Storytelling Mastery Lab
A Training Experience for Creative Leaders
An effective and strategic deep-dive into your storytelling journey.
* This is a One-Day, and In-Person training.
A practical deep dive into the fundamentals and essentials of gathering stories for your 'carrier bag', and crafting business stories with strategic intent for any situation. Learn to collect and craft with your audience in mind.
Breathe life into your stories to wow your audiences. Activate your storytelling instrument (your body and voice) for impactful delivery, using techniques from theatre and embodiment principles. Learn to be confident on any stage as a storyteller.
Testimonial:
Colin quickly won us over by engaging the group in his own compelling storytelling and breaking down for us how to tell our own stories in our ways. Colin has a magnetic energy about him, and he made the whole class a delight to be a part of and to learn from...I came away with new practical insights I could use in my personal and professional life. I would highly recommend and would do more classes with him in a heartbeat.
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- Benjamin McDiarmid
Storytelling Mastery Lab.
The Living Storyteller is an interactive and cutting-edge storytelling learning experience that will help you build your storytelling confidence and set you on the path toward storytelling mastery.
Designed over years of iteration, this training has been shaped to support you to discover and unleash your inner storyteller and take you on a learning journey from technical insights to the magic of storytelling performance discovery.
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Participants will gain a range of narrative skills, relevant knowledge, and storytelling delivery competencies that can be immediately applied in any context in your organisation or in your life.
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Participants will be introduced to the essentials and fundamentals of storytelling crafting. You will learn how to gather stories and relevant information so that you can ensure the stories you tell will resonate and be relatable for your audiences.
You will also learn how to craft your stories for optimal structure, brevity, and creative flair. Participants will discover how to integrate the gathering and crafting process with creative components so that your storytelling journey begins with confidence.
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Finally, fully embracing your inner storyteller is about breathing life into your stories with confidence, creative courage, and presence.
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"Just the right amount of content. Relevant, engaging and ready to be moved into practice almost instantly." - Michael
Who Should Attend
Leaders, managers, creatives, designers, facilitators, and coaches.
What You Will Learn
A FUSION OF PRACTICE
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Brings together many years of research, practical application, and expert facilitation in storytelling.
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Teaches you the fundamentals of storytelling and provides you with all the necessary technical insights and a menu of story components to ground your learning.
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Learn how to think in story, gather and collect stories, and how to harvest powerful stories. The emphasis is on a human-centred approach to story-crafting.
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Understand how a story of disruption will support you to garner buy-in for your projects by imagining a compelling future through the stories you tell.
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Is supported by insights into neuroscience and embodied cognition for enhanced understanding, including a review of the compelling science of storytelling.
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Learn how to combine data and storytelling for effective presentations, pitches, and talks.
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Is designed to be responsive to the storytelling aspirations of delegates.
AUDIENCE FOCUSED FOR EMPATHY
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Learn how to create an emotional connection with your audience, and understand why this is where the magic of storytelling delivers.
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Reveals how to persuade, influence, and motivate your audience through the stories you choose.
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You will learn how to humanise your message and gain the trust of your audience.
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Guides you to align your storytelling with your intended audience so that your storytelling is relevant, impactful, and memorable.
LEARN BY DOING APPROACH
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Safely take you to the edges of your comfort zone in a way that will support your growth and inspire you to believe in your storytelling ability.
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Take you on an experiential learning journey to activate your insights and take your storytelling to new heights. The focus is on crafting, iteration, and practice.
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Shows you how to take creative risks in the way you make strategic choices in your story-crafting and delivery.
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Combines technical understanding and knowledge with practical integration inspired by coaching techniques borrowed from the theatre, such as improvisation, embodiment and simulations.
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Offers you an opportunity to craft and practice a story you can apply, giving you the confidence to lead with a story in any context at work or in your life.
COLLABORATIVE
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Is fun, energising, and engaging, with many storytelling examples to enhance the learnings.
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Through storytelling, we improve collaborative dynamics and shape organisational culture.
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Used strategically, stories hold the power to engage people and inspire action.
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To be a good storyteller you need to be a good story-gatherer. Learning how to listen intently and extract stories from others, with a sense of curiosity and care, is a key aspect of improving your skills as a storyteller.
*Customised and in-house storytelling training is also available on request with consultation.
Meet Your Story Coach
Colin Skelton is an experienced creativity facilitator, theatre-maker, storyteller and design thinker who has spent decades working with the art of storytelling.
He has designed and facilitated numerous storytelling trainings, both in-person and online, with corporates, universities, and other organisations in South Africa and internationally.
Colin brings a unique approach to his storytelling work. With a rigorous and deep understanding of applied storytelling, Colin activates the learnings through story examples, guided story coaching, and applied theatre techniques to bring your stories to life.
Paul - CEO, Synergy Global Consulting, Johannesburg
Colin was asked to build our storytelling muscle as a company and as individuals. Colin designed a process that allowed for creativity, fun and most importantly the identification of what we are all about as a business. It cleared up some conceptual blockages we had and has provided a positive frame for our ability to reach out into the network, have something to say, and receive wisdom and insight with open minds and hearts.
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Colin was the facilitator at an all-day workshop on the subject of Storytelling. Colin has an infectious teaching style and you can see he knows his subject matter inside and out. Colin provided a safe environment for us attendees to stretch our abilities and learn new skills in a constructive manner. I'd definitely attend a workshop he's facilitating again.
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Thank you for the great presentation and performance you shared with us yesterday! I felt totally lifted up & joyful during and after the session. It was like a new Joe Dispenza interactive seminar!:)
Steven - Experience Designer,
Reserve Bank of New Zealand
Horia - Online participant
Tine - Service Designer, Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency
What a treat to have you deliver this course...In my experience, you made it really easy for people - including myself - to open up and contribute throughout the day. Your ability to encourage individuals to step out of their comfort zone and explore new territory was remarkable. I found you balanced the theoretical input with the practical output really well. You didn't only talk about how to tell stories, and how to use different tools and methods, you went ahead and told us stories, showcasing their different effects. What a great way of creating memorable experiences!
Darren Graham - Director,
Joint Prosperity
Colin is known for applying creativity and a growth mindset to business challenges. His value is facilitating new thinking to new problems to achieve breakthroughs and impact. Colin brings new ideas, creativity, art and fun to the learning process. His facilitation skills keep his audience energised and engaged in creative problem solving.
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Carrie - Client Service Director, Mscsports, Johannesburg
We had the pleasure of having Colin Skelton facilitate a company workshop and the day was more interactive and successful than we had ever imagined.
Not only is Colin energetic, warm and engaging – his story-telling methods assisted us in driving a few messages home for our team as well as assisted us in unpacking and finding solutions for challenges we are facing as a business.
He is so entertaining and ensured that this workshop will remain relevant and memorable for our team for a long time to come! He was well suited to our environment and as a very diverse group of people, he related extremely well.
We are very grateful for his contribution to our workshop which focussed on revisiting our company values & USP. We hope we can welcome him back into our space very soon!
Michael - Online Participant
​Just the right amount of content, relevant, engaging and ready to be moved into practice almost instantly.
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