Anecdote is excited to announce that Shawn Callahan and Mark Schenk will be coming to India to lead our storytelling and narrative workshops in New Delhi.  

And here is a little bit about the workshop. Hope you can join us on the 25th September.

 Storytelling to influence, engage & persaude

We all desire better ways to persuade, share what we know, and help those around us make sense of the complex world we live in. The development of our innate storytelling skills helps us to build confidence, convey ideas clearly, and probably most importantly, display our humanity.

Just recently we helped a CEO tell the story of his company's strategy. As he told it he added his own personal anecdotes. The audience, his employees, were captivated. Many said, "it's the first time that we got to see him as a person instead of just a name and a title." He could've shown the PowerPoint slides, but he didn't and his audience not only understood, they felt the importance of his message.

We all want to express our ideas with great impact, yet eyes instantly glaze over the moment you beam your PowerPoint slides laden with dot points. We know informally that stories are engaging – we tell them at dinner parties and people listen and they ‘get it’. Yet few leaders systematically harness storytelling to communicate ideas, convey their organisation’s values, or inspire their people. Anecdote’s storytelling workshop will show you how to do this.

Our workshop is interactive because we strongly believe in the power of practical activities to foster learning. Throughout the day, participants will engage in hands-on activities designed to build their skills and knowledge.

What the one-day workshop is all about

Stories have an incredible natural power. Our workshop will teach you how to tap into this power in three ways:

• Communication – how to get your message to stick
• Influence and Persuasion – how to change behaviour
• Insight and Empowerment – how to understand what’s really going on

Getting your message to stick

At a recent businesswomen’s summit, Ginni Rometty, the CEO of IBM, shared a story about how, early in her career, she responded to a big job offer by saying she needed time to consider it, as she was unsure whether she could handle the responsibility. On hearing about her uncertainty, Rometty’s husband boosted her self-confidence with just one simple question: ‘Do you think a man would have ever answered that question that way?’ Her little story was reported in Fortune, The New York Times and Harvard Business Review blogs. It stuck.

The telling of business stories is not about concocting events and delivering your tale to an enraptured audience. Rather, it relies on people sharing their own experiences in an authentic and empathetic way. Everyone has stories to tell, but in many cases we are unaware of them. During our workshop, we help participants to understand why stories work, and how they can become effective story collectors and tellers. We show them how to use these skills to dramatically improve the effectiveness of their communications. And the beauty of it is that these skills are equally effective in our personal and professional lives.

Changing behaviour

In 2009, we facilitated a workshop involving 300 survivors of the Victorian bushfires, helping them share stories of when a small thing made a big difference. It was the first step in helping these people to connect with and learn from each other about how to recover from the disaster.

The initial step in influencing your audience is to establish a connection with them. Once this has happened, there are then many ways in which stories can help motivate that audience and inspire action. This section of our workshop focuses on how stories can forge stronger relationships, open up people’s minds to new possibilities, and effect real behaviour change. We’ll show you how to bring values to life, make strategies stick, and strengthen employee engagement.

Understanding what’s really going on

We once met with the CEO of a major bank who told us about his organisation’s excellent employee engagement scores. We then collected stories from his staff and discovered that many of them were bitterly unhappy.

The final section of our workshop focuses on how to use stories to find out what’s really going on in your organisation, and how to then tackle complex and challenging problems: the ones that involve people and seemingly intractable differences of opinion. Some of the important skills required to do this include asking effective questions and helping people move from problem-solving to seeing the broader patterns at work.

Who should attend?

This workshop is invaluable for anyone who wants to improve their ability to become aware of and tell their own stories within a business context. It is also beneficial for people who wish to improve their leadership skills and their ability to communicate ideas and engage staff in developing new behaviours. As we believe leadership occurs at all levels of an organisation we doubt this skill would not apply to any employee!

You should attend this course if you are interested in:

• becoming a real enabler of change in your company
• communicating your organisation’s mission, strategy and values
• motivating and inspiring people
• making a real connection with your people and fostering trust
• becoming a more interesting and memorable speaker

 What attendees have said

‘Anecdote has a most honest, open and engaging approach, which is what has been shown to work best with this technique and creates an enjoyable workshop.’

‘The workshop covered a lot of territory in a way that combined analytical rigour with a clear and informal delivery. I recommend it without reservation.’

‘There’s loads of value in the Storytelling for Business Leaders workshop and it’s been a useful part of my leadership development activities. In my role as Chief Sustainability Officer I’m often using stories about how our clients’ thinking has shifted around sustainability … they’re often very powerful. The workshop has given me ideas and tools for actively including stories in presentations to give people a better sense of who I am and what I stand for, as well as to illustrate key messages. I know they’re having an effect because of the feedback I receive – that they reflect an authenticity that is engaging – and because I hear people sharing these same stories.’

Payment information

Payment via credit card can be done through the Eventbrite system. This requires us to show the workshop fees in Australian dollars. The fees equate to the amounts shown below (using the currency conversion rate of A$1 = IR58.89 as at 6/8/12).

Early Bird ticket price A$595 = IR35030 (approx)

Standard ticket  price A$895 = IR52990 (approx)

Late ticket price A$995 = IR58590 (approx)

Currency fluctuations and the rates used by different banks may result in minor variations to the price reflecting on credit card statements.