STORYTELLING FOR CHANGE
Develop a compelling story that moves your team to action
Great stories have the power to move people, but not all stories are created equal. How do you create a story that captivates when the topic is more complex and less attention-grabbing? What is it that makes them pause, seek to understand, and care about the information you are sharing?
In this course, you will move from feeling like you’re inundating your audience with facts and figures to telling a cohesive and compelling story that resonates with people, builds understanding, and gets you the buy-in to move forward.
This course is conducted in a hybrid format and the duration is over 3 consecutive days for a total of 6 hours.
By the end of this course you will:
- Understand how to craft memorable stories your audience can repeat and retell to spark change
- Set clear goals for your story and use frameworks to outline important elements of it
- Inspire your audience to take action
- Sharpen the clarity of your story by working with visuals
- Test and improve your story with feedback
- Keep your audience interested and engaged
Learners will leave with:
- A personalized change story that can be adjusted and scaled to various audiences and formats
- A series of storytelling challenges to unlock creative thinking
- A library of storytelling methods to use in your daily practice
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 about the data.
- You’re unsure of what thread to pull to get more people to care about the information you’re presenting.
- You leave your presentations feeling like you’ve just gone around in circles OR
- Your audience leaves your presentation unsure about what to do next.
- You’re frustrated that your presentations aren’t landing and often feel jammed packed or chaotic no matter how many hours you spend dissecting/finessing the data.
Course Features and Benefits
While the course is fully virtual and will be delivered via Zoom and MURAL, you’ll be able to connect with and learn from fellow participants. The group will be divided into small cohorts, with whom you’ll be working and discussing, in addition to the full-group activities and discussions.
About the Learning Experience
- Learn from expert practitioners
- Asynchronous video content to view at your own pace in your own time (zone)
- Three hands-on, live-instruction session with your course instructor to learn by doing and get support
- Real-time guidance and feedback to troubleshoot and practice key skills you can immediately apply to your organization
- Benefit from the rich discussion, support, and inspiration from other professionals attending the course
- This class is designed to be an open and collaborative environment where you and other learners will be able to see each other’s work.
Ongoing Benefits
- Lifetime access to course portal and materials including MURAL template
- The tools and frameworks for leading the activities in your daily practice
- Access to new tools, bonus content, and course updates as the course evolves
- One on one, 30-minute consultation on your project with an expert practitioner
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
DAY 2
DAY 3
Story IS change
- The science of storytelling
- Sensemaking and prioritization
- Defining the goal of your story
Async Video Lecture
Get a jumpstart on your story
- Story starting points
- Keeping the audience top of mind
- Story elements, narrative arcs, and frameworks
Async Video Lecture
See the story better, visually
- Scalable stories
- Revising and pulling the story together visually
- Storyboards
Async Video Lecture
Storytelling begins with understanding your audience
- Empathy and understanding the audience
- Making sensory connections to the internal organs of the audience
Live Group Instruction
Tell a story that lands
- Setting learning objectives
- Metaphors
- Storyboards
Live Group Instruction
Denouement isn't the end—keep your listeners engaged
- Audience engagement
- Next steps with the story
Live Group Instruction
Your Instructor
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.
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
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 25+ 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’s spread out across three days, and during the course you will have access to:
- Asynchronous video content to view at your own pace in your own time (zone).
- AND three hands-on, live, group-instruction session with your instructor to practice key skills, answer questions, and provide you with additional feedback on activities.
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