THE POWER OF STORY
RAMP UP YOUR ANNUAL CONFERENCE

"Stories are the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal."
Howard Gardner, Harvard University

We have conferences to reward and recognize our people; get them networking and bonding and most important of all deliver a message that is going to boost their performance. It’s that last one where we often fail. Too often the presentations act as a double dose of fast acting sedatives, the motivational speaker’s impact lasts about as long as the applause and delegates go home well-partied but otherwise unchanged.

You can radically increase the return on your conference investment by using the power of stories. Research shows that stories are significantly more likely to be remembered and acted on than abstract facts. They’re also entertaining, engaging even the most attention deficit audiences.

Raising performance

Most organizations are pretty good at recognizing excellence they’re just not great at replicating it. The key is role-modeling. The most powerful learning human beings do is through imitation, under performers have simply imitated poor behavior. If you want to unleash their potential you could pair them up with your star performers. This is effective but it only gives one person at a time the chance to learn from your stars. A better option is to get the stories about how your top performers do what they do and spread them through the organisation. This enables everyone who hears the story to emulate the star’s behaviour.

Of course it’s not just the star performers who exemplify greatness. Every day in every organisation there are ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Most of these ‘every day heroes’ go unnoticed. There is a basic principle of learning: what gets rewarded gets repeated. When you tell these stories not only are you recognizing excellence, you are linking that recognition to a specific behavior, ensuring that it happens again.

Stories are also a great way to bring corporate values alive. In most organisations values are forgotten almost as soon as they’re created, even if they’re remembered they seldom change behavior. When staff tells stories about how they or colleagues they’ve witnessed have lived those values, people see how they themselves can put them into action.

What’s your success story?

Most conferences are a data-dump. The audience sits passively while presenters try to download information. When you get delegates to tell success stories you engage them emotionally, get them contributing and figuring out the secrets of success for themselves. Delegates will be taught a short, easy story-creation process. They will be divided into groups. Each person will have to tell a success story about how they are someone they’ve seen has lived a value, delighted a customer or in any way achieved success. Each team will vote on the best story which will then be shared with the rest of the conference. Back in break-away groups they will tell ‘vision stories’ about what they’re going to do after the conference to raise their performance further.

Award Events

In most organisations when someone wins an award most people know what they did but not how they did it. To discover the specific behaviors of the star performers a professional story-teller will interview them, their colleagues, clients and the person who nominated them. The story-teller will then construct an entertaining and inspiring anecdote that demonstrates what the winner did. Alternatively or in addition, Justin Cohen will emcee the event and interview some of the winners on stage to find out more about how they did it.

Story Coach

Story experts will be available to coach the internal presenters to ensure that they use stories to increase the power of their presentations. They will also have their power point shows created for maximum impact.

Follow up

The best story from the conference will be recreated into a Big Little Story that will be distributed throughout the organisation. Team leaders will be encouraged to create a story-culture by starting meetings with success stories. This will encourage staff to both collect and live out better stories. Eventually these will be compiled into an organizational bible, a blueprint of ‘the way we do things around here’.

"You can change an organisation one story at a time."
Justin Cohen

KEYNOTE PRESENTATION

If all you’ve got is an hour you may want to bring Justin in to do his internationally acclaimed keynote presentation…

WHAT’S YOUR STORY?
Master the ultimate form of influence

Taking the audience on an inspirational journey from the birth of humankind to the present, Justin Cohen shows how the explosive speed of progress is fueled by our unique ability to tell stories. If you want to grow an organisational culture, share knowledge, sell a product or lead a team you need to use the oldest and most powerful form of influence, you need to tell a story. Even when we’re not speaking, our brand, offices, clothes and interpersonal style are telling a story. Finally there are the stories we tell ourselves, these are the source of our success or failure.

In What’s your story? delegates will learn how to:

• Use stories to inspire action
• Define and enhance the story their brand tells
• Turn a dull story into a riveting one
• Lead change with a new story
• Transform dead corporate values into living behaviors
• Discover a four-step story creation process
• Think, speak and act out better stories

With a combination of cutting edge research, humor, entertaining stories and practical take-home tools, Justin will help your people master the ultimate form of influence. This is a spectacular, multi-media presentation that will inspire delegates to tell better stories to their team, customers and above all, themselves.

Justin is much more than a motivational speaker. He is informative and provides practical suggestions that go beyond short-term motivational hype.
Maxine Van Der Vyver, Senior Advertising Manager, Media 24

‘Justin delivered a powerful message that will have a long lasting effect on our people. We are experiencing early returns on our investment with a clear increase in sales numbers.
Raymond O’Neil, MD, HSBC MIDDLE EAST

‘I think the standing ovation Justin got says it all!’
Leanne Burrows, Key Accounts Executive, Ster Kinekor