LPA-certified coach Deb Sakry Lande is a strategic communications consultant, leadership advisor and storyteller who guides people and organizations through transformation, innovation and growth. She is the founder of Stories with Intention and co-author of the book and quote cards, Universal Intentions.
A career lifting up other people’s stories
Deb Sakry Lande spent much of her career as a communications director at human services nonprofits, working alongside people who have experienced homelessness, and food or housing insecurity. She cared deeply about the people whose stories she helped tell. But anyone who has done that job knows there’s another layer in addition to the individual’s stories: the organization’s goals, the marketing strategy behind a video, the campaign the story is meant to serve. Those pressures are legitimate and require a constant balance between the agency of the storyteller and the goals of the organization.
Eventually, Deb realized she wanted to tip that balance toward the storyteller and to work with a deeper focus on building relationships among storytellers and strengthening their skills. “I wanted to be in the peer space,” she says, “of saying to storytellers, ‘this is about you. This is about your growth. How can I help?’”
Finding strengths people don’t know they have
That shift led Deb to launch her consultancy Stories with Intention and what she calls “storyteller strength-finding”: helping people recognize the assets they carry, often without realizing it, and tell their personal stories from a place of strength, which is often hidden in the struggles or traumas of their past.
Deb thinks in terms of “above the line” and “below the line” energies. Above the line is positive, optimistic, open to possibility. Below the line is I can’t do this, it’s too hard, I’m not capable. It isn’t an either-or, Deb stresses: “We are both. But it’s where you spend more time that moves the needle of your life in either direction.”
The role of personal storytelling in creating positive impact is one that Deb has long explored. Alongside her career in communication, she was co-creator of the Universal Intentions book and movement, helping adults, youth and communities expand the love, belonging and joy they need daily. For 13 years she has worked with the “Read, Reflect and Act” approach behind Universal Intentions, the trifecta of a poetic intention, a powerful reflection question and a take-action challenge to shift energy from below the line to above it. Stories with Intention brings together her communications career, her social services background and intentional practice—and the LPA method helped her put the pieces together.
When introduced to LPA’s approach to storytelling for advocacy, Deb felt it was one that moved people toward that above-the-line energy quickly: strength-based, storyteller-centered. She zoomed in on the “Point to the Positive” quality in LPA’s Five Qualities of a Well-told Advocacy Story, and on agency, one of the elements of the LPA Whole Advocate model.
This led Deb to become certified in the LPA method and apply it to her ongoing work with youth and other communities.
Two workshops, built around the storyteller
Today, through Stories with Intention, Deb offers impactful workshops for small groups, running a minimum of two hours and up to ten, depending on the time an organization has available. Both can be replicated in many settings.
Storytelling for Change is for organizations and their constituents. Participants do work on values and explore self-expression and language: what to let go of, what to hold on to and how to choose, every day, to shift from what Deb calls “toxic energy toward tender energy,” meaning self-compassion, care and healing. They work with LPA tools including the Story Map, the Brief Brisk Advocacy Blueprint and the Experience Arc. At the end, they decide what to create from their personal exploration. Some write a poem. Some prepare a speech. Others record a video of what they learned, something to watch again and again as a reminder of the power of their own story.
My Story, My Choice is for young people from about 13 to 23. It starts by exploring values and language, then goes deep into social media and personal brand. “It’s your story, it’s your choice how you tell your story throughout your life,” Deb tells participants, “so let’s give you some tools and techniques to be conscious about how you are telling your story.” When appropriate, participants build a LinkedIn profile or work on their writing skills, which then sets them up to find a first job, build a resume or simply reframe their personal narrative to be more positive and hopeful. Deb launches the current series this November at the Best Buy Teen Tech Center in Brooklyn Park: four weeks, two hours a week.
One of Deb’s favorite touches comes at the very end of the Storytelling for Change workshops. Each participant handwrites a letter to themselves, seals it in an envelope before anyone reads it and addresses it in their own handwriting. Deb then mails the letter back to them six months later and it arrives as a surprise: a reminder of what they care about and want to advocate for. It’s a way, she says, to show people that “the skills they learned in the Storytelling for Change workshop, and the strength they gained continue to have legs in their life.”
What happens when intention becomes clear
This summer, Deb ran four-hour workshops with residents at one organization’s affordable housing community. Recently, at that organization’s gala, one participant ran up to her with news. After the workshop, she said, she had “so much more confidence in myself, and my story, and the skills that I bring.” She’d also gotten clear that she wanted to work with a particular population, something her job at the time didn’t offer. So she applied for a new job—and she got it.
The turning point was a distinction she made for herself: she cared about affordable housing, but she cared most about one specific kind of supportive housing. “That’s an incredible distinction, and you got super clear about it,” Deb told her. In four hours, Deb says, the participant “figured out what her focus was, figured out what she wanted to advocate for, and basically talked herself into applying for a job in the exact field she wants to be an advocate for.” As one young person in another workshop remarked, “Change a perspective, change a life.”
Organizations that put the storyteller first
Deb is quick to credit the nonprofits that have hired her for seeing the value of story work. Minneapolis-based YouthLink hired her to co-create with young men who had lived experience in the foster care system with the goals of preventing homelessness and empowering young people transitioning from incarceration. Beacon Interfaith Housing Collaborative, another client, has hosted workshops for residents at two affordable housing properties. Both engagements were funded all or in part by grants the organizations secured.
“We need storytellers to feel empowered to tell their story,” Deb says, “but on their terms.” She hopes that comes through most of all: deep gratitude for the organizations that chose to focus on building agency, skills and emotional strength among their constituents. “They’re seeing the value in putting the storyteller first.”
Working with Deb
Deb’s primary clients are communications leaders, fundraising leaders and executive directors who want to build the skills and strength of the people connected to their organizations. She’s starting with youth, housing and food insecurity, but the work isn’t limited to those issues or communities. “Whatever you call it,” she says (relational, person-centered, storyteller-centered), “it is about elevating people” while getting to the purpose of an organization’s mission. Participants build skills and learn something about themselves, and the organization’s mission is stronger for it.
To learn more about Deb’s work, connect with her on LinkedIn. Find her book’s website at Universal Intentions or buy it on Amazon.