Storytelling may be your most powerful way of communicating with your audiences. As a leader, you need to ensure that you are shaping and sharing stories that move things in the right direction.
When and where?
Choose one of these dates for the online course:
Monday 11th September (2-5pm UK time)
or
Thursday 16th November (2-5pm UK time)
Why this webinar now?
Do you know what your stories are saying about you and your organisation? Would you like to craft stories that allow you to make more of the impact you want in the world? Wherever we go, we hear stories. We are all attuned to stories – the most powerful influencing tool ever devised.
What stories are you telling? Is your organisation telling stories that help or that damage? And, just as crucially, how skilfully are you telling them?
In this innovative workshop you will learn how to get the impact you want by crafting and telling your stories more effectively.
This 3-hour webinar takes you step by step through activities that will have you telling stories as never before. Drawing on lessons from journalism, improvisation, film-making, brain science and your own rich experiences, you will:
- Gain a fresh appreciation of the importance of the stories you are telling
- Improve your skills at making stories compelling and memorable
- Learn how to co-create stories with your different audiences
Outline
- How stories are the number one influence on perceptions
- What makes a story compelling?
- Shape, structure and theme – how to craft your story
- Making connections with audiences
- The value in personal and organisational stories
- When you don’t know the ending…
Paul Z Jackson is the author or co-author of several books about improvisation, coaching and organisations.
What do I know?
I have designed this innovative workshop to bring together the rich threads of story-telling that have run through our personal, professional and political lives.
When I was trained as a journalist, my job was to root out news stories and write them so that our readers could easily absorb them, most important point first, then in descending order of priority.
We learned how to craft them quickly, articulate them, then move on to the next. Respect ‘the power of the deadline’!
I later specialised in writing features; less newsy, but in more depth, exposing scandals, analysing trends, investigating the hidden workings of schools, hospitals and murder hunts. I was encouraged to dig into the truths of what made people tick – whether cabinet ministers, film directors, rock stars or scientists with important breakthroughs to explain.
One million words later, I joined the BBC as a comedy producer, where the task was to assemble great story-tellers to entertain our audience. I worked with script-writers and actors, and especially with improvisers.
Improvisers know how to create stories in the moment, collaborating with each other – and with the outside world – to instinctively select what to keep and what to discard, so that a story fulfils its potential. When to start, what to develop, when to stop.
Effective stories cut the clutter and communicate with clarity
Disney Studios invited me to present in California. I’ll share with you how the masters of animationt create appealing heroes, fascinating worlds and compelling story-lines.
And I’ll tell you what they learned from me: How to craft stories when you don’t know the ending, when control is shared between you and the audience.
And what do you know?
You have been exposed to thousands of stories in many media. You have told stories to your friends, families, colleagues and clients. You know plenty – about what works and what doesn’t.
Your organisation may not be making movies, but it is putting out a constant flow of emerging, co-created sets of stories that have lives almost of their own, building or sabotaging your credibility.
In this webinar we’ll explore what those stories are currently communicating about you. We’ll consider which to encourage and which to quash.
Happy ending…
We’ll get better stories up and running, so that they serve your interests and make a bigger splash as your audience takes them on, spreading and developing them.
You’ll learn to set the agenda, pose the questions and be first to propose useful answers.
Your stories will appear in conversations, meetings, on websites, in emails; in blogs, books and journals – anywhere you get a chance to express yourself and influence others to take action.
Once upon a time, any story would do. No longer. Audiences have zero tolerance for boredom. And what we are working on is too important to get wrong. You can no longer afford to repel the audiences you need to attract.
It’s time to sort out the heroes and the villains, to know the roles of your characters, and to re-work information, emotion and metaphor to serve your crucial purpose. Let’s tell better stories.
How much to attend?
Book now for the early bird discount rate of £249+vat (early bird discount already applied to ticket rate if booked before Friday 30th June when the rate will increase to £349 +vat).
