Build Team Capability

Impactful and inspiring communication starts with knowing the story you want to tell.

Unlock the storytelling skills in your business to create effective leaders, align and connect your teams and embed storytelling in your culture.

People in their professional roles are asked to present, run meetings, communicate strategy, and motivate their teams without ever being trained in how to do that effectively. Clear and engaging communication is a skill that needs to be learned, to be prioritised, and to be part of the coaching culture of a team. Without training, people can feel ill equipped, under confident and intimidated by the experience of delivering to an audience.

This package of learning builds confident leaders. It has been proven to be high impact, using a blend of group workshops and individual coaching designed to embed the storytelling mind-set into people’s ‘every day’.

The training kicks off with an energetic and interactive full-day workshop, followed by 121 online coaching and online group skills building. We have run these packages for a whole range of roles including sales, marketing, insights, product designers, University educators, and artists. Each package is carefully designed with the client, to deliver their objectives for the cohort. We recommend a maximum of 12 attendees.

Outcomes: attendees will: -

  • Change their mind-set to prioritise audience engagement
  • Become confident in their ability to impact and influence an audience.
  • Learn the Three Steps to Impact which makes communication planning more efficient and effective
  • Never use a ‘one-size-fits-all’ method of communication again
  • Always structure an effortless journey for their audience with no irrelevant detail
  • Collaborate creatively using the shared language of storytelling

Suntory Beverage and Food GB&I (SBF GB&I) is the home of some of the UK’s most loved drinks brands including Lucozade Energy, Lucozade Sport, and Ribena. Together, we have been building storytelling skills throughout the organisation, and have seen this make a significant impact to the way people present, run meetings and lead their teams. To date we have run packages for Sales, Marketing, Revenue Growth Management and Channel Heads, training almost all senior members of the business.

“Storytelling is becoming embedded into our DNA as a business. It has had an impact on our organization, where before we would give a statement or an issue stated a fact, now we tell stories, we create engagement, and also use the jeopardy so that individuals feel like they've got that hook into the story. This has been a business opportunity, and we've been able to use storytelling to give much more context and realization to what's going on, but equally, it's been a personal development plan for individuals where they've been able to enhance their skill set to become leaders.

Through the programme, I have seen key talent go on to bigger roles, and I have had high potential talent that have stepped up onto my leadership team. I would say that the essence of storytelling has been part of their development journey to become leaders. One of them has a transformation agenda, so requires storytelling to get raise awareness and desire for change. Another is now running a large team where communication is key, storytelling is critical to capturing that audience, I've seen them present in front of those people and it's quite remarkable, the difference.

From a personal point of view, through using the framework I learned, I have achieved significant investment for organisational change. I am proud of the culture of development at Suntory which has enabled the tools and the learning to travel through the business. New ‘graduates’ often tell stories with much pride, of how they were able to collaborate on a presentation with more experienced alumni following their training, and this is where the learning really starts to stick. We then see ‘graduates’ coach their own teams and drive storytelling as a priority. We continue to look for ways as a business to build the skills, and keep storytelling front of mind. ”

Alpesh Mistry:
Sales Director Suntory Beverage & Food GB&I

Storytelling Brings Suntory a 30% Share of voice

The Suntory Senior Sales Team were our first cohort in Spring 2022. One of the team, Keith Allen had been tasked with establishing SBF GB&I as a thought leader on the subject of one of the biggest changes in the drinks industry in 50 years – the Government’s Deposit Return Scheme. Keith used his 121 coaching sessions to plan and refine his key presentation on this subject.

Once Keith began to deliver this presentation, he used his storytelling tools to evolve it, in his words, “rather than present I started to tell stories to start conversations”. The success of this approach has contributed to Keith being invited to ‘tell the story’, by 12 key customers, the Scottish Environment Protection Assoc, retailers, trade associations and other drinks industry bodies. He has also delivered this presentation 36 times internally to different functions, tailoring accordingly. Keith has built up an extraordinary momentum and engagement with the industry and his work has seen SBF GB&I consistently take over a 30% share of voice of DRS commentary in external trade media since the Spring.

“I don't think we'd be here if it hadn’t been for your sharing your skills, and having a structure, helping us build on our strength….that rich story helped them (my customers and colleagues in the industry) imagine what this meant in their own world, and generated the need for industry-wide commitment to solve the challenge of DRS.”

Keith Allen:
Commercial Sustainability Director, Suntory Beverage & Food GB&I

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Designers discover the impact of telling their design story

Groupe SEB are a global business headquartered in France specialising in the design, manufacture and retail of cookware and small domestic appliances, whose brands include Tefal, Moulinex, and Rowenta. Our brief was to enable their design team of Small Domestic Appliances, to be able to tell the design story of the products they were presenting internally by connecting them with the idea that their process was worthy of a story and coaching them to tell that story in a compelling way to their internal audiences.

The existing internal process to decide on a new product design required designers to offer up different design options from which the business would choose one. This led to long presentations full of facts to differentiate the options and to designers presenting options they were not entirely wedded to. In their workshop the product designers presented one option they believed in, took their audience on a journey to understand why this was their recommended design after months of research and development, and enabled their audience to imagine the customer and why this would be desirable to them. In their online workshop they then looked at how the story tools could be applied to the design of PowerPoint decks to achieve the same engagement and clarity.

“Having gone through Storytelling training with Ann myself and having seen the power of it first hand, I was keen that my team would also benefit from it. The results have been everything I hoped for and more. They are more confident, succinct and to the point in their delivery which leads to better understanding and therefore collaboration between Design and the Marketing teams.”

Chris Gidwell:
VP Group Design

“The storytelling training was super useful to me. It has given me a new angle into my presentations which make them way more interesting and credible, and it guides also my creativity now. Double benefits, as every day I try to find new ideas and new designs 😊 One of my best trainings ever… ”

Nils Wessels:
Lead Product Designer

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