CHARLENE: Kia ora koutou, and welcome to today's webinar, The Power of Story: Stories That Move People. To those of you joining from Aotearoa, nau mai, haere mai. And to those of you joining from across Australia and from anywhere else in the world, we wish you a warm welcome to today's discussion. I'm Charlene Harvey, and I'm the regulatory strategy and practice lead here at Allen + Clarke.

For those of you joining us for the first time and don't know about us, we're a consultancy that helps organizations make complex, high-stakes decisions with evidence, defend them with confidence, and build them to work for the people and communities affected. We specialize in strategy, change management, evaluation, and policy.

Now, storytelling is a large piece of the work that we do here at Allen + Clarke, whether it's rallying people behind a new strategic vision or an operating model, or helping leaders connect with their teams or communicate their work in a way that actually moves people to deliver results. Today, I'm joined by a couple of my colleagues.

So Rachel is here with me in person, and our design thinking lead, Craig Griffiths, will be joining us later. I'm now going to hand over to Rachel to introduce yourself and how we're going to structure today's session.

RACHEL: Thanks, Charlene. Kia ora, everyone. My name's Rachel Benton, and my sign name is Rachel, which is a little dance move. A big hello to our NZSL friends, Alan and Rika, who are here supporting us as interpreters and our NZSL crew watching as well. So a story that I share when I introduce myself is that I am passionate about making work better.

I work with organizations to use comms, creativity, and behavior change to bridge the gap between strategy and reality. So thanks for signing up and logging on today to join us. Today, we'll start with a bit of why when it comes to storytelling before exploring six key storytelling frameworks and when, where, and why to use them.

We'll end with some reflections and tips for how to deliver stories and some concrete next steps that you can take to become a more compelling storyteller. Throughout, we'll share everyday examples of how we use storytelling in our work or where storytelling has had a big impact on us. One of the most important things we want you to take away from today is that good storytelling doesn't happen by accident.

Anyone can be a good storyteller, but to be great, you need to build the muscle. And so this means that the best stories in a business setting, they're not always spontaneous. They absolutely can be, especially if storytelling is part of your natural communication style.

But we reckon that the best storytellers at work, they're the ones that are clear on why they're using storytelling as a technique, and those who practice and prepare. But there'll be more on this to come.

Why storytelling matters

CHARLENE: So if we take a step back, storytelling is one of the oldest tools that we have for making sense of the world. Long before spreadsheets and strategy decks, people passed on what mattered through stories.

Storytelling plays a central role in cultures because it carries history, values, identity, and practical knowledge from one generation to the next In Aotearoa New Zealand, this is especially important in our culture, where stories help preserve whakapapa, connect people to land, and strengthen language and belonging.

So if you think about the last week at work, can you remember the details of the last key presentation that was given? But I bet you can remember a colleague's crazy story about their weekend.

RACHEL: And that's because there's some fascinating science behind stories. In neuroscientist Uri Hasson's fantastic TED Talk, he shares about research using functional MRIs to scan people's brains while they were telling or listening to people sharing real-life stories. They found that when someone tells a story, the listener's brain is actively synchronizing with the speaker's.

They call this neural coupling, and it doesn't happen when someone is listening to information. It's only really happening with narrative, and not only that, they found that narrative unifies a group's thinking.

And another one to add to the reading list is Jonathan Gottschall's book, which is "The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human." And in it, he argues that stories help us to navigate life's complex social problems. He reflects that human memory is essentially story-based and estimates that up to 70% of all of our conversations consist of stories. So we're using them every day, whether you realize it or not.

And if you spend some time learning about how you can improve your storytelling in a corporate setting and putting that into practice, you're going to be an even more effective communicator. So to help you craft and share compelling stories, we've pulled together six of our favorite storytelling frameworks, which you can see on the slides here. A little bit of a sneak peek, the ones that we'll cover.

Feel free to take notes as we go, but we'll also make sure you get a copy of the slides after the session today. Each of these frameworks, they're useful in different situations, and you'll see there's some similarity, but they've all got a unique purpose. We'll jump into the first framework.

Six storytelling frameworks

Framework 1: ABT (And, But, Therefore)

RACHEL: The first one is ABT. It's your and, your but, and your therefore. You can use this when you need people to know exactly what's happening and what to do next. So it's good to lean on in crisis comms, rapid board updates, or if you're trying to sell an idea to a skeptical room. And what ABT does is it makes a message clear, memorable, and persuasive. We've got the and, which is for agreement.

