Leading through Storytelling
Achieving impact by telling and working with powerful stories
Story is the way we humans make sense and meaning of the world. Being able to share your story is a key skill. Being able to use story to chart your course is leadership at the highest level.
There is a power and potency in stories we are only now rediscovering. As the basic form of human currency, stories hold both our worldview and the wisdom of our experience. The key to unlocking their power is learning how to work with story – both for yourself and for the groups and systems you are part of.
“When you learn to work with stories, you can – quite literally – change your world.”
As more and more voices compete for influence, it is even more important to be aware of, working with, and shaping your own story. The stories we hold shape our future possibilities individually, organisationally, and from a community point of view. To create the biggest impact, you need to learn to work individually — both listening for and telling powerful stories — and systemically – working with the stories in the system you are part of. Every leader needs to know how to use the power of stories to engage the team and the future.
COMMUNICATION ACADEMY
invites you on a three-day residential training
On this three-day residential training we invite you to look at how story works on the individual, group and meta-systemic levels. Our work will be based on a simple six-step model, The Tao of Story, a map for the practice of both Storytelling and StoryWork. We will be using our own stories as the material for our practice together.
During the training you will ..
Find and tell your own story Find the stories you need to tell. Craft the stories that help you take charge of your work and life. Hone your Storytelling skills.
Engage in StoryWork Learn how to search out and work with the stories that help or hinder your business, through the practice of StoryWork.
Discover systemic stories. Find out about how to work with systemic stories and the wisdom they hold. See how they can chart your course for the future.
Work together with other participants to craft your stories and hone your skills.
Uncover the next steps in your story practice.
The training will take place in English, with group support for other languages.
Who is this for?
Leaders who want to identify and work with the stories they need to tell to increase their impact.
Team leaders, managers and co-workers at every level of organisation who want to explore how to motivate and focus team energy.
Community workers who want to support the communities they work with.
Individuals who want to learn more about the art and practice of storytelling.
Anyone who wants to explore how stories and storytelling can help make their work and life more focused and successful.
Mary Alice
Mary Alice is a Story Activist, specialising in using story in service of positive systemic shift and to access and create collective intelligence on critical issues. Her art is creating and hosting spaces for wise action, and narrative practice forms a key part of her work, focusing both on Storytelling and StoryWork and the emergent space in-between.
Her powerful results from a telecommunications merger project were written up in the 2006 book Wake Me Up When the Data is Over: How Organizations Use Stories to Drive Results (ed: Lori Silverman).
Now, she is researching how the finding and awakening of positive systemic stories can help accelerate change. Over the past years she has been working with a team in Denmark on the story of the country going bankrupt in 1813 – a time of moving from crisis to possibility. She is supporting a new story for education in Lithuania and working with teams in capacity building around participatory practice, including the use of story as a tool and practice for supporting the forming of communities, in organisational work and between people who want to work on what really matters to them.
She is an Art of Hosting Steward and works under the auspices of her own company, SOAR (Significant Orientations, Amazing Results). After years of living as an intentional nomad, living, working and gathering stories all over the world, her own story is now changing.
The Art of Story
A taste of the principles and practice of storytelling. Presentation and dialogue with Mary Alice Arthur – story activist.
27 May, 14:00-17:00
Sofia, Serendipity, 99-101 Tsar Boris Blvd.
Participation fee is 75 BGN.
Leading Through Storytelling Retreat
Three-day residential training where we will look at how story works on the individual, group and meta-systemic levels.
29 May, 17:00 to 31 May 15:00
Casa Art Hotel