Fundamentals of Storytelling in Organisations

The art and skills of Storytelling becomes more and more necessary nowadays, because flowcharts, arrows and PowerPoint bullets don't measure up to what is needed in organisations anymore.

Organisations do change and develop all the time.
People need real stories to become committed.
People need authentic storytellers to listen to before they get involved knowinly and motivated willingly.

Authentic storytelling is not about persuading people to think like you do, to act like you want them to. It is about people telling stories to make a real difference in their (privat or) professional life.
Authentic storytellers in organisations know the difference between management and leadership.

If that's true, why do I time and again get the shivers when I read about storytelling? It's not that most often storytelling solely seems to be applied to social media, to commercials, to marketing and to sales, to change management, to organisational development, to building corperate identity, even to justify views on our international aid for the non western world. I like a good story in commercials!

I presume that I get shivering once the basic assumption proves to be that storytelling is superimposing the views, morals, intentions, etc. of the storyteller upon the listeners. Then storytelling (probably with the best intentions) just will be a nice wrapping up of persuasion.

Nowadays quite often on international fora I like to combine my scientific background (critical thinking) and my storytelling skills (creative thinking) for sharing both the possibilities, the challenges and the art of the storytelling itself. Storytelling can be far more then molding the hearts and the brains of people.

In my view storytelling is a multi-dimensional experience. It is a great way of meeting people both above and below "the waterline". Storyteller and audience interact. They exchange and share.  Authentic storytelling is about people telling stories to make a real difference.

In my view businesses and organisations are not just managerial objects run by ceo's. Businesses and organisations are living entities. Businesses and organisations are made by people. The people àre the business, the organisation. Without them no organisation, no business can survive.
Stories are profound ways for employees, managers and ceo's (etc. etc.) to cocreate a flourishing, prosperous company; government, ngo and non profit organisation alike.

Stories are so usefull for communities around the world, too. By telling, sharing and cocreating stories people empower their community (whatever, however, whenever they want). For them stories are profound ways of relating to and exchanging with the outside world, as well. (watch this trailer).


The art of  Storytelling is like Archery (read the story). The storyteller is responsible for the arrow and the shooting: tension and relaxation, gripping an letting go, aiming and hitting, but be aware, that every listener among the audience is responsible for his/her own bull's eye. (watch the teaser).

The practice of Storytelling is learning about message, performance and interaction. Is is learning how to mold the content, how to adept your way of telling a story and how to communicate with your audience.

Want to know more? 

Welcome to participate in a Keridwen Workshop

or Keridwen Interactive Presentation. 

For example: September 2014 - Hungary & The Netherlands, November 2014 - Sweden, March 2015 - South Africa

.

Want to get more information?

 Watch this slideshare-teaser and please contact me at Keridwen

Looking forward to your response!

Marcel van der Pol

www.keridwen.com 

Mtiririko Conferentie Zuid Afrika: Programma

Mtiririko… Flow and Commitment!
Seminar… We have a dream…

Mtiririko Conference South Africa 

April 2014 - Program

Day 0 (the day before the conference)

Evening

• Welcome and networking session. 
• An overview and suggestions on how to make the most of the conference.
• The First Encounter: A highly interactive session connecting the young and the young at heart. 
• This will be a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the diversity of the participants / attendees, organizers and trainers. We will start with a dancing exercise and enjoy the dance with the three basic rhythms of the world (by professor Jitske Kramer). These rhythms will tell you more about yourself, your new friends and about the different ways in which people in this world work together.
• Performance led by Gerard Vonk,' artist in residence'
• Meeting with music, dance and stories to get to know each other better.

Day 1
Optional before breakfast

- Yoga for all levels of proficiency or a nature walk to provide relief from stress or stiffness

Morning program: Building our community

• Opening plenary session: “How can we look at life’s challenges as opportunities and find the courage to face our problems ”. A session to further elaborate the relationships and the collaborative energy of the previous evening session to get to know better your fellow participants / attendees.
• Creative thinking and creative communication techniques: Get inspired by the empowering exercises and by the effective ‘cross-the-line’ method ,training for schools and communities. These exercises help opening up and identifying important professional and personal issues. It will help to set goals for the next days.
• Peer groups and buddies: Next to that we will ask you to form peergroups and choose buddies to share with and support each other, during the conference and hopefully also thereafter.

Afternoon program: Appetizing Harvest

• Three interactive workshops to identify the resources, talents and known solutions by combining expertise. We will work with different techniques to look at the same problems from different angles and create more fruitful perspectives. This will allow to create a wide range of new solutions and insights. All problems are solutions:
• Workshop 1 will focus on systemic and personal power approaches
• Workshop 2 will focus on creative and analytical approaches
• Workshop 3 will focus on theatrical and directors approaches
• Outcome: Collecting surprises
• Creative presentation of the most important new insights and discoveries of this day. 