You're going to state two things that are true, and you're setting up that shared context between you and the audience. The but introduces the tension. This is the obstacle, the challenge, or the complication that you're facing. And then the therefore is the resolution. It's the what happens next, the call to action.

And as we were preparing for today's webinar, I learned something I thought was quite interesting about this technique and how it was created. So Randy Olson, he was running an experiment with workshop participants, and he put this painting, that you can see on the slide, up, and he asked them to describe it. This is a painting by Edward Hopper from 1949.

And if you're asked to describe what you see, that's what the people did, and it took them about 30 seconds, and there wasn't really any so what. And after he introduced those participants to the ABT framework, people were able to deliver crisp stories of about 13 seconds, and they conveyed the meaning and the feeling. As Olson described it, they were advancing the narrative.

And to help you see this in a real-life example, his own ABT for the painting was, "There are three people in a room, and the sunlight indicates late afternoon, but the woman in the middle appears to be questioning the man sitting down. Therefore, this looks like an interrogation." So you can see how that description, it's giving us the so what. There's analysis, there's meaning and thought and feeling behind it.

I have another example that really showed me how this framework had come into play for me in one of my most memorable crisis comms moments around the time of the Kaikoura earthquake. Some of our colleagues came back from lunch and found that the lobby of our second building, it was covered with signs that it wasn't safe to enter. Our leaders were trying to figure out what was going on.

Obviously, it was our top priority to keep people safe, and we also had journalists calling. It was late on a Friday afternoon. And so in this instance, the framework of ABT, it was essential. What we would've said, not the exact words, but something like, "Our teams came back from lunch today and found the lobby of their building covered with signs about the building being unsafe.

But the inspectors hadn't alerted us. Therefore, we've stood everyone down, and we'll give a full update by 5:00 PM." So it was a short and sweet statement. It conveyed what was happening and what it meant, and that meaning is really important in stories. Can you tell us a little bit more, Charlene?

Framework 2: The Golden Circle

CHARLENE: It's a great segue, Rach. So this moves us on to our second tool. So this is your tool for meaning and when you really want to connect people to the why. So this is Simon Sinek's Golden Circle, and the power of this storytelling framework is that you start in the center. You start with the why first, then the what, and then the how.

If we compare it to ABT, ABT is better for a quick narrative, whereas the Golden Circle is better for explaining identity, belief, purpose, such as why we exist, how we operate, and what we do. Now, this is used quite a lot when talking about a company vision and mission and purpose, especially in their statements.

And the Golden Circle is most useful when you want to inspire people instead of just starting with facts and figures or features. And it works well for any message where belief and commitment matter more than a technical explanation. So if we take an example, and let's look at New Zealand's famous Fix & Fogg, and how they use the golden circle to tell their story.

So if we think about it using the golden circle as a bit of a framework, we create meaningful, sustainable impact through a shared love of delicious, honest food. By prioritizing ethical sourcing, environmental responsibility, and community support, we create an award-winning gourmet nut butters.

So why this works is that it highlights that Fix & Fogg doesn't just sell jars of delicious peanut butter, they sell a commitment to sustainability and premium craftsmanship. And so this creates a real emotional connection, and value-driven connection for customers. And this is what transforms what could be a casual grocery shopper into a really loyal brand advocate.

Now, Rach, I know you've got a really good example before we jump into the next framework.

RACHEL: Yeah. Thanks, Charlene. The example I'd share here, it's a health and safety campaign, so an internal campaign. And starting with the why, it was the company's belief that the most important thing people could do was go home every day safe to their whanau and friends. And so the how, that was funding and developing and delivering a creative campaign that encouraged people to have more safety conversations.

And the campaign was simply Stay Safe, Mate. It had supporting messages, it used quirky language and humor, it was bright, bold, colorful, and all of that was to really capture people's attention and normalize talking about safety. It was supported with training, tools, resources to help people know how to start and how to have a really good safety conversation. The what was the end product.

So that is the specific job that the campaign was doing. In this case, it was about having a safe workplace. And generally, that's where people start, especially when it comes to health and safety. We want to have a safe workplace, and this is what you'll do. But you can see there, by coming at it from the why, by getting people home to those that loved them, the organization is able to demonstrate its commitment.

