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Creative Writing

The Power of Storytelling

Published by Pearson

Beginner content levelBeginner

Communicate Your Vision with Impact to Deliver Your Message and Get the Desired Outcome

  • To stand out in your career, you need to be able to tell—and sell-—a story
  • Storytelling is an art—and this class highlights the specific actions you can take to engage your audience with powerful verbal storytelling
  • Make your messages memorable for the long term and achieve the desired outcome

Whether you are speaking to a large group or in a small, informal meeting, storytelling delivers your message with memorable impact. With 40 years’ of journalistic training and keynote expertise, instructor Carl Pritchard takes you through two simple ways to make your stories more effective immediately. He highlights the four most common mistakes storytellers make, and the ways to make stories resonate beyond the initial presentation for the long term. He shares how audience participation is everything, even in remote settings.

Career Success Series The Career Success Series from Pearson addresses essential skills for your personal and professional development in the areas of communication, presentation, critical thinking, teamwork, leadership, problem solving, and resilience. These skills are critical for any industry, any job title, and any career stage – whether you’re just starting out or have been in the workforce for years. Expert trainers deliver practical tools and techniques you can use to enhance your resume, excel in your career, or simply enrich your life skills.

What you’ll learn and how you can apply it

  • How a unique turn of phrase can become the cornerstone of storytelling
  • How vocal inflection and pacing make all the difference in weaving story magic
  • Why name- and location-dropping are critical to a great story

And you’ll be able to:

  • Keep stories short, but still convey the heart of the message
  • Own the storyline, and win hearts and minds through vulnerability
  • Leverage theater of the mind when on a virtual meeting or call, without video or PowerPoint

This live event is for you because...

  • You have meetings (or agenda items) and wonder if people get your message
  • You feel like some of your messages need some extra oomph to win hearts
  • You notice people not paying attention when you’re trying to make a crucial point

Prerequisites

  • Participants should come to the session with one story they need to share but somehow miss the mark.

Recommended Follow-up

Schedule

The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.

Segment 1: Setting the Storytelling Stage (50 minutes)

  • Sharing Stories Journalistically Using the Inverted Pyramid
  • Knowing and Creating the Story, the Characters, and the Environment
  • Weaving Connections and Building on the Storylines

Exercise 1: Perspectives on Storytelling. During this activity, participants will be asked to name/identify key messages that they would like to get across, and a story (and its star) that represents the ideal example of the message in action. They’ll then engage in identifying the environment where the story takes place.

Break (5 minutes)

Segment 2: The Power of Language, Etymology and Brewer’s (65 minutes)

  • Finding the Right Story: RMS Titanic and Wheel of Fortune
  • Deploying The Name, [insert your name here, participant]
  • Creating an AHA! Moment – Letting the Cat Out of the Bag
  • Project, Projere, Impelling Forward

Exercise 2: One Practice. You’re a (insert your favorite off-work activity here) buff. What lessons/messages/revelations can you share without boring everyone with your stamp collection?

Break (10 minutes)

Segment 3: Why Should They Listen to You? (45 minutes)

  • Your History
  • Their History and Finding a Common Thread
  • Three Truths About You
  • Three Truths About Everyone
  • What Makes You not an Impostor

Exercise 3: What Do We Share? In this exercise, participants will establish one common thread with everyone else who’s actively participating, and drive home the importance of connections and commonality.

Course wrap-up, QA, and next steps (5 minutes)

Your Instructor

  • Carl Pritchard

    Carl Pritchard is the principal and founder of Pritchard Management Associates. He is a recognized lecturer, author, researcher, voiceover artist, and instructor. As a trainer, he is the “fun guy” of project management and risk management, engaging audiences and sharing stories on topics from any of his eight textbooks. Carl served as lead author for the risk chapter in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), Fourth Edition. His work as an instructor has taken him worldwide, training for learning organizations, private clients, and Project Management Institute®. He served as US Correspondent for the UK PM magazine, Project Manager Today for 15 years, and was PMI Global’s “Best of the Best” in project management for 2019, earning the Eric Jenett Award. During his media career, he served as news director at WASH-FM (Washington, DC), and hosted the station’s most popular weekend talk show, Sunday Morning Magazine.

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