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Transformational Storytelling Training Workshop for Business Teams
What Your Team Will Get From a Transformational Storytelling Workshop
A leading edge communications process that will level up all the ways you communicate at work: presentations, reports, storytelling with data, pitching business cases to internal stakeholders, and much more.
A new understanding of the role of business storytelling in the time of AI, with review of best practice examples and cutting-edge research
Immediate application of your new insights to the real stories your team uses in your work today. (Instant ROI! 💰💰)
An action plan—customized to your team!—that will show you exactly how to sustain your learning and incorporate into existing systems & processes.
Tailored guidance from a renowned expert in business storytelling who will help your team elevate adaptability, impact and creative confidence.
“We came into the room with a complex technical product, and walked away from the workshop knowing exactly which stories we should be telling and why.”
— VP Product, Unbounce
Transformational Storytelling Training Workshop for Business Teams: How It Works
This immersive training workshop enables a practical and impactful communications toolkit by guiding your team to learn the art and craft of business storytelling—and make the first steps towards sustainable change.
DESIGNED FOR:
Teams from any Organizational
Function (e.g. sales, product, marketing, analysts, finance, executive, etc.)
FORMAT:
In-Person in the US/Canada.
(Virtual also available
on a select basis.)
DURATION:
Standard workshop is
2 days of learning.
(Shorter/longer trainings
also accommodated.)
CLASS SIZE:
In-Person: Up to 50
Why Transformational Storytelling Training Workshop for Business Teams?
In today’s quickly changing world, where entire markets can shift in a single tweet, every business professional needs to upgrade their communications skills and abilities. In today’s business environment:
storytelling is required to contextualize data to external audiences and internal stakeholders
storytelling is required to change someone’s legacy belief and inspire new ideas and behavior
storytelling is required to help others see a future that does not yet exist
storytelling is required to instigate impact, belief and engagement
For this reason, storytelling has suddenly become essential for many organizational functions that have not traditionally had a communications role. Storytelling is no longer restricted to just sales and marketing—it now applies to everyone in the organization, from executive leaders with a transformational vision to business analysts with a data-based story to tell to everyone who needs to create direction, buy-in and change.
How Is Transformational Storytelling Different From “Telling a Story”?
Transformational Storytelling is the ability to take a fact-based message and transform it into an engaging, impactful and relevant experience for professional audiences, like stakeholders and customers.
This ability is much more than “how to tell a story”. Transformational Storytelling is about developing core skills:
How to find the optimal narrative that will suit different audiences, contexts and communications formats
How to deliver the narrative in an engaging, authentic and impactful way, no matter whether you are writing, speaking, using visual tools like data, or presenting via digital formats
How to transform the narrative, continuously, as the audiences, contexts and formats evolve—for example, due to changing global circumstances or the introduction of new technologies like AI
These are the subjects that are explored in depth during this ground-breaking storytelling training workshop.
About the Transformational Storytelling Toolkit
“Storytelling” is a loaded word in business; everyone uses it, but very few understand what it means. Generally, most people—even workshop leaders—think that storytelling is about structure. They teach workshops where business professionals learn concepts like beginning, middle and end that could have been taught in high school.
Yes, it is important to know that a story needs a beginning, a middle and an end. However, this insight is only scratching the surface. In order to elevate communication at work, your team needs more than a plotline:
You need to develop the craft of storytelling. This includes learning structural frameworks and developing an understanding of what makes a story “good”.
You need to develop the art of storytelling. The art of storytelling is all about figuring out what makes a message compelling. This is a sophisticated topic that includes understanding an audience, understanding your own relationship to your message, and understanding how to deliver it in the most effective way.
You need to develop the ability to change your perspective. This ability to change is actually the most important thing you can learn in a storytelling workshop. That’s because what you’re really trying to learn is how to stop communicating in one way and start communicating in a different way. You need the ability to change. Without this skill, your team will not improve no matter how many “correct” structures you learn.
The Transformational Storytelling toolkit provides resources that apply to each of these three categories. Our tools will help you facilitate change in all three elements at once. At the core of our work is a unique creative process that can actually instigate an innovative new perspective that is tailored to you.
The Transformational Storytelling toolkit applies to the full range of communications at work: from selling products to selling ideas; from elevating the impact of data-driven narratives to getting buy-in for change.
Our goal is to introduce you to this innovative toolkit and guide you to apply your new insights to your real work.
Overall Goals of Your Transformational Storytelling Training Workshop:
Understand the enormous value and relevance of Transformational Storytelling in your team’s real work
Study best practice examples to learn the basics of the sales storytelling toolkit
Learn a cutting-edge innovation process to dream up more effective ways of telling your real stories
Apply your learning immediately to examples of your real messaging, instantly achieving ROI
Create a custom designed plan to sustain your learning with minimal additional resources
Walk away with new insights and inspiration, having addressed and overcome any resistance to change
Your team will achieve these goals through a variety of highly interactive exercises tailored to you.