Evening

• Performance by Marcel van der Pol, artist in residence 
• The evening program will be facilitated by the new ‘evening committee’ of participants who volunteered for this task with help of the organization.

Day 2
Optional before breakfast 

• Yoga for all levels of proficiency or a nature walk to provide relief from stress or stiffness

Morning program: Creative Connecting Carrousel

• In a carrousel of 3 mini workshops we will share practical ways to create empowerment and also find solutions for the issues identified on day one . We will choose the best suitable techniques, including: 
• The systemic approach: constellation work.
• The creative approach: mind mapping, hypnotic suggestion, playful games to find serious insights, De Bono’s thinking hats and lateral thinking.
• The artistic approach: playback theatre, solutions by means of archetypes, using music or  other art forms.

Afternoon program: “Resourcing the Future” expedition.

• We will go on an expedition to a nearby prehistorical location. We will use the paintings and the old roots in our program as one of the inspiring starting points to reconnect with possibly forgotten talents and resources. It’s a beautiful part of the conference that can create powerful insights and awareness.

Evening program: World café, World encounter

• An introduction to enjoying the “World Café” methods to take home. This attractive method will enable you a.o.to collect contributions and ideas of every individual, even in large groups. People build on eachother ideas. The evening committee will set the stage for a great evening to meet old and new friends. 
• Performance by artist in residence: to be announced by the evening committee.
• Closing Night Dance (from various continents) and Music Party

Day 3
Optional before breakfast

• Yoga for all levels of proficiency or a nature walk to provide relief from stress or stiffness

Morning program: Gathering for the Harvest; preparing for the next step

• The content of this morning will be based on the practical questions and personal wishes of the participants and what they want to take home for the next step. We will combine all the knowledge and skills available to meet these questions and wishes. 

Afternoon program: Big Harvest Party and celebrating future steps

• An interactive session allowing attendees to explore ways to live their values. Everyone will give a short presentation of his future steps after this conference. This will be presented and celebrated in the peergroups.
• Closing plenary ceremony for sharing thoughts and say farewell. 
• Sharing personal and professional highlights, experiences and thoughts in the big Mtiririko Closing Circle. We will celebrate this milestone together.

During the conference there will be a:

• Wall of Fame: For every person there will be a poster with their picture on it, everyone can write down their appreciations for this person during the seminar.
• Wall of Solutions: There will be a wall where everyone can put questions or problems they would like answers or solutions for. Everyone will be invited to write down their suggestions. 
• Best Lessons Learned Book: Everyone will be interviewed by students about one best practice and one best failure. This will be shaped in a booklet for everyone and a digital version. This learning book will also be used to share with colleges and sponsors. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new” (Albert Einstein).
• Supporting Network: At the beginning of the conference we will create a network of buddies and peergroups. During the conference there will be moments to share items with your buddy and your peer group and give each other support. We hope these networks will continue to exist after the conference. 

====================================================

Background

Mtirriko! We are a group of six highly experienced Dutch consultants and trainers wanting to organize a three day seminar in South Africa. The main goal of the seminar will be to inspire people, to support those who work in townships and contribute to the development of their community.

We all have our own specialization and expertise to share and make a contribution to the whole. We know each other well professionally and often collaborate on different projects.

Our workshops aim to empower the participants. More specifically, our goals are: 

1. To favour ‘self-regulation’, a well-known notion in top-class sport.
2. To supply people with the instruments and knowledge to become more and more the ‘art director’ of their own lives and situation, empowering them to realise dreams, find solutions, and overcome challenges.
3. To strengthen people’s entrepreneurial qualities so they become more effective, believe in their own talents and abilities, and enjoy them.
4. To keep it simple, making every tool as easy and straightforward as can be.

The seminar will be focussing on several themes to be selected, seen from different angles and disciplines: methods for creative thinking, problem solving, tales & theatre training, systemic work, hypnotraining as used in sports, inspiration and the creation of energy and breakthroughs, and handling conflicts will all be used as means to contribute to empowerment. Some theatre and music will also be used as inspiring learning tools and as a means to create a joyful atmosphere, brotherhood and mutual understanding.

The contents of the seminar will be highly practical. The participants will get a good understanding the contents and will be able make their communities profit from it immediately. People will learn to change their perspectives, find new and fresh solutions to important issues, innovate, and discover chances and opportunities.

Together we will try to find new ways to deal effectively with major problems such as HIV, diabetes, drugs, orphanage, crime and conflicts. How to create intrinsic commitment of the community in projects will be one of the issues. The combination and integration of different expert skills may lead to completely new insights.

Balance in giving and taking…

The seminar will create synergy: everyone is a student, we all learn from one another, and every participant will also be a teacher. We (from Europe) are eager to discover African ways of dealing with problems, to develop new talents and enjoy and activate our resources.

This will be an accessible 3 day seminar, with plenary sessions and several parallel smaller workshops to practise and deepen the newly acquired knowledge. The seminar and workshops will be (inter)active, dynamic, practical and personal in a constructive, positive atmosphere.

