Because storytelling is universal, the foundational principles of what makes a story influential remain constant even as the use case or audience changes. What shifts from context to context is how those principles are implemented or applied.
Stephanie Judd authored this article as a Forbes Council contribution.
Read MoreIt’s not all that uncommon for salespeople to be armed with a presentation or demo slide deck that was put together by the marketing department. The purpose of a “single source of truth” like the corporate-approved slide deck is to ensure that all salespeople have the same talking points and are communicating a consistent narrative in the marketplace. This is a noble goal, but one of the unintended consequences of a company-wide narrative in the form of a slide deck is that it can become stale and devoid of any kind of personal, authentic touch.
Read MoreA common question we hear from folks preparing for a “big” meeting is, “How do I handle the person who always dominates the conversation?” There are several strategies you can use to make sure the dominant voice is productive, and doesn’t prevent other voices from being heard, derail your meeting flow, or interfere with your goals. Here are three…
Read MoreNot all stories are created equal, and by focusing on what makes a story influential, tech salespeople can dramatically shift their conversations. Here’s a look at the common mistakes and what to do differently.
Stephanie Judd authored this article as a Forbes Council contribution.
Read MoreWith an increasingly distributed and global workforce, organizations need to become more sophisticated about how to support their employees' growth and development. There are many variables to consider from time zone, to language barriers, cultural differences, remote vs in-person vs hybrid, folks who are co-located but virtual, etc. Meanwhile, L&D teams are still being asked to deliver high-quality training and great experiences that engage employees and inspire them to do the hard work required to develop new skills. Here are a few tips and tricks we’ve picked up along the way as we develop impactful learning experiences to a variety of global teams and organizations.
Read MoreWe recently hosted a roundtable discussion on Building Authentic Sales Relationships in a Hybrid Virtual/In-Person Tech Industry. Additionally, we continue to do a great deal of executive coaching for leaders in public health, tech and other fields. There are several unique challenges leaders are facing in supporting their people right now due to the hybrid nature of work and offer these best practices for consideration.
Read MoreIn the 5+ years that we’ve been operating as Wolf & Heron, we’ve had the privilege of delivering our Influential Storytelling program to 1000s of folks and provided one-on-one story coaching to hundreds of professionals. In our experience, there are several questions that have been posed to us with regularity about storytelling and influence, so we thought we’d take some time to share our perspective publicly.
Read MoreQuestions have a powerful role in conversation and they’re underutilized at work. As experience designers and facilitators, we rely on questions to carry our participants through a process of discovery and learning. As leadership coaches, we rely on questions as the driving force for our conversations. Meanwhile, we see how often questions are underused by leaders, meeting facilitators and organizations in general.
Read MoreWhen we coach leaders as part of an enterprise leadership development program, we often also provide mini training sessions to these same leaders on the basic skills of coaching. What always surprises us is how difficult it is for leaders to see the parallels between coaching and leading, and even understand why learning coaching skills is relevant to their growth as leaders.
In Stephanie’s personal experience, the process of getting certified as a coach was one of the most transformative things she did in her leadership journey. She discovered through her coaching practice a set of questions that are so simple and powerful that we use them in all sorts of contexts beyond coaching conversations. Here are a few.
Read MoreIf your job is to sell your company’s products or services, you need to know how to communicate their value in a compelling way. When we work with salespeople, they already understand that storytelling can be a powerful tool for them, but they struggle with how to leverage stories appropriately. Sometimes they can come up with a story, but it’s too literal and leads them down a rabbit hole of demo-ing their product rather than actually telling a story. Other times they drone on and on, losing their audience along the way. Sometimes they just can’t come up with a story idea, even if they know they should be telling stories! Here are some tips and tricks to get you started if you’re having the same challenges.
Read MoreWe’re making plans in an era of uncertainty. These things are going to keep happening. It’s not clear if we’ll ever again get to a point where we can guarantee that an in-person event will definitely be in person, or that the keynote speaker we were planning on doesn’t suddenly develop the sniffles and will now give her speech from a virtual podium instead of the stage. Because of our new reality, here are a few recommendations on how to be proactive in your leadership and team meeting planning.
Read MoreAs a business, we had zero in-person events scheduled between March 2020 and June 2021. As we became vaccinated against COVID-19, and many in the community became protected as well, we started hearing from clients that were hopeful and interested in gathering in-person, while still taking precautions to mitigate the virus's spread.
