STORYTELLING FOR CHANGE
Develop a compelling story that moves your team to action
Why take this course
- Learn from expert storytellers
- Understand how to craft stories that will resonate with your audience
- Learn how to establish clear goals for your story and identify its most compelling elements
- Sharpen the clarity of your story by working with visuals
- Test and improve your story with peer and instructor feedback
Get your audience's attention with a well-crafted story
This course is for:
Consultants: Working to get their clients on the same page.
Managers: Looking to achieve better buy-in and increase their influence.
This course is for you if...
- You’re frustrated that your audience is getting lost in the information you’re presenting and missing key insights.
- You’re struggling to connect data points with a compelling narrative that moves people to action.
- You have a lot of information to present but very little time to get your audience to understand or care.
- You’re frustrated that your presentations aren’t landing and your audience isn’t taking the action you want.
Course Features and Benefits
About the Learning Experience
Added Bonus
Ongoing Benefits
- Lifetime access to course portal and materials including MURAL template
- A library of storytelling methods to use in your daily practice
- Access to new tools, bonus content, and course updates as the course evolves
BEFORE DAY 1
Prework
- Collect data, information, or a scenario that you need to tell a story about
- One 30-minute new learner orientation
DAY 1
Story IS change
- The science of storytelling
- Sensemaking and prioritization
- Defining the goal of your story
Storytelling begins with understanding your audience
- Empathy and understanding the audience
- Making sensory connections to the internal organs of the audience
DAY 2
Get a jumpstart on your story
- Story starting points
- Keeping the audience top of mind
- Story elements, narrative arcs, and frameworks
Tell a story that lands
- Setting learning objectives
- Metaphors
- Storyboards
DAY 3
See the story better, visually
- Scalable stories
- Revising and pulling the story together visually
- Storyboards
Denouement isn't the end—keep your listeners engaged
- Audience engagement
- Next steps with the story
Your Instructors
Tim May, Creative Director
Tim has been telling visual stories his entire life. As a designer for XPLANE since 2008, Tim has inspired a cult following of doodlers, visual thinkers, storytellers, and facilitators from all walks of life. In his role as Creative Director, Tim oversees a skilled design team, and contributes heavily on client work, brand and thought leadership through webinars, workshops, and courses.
His larger-than-life facilitation style has helped broker alignment among the most divergent of viewpoints. He frequently helps clients simplify their thinking in order to tell more compelling stories, with a particular focus on vision, strategy, culture, and process.
Tim’s clients include Netflix, Boston Dynamics, Kaiser Permanente, Red Bull, and many more.
As a facilitator, Tim is generous with his time and believes in meeting people where they are. Tim is also well known on Instagram for his ongoing plot to intricately (and covertly) illustrate every airplane barf bag he encounters.
Tracy Granzyk, MS, MFA, Senior Solutions Consultant
Tracy is a Senior Solutions Consultant at parent company TiER1 Performance by day and a longtime freelance writer by night. During the day, she spearheads transformative initiatives within the life sciences and healthcare sectors, focusing on digital transformations, omnichannel marketing, communication strategies, and organizational change management.
Outside of TiER1, Tracy is the founding editor-in-chief at Please See Me, an online literary magazine that elevates the health-related story of vulnerable populations and those who care for them. And she is the founding and former Senior Director of the Center for Healthcare Narratives at the MedStar Institute for Quality and Safety and a longtime faculty member at the Academy for Emerging Leaders in Patient Safety (AELPS) where she helps patients and healthcare professionals tell their stories.
Tracy has written, directed, and produced award-winning healthcare films, published numerous articles on health-related topics, and served as a ghost writer on longform fiction and creative nonfiction projects. Her innate storytelling talent has driven impactful change across numerous causes and business ventures.
What Our Learners Say
“This course gave me the confidence to try different ways to engage my audience.”
—James Thomas, Owner, Four Forces Consulting Limited
“This course was a great thought exercise that helped me approach my day-to-day work in a new way. The cohort was engaged and supportive. Overall, the course was a great experience!”
—Caitlin Dodge, CEO, Think Argus
“The course and instructor were very engaging, and the concepts were simple, yet effective.”
—Cheryl Giua, Change Management Lead & Culture Transformation Lead, Guardian Life
“This is a great course for any professional looking for a new way to help inspire change.”
—Noelle Broughton, Development Program Manager/Instructional Designer, StockX
Course Resources
For more information about the content that will be covered and what to expect throughout the course, download a copy of our course syllabus.
Thinking like your audience is the key to getting them motivated for change. Our Five Frames storytelling exercise quickly gets you into your audience’s shoes so you can understand how the change will impact them.
FAQ
Q: Why should I trust XPLANE?
A: XPLANE has been helping leaders worldwide tell impactful change stories since 1993. Frequently, clients come to XPLANE with an overwhelming amount of data, and look to us to simplify and construct the information into a narrative people can better understand and align around.
Our storytelling methods have successfully helped organizations’ employees (1) buy-in to a new culture, (2) adopt a new process or methodology, (3) get them aligned around a new vision, and more.
With over 30 years of trying and learning on real projects with our clients, we’re eager to share our methods and resources with you to help you create impactful stories for positive change.
Q: I’m super busy. How many hours will I need to invest? What’s the estimated course hours and assignment time?
A: Our course is built to fit your busy schedule. It includes:
- 90 minutes of asynchronous video content that is available to view at your own pace.
- 6 hours of live workshop sessions that are spread out over three nonconsecutive days (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) for 2 hours each day.
- The opportunity to practice key skills and get instructor and peer feedback during the live workshop sessions.
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