As we emerge from a few years of economic volatility and business uncertainty, today’s leaders are ready to move forward and advance strategic initiatives. Although many of us are accustomed to doing more with less, now more than ever it’s critical that we build confident and resilient teams that can handle whatever comes their way. (Hint: Your teams need a new superpower!)
The most successful organizations are investing in their people to develop skill sets to ensure teams are swimming in the same direction, speaking a common language, and most importantly, communicating their strategy, ideas, and data with clarity.
What if we told you there was one critical skill that could help you achieve this, while boosting team collaboration, improving efficiency, and progressing your company’s big-picture goals? Better yet, this tool can be learned and leveraged across your entire organization and used in just about every business transaction.
And don’t worry, we’re not talking about some high-priced tech gimmick or overused management buzzword. We’re talking about a fundamental business skill that is often overlooked and highly underrated.
It’s storytelling.
Storytelling moves business forward
The fact is, many business problems can be remedied or even prevented with better communication, and storytelling is one of the most effective ways to master this essential business skill.
Not only does neuroscience prove that story is the most impactful form of communication, but it can be adapted to any audience and any format, from concise presentations updating the C-Suite to persuasive sales emails engaging prospective clients.
And here’s the best part—its scalability allows it to be used by everyone in the company, creating synergy among teams and better engagement with your customers.
We can all agree that everyone loves a good story. The problem is, at work, we struggle to apply storytelling to our everyday business communications. Without the skills and confidence, we resort to cobbling together ideas and data dumping, leaving our audience confused, frustrated, and (let’s face it) forced into another meeting.
And worst of all? We’ve just missed an opportunity to influence decisions, communicate value, and drive business forward.
There’s a better way.
Here at The Presentation Company (TPC), we believe storytelling is more than just words. It’s a choreographed dance between your story, visuals, and data. Each element is critical and when combined correctly, they provide the spark to bring your teams’ ideas to life.
To help you get there, we’ve created the ultimate storytelling learning journey that provides teams with a common language and framework to communicate their strategy, ideas, and data with clarity.
This journey grounds everyone in a new, powerful mindset: Story first, visuals second.
Turning storytelling into strategy
Our three-part learning journey brings business storytelling to life through the lens of story strategy, visual strategy, and data strategy. Our interactive journey takes professionals through three highly experiential workshops that unpack each strategic principle and how they can be applied, giving teams the collaborative tools and common language they need to create impactful visual stories.
Why story strategy?
Through our Crafting Strategic Visual Stories workshop, learn storytelling fundamentals and get tools to easily apply the power of narrative into every aspect of your job. Our storytelling framework will teach you how to turn your ideas and data into meaningful business stories that are clear, actionable, and memorable. You will also learn how to flex your story to any audience or scenario (like when your 30-minute presentation is cut to only 5 minutes!).
Why visual strategy?
As any great communicator knows, strong visuals are absolutely critical to effective messaging. Our Influencing with Visuals workshop is geared toward those who know how to craft a business story and are ready to bring it to life with clear, impactful visuals. You’ll learn how to create a tailored visual story strategy, use interactive story building and coaching tools to pressure test your story, and get inspired with real-world examples that inspire action.
Why data strategy?
Too many numbers and graphs can overwhelm and disengage audiences, but wrapping data in story and visuals gives decision-makers the context they need to understand what the numbers are actually communicating. Presenting Data Visually rounds out our other two workshops by giving teams the tools to create easy-to-scan charts, tables, and graphs that cut through the noise and lead to actionable data insights.
See individual and organizational results
Here’s the best part: Storytelling not only levels up the individual skills team members bring to the table, but also, it creates a shared communication framework that can lead to widespread organizational change.
In other words, your ROI will show up in more ways than one.
As individual learners go through our journey, they’ll gain a wide range of advanced communication skills, including how to:
- Ensure that your audience’s needs are top of mind in any communication
- Bring clarity and meaning to complex ideas and data
- Flex business stories to any audience or scenario
- Craft a BIG idea to help your audience understand the one thing they should know or do
- Cleverly use visuals to influence decision making and buy-in
- Boost executive presence by building authentic connections and displaying mastery of material
When these skills are taught and leveraged across the entire organization, even greater results are possible. Business leaders can:
- Empower teams to elevate conversations and drive meaningful change
- Accelerate decision-making, time to revenue, and innovation
- Improve efficiency by reducing ineffective meetings and costly review cycles
- Create alignment and agility among teams
- Achieve results that tie back to corporate initiatives
Grounded in theory and smothered in practicality
There’s a reason we refer to our program as a journey. Our curriculum is designed to flow from one workshop to the next with skills, tools, and coaching that build upon each other and travel with you on – and beyond – the journey. Our goal is to provide useful skills you can apply immediately, build on as you move through the program, and fine-tune long after training ends.
We also value your time. Stepping away from daily work responsibilities for learning and development can be a real challenge. That’s why we ask participants to bring their real work, presentations, emails, one-pagers… (anything!) to transform during our workshops. This not only makes the best use of your training time, but also, it allows you to see the immediate value of storytelling and motivates you (and your team) to keep learning.
And if you are worried about making these new skills stick, we have that covered, too.
Getting everyone to speak “story” in your organization requires one main change in your everyday process: Coaching. But don’t sweat it—we’ve incorporated those tools into our learning journey as well. Throughout TPC’s program, teams are introduced to collaborative coaching techniques, tools, and resources that layer upon each other and are intended to be used outside the workshop setting.
All of these resources come together to facilitate real change that can transform the communication dynamics and culture of your company. Storytelling will become your strategic superpower as your team continues to build and improve their business stories well after the training wraps up.
Communicating a more successful future
Every company is looking for a way to elevate their business right now. Some will grasp at trends and risky initiatives, but the most impactful change starts from the inside out.
Storytelling is an innovative way to get your teams speaking the same language while also strengthening their most critical business skills. By embarking on our three-part learning journey, you can upskill your people in real-time, move your business forward as they progress in their abilities and support each other, and create organizational and cultural change that will benefit your business now—and well into the future.