It's really important. And the coolest thing was that in time, you'd hear people saying, "Stay safe, mate," to give someone a heads-up. It became part of the vernacular. It was really story in motion.

Framework 3: The three-act structure

RACHEL: So I'll move on from that example to framework three, which is the three-act structure. This is really great for when you need to get messages across concisely. So in here, you're going to really lean into the story and the arc of something that you've got to share. We all know that every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and this structure, it's going to give you exactly that.

It gives you that set-up, the confrontation, and of course, the resolution. You're going to recognize this everywhere. It's rags to riches, the quest, the tragedy. I'm a little bit of a musical theater geek, so I can also tell you it fits into many Broadway and West End musicals like "Wicked," as do the recent "Wicked" films, but we won't talk about the second one so much. I'll keep us on track.

In a corporate setting, the three-act structure, just like in "Wicked," it's going to help you set out your message cleanly. So act one is where we are, act two is what's in the way, and act three is how we're going to change it. So can you see we've given with those three acts, we've the organization or the strategy or the problem that you're working to overcome.

The framework helps you to organize your arc so that the tension builds, but then it resolves. This tension, it's really important, and we do tend to find that people want to skip to act two. They want to go from here's where we are to here's the plan. Because sitting in that middle, it can feel a bit uncomfortable, but there's no tension, no attention.

If there's nothing in the way, then there's no reason for anyone to lean in. So in a company update, a leader could start with act one, where the business is today, act two, the new strategy that's going to shake things up, and then act three is what we all need to do to deliver the strategy. And you've got the flexibility that you can use this in a town hall, in a strategy rollout, a business transformation.

It's as easy as we see in the films or those exceptional musicals. Almost any content can fit into those. Charlene, can you share where you've used them in real life?

CHARLENE: Yeah. So in one of my previous roles, I was accountable for building a customer insight function within an organization, and I was also supporting the organization to become more customer-centric. Now, there is nothing more powerful to shift to customer centricity than actual customer stories. And one of the stories I came across stayed with me, and I'd use it to reinforce the shifts that we were trying to make.

So as I tell this example, see how this story uses the three-act structure, so for the set-up, the conflict, and the resolution. So there was this customer that was in debt, and the organization had been sending overdue letters to them for months and months and months. They weren't responding to any of the letters or the call. They just really couldn't get hold of them.

And if the organization was to have a naughty list or a bad customer list, you'd bet that they were on it. Now, as part of the conversations that were happening at the time, they were making a whole lot of assumptions about the customer. They owed the organization money, they were willfully ignoring all communication, and they'd gone to ground.

And as a very last resort, and only because it would help with the subsequent legal debt recovery process, they finally sent someone else to talk directly to the customer. And when they got to the house and the person answered the door, the first thing that they saw was a large tumor on the neck of the customer.

Turns out that for the last six months, they'd been dealing with this cancerous tumor and their cancer treatment, and the last thing on their mind was this outstanding bill, which in the big scheme of things was just not important. Now as soon as everyone knew about the situation, things were put in place to accommodate the person and their situation, and the debt recovery process was stopped.

All that organizational angst and effort towards this customer completely disappeared, and all it took was 10 minutes with this person to understand what was really happening with them. So a couple of points.

You'll see that I chose the three-act structure to effectively tell the story, and the reason why I chose this is because I wanted to be respectful to the situation and actually tell the detail in three specific acts around this story.

And when I talk about being mindful of the story, I'm mindful that this is quite a powerful customer-related story, so I am actually really mindful when I would tell it, who I told it to, and how it was used. And Griff will talk a little bit more about that when he gives some tips around storytelling. Mm.

Framework 4: SPARK

RACHEL: Thanks, Charlene. It's a really powerful story, and a good thing to remember about that context and when it's right. Yeah. We're going to shift gears and head into our fourth framework, which is SPARK. And this is one that you can use to instill confidence. SPARK stands for situation, problem, action, result, and key takeaway.

It's got some DNA with the common interviewing technique you'll all know, I'm sure, STAR, but there are two things that set it apart. So the problem is introduced early, and that means that your audience, they're connected in, they're hooked into why. And then by finishing with the key takeaway, that what it means, you've built confidence. You've shown what is going to happen.

