Storytelling and Narrative in the Workplace
Charles Lanigan, MA
E-mail: clanigan@sanepractices.com
Phone: 412-378-5013
About This Workshop
Storytelling humanizes work
environments, providing enabling personnel to collaborate and communicate across
organizational and experiential boundaries. Stories provide context for comprehending
abstract information, facilitating closer connections and a deeper understanding
among team members. This in turn helps teams respond effectively to changing needs
and opportunities. As John Seely Brown and others have shown, conversations
among project personnel and business partners include a mix of technical and
personal information. Organizations don’t always recognize the benefits of these
conversations. Not all team members are equally skilled or willing to articulate
their ideas and share what they know.
Whether storytelling occurs
through formal channels or through informal offline conversations, it facilitates
knowledge-transfer and the creation of shared goals and identity among project
teams. It enables personnel to take an active rather than passive role in
conducting and contributing in projects.
This workshop presents
skills and techniques for use in recognizing the dynamics underlying
storytelling and employing it to increase the depth of understanding and
connection among individuals and groups. The skills are applicable face-to-face
conversations and interaction through virtual (Web 2.0) technologies
Who Should Attend:.
The workshop is
designed for managers and other personnel leading project teams using Agile and
other methodologies.
Participants Will
Learn
- How human beings use narrative to discover and
share what they know
- How to use humor and drama to engage teams and
redirect tension and conflict
- Storytelling techniques that are effective in
engaging individuals and groups
- How to go beyond Powerpoint slides to use
stories in connecting audiences with abstract information
- How to ask open-ended questions and engage in
conversations that uncover hidden (tacit) knowledge
- How to translate user stories into actionable
information to be documented in story cards and formal requirements
- The dynamics of virtual vs. face-to-face
communication and storytelling (body language, tone of voice, netiquette,
word choice, code-switching)
- Using stories to connect across experiential,
cultural and organizational boundaries
- How stories contribute to shared organizational
memory
- Finding the balance between
documentation and dialogue in Agile projects
Preliminary Outline
1.
Audience,
Purpose and Need
·
Understanding your audience and what they care about
·
Engaging people through backstory and prerequisite
knowledge
·
Individual and group personas
2.
Narrative
Techniques and Considerations
·
Stories that inform, motivate, persuade and
instruct
·
Metaphor and analogy
·
Storytelling and organizational memory
·
Myth and work:
archetypes of successful projects
·
The social life of information
3.
Tools
and Techniques
·
Storytelling in print and electronic (virtual) environments
·
Online and in-person presentation skills
·
Communicating across cultures and subcultures
·
Code-switching, jargon and the importance of
language
4.
The
Storytelling Process
·
Ways of knowing:
acting on vs. acting with
·
Discovering knowledge through conversation
·
Storytelling in teams
·
Uncovering hidden (tacit knowledge) in working
with subject-matter-experts
5.
Exercises
and Discussion of Case-Studies
§
Storytelling
in group and individual decision-making
§
From
obfuscation to enlightenment: jargon, audience-appropriate
language and code-switching
§
Using
stories to establish and reinforce team roles
§
Guiding
users in narratives to identify and prioritize their business needs and
requirements
§
Asking
good questions: applying active
listening techniques
§
Uncovering
hidden requirements: understanding what
is said and not said
§
Developing
clear language and presentations skills
§
Mind-mapping
and story-board techniques
6.
Summary
and Conclusion
About the Speaker
Chuck
Lanigan has spent fifteen years developing workflow and collaborative
applications and promoting knowledge management initiatives at organizations
such as PNC. He has written for CIO Magazine and taught previously at the