We are firm believers in the value of empowering leaders (and people) to be compelling communicators who can inspire and persuade others with stories. Now that we’re almost a decade into delivering our flagship program, Influential Storytelling, we’ve partnered with clients ranging from Google to the University of Michigan, Uber to McGraw Hill. In that time, we have developed a strong point of view about what it takes to create an effective storytelling learning journey.

If you’re designing a storytelling learning journey for your employees, here are a few guiding principles we recommend you keep in mind:

Understand the storyteller’s context

Every learning journey—irrespective of the skill you’re teaching—should be grounded in a deep understanding of the context in which your learners will be leveraging that skill. In the case of storytelling, understanding context means you need to know the who, when, how, and why of storytelling; who the audiences are that the storyteller will be sharing stories with, when the moments will present themselves, how these stories will be shared, and why they should even be telling stories in the first place. 

These details are important because they will help shape the design of your program. For example, when we work with product managers, a common use case for stories that they identify is in a presentation to their executive leadership. In this context, they have time to prepare their story ahead of time, and potentially even vet the story with representative audiences before the big day. Alternatively, when we work with sales teams, we often discuss the relevance of telling extemporaneous stories in the midst of a conversation with a customer. These different contexts require different discussion points and focus areas for the learning journey.

Understanding the storyteller’s  context is also important because it may be relevant content to teach! Learners who are stretching into the storytelling skill often aren’t even aware of the storytelling moments that may already be present in their lives, let alone the reasons why they can and should be telling stories, or for whom.

Help your learners identify stories to craft

Our learners often struggle the most before they even begin. They judge and self-censor story ideas and hesitate to settle on a concept they can craft into a story. Not only is this challenge deeply personal, each learner progresses through it differently.

For this reason, our learning journey is designed with this particular challenge in mind. Before our learners gather for the live experience, we provide brainstorming prompts and meet individually with each person who needs it to help them find a story idea. Sometimes we simply have to build their confidence. Other times we help learners understand the relevant merits and drawbacks of a few stories they’re considering. Sometimes we help them brainstorm stories based on the use cases they’ve identified.

But beyond the story-crafting process that’s built into the learning journey, learners also need to learn how to identify stories they could tell in future situations. We help our learners identify the moments where they can build in a pause-and-reflect routine. In these moments—often at the end of a project, or another natural transition moment— they can capture just a few notes about the experiences they had and what they learned. These notes then become a story idea library to which they can return for story ideas when the moments present themselves.

Give your learners a language through which they can discuss the strengths and opportunities of a story

It’s important you give your learners story models and frameworks that are easy to grasp.  The more you can create structure for folks, the more easily they will be able to understand and integrate the content. In Influential Storytelling, we explore the Super Powers of an Influential Storyteller and the 5 Ps of Influential Delivery. In your own learning journey, it might be a different framework, but what matters is you’re giving your learners a way of talking about the different parts and pieces of a story, and a way to evaluate the quality or power of each story.

One of the greatest benefits of providing your learners with a language is that it lasts beyond any workshop or training. It becomes a shared articulation by which they can give each other feedback. For example, the Super Powers of an Influential Storyteller gives learners four key ways to ensure their stories are influential, along with shorthand to reference each. One of them is to Invite Curiosity. After the program, as people are sharing stories and using stories at work, they can check in with each other and say, “How might I better Invite Curiosity?” and everyone has a shared understanding of what that means.

We delivered our program for the sales team at o9 Solutions, and later we heard feedback from the Head of Sales that he appreciated the frameworks that we gave his team because they empowered his team to talk to each other about their stories. After our program, he made it a regular practice for the team to share stories and give each other feedback. This was only possible because they had a shared language that allowed for efficient and effective communication.

Make it easy to experiment (and fail)

Storytelling can feel intimidating. For some, anything in the universe of public speaking is terrifying. For others, storytelling is vulnerable because it requires at least some element of sharing something personal. Whatever the reason, keep in mind that you will have to make a pointed effort to set your learners at ease and make them feel comfortable to experiment.

Some ways that we accomplish this in our program include:

• Helping people feel confident about the stories they choose to craft.

• Giving learners a chance to think on their own before sharing with a partner.

• Laddering up the commitment by first sharing with just one person, then two, then more.

• Emphasizing the value of iteration and experimentation along the way.

• Showcasing a story of our own that is itself a work in progress.

• Pointing out the big difference between the story they came in with, and the story they leave with.

• Celebrating risk taking, not outcomes.

• Framing feedback as “experiments to try” rather than “things that will definitely make the story better.”

• Discussing audience variability, and the inherent nature of a story to land with one audience and not land with another.

Leverage what’s powerful about story and storytelling

Beyond the storytelling skill-building that you hope to provide, storytelling also supports connecting people to each other. A storytelling learning journey can have the added benefit of building relationships and trust across your organization.  If you’re investing in developing the skill for your leaders, you might as well also capitalize on the side-benefits of building a more connected and trusting team.

To accomplish this, your program has to be designed with plenty of opportunities for your learners to share and hear stories with each other. You can’t have too much content or presentation and you must have opportunities for sharing in small groups. The more your learners can share and hear stories, the more connected they will feel, and the more memorable the experience itself will be.

At the beginning of the “come back” after COVID, when teams hadn’t seen each other in person— in some cases, for years—many of our clients were looking for a way to accomplish both professional development, and team building. Amplify, an EdTech company that saw a TON of growth during the first few years of COVID had a marketing team that went from 5 to 45 during that time. The team had never met in person, and when they finally had their first all-hands gathering, the Head of Marketing wanted to make sure that the team had a chance to really get to know each other. Although they had socialization time built into the 3-day event, the after-action feedback from participants highlighted the storytelling learning experience as not only the best part of the team retreat, but also the period of time when they felt like they got to know each other the best. Storytelling, by its nature, will naturally lend itself to building connections. Your programs should at least lean into and leverage that power as an opportunity.

Interested in developing a storytelling program at your organization? Send us an email.