So SPARK is great in team meetings, delivery updates, board meetings, crisis comms again debriefs, even performance updates. This one, it's not a tool for inspiration like Golden Circle and delicious Fix & Fogg's peanut butter. But it's about facts and credibility, and its tight structure, it helps you land exactly what your stakeholders need to know.

We've used it to run crisis war rooms where we'd give the executive team updates every two hours, and with this framework, we're using that same structure every time, and so that means that nothing gets missed under pressure, and also that leaders, they know what to expect. So SPARK is about communicating the what and then the so what, and it helps you to build credibility and instill confidence.

What about when you do need to inspire action and get people excited about peanut butter or- What kind of framework are we going to use?

Framework 5: Monroe’s motivated sequence

CHARLENE: So this is where our tool number five comes in. So this is Monroe's Motivated Sequence. So this is a really great framework for when you need an action or a decision, and this is a way of structuring a story so it actually moves people to act rather than just informing them like Rach talked about with SPARK. Now it's effective because it follows the natural way people make decisions.

If you think about the show the Dragon's Den, they all follow this kind of style. Now on the slide you're going to see the five key steps of this framework. The first is attention. You open with something that makes people sit up and listen. Second is need. You'll show them that there's a real problem, and more importantly, you want the audience to feel why does it matter to them. The third step is around solution.

This is where you offer a solution and explain how it fixes the problem that you just articulated. The fourth step is visualization. Now this is the most important step. Up to this point, you've talked about the need, the problem, and what it might be, and in this step you're painting a picture of the future, either how good things could get if they go with your idea or how bad things could go if they don't.

And you actually want your audience to imagine it and feel it, and really imagine it. The last step is action, so this is when you tell your audience exactly what next, something specific and doable, not just think about it. It also includes making a decision. So if you think about the show the Dragon's Den, where they always end with the asks. So dragons, I'm offering you 20% for 200,000.

So this is your story for driving action, and as I said earlier, the key part that really makes it work is that visualization step. It's about logic will inform people, but when you create a vivid picture, the outcome is what really moves them.

Now, I've used this when I've been part of developing a business case for a large transformation program when it was really important that we got support from key stakeholders, because we really needed them to understand the rationale for the program. And what we did was we turned these style of stories into videos, because we really needed that visual element to drive home a couple of key points.

So if I think about one of the stories, in the first video it was we started out and we had this huge room full of paper, literally stuffed top to bottom with boxes of paper. That was actually the reality of the situation for this organization, and it was the basis for the transformation program where everything was going to be digitized. We then talked through the problem. So what does all this paper mean?

How much effort went into dealing with all this manual paper, literally boxes and boxes of paper, and the opportunity to streamline the entire process, not just for the business, but for the customers as well. We then visualized a couple of customer scenarios of what the future system would look like from their point of view, how fast and convenient it would be, and this really made it tangible.

What we were designing was quite an innovative solution, so helping the stakeholders to visualize that end solution made it really real. And this actually set the scene for the subsequent conversations and the decisions that we were expecting from the stakeholders that would eventually fund the entire program. So Rach, what's our last framework?

Framework 6: The hero’s journey

RACHEL: Our last framework. So today the last framework is the hero's journey. This is a great one for illustrating change. So in this story, you're following someone or something where they're leaving the normal world, they're going out, they're facing real trials, and they come back changed. So it's less about organizing information and more about earning an emotional response.

There is a little bit of similarity between this framework and the three-act structure that we talked about before, but the difference in here is the three acts, it's about the shape of the situation. You've got that where we are, what's in the way, what's going to change. The hero's journey is about, it's about that inward transformation, where someone's different at the end than they were at the start.

The lows make the highs feel even higher, and they make the story more memorable. You're painting a picture, just like with visualization in that last one. People can relate to it. You can see yourself in their shoes. You're more likely to persuade with this kind of technique, and you can use it in two different ways. You can use it to look back, so you can look back on a change that's already happened.

It could be a results update, a project wrap-up, a culture moment. Your job is to name the cost, not just the win. Mm. So you're not going to just say, "We hit the target." Mm.

Instead, with this framework, you'd go back, you'd go back to the false start, the six months that didn't go to plan, the resulting pivot, and then reflect on what's changed in how you as a leader saw that problem, not just the fact that the results were great.

