Custom Trainings for Your Team
I lead trainings to help people strengthen storytelling practices, deepen their sense of community, and effectively message their work. Every training and training series is customized to meet the type of work an organization does, the organization’s goals and where they are starting from, and the people who will be participating. Below are answers to some FAQs as well as some examples of trainings I’ve conducted in the past. Want to talk more? New clients can book a free 30-minute consultation (phone or Zoom).
Training FAQs
WHO ARE YOUR TRAININGS FOR?
Whole teams. For when organizations want to bring together folx from different departments and different roles to get on the same page about a topic or develop a common skill.
Specific departments. For when a group wants to look at storytelling or communications through the lens of a specific focus or project (e.g., development staff want to focus on fundraising storytelling or advocacy staff want to focus on storytelling practices for policy change.)
Individuals. For when your team isn’t ready to get started, but you are. Check out these virtual trainings that are open to all. There are typically 10-12 of these trainings per year.
ARE YOUR TRAININGS VIRTUAL OR IN-PERSON?
Most organizations choose to have me train virtually. Awesome! I also love training in-person. I’m based in Boston, Massachusetts, and I conduct live trainings locally for the same rate as virtual trainings. I’m also happy to travel to other locations for live trainings and build travel costs into the rate.
WHAT IS THE LENGTH AND FORMAT OF YOUR TRAININGS?
2-hour “enhanced webinars” introduce information on a specific aspect of storytelling or messaging, get folx to think about and unpack practices at their organization, and discuss some proposed strategies in the context of their work. These trainings typically involve 45 minutes of activities and discussion, 45 minutes of presentation, and 30 minutes of Q&A. Maximum participants: 50.
4-hour skill-building workshops help folx develop and practice a specific storytelling, community-building, or messaging skill. I’ve done workshops to help teams learn how to conduct informed consent conversations, develop empowerment-based interviewing skills, craft empathetic narratives, facilitate story circles, and develop effective presentations. Maximum participants: 20.
For organizations that want to dig deeper, I also build custom training series.
Sample storytelling trainings
2-Hour Enhanced Webinar
Who Tells the Story?: Partnering with Individuals & Communities to Tell Their Own Stories
Stories are critical to social change. They show us the human stakes of policy decisions. They offer windows into experiences unlike our own. They make us stop and think, because they first make us feel. For organizations that use storytelling to help change the world, the conversation can’t begin and end with how to tell compelling stories. They need to consider: (1) the impact that sharing can have on the storyteller; (2) how the story is framed; and (3) how people and communities are represented in and affected by those stories. In this webinar, we’ll explore tangible strategies organizations can adopt to partner with the people who use their services to tell whole-person, empathetic narratives that center people with lived experience in their stories and in the organization’s story gathering process. There will be time at the end for participants to ask questions about specific practices at their organizations. Note: If you aren’t sure where to start and are looking for a good introductory training, this is it!
Perfect for: Front-line staff wrestling with how to find and share stories; Communications and development team members; and any team members responsible for shaping storytelling culture and policy.
2-Hour Enhanced Webinar
Amplifying Without Overpowering: Taking Steps to Cede Storytelling Control & Deepen Partnership
Nonprofit, legal services, and health organizations frequently tell stories in response to an immediate need—a reporter calls, an event is coming up, or a funder requests one. And then the organization goes looking for an individual story that matches the request. When this happens, the narrative—and the goal for sharing it—is predetermined before the person at the story’s center was ever involved. In this webinar, we’ll look at ways to move beyond this posture of storytelling and explore ways to involve individuals and communities in setting your organization’s storytelling agenda in more meaningful ways. We’ll touch on creating speakers bureaus and storytelling groups, investing in documentary-style projects, re-allocating funds to support existing storytelling projects in your community, and other ways of ceding storytelling control.
Perfect for: Any combination of team members. This webinar is about creating a shift in culture; organizations will benefit most by having staff from different departments in the room together.
4-Hour Workshop*
Leading Consent Conversations: Strategies to Understand Boundaries, Elicit Perspective, and Empower Storytellers
The process of asking someone to share their story is the perfect opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of how, when, where, and why they want to share it and how they want to shape it, but that can only happen with an intentional and specific two-way dialogue. During this interactive and skills-based workshop, participants will explore what enthusiastic, informed consent means in storytelling. Activities will help participants re-imagine consent conversations as a tool for fostering partnership, exploring boundaries, and understanding goals. The workshop will also help participants develop skills for empowerment-based interviewing.
Perfect for: Anyone working in a position where they directly ask people to share their stories, and anyone who works with those individuals to document their stories.
*Can do a 2-hour enhanced webinar on consent that covers some of the topics in this workshop.
4-hour workshop*
Sympathy Leads to Charity, Empathy Leads to Change: Crafting Whole-Person Narratives
Stories that evoke empathy (rather than sympathy) reveal a whole person and don’t reduce someone to a problem or a circumstance. They center the person with lived experience rather than an organization that has provided care or assistance, and they offer context to help the reader or listener understand not just what happened, but why. During this interactive and skills-based workshop, participants will explore these ideas in-depth, and practice crafting a story that emphasizes each of these elements from a provided interview transcript. After sharing their stories in pairs and small groups, we will discuss the ways that participants’ experiences and perspectives led to the creation of different narratives, even when using the same source material, and what this means for working with patients, clients, and community members to document their stories.
Perfect for: Anyone working in a position at a nonprofit, legal services, or health care organization where they are writing stories for their organizations or are working directly with clients / patients / community members to document and share their stories.
*Can do a 2-hour enhanced webinar on consent that covers some of the topics in this workshop.
Sample community-building training
4-Hour Workshop
Leading Community Story Circles to Build Community & Gather Perspectives
The purpose of a story circle is to build or strengthen a sense of community within a group, to examine differences, and / or to explore social challenges through our own lives. Organizations can use story circles to build and strengthen a sense of community between their staff members and/or between community members, as well as to gain insights and perspectives from community members on social and policy issues that inform the organization’s services and advocacy work. During this workshop, participants will first participate in a story circle and then learn how to facilitate one themselves. Note: Story circles are a community-building and perspective-gathering tool, NOT a tool for gathering stories for marketing purposes.
Perfect for: Anyone looking for new ways to deepen a sense of community among staff, clients/patients, and/or other community members. It is also great for anyone who wants to explore a new way of gathering perspectives on issues, policies, or services from those same groups to inform their organizations’ priorities and work.
Sample messaging training
2-Hour Enhanced Webinar
Ditch the (Elevator) Pitch: Replace Perfection with Connection
The idea of an “elevator pitch” – a single, compelling way to talk about your work that will be effective in any setting – is alluring. We’re led to believe that there is a magical 2-minute speech, and if we can find it and memorize it, we’ll be golden. But getting someone else excited about what we do and hopefully getting them to take some kind of action requires that we first connect our work to their values. In other words, it requires the exact opposite of a one-size-fits-all speech. In this session, we will look at how to cultivate persuasive messages for different scenarios you find yourself in, strategies designed to increase a person’s interest in what you’re saying and other strategies designed to increase someone’s understanding of what you’re saying. We’ll unpack four questions everyone should be able to answer about their work as building blocks for any conversation, and we’ll end with some exercises designed to help you unpack messaging about your work for different situations.
Perfect for: Any team members. Also a great training for boards.