Storytelling

Have you ever watched an audience grapple with relating your content to their own experiences? Have you struggled to capture their attention, engage their minds, or even earn their trust?

As instructional designers and trainers, we have one immediate goal: connect with learners. Connections are at the heart of learning transfer and a critical component of learning application. How do you create that connection? That’s where storytelling comes in!

Storytelling is an incredible strategy for building authentic connections between you and your learners. This highly interactive session will provide you with a roadmap to help you craft your own captivating stories; we will also apply the roadmap as you create your own story in real time. We’ll talk about the science of storytelling, how to select the right story for your training, and how to effortlessly integrate stories into instructor-led, eLearning, and virtual sessions.

  Perfect for:
Individual practitioners, training teams (instructional designers, facilitators, managers)

  Topics:
Training Delivery | Instructional Design | Audience Engagement

  Length:
1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours

  Delivery:
In-person, online (1 hour only)

  What you will learn to do:

• Identify optimal opportunities to integrate stories into training content
• Craft compelling stories that form connections between the instructor/facilitator and the learner

   CONTACT US TO LEARN MORE   

It’s all too common a scene: a frazzled instructor, standing before a room filled with disengaged learners struggling to relate the information presented to their day-to-day roles. The content is important, the application to their jobs is clear, but they just aren’t connecting to it—or to the instructor. How can an instructor capture the learners’ attention by creating personal, authentic connections that inspire them to master the content and apply it on the job? It’s in those challenging moments where storytelling can make a profound, meaningful impact.

Storytelling is perhaps the most human training strategy and the greatest tool talent development professionals have at their fingertips. They create genuine, memorable experiences for the learner, which creates an environment where the learner can form a connection with both the content and the trainer. We remember stories because we relate them back to our own experiences: we internalize them, we reflect on them, and we make them our own.

It’s not enough to just tell a great story as part of a training session. Knowing how to pick just the right story, craft it into a proper format, and integrate it into training content requires developing and applying some solid storytelling skills. While training professionals hear quite a bit about the role storytelling can play in their training design and delivery, knowing how to seamlessly weave a story into existing content to engage learners and foster their connection to the content and the facilitator is not as easy as it sounds. This session seeks to ground learners in storytelling basics as well as provide tips and ideas for creating and sharing stories as part of instructor-led, eLearning, and virtual programs.

This session will provide an overview of how storytelling can be applied to any learning experience to foster knowledge transfer and promote memorable, engaging experiences. Attendees will learn basic storytelling principles, how to source great stories, and how to tailor stories to fit real-world training experiences. Examples and tips that introduce storytelling concepts appropriate for any training will be unlocked through interactive discussions, and participants will be able to apply them to their own upcoming trainings in real time. Through partner exercises they will share their stories, receive feedback, and walk away with ideas for how they can perfect their stories before their next training. With their greatest training tool unlocked, participants will be ready to bring upcoming trainings to life with well-crafted, compelling stories.

  Perfect for:
Individual practitioners, training teams (instructional designers, facilitators, managers)

  Topics:
Training Delivery | Instructional Design | Audience Engagement

  Length:
8 hours (1 day), 16 hours (2 days)

  Delivery:
In-person

  What you will learn to do:

• Apply storytelling basics and best practices to training content
• Create and deliver effective stories that advance learning outcomes
• Engage learners through stories to create memorable, personal connections

   CONTACT US TO LEARN MORE