So a leader saying, "I went in assuming that we needed to move faster, and what I learned is we needed to slow down and fix the foundation first," it's a transformation story. It costs the leader something to admit it, and that currency has an impact. People also then can see, they can see the impact and the connection between their hard work and the change that's followed. Yeah.

And I think they're going to have more faith that things are going to be different come what's next. Mm. Yeah. You can also use this framework if you're looking ahead, so you're wanting to prepare people for a change that's coming, so transformation program, a new strategy, a new way of working.

And here, this is where you're going to be telling people straight up there is going to be a messy middle, and by acknowledging that things are going to get harder before they get better, people will know that it's coming, and importantly, they'll know when they're there. Mm-hmm. They'll recognize that that's the messy middle.

If people haven't had that kind of message, when they're in that hard bit, they might think that the plan's failed. So whether you're looking backwards forwards, the test for this framework is the same. Is there a cost, a real moment in the struggle? Is there a shift in how someone sees things now? It's the vulnerability and the transformation that are the most important for this one.

Can you share, Charlene, how you've used this in practice?

CHARLENE: Yeah. So I actually use the hero's journey as an exercise, as part of a strategic planning process when I'm working with teams to create a shared meaning and understanding of their future.

So in this case, the team are the hero, and they're about to start a change journey, and we work through an exercise, we create a story about setting off on a journey on a sailing boat, and as a team, we work through what each phase of the journey means, how will the team behave, what they can expect, and what the team needs to be successful in that phase.

So if you look at the slide, the hardest part of any change journey is what Rach referred to as the messy middle, and yeah, when you're in the stormy seas or you can't see land and you aren't making any progress, what are you going to do about it?

So by working it through as a team and visualizing it, the team creates their own change story, and it becomes a template for what to expect and how they're going to get through it. Essentially, this means that they'll become better prepared for what's coming. It's also really honest about the impact of change on people. It's not going to go swimmingly. So I think we've come to the end of our six frameworks, Rach.

We've talked through how and when you can use them, but even a great story is as good as your ability to tell it, so we're now going to pass over to Griff, our own A+C master storyteller, to give us some tips around how he uses storytelling in his design thinking work. Let's throw to him.

Griff’s storytelling tips

GRIFF: Kia ora koutou, everyone. My name's Craig Griffiths, and I'm design thinking lead here at Allen & Clark. It's a real pleasure to be with you here today. As Charlene said earlier on, I use storytelling a lot in my design thinking practice. It's a really critical skill, and something that I really enjoy doing. It's also a really critical skill in terms of the overall design thinking practice.

So much so that the D-School, which is like the spiritual home of Design thinking based at Stanford University. On their staff, they have what they call a master storyteller, which I think is such a cool title, and really shows the value that they place, as the vanguard of design thinking, in storytelling as a skill.

I was actually once lucky enough to watch him tell a story, and one of my key takeaways was that the storytelling superpower is that it helps people create a mental picture of what's going on, a mental picture of that situation or that environment that they can carry with them and continually reference that, and it's such a powerful tool.

It helps lock in the environment and those tensions and pressures that the characters of the story are experiencing, which we've talked about a little bit already in the webinar, in a much more compelling way than a list of bullet points might ever do. So before we dive into some of the key things that I think about when delivering a story, I want to tell you a wee story of my own.

A few years ago now, I was working in the energy sector on a topic which is called energy poverty. Energy poverty is basically defined as those people who are unable to heat their houses to a healthy standard. It's a really big and significant issue in New Zealand and was a really fantastic piece of work to get involved with.

As part of that work, I interviewed a customer that was in significant amounts of debt, and I mean really in debt. And as a result of that, he was severely rationing his electricity use. His story was so compelling that I was able to use that to create support for our prototype solution, not only across the energy sector, but also across and involving two supporting government agencies.

In prepping for this webinar, I thought about the story as a perfect example of Monroe's Motivated Sequence. But on reflection, and given the time that we've got available today, I couldn't do it justice. And I guess that's my first storytelling insight. Be respectful and know your people's stories. Make sure you honor the story subject.

We've seen that powerful stories always involve some kind of tension or loss or hardship, and there's almost always an element of that to every story. So it's important to recognize when it's appropriate to tell a story and equally, when it's appropriate not to tell it. You owe it to that person who gave you that story to treat it properly. And continuing in that vein, practice it.

