Unlocking Emotional Insights with Story-Driven Data and AI with James Warren
“The more narrow we get with our prompts, the deeper and more profound the insights become.”
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How do you uncover what your customers and employees really think—without another boring survey?
In this episode of The Storytelling Lab, Rain speaks with James Warren, the founder of Share More Stories and creator of SEEQ, a storytelling and insights platform that blends the emotional power of stories with the analytical depth of AI.
With a background in brand strategy and corporate leadership, James has pioneered a way to analyze written stories to reveal the underlying emotions, needs, and values of employees, customers, and communities.
James shares how emotional mapping, sensory prompts, and narrative-based strategy help organizations tap into deeper truths that conventional analytics miss. Whether you’re a team leader, marketer, or founder, this episode offers powerful insight into how empathy and data can combine to unlock connection and impact at scale.
In the episode, you will learn to:
Uncover hidden truths by using storytelling as a data collection method for organizational insight
Bridge the gap between emotional intelligence and analytics by using tech tools like AI and NLP without sacrificing humanity
Design better prompts that help employees and customers recall deeper, more meaningful stories
Strengthen both employee and customer experience (EX and CX) by listening to the emotions that drive behavior
Use stories to create authentic culture alignment across leadership, brand, and community
“The more narrow we get with our prompts, the deeper and more profound the insights become.”
- James Warren
If you want to learn about a tool that helps measure the emotional response of people listening to stories, this is the episode for you!
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Some of the highlights of the episode:
00:00 – The Hidden Truths Your Dashboards Aren’t Telling You
02:15 – What Is SEEQ and How Does It Work?
04:39 – Story as Insight: From Workshops to Scalable Platform
07:25 – The Deeper “Why” Behind Human Behavior
09:43 – James’s Journey from Altria to Story-Driven Strategy
13:08 – Navigating Change vs. Controlling Narrative
15:27 – Storytelling as Culture: The Role of Leadership
18:33 – Climate vs. Culture and How Story Sets the Tone
20:40 – Vulnerability in Leadership and Its Ripple Effect
23:09 – Connecting Employee and Customer Experience (EX and CX)
26:14 – Story Mining: Why You Need a Process to Collect Them
29:31 – The Power of Prompts to Unlock Recollection
33:34 – The Problem with Sound Bites and Attention Spans
35:38 – How Specific Prompts Lead to Richer Insights
38:13 – Mapping Emotion with AI and NLP Tools
41:32 – The SEEK Platform's First Big Breakthrough
43:47 – How to Sell Storytelling to Skeptical Leadership
46:08 – The AI Stack Behind Emotional Analysis
50:09 – Building SEEK GPT and Automating Story Insight
52:03 – Lessons in Leadership, Team Building, and Trust
54:07 – Publishing vs. Preserving Stories: When and How to Share
56:24 – The Future of Share More Stories and What’s Next
58:03 – Helping Leaders Lead with Stories, Not Just Strategy
As always, I hope you enjoy the episode!
Rain
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For more storytelling tips and tricks,
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