So, we're leading events again, and often, our hosts are asking attendees and facilitators to mask up. Since June, we’ve had the opportunity to lead our Influential Storytelling workshop in-person several times, and many of those times we facilitated while wearing a mask. Along the way, we’ve learned a thing or two about how to facilitate or present with a mask on; what to pay attention to, what to keep in mind, and best practices to take to heart.
Here are a few of our learnings.
Read MoreOver the past several weeks, we posted a series of articles that walk you step by step through planning and facilitating the best strategy retreat of your career. Each week, we focused on one critical piece of the process we follow with our clients to ensure they design their meetings effectively and facilitate them for success.
>> Part 1: Define Success
>> Part 2: Develop a Straw Man Agenda
>> Part 3: Design Your Activities to Engage Your Attendees
>> Part 4: Navigate Day-of Challenges
Read MoreIt’s showtime! You’ve defined success, prepared a straw model agenda, and then refined that agenda for engagement. You’ve done the work to intentionally set up your meeting for success, but there are some things you just can’t do in advance. Here are some tips to help you navigate (and avoid!) day-of challenges that may arise.
>> Keep the Meeting on Track
>> Address Last Minute Attendance Changes Productively
>> Handle Low-Energy Moments
Read MoreNow it’s time to roll up your sleeves and prepare to get a little dirty. This is where it gets incredibly messy before you clean it up. Think about the journey your participants need to go on over the course of the retreat, and build out a row in your table for each step of that journey. Determine what they need to KNOW, FEEL, and DO first, second, third, and so on. Each row will be its own experience or agenda item, and each should have it’s own distinct purpose. Then, as best as you can, fill out the rest of your table to create your straw man agenda.
Read MoreThe most important thing you need to do once you’ve broadly identified the need for a strategy retreat is to define success. There are a few ways to do this, but the crux of this step is to make sure you and your team are aligned on the “why” for the retreat. Why is it happening? Why should people show up? Why should they care? Why should they contribute? Don’t just focus on the routine… we’re meeting because that’s what we do every year. Instead, aim to uncover why this retreat specifically needs to happen this year. Although you may already have a cursory idea of agenda topics, this step should take you beyond thinking about “what” you’re doing, and bring focus and sophistication to your meeting design.
Read MoreRecently we delivered our Influential Storytelling program to a sales team that was interested in the content for two reasons: They understood the value of storytelling in their sales process and wanted to bone up their skillset, but they also saw storytelling as a crucial part of developing internal institutional knowledge about the product, their customer success stories, and more. As the company grew, the sales team was experiencing a lot of turnover. The Director of Sales wanted to capture and codify the institutional stories that everyone on the team should be familiar with and leverage in the sales process
With this objective in mind, we recommended they establish two routines after exploring our Influential Storytelling content.
Read MoreBottom-lining is one of the most effective ways that a facilitator can keep the conversation on task, redirect tangents, stick to agenda and time, and engage participants. If you have a particularly chatty participant, asking them to bottom-line their contribution helps them cut out the unnecessary storytelling and asides. If you or others in the meeting have trouble understanding a participant’s point, asking them to bottom-line will help clarify what their message is. And as a facilitator, by reiterating what you hear a participant say as a single, succinct bottom line will help verify that you (and others in the room) are interpreting things correctly.
Read MoreAs bootstrapped founders, we may not find ourselves about to give a formal pitch in front of suited VCs, but we do constantly interact with potential customers, partners and other stakeholders in our networks. Every one of these people should know what you do and most importantly why you do it.
You’ll know it’s time to tell a story about what you do and why when you get questions like these:
Why did you start your business?
What are you up to lately?
Tell me about yourself
Here’s how you can craft a version of your story that will feel authentic and extemporaneous, but also be an influential and powerful representation of you and your business...
Read MoreHer plan was to pose some questions to the group, and then have a discussion about each one. Stephanie immediately asked her if there would be any implicit or explicit power dynamics in the room, and whether any person in the group was considerably more extroverted than the others.
You see, her big challenge wasn’t identifying the right question to ask. She had good, open-ended questions that were straightforward enough and easy to understand (although hard to answer). Her challenge was making sure that the ideas that surfaced were all given a fair shake, that no one voice dominated the conversation, and that her process guaranteed the best ideas would bubble to the top.
Here are some fun tricks we recommended to her that day, and ones you can consider for your own meetings…
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