Make sure that you can tell the story to great effect. You owe it to that person to use that story to the best of its ability. Now, look, I'd be kidding myself if I said that I was a master storyteller or even that fact close to being an apprentice. But I have got a lot better over the years, and I've done that by paying attention to a couple of key things.

First of all, storytelling is essentially a human experience, and as we've learned, that often involves attention, and that usually requires displaying a degree of vulnerability. So I always like to open a story with something human, a quick and honest, little detail or relevant detail about yourself right at the start, which helps build trust way faster than reeling off your credentials ever will.

It personalizes the occasion and really helps the audience buy into what you're talking about. Along those lines, keep your stories human. Language really matters. For instance, which of these two sayings resonates with you more? Our hardworking doctors and nurses, or our frontline staff? I know which one I prefer. The next one is pretty well-known, but it's also often overlooked, and that is death by bullet point.

Reading your slide out word for word is the fastest way to lose a room, send them to sleep. If it's up on the screen already, the people in the audience are already asking, "Why the hell are you there? And what do we need to listen to you for?" Unfortunately, I had an example of this a few years ago. A quick story.

In a former life, I worked at Contact Energy, and I was invited to present at a sports marketing conference in Australia. It was a pretty big gig, and as it turned out, I was scheduled to speak just before the global head of sponsorship for Vodafone. I'd worked on my presentation for weeks, and the slides were packed with some really great info.

I was really happy with the way it went right up until the point where the guy from Vodafone got up to speak and started presenting all of his six slides, each of which had just one image and a fantastic story of learnings related to each. That day, I learnt that if there's a paragraph on your slide, you've already lost the room, because people can't listen to what you're saying and read at the same time.

So nowadays, if I have to use slides, I just make sure that there's one word, one number, or one image on the slide, and let the stories do the talking. Or even better, let an object do the talking. This is especially so when numbers are in your presentation. They are hard to picture, especially big numbers, and having a prop involved helps people connect with it in two seconds flat.

So instead of throwing stats at your people, give them something they can actually see. Remember the video that Charlene talked about in the webinar earlier on, when she mentioned the video with the desk full of paper? That gave people an idea that they could latch on to and understand what volume she was talking about.

When researching this webinar, I also came across an example of a population researcher, who, when he was giving a presentation on the growth of the global population, used large cardboard boxes to represent one billion people, and it was a fascinating way of understanding how the population has expanded. Another one that you'll instinctively know is to vary the pace, the pitch, and the volume of your voice.

There's nothing that loses people more rather than someone who just talks in a monotone flat voice. It doesn't matter how good the story is. So slow down Drop your volume on the important parts. And when you need people to pay attention, speed up. It gives a little bit more of energy back into the room. If you get the chance, watch Barack Obama tell a story.

He's fantastic at it and uses pace and variation of his voice to really great effect. And much like a monotone voice, someone who's rock solid, stands in the middle of the room and never moves, easily loses the attention of the crowd. But equally, someone who fidgets, moves around, does all sorts of unusual movements, equally loses the concentration of an audience.

So, when you are presenting or telling a story, make sure that all your movements are intentional, that they reinforce the story that you're trying to tell. Every movement has to have a purpose, otherwise it just looks like you're burning off nerves. And also, don't be scared of using a little bit of silence. It's just human nature to want to try and fill in a quiet time or an awkward silence.

But as a storyteller, it's a great tool. Use it. Pausing for effect is a really fabulous tool, and what it does is it just emphasizes that what you've just said is important, and people need to take notice of it. It also improves their ability to remember it. So don't be afraid to use a good pause. It's hard to remember this one too sometimes, but nerves are natural.

They're designed to help you prepare and focus on what's important. The old flight versus fight thing. But if you suffer the downsides of nerves, like a lot of people do, and early when I started presenting and telling stories, I was very nervous. But what I found was really useful was to find out what actually is that thing that makes you nervous and how that manifests for you.

For me, it was, what do I do with my hands? So now, whenever I'm presenting, I make sure that I have a pen or something in my hand so that it allows me to kind of focus on that and take away any kind of issues that I have about what I'm doing. And finally, stuff will go wrong. It always does, and you can guarantee at some point it will.

The slides won't work, the mic will cut out, the clicker won't work, something like that. Don't worry about it. The key thing is how you recover from it. The audience may or may not even know that it's happened, but if it's obvious, try to keep the content rolling.

