Today hit close to home to the very thing I currently do at my museum, tours and telling stories. I was in the very first docent class to graduate before the National Museum of the Marine Corps opened. I have been giving tours for 12 years to everyone from dignitaries to a family of three. Storytellers must NEVER rest on their laurels. There is always something to polish in your narrative, change in your narrative or work on the non-speaking aspects of storytelling.
Our group was able to listen to some inspiring professional storytellers today at the National Capitol Visitor Center. I was captivated by our tour guide, Jessica Jackson. She combined so many of the elements of storytelling that we have talked about so far. She engaged us, she used humor, she was self-effacing, relatable, passionate, incredibly knowledgeable without being intimidating to the visitors. When she was done I had a smile on my face and I thought…that is the type of guide I want to work with as a colleague. Watch her re-enact a fiery and passionate speech from Frederick Douglass by clicking here. Now that is a tour guide!
I knew there had to be more to her superb delivery and I was right. Meeting the education department at the visitors’ center was a gold mine of information about how to train people to tell stories effectively while relating to your museum’s mission. Lauren and Eric are educated storytelling pros that have taken a program of antiquated and uninspiring tours at the capitol and made them relatable to a worldwide audience of visitors. That is a monumental task. When I return to my museum I am going to talk with our visitors services department and see if they might invite Eric and Lauren to come down and talk to our docent corps. It would be a huge benefit to us!
I wrote furiously while they spoke about storytelling but these are my golden nuggets I got from them today:
- The old tour at the capitol was about dates, times and a checklist of places. Avoid that at all costs
- Always ask “why are we doing this?”
- No matter the tour…try and at least ask one open-ended question and allow at least one 7 second period of silence in a 30-minute tour
- Go beyond the tangibles and explore the intangibles to get at the universals (i.e. family, love, loss)
- INTERPRETORTURE…Don’t be aloof or keep information from your visitors like you have a secret or want to control the sharing of information. (my new favorite tour guide word that I plan on using as a negative example for a long time!)
- INTERPRETANTAINMENT… Use with caution and temper humor to ensure it remains about the audience and not the tour guide
- When the tour is done, have you supported your organization fully?
- Best tool for storytellers is improvisation
- Be creative. In other words, get out of your comfort zone to give something a try. That is how innovation works.
- Question why everything and anything is in a tour
Dave's Museum Journeys 
Dave, I enjoyed sitting next to you while we heard from Lauren and Eric: your engagement was contagious! Lauren’s description of welcoming their visitors home struck a chord with me. Do you think all museums could adopt that attitude towards their visitors?
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Stephanie, I learned a long time ago as a tour guide that a welcoming attitude towards the visitors is half the battle (no pun intended from this Marine) no matter the type of museum. We focus a lot on that for our visitors at the National Museum of the Marine Corps. Many people see the military, especially the Marine Corps, as stoic, strict, rigid, etc. In short, not the kind of descriptors associated with “welcoming”.
I am proud to say that when we went through an extensive museum evaluation our docents and personnel on the museum floor were held up as a gold standard. Also, if you read some of the comments on Trip Advisor its clear we are doing something right. We can always get better but overall we have a track record of welcoming. We recently adopted some of the same training that Disney uses to train their employees. Our visitor services coordinator has changed up our volunteer training to incorporate it.
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