“Jordan knows his stuff inside and out, and he communicates it wonderfully.”
— Workshop Attendee, Canadian Tire Triangle Leadership Academy
Jordan’s Storytelling Workshop Clients
Jordan Bower has worked with more than 150 organizations from around the world, and trained tens of thousands of professionals in strategic storytelling. His clients include:
“We have seen immediate improvement in all our communication, from how we tell the story of our founders to how we express the vision and value of our product. Jordan’s workshop delivered impact from our executives to individual contributors.”
— Chief Revenue Officer, King’s Hawaiian
Transformational Storytelling Training Workshop:
Overall Structure and Learning Approach
Expect an innovative learning experience with immersive exercises and dynamic structured learning that helps your team improve your skills, messaging, and tactics in real time.
Chapter 1:
Understanding the Hidden Value of Storytelling in Business
Includes these topics:
The Craft and Art of Transformational Storytelling
How The Best Business Leaders Tell Stories: It’s Not What You Think
Storytelling in the Time of AI: Now’s the Time for Stories that Evolve
Includes these exercises:
How to Tell Your Personal Leadership Story… in 3 Mins or Less
How to Think—and Listen—Like a Storyteller
Chapter 2:
Assess—and Transform—Your Team’s Real Messaging Way Faster Than You Think
Includes these topics:
The Craft of Storytelling: Turning Data into Insight
The Art of Storytelling: Evoking Engagement Authentically
Includes these exercises:
Transform Your Perspective, Transform Your Story
Your Storytelling Process in Four Parts: Create, Try, Reflect, Repeat
Chapter 3:
Elevate Your Impact & Plan What’s Next
Includes these topics:
Transformational Storytelling: Putting It All Together
How To Address Outer—and Inner—Resistance
That was a Great Workshop: So Now What?
Includes these exercises:
Developing Your Story—and What to Do With Feedback
15% Solutions: Designing Achievable Next Steps
Meet Jordan Bower.
A dynamic lateral thinker, expert group facilitator and accomplished business storyteller, Jordan Bower has been teaching the art, craft and science of strategic storytelling in business for nearly fifteen years.
Jordan has delivered more than 150 storytelling workshops to organizational clients, including tech companies like Autodesk and Mozilla, large scale corporations like King’s Hawaiian and Canadian Tire, as well as many groups across small and medium-sized business, non-profits and the public sector. As a keynote speaker, he has delivered talks and workshops at conferences and events in North America, Europe and Asia.
Jordan often supplements his workshops with transformational coaching, consulting and advisory engagements. He is based in Vancouver, Canada, where he still enjoys very long walks.
FAQs
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The training includes 3 learning modules:
Overview of Business Storytelling: What it is and why it is relevant
Foundations and Frameworks of Business Storytelling: How to think about integrating storytelling ideas in business mesages
Putting the ideas into practice: Applying new insights to the team’s real messaging.
These modules are supplemented with a mix of interactive exercises, peer learning groups and large group facilitated conversation.
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Very! We keep the energy up with real world examples of effective business storytelling, dynamic content and facilitation style, and plenty of structured exercises in pairs and peer learning groups.
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This training takes a principle-based approach to business storytelling. That means the principles can be applied broadly to any kind of business communication. We address written and verbal communication in emails, reports, Powerpoint decks, presentations, videos, social media and much, much more.
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Yes! The principles learned in this workshop apply to storytelling with data and other visuals. Participants learn how to clarify their message, find the emotional core and relate it to their stakeholders or other audiences. Then, they practice applying these ideas to real examples of their workplace messaging.
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Yes! Before every workshop, we conduct research that allows us to customize content and examples to your group. Before the session, we will suggest examples of your real messaging that can be “workshopped” during the training. These examples may be marketing materials, a slide from a Powerpoint deck, or other relevant “stories”.
Don’t worry, we will guide you to the best stories to work on in the training, and you will approve everything in advance!
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Yes! We love working with our clients to maximize the value they get from our training. Just send us a message!
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No! The workshop uses a mix of structured exercises, peer-learning groups and large group sessions to introduce and learn the material. Your team will participate in exercises in pairs and groups of four, but no one will be obligated to present anything in front of the entire group.
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Yes! I have custom designed the content, and I deliver it in a tailored way to every group. I have successfully delivered more than 100 storytelling workshops!
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Yes! Your team will receive additional materials, recommended readings, and tools to continue developing their storytelling skills after the workshop.
Additionally, I will meet with your leadership after the workshop to reflect on the learning experience and to recommend customized next steps.
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This storytelling training is often the first step in a change initiative. Transformation is my speciality! I will be happy to discuss a longer journey if you like, after the training. For more info, check out my homepage.
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This content is presented as a workshop, rather than a storytelling training for business, because participants will “workshop” real examples of their mesaging. The workshop is highly engaging and interactive, focusing on developing storytellers rather than “training” them.
Get in touch with Jordan
Let’s schedule a 30 min consultation to discuss your group, your goals, and how I might be able to help.