I always have a couple of filler stories up my sleeves that I can use while the tech gets fixed or the mic's reconnected or something like that, just so you can keep the moment going. And then just seamlessly roll back into the presentation. Okay, everyone, I hope you found that useful.

Unfortunately, we've run out of time, but if you do have any questions or would like to reach out, if you have any questions or work that I might be able to help you with, stories that you need some practice telling, please do so. Contact details are at the end of the presentation. Thanks again, everyone, and back to you, Rach.

Closing and next steps

RACHEL: Thanks, Griff. I reckon you've just shared a bit of your own hero's journey with everything you've learnt when it comes to storytelling, and he is selling himself short because he is definitely well beyond apprentice level when it comes to storytelling.

If you are interested in finding out more about design thinking and hearing some of Griff's excellent stories, then make sure you check out the design thinking webinar on our resources page on our website.

But before you do that, you've taken time to join us today or watch the recording, which tells us that you're interested in becoming a more compelling storyteller, and we know that commitment turns intention into action. So we're going to leave you with some homework, and stick around to find out about a cool opportunity we'll be hosting in a couple of weeks and for some Q&A as well. Yep.

We've created five steps to help you turn today's five frame, six frame- Help you turn today's frameworks into stronger stories. There's five steps. So we've got identify. We want you to take some time, grab a piece of paper, and brainstorm out those stories that you find yourself repeating. You're looking for patterns. Why are these ones sticking?

Once you've got your list of those often told stories, grab another colored pen, and then map in which frameworks are you using, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Then observe. You're going to watch for two things. One is watching other speakers or podcasts that you're listening to, people presenting in meetings. Notice which stories are really landing and which fall flat. Take some notes, see some tips.

I also want you to pay attention to times when you're in a conversation, but you felt like you could have had more impact, or it just felt a bit tough. I wonder then, could storytelling have helped you? It might be that you've had a hard conversation, a team update, or you've been in a presentation, and you've just felt that you could have done more. I want you to keep track of those slightly uncomfortable moments.

And then you're going to grab your brainstorm from earlier, have a think about those moments, and see, where could storytelling help me? This is where you want to get clear about that objective. Mm-hmm. We talked around what are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to build trust? Are you trying to persuade, warn people about something to come or connect?

And look back at your list of stories and see if there's one that fits the objective. And if nothing fits, that's fine. It just means that you've found a gap that you need to find a story for. Then prepare and practice. Mm-hmm. You need to tell your story out loud. Workshop it with a colleague. You want to tell it out loud before you share it for real. You're going to time yourself.

You might do a self-tape if you're feeling brave, and then you can listen back. You can see what's not earning its place. Where could I make the message work harder? And then we want to hear what this is like for you. We want you to reflect. Come and share how's it been going.

We're going to run a follow-up session on Tuesday the 4th of August, and we'd love if you'd like to join us and share your stories of what you've been testing, how have you been experimenting, and what have you been noticing about people telling stories around you. We'll have a link to register in the email that you'll receive later. Yeah

CHARLENE: So that's the end of our webinar. We've covered quite a few aspects of storytelling today. We've told you a structure for the six different types of stories, when to use them, how to structure them, and some tips around how being, around being an effective storyteller. And, as Rach just talked through, a bit of homework, and the offer of an additional catch-up if you would like.

We've got some time for some questions, and I know a couple have come through, so

Questions and answers

This portion was unscripted, with frequent overlapping speech between Charlene and Rachel. Speaker attribution below is inferred from context and should be treated as best-effort rather than verbatim-certain.

CHARLENE: So Rach, do you want to take the first one?

RACHEL: Yeah, sure.

CHARLENE: So we have a question from Allison, who said, “Are there some key questions that you can ask to help you decide which is the best structure to use?”

