Business Storytelling Coaching

10. As your Business Storytelling Coach I work with you to use stories as a natural and powerful tool to solve your specific business problems. Stories act as a hook to engage the listener, build an emotional connect and drive business outcomes.

What I don’t do – is get you around the workplace sharing stories. Surely, not! Peter Hawkins leading consultant, writer and researcher says – that the greatest challenge is in the connections between teams and team members.
Where do you face your biggest challenge as a leader – do you need to drive change, create a culture of curiosity, enhance gravitas, engage and motivate your teams? etc.. Research says one of the universal problems leaders face is how does one make what they care about also what others care about and thereby influencing teams. Therein lies your opportunity as a Leader to create change, be a role model and shape the world. This is also called Reverse Coaching as a Leader.

Influencing & persuading is a High-order skill: Today a leader is looking to Influence and inspire through stories. As your coach I help you convert your experiences into powerful stories, fill your story tool box by collecting stories, practice and apply to your specific business outcome. Starting point are your goals.

Solve a real time problem with real time stories: Persuasion is not by bar charts or pie charts. As you paint a picture for me of the preferred future – you share and listen to your own stories. Understanding how it can help you to transition into a more persuasive communicator. Stories shower droplets of emotions that is the engine that brings in empathy and action. Through Coaching I help you to build your tool box of micro personal and work stories that drive your unique and specific business outcomes that you identify for yourself. Your tool box can have your nuggets of experiences, stories you read or stories of other people – this ensures you are an authentic, vulnerable and builds your credibility as a communicator.

Example: Storytelling to build communication and gravitas

A manager in a tech firm trained as an Accountant, let’s call her Sara reached out to me at the beginning of this year (2023) saying ‘I want to improve my communication skills with my stakeholders’. I knew Sara as both of us are part of another professional women’s cohort. When I probed Sara, she mentioned that the feedback she gets is outstanding on outcomes achieved, she is told that the deliverables are not just met but that she has excelled. She leads a team on innovative learning.

However for last 3 years her one archilles heel was that her communication needs to improve. Her voice I sensed sounded frustrated and annoyed. As I gently prodded to know what is the cause of this frustration – she said ‘I am asked to lead big projects, engage with senior stakeholders, interact across countries yet am told I don’t communicate well. ‘Doesn’t it sound odd, she said?’ Using the coaching process we looked at her motivations, fears, purpose and beliefs so that we work on creating a long-lasting transformation and not just a short lived change.

Coaching is always goal focused so we identified areas where Sara needs to communicate, her stakeholders, impact she wants to create etc.

The process helped Sara share stories of vulnerability, her successes, impact, visualizations. We partnered in role plays, simulations where she shared her experiences, her learnings with courage and authenticity. There was learning, practice and application in equal measure.

Her early experience 2 weeks later was how she got a standing ovation in a Toast Masters forum. A month later excitedly she called to say that the team was making a presentation to the super boss and she was asked to present one slide that had lots of data. The presentation she heard before her she described them as dry and boring. She chose instead to narrate 2 stories around the data. While describing to me she said ‘Boss was jumping up with excitement and asked her if he can also attend her labs next time. It didn’t end there soon she realized everyone around her starting sharing stories’. As she narrated this to me - her voice was so excited and full of joy.

Are you looking to persuade, drive change, create a culture of inclusion, lead a town hall or give a speech at the next onboarding event, let us work together