During this period of preparation and development, we want to build a fruitful form and program together with the people interested and future participants to integrate important needs and wishes.

Basic principles and goals

• Conceiving problems as opportunities
• Uncovering resources, talents and confidence
• Empowering participants with new skills and experiences to bring along to their communities.

Let's introduce the Mtiririko trainers

Let us introduce to you .... Mtiririko

Mtiririko is a group of six highly experienced Dutch consultants and trainers organizing a three day seminar in Phutadidjaba, South Africa (April 2014).

The main goal of the seminar will be to inspire people, to support those who work in townships and contribute to the development of their community. 

Geert Kamps fully realizes he will meet in South Africa with an audience that already is highly motivated, inspired, experienced, gifted and passionate about their daily activities. He aims to raise an increased consciousness of these already existing capacities and talents, allowing to put them to work even more actively. He will use various means to explore, discover and use one’s own talents, a first one being to get people moving literally (through sporting activities, games, gumboot dancing, etc.) in order to create both physical and mental energy. Once moving physically, people not only become much more conscious of their own energy, but will also want to control and orient it towards specific directions. During this seminar, you will discover and explore how to transfer this physically created energy to your daily life situations and find new directions for solving old problems. A second thing Geert will explore with the audience is the power of words: he will aim (a) to create an improved consciousness of the impact words have on the emotions of the listener and (b) to show that language has the potential to provoke action.

Gerard Vonk, who has a background as a psychologist, will provide the audience with a series of creative and associative tools allowing people to realize that for any perceived problem they already have one or more solutions at hand. One of Gerard’s convictions is that problems actually don’t exist, only solutions do. Creative and associative techniques are excellent tools to uncover solutions for any issue. Gerard will frequently use music, images, metaphors and theatre play as a means to stimulate your creative and associative power. Creating enthusiasm, making people discover their own passion, discovering the power of groups, exploring one’s own talents and strengths are recurrent themes in his workshops. Another of Gerard’s convictions is that things need to be done together and that we all can and have to learn from one another. Therefore, during his workshop he and the participants are both teachers and learners. At a more global level, he truly believes Western society can learn many things from African society and vice versa.

Marcel van der Pol has many activities, ranging from theatre director/actor, story teller, trainer, coach, consultant and university teacher. All of his activities serve a few common goals, such as replacing traditional perspectives with new ones, creating new patterns of thought (both at the professional and personal level), breaking through set habits, stimulating personal creativity and innovation and exploring concrete, new possibilities one’s own environment already offers. He has developed several means to achieve these goals, among others storytelling and theater performances which he uses to provoke change and growth, and his The Dance of the Hero®, actually a metaphor of twelve heroes, each hero offering a specific perspective on the world and helping you to broaden your own patterns of thought.

Anne Heleen Bijl specializes in creative/lateral thinking as a means to bring about simple but highly effective and immediately applicable solutions to often long existing problems. Her approach favors freer thinking in terms of opportunities and possibilities. She works with creativity tools for developing new ideas and creating true commitment to projects through a common vision and mission. She uses ‘mindmapping’ as a means for information transmission and transparent presentation of ideas, a technique which could be applied by for instance pastors wanting to present information as clearly as possible to illiterate people in their respective communities. How to create an inspiring environment and to recognize, mobilize and put into action each others’ talents is another aspect of Anne Heleen’s workshops. Making people flourish, eliminate obstacles and realize their dreams, desires and wishes always play a central role in het workshops.

Nicole van der Ouw approaches people and organizations from a systemic perspective. She considers systems as a whole, with different layers and connections, both at the personal and the organizational level. This allows her to help people create meaningful breakthroughs and change, in their own lives as well in the organizations or communities they work for. One of her basic principles is that reason and rationality have to be connected to the feelings, passion and inner power of individuals. This method will allow you to create solutions which are both intelligent/rational, and fully supported and vigorously defended by the people who have to adopt them. Her strictly result-oriented approach is not only systemic, but also playful and creative: lighthearted, profound creativity with laughter and a relaxed atmosphere play an important role in bringing about creative change. She provokes curiosity as to how things can be done differently through changes of perspective. Bringing out wisdom in people is a key element of Nicole’s way of working.

Sjoerd de Vries is a systemic consultant working at local, national and international levels. As a creative change manager specializing in systemic constellation work, his principal goals are to find out which dynamic patterns block a specific organization, where those blocks originate from and how we can solve them before starting up something new. Sjoerd uses systemic constellations as a means for achieving innovation, discovering new services, creating new experiences and driving real cultural change. His systemic approach will provide you with a set of empowering tools helping you to recognize repeating patterns, to remove obstacles, to stand out, to win loyalty and to inspire action. Sjoerd sees certain parallels between the Netherlands right after the war (when church financed social academies played an important role in restructuring certain aspects of Dutch society) and the current situation in South-African townships (where many social changes are driven by pastors).