CHARLENE: Great question, Allison. We always — as I think Rach gave a bit of a framework earlier — but you want to take a step back and think about who's your audience, what's the outcome that you're seeking. Are you trying to influence? Are you trying to get an action or a decision? Are you trying to inform? That will help inform the different kind of framework that will work best for that situation. We were talking before the webinar about the painting example, where we had the and, but, and therefore — and actually you could take any of these frameworks and apply them to that painting. You could build the tension. You could have the hero's journey, someone who's been out and experienced something and is playing that back. So I'd also encourage you to think about how you can test it: I've got this thing I'm trying to achieve, I think there's a story that could work, and playing and seeing which one feels right, and how much time you've got — that changes the story too. If we go back to that picture, when Rach and I were talking earlier, we were saying that if you were to look at that picture and describe it through the hero's journey, you're going to get a very different story than if you're just ABT-ing it or SPARKing it. It gets you used to the different frameworks, and shows how it changes the overall story and the impact it has. So we were thinking about doing that as a bit of interesting homework for ourselves.

CHARLENE: Rachel just noticed this one. We noticed one of the challenges in your registration was how to influence different stakeholders. What would you suggest around that?

RACHEL: In that situation, again, we're going to bring it back to the start with why — what are we trying to achieve, what is the objective — and also a bit of stakeholder mapping. So who are you trying to convince, or trying to get on board, or get them to do something? There'll be different stakeholders in your life who make decisions in certain ways. They need to have the information and the facts — that's where you might go for an ABT, or for the three-act structure even, just depending on what that is. There might be those that are a little bit more led with the purpose and impact, or the story that you shared earlier about the debt recovery. So you can figure out your objective, think about who you're talking with, and then think about which framework will be right for that person, and how to map that. And again, there might be some different ways of telling the same story that will help you achieve whatever it is that you're looking to do.

CHARLENE: I think it's been really clear that one story will not probably work with every single stakeholder, which is I think what you're saying, Rach — think about what resonates with them and what you're trying to get them to do.

RACHEL: Definitely. And it's okay if people hear your stories several times. There are stories that are going to be in your back pocket that you bring out — like, how many times have you told your story about the debt recovery one?

CHARLENE: It doesn't matter how many times you've heard it before. Generally, people will take something away, and it gives you that chance to practise as well.

RACHEL: So don't feel like you've got to go out and have loads of stories that you're trying to do. It's okay to just have a couple that you're refining and polishing each time.

CHARLENE: And then this last question that we've got — we've talked a lot about stories in terms of achieving business strategy, but are there other ways that you can use stories in a corporate setting?

RACHEL: One of the things that we didn't manage to fit in here today was around how you can use stories not just for corporate challenges or trying to achieve business strategy, but also if you are looking to instil confidence in yourself, to show that you've got what it takes, or that you are the calm person in the storm. This is where you could turn on something like SPARK, where you can say — if you've got a leader saying to you, ‘Oh, we've got to do this big thing, there's deadlines, it's intense,’ normally I think people would just be like, ‘Yep, it's all good, I've got it.’ But actually, if you take a little bit of time and just say, using the SPARK framework, ‘In this situation last time, the problem I faced was… the action I took, the result was…’ And then your key takeaway — you're really instilling confidence, and you're showing whoever it is that you're engaging with, ‘I've done this before. I know what I'm going to face and what's required, and I'm also thinking about it. I'm not just rolling out the same thing again. I'm really approaching it from a strategic perspective.’ That's a great way to build confidence in yourself at work.

CHARLENE: I also love using the hero's journey as a self-reflection tool. So if I'm doing coaching with staff, or even as a team — what actually happened, where were we? Because it's by recognising everyone's journey that they've gone through that they're able to understand where they are now and how their journey has got them to that place. It's a nice self-reflection tool that gets people thinking that challenge isn't necessarily bad — everyone can come out of it.

RACHEL: So yeah, I think a lot of those frameworks can be used for multiple purposes. And as you saw in the webinar, even some of the ways that we've applied story — videos, direct comms, as exercises — we've just talked through a couple of ways to use story and narrative as a tool. I think we're just scraping the surface of what stories can do. But I hope that's helped.

CHARLENE: So this is probably a good place to wrap up. I'm mindful that we've come to the end of our time. Thank you so much for staying on and for your thoughtful questions — it's the kind of discussion that makes these sessions really valuable for everyone, and it's what we really enjoy, making sure you're getting as much out of this as possible. And remember, if there's any part of today's discussion that's sparked ideas for your own work, we're always happy to contribute to the conversation — feel free to reach out. Join us in that session in a couple of weeks' time.

CHARLENE & RACHEL: Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it, and we hope to see you at that upcoming workshop. We'll send the link out with the slides after the recording. So have a great rest of the day, everyone. Ka kite.