Storytelling: The Secret Weapon of Communication

Overview

Great stories only happen to people who can tell them. This workshop teaches the art and science of storytelling, through interactive exercises, brief lectures, and case studies of master communicators in business, politics, film, literature, and advertising. Harvard Professor Howard Gardner calls stories “the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal.” Participants will hone their weapons with practical tools for professional and personal contexts. Regardless of your goals— someone to influence, something to sell, or simply wishing to express your own experiences with maximum impact—storytelling is an essential meta-skill with an irresistible power to capture hearts and minds.

Topics

• Communicating your story with clarity, concision, and conviction
• Storytelling tactics: structure, suspense, pacing, humour, vivid description, character, imagery, style, motif, and point of view
• Key frameworks for turning new experiences into compelling stories
• Unleashing the hidden potential of the stories you already know
• How to “workshop” stories for immediate feedback and guidance
• Getting people to listen—and to keep listening
• How to choose and include meaningful details
• Crucial differences between written and spoken stories
• How to bend the truth without breaking it: exaggeration and hyperbole
• Time-tested approaches for beginnings, middles, and endings
• Understanding and applying dramatic structure
• How stories shape our understanding of the world, and of each other
• Gauging audience reaction to revise and adapt your material
• Identifying obstacles to effective storytelling—and how to overcome them

Audience

• Professionals at any level seeking to leverage their communications skills with practical storytelling tools
• Communications specialists who want to refine or refresh their storytelling ability

Duration

Cost

• $655 (plus tax)

Featured Instructor

Arthur Thuot is the facilitator at StoryCorp, a company that delivers storytelling workshops to business and government. Previously, he served as a project director for a media agency in Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific. He holds an MFA from the University of Florida and an HBA from the Ivey Business School at Western University.

Sessions