Storytelling for Change

Why Storytelling?

Storytelling is by far the most underrated skill in business. Whether we have to stand in front of a group of people and present an idea, a proposal, or a report, or simply run a meeting, or engage in a personal dialog, the skill of storytelling can be a great benefit to engage your audience, whether they be your colleagues, your employees, your board of directors, or a group of strangers. People will remember the story you tell far longer than they will remember a dry proposal, a sales pitch, or an argument based on logic—no matter how compelling the data!

"After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world."
— Philip Pullman

The Workshop Structure

Starting with a simple framework for story creation this dialogue-centric workshop offers participants the ability to weave flow, metaphor, gesture, movement, language and silence into their narrative to better share their message.

The focus of this workshop is on speaking from your heart, embracing your listeners, sharing your passion, and above all encouraging and guiding others to do the same. It emphasizes emotional connection over the usual intellect-orientated techniques we learn for persuasive speaking, which, while helpful, often fail to serve our deeper need to really connect, human to human.

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." — Maya Angelou

Learning Outcomes

Your learning is, of course, your responsibility, but I hope that by the end of the workshop you'll understand story flow, narrative, and the use of metaphor, and be able to apply these skills when speaking in public to both small and large audiences, and to engage colleagues and clients through the use of fable, parable and analogy. Practical storytelling experience during the session will build confidence and directly demonstrate the power of these simple techniques.

Previous Participant Responses

"This fantastic course took me from being unable to put together an interesting story to having a room full of people hanging on my every word. Educational and fun!"

"I took Tobias's Story telling workshop a few years ago and today it remains a polished and well-used tool in my toolkit. This not just at work, but in my interactions with family and friends."

"This workshop is a brilliant exploration into storytelling and it's uses around the workplace. We are guided into places which at times feel uncomfortable but come out feeling confident and creative. Tobias's teachings are so insightful and fascinating, highly recommend attending."

"I've taken a lot of presentation skills training and this short workshop was one of the most effective in terms of providing actionable skills that can be put to use immediately without having to memorize a long list of 'do this, then do this...' tasks. Thank you for initiating the workshop and please keep it up. I have recommended it to several colleagues already."

"I came away with a different perspective on how to tell a compelling story. It was really eye opening to see how much a presentation can be improved after integrating the advice that we received. It made me want to seek more occasions to 'show up in front of an audience', and I found the content of the workshop to also be applicable to general communication within my team."

"This workshop was enlightening for me."

"Thought provoking, Interesting, Challenging. I watch films with a different perspective now. Attending Tobias' workshop has made me rethink how I communicate with people. It was also a lot of fun!"

"Lots of excellent ideas were presented. The strategy of using a story framework to bring the audience in on your passion or your idea has stuck with me since the workshop."

"Great workshop. I found it useful to see how storytelling can be applied to a technical talk to make it engaging and worthwhile."

"I was fascinated to see the results of Tobias's teachings and instructions unfolding as we participated in the group exercises. My next project will be working with data, I will definitely apply the storytelling techniques that I learned in this workshop when doing technical presentations about the project."