Dr Milton Erickson was a famous psychiatrist whose patients would wait more than 18 months for an appointment. They would send other clients to him for years later because they were doing so well.
Milton told Joe a story about a tomato plant. Joe was struggling with pain from terminal cancer. Because of the story, within a few hours Joe's pain lessened. In a few days the pain was under control enough for him to be in care at home.
Stories make things happen.
Stories do more than amuse. They entrance. They suggest ideas. They encourage people to find their own solutions. People remember stories. They forget facts.
Perhaps you would like clients to have so much faith in your abilities that they'll wait 18 months for an appointment with you.
Maybe you're interested in relieving the pain of your work team. Even helping your clients feel so good they recommend you to their peers.
Story has long been a vehicle for teaching and learning, and is gaining prominence in the business world as a tool for knowledge management.
Daniel Pink chronicles the use of story in fields as traditional as medicine and law, suggesting that story telling is a $1 trillion per year USD business.
You can make stories work better.
If you'd like to learn more about how to tell a good story, to make your stories more relevant, come to our Storytelling in business workshop. Good stories clarify and reveal your vision. You can make stories work to fit your point, learn how to feed your audience's values and satisfy the human need for story.
Discover the world interpreted through story: the hero stories, the cautionary tales of your everyday life and of your flights of fantasy will entrance and guide you to a place that nourishes your spirit and keeps your staff and colleagues entertained and listening.
Interact and stretch your mind.
The story workshop is interactive. You work in large and small groups to craft fictional stories as well as retell stories from life. You will have an opportunity to learn to:
- apply stories to work - and make stories work as persuasive tools
- how to structure a story to capture people's attention
- make it easier for people to see your vision, using enough detail without being boring
- add humour and feed values through story
The workshop also covers:
- why tell stories
- when and when not to use story
- making your stories even more relevant, and using others' stories to make your point
- techniques to capture stories from your organisation and make sense of the themes from those stories
We developed this workshop because people loved the segment on storytelling in our other workshop Life is not a rehearsal: start improvising . Our feedback forms kept on saying "Please more story telling". So this is it!
Please wear comfortable clothing and shoes (avoid high heels). You may sit on the floor for some activities.