, Pitch-A-Story, to engage children and adults in the imaginative play of creating and telling stories that is also used in classrooms around the country

Areas of Specialization

  • Story-Based Leadership Training Design & Delivery
  • Culture Mapping
  • Experience Design
  • Organizational Transformation
  • Corporate Communications
  • Training Design & Delivery
  • Story-Based Team Building
  • Using Story to Support Non-profit Fundraising

Unique Attributes

  • Has worked with diverse organizations such as Walt Disney Imagineering, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Hewlett Packard, Eastman Chemical Company, Kraft Foods, and Novant Health
  • Authored The Healing Art of Storytelling, Stories: The Family Legacy, The Kingdom of Nowt, Story Intelligence, and co-wrote The Patient Survival Handbook
  • Held the title of StoryAnalytics Master for the IDEAS Innovation Team (a former division of the Walt Disney Company) where he was on the team that created StoryCare, an innovative program for driving behavioral change among healthcare staff to improve patient safety and satisfaction
  • Co-Created the award-winning board game Pitch-A-Story and is an accomplished artist and photographer

  • Hobbies

    Painting, macro-photography of tree bark and lichen, fiction writing, working on a jazz documentary film, performance of an original work that tells the story of an 18th Century mystic, and golf

  • Favorite Food

    Higher protein, lower carb diet—in the end, avocados make everything taste better

  • Band

    Sting

  • Movie

    Shawshank Redemption

  • Super Power

    Mind Travel

  • TV Show

    Currently immersed in Madame Secretary; also love English Murder Mysteries—latest obsession was Father Brown

  • Book

    Drawdown—the best book I have read on how we’re going to save the planet from human activity

  • Quote

    “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”—Albert Einstein

Consultant Insights

  • My ideal client is someone [an organization] that:

    Is seeking to maximize the potential of his people and company.

  • The highlight of my career so far has been:

    Helping Walter Reed Hospital shut down without any degradation of the level of patient care.

  • My superpower as a coach is:

    Storytelling.

  • My philosophy on life is:

    When in doubt, come back to the present moment, look around, and breathe.

  • I hope my legacy is one of:

    Creating meaning and insight for people whom I teach.

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