Tales For Trainers

A concise guide to using stories, anecdotes, metaphors and poety in training and development, Tales for Trainers is packed with ideas to give training more impact. Beginning by setting the use of stories in learning on a sound theoretical footing, the book goes on to include sample stories that trainers can use to read out loud. The author provides 50 tales that will immediately help trainers, managers, educators and coaches to reinforce key messages or stimulate fresh thinking.Proven to work in a variety or training environments, the stories range from ones written specifically by the author to carefully selected extracts from literature. They both work brilliantly as an aid to learning. The book also includes a detailed matrix to show which tales can be effectively used to promote particular actions or concepts. Online supporting resources include audio clips of stories illustrating the benefits of using storytelling in a business context.

In More Tales for Trainers, Margaret Parkin presents a further 50 stories, anecdotes, metaphors and poetry, which any trainer or manager can readily use to encourage and engage learners. Beginning by setting the use of stories in learning on a sound theoretical footing, the book goes on to include sample stories that trainers can use to address a number of learning and development needs. The stories cover all the key areas in organizational training, including: leadership, communication and change.

Coaching is rapidly proving to be an invaluable aid to personal development and a successful way to enhance performance within organizations of all types. More and more people are also discovering how to use storytelling to bring about change and reinforce learning. Tales for Coaching combines these two approaches into a powerful and effective technique to assist personal change. Showing you how and when to use stories to maximum effect, whether you are coaching an individual or a group, the author demonstrates how your coaching can have greater impact with the effective use of storytelling. Complete with sample stories that can be read aloud in a variety of coaching situations, Tales for Coaching includes 50 tales that will immediately help coaches, trainers, managers and educators to reinforce key messages or stimulate fresh thinking.

storytelling is not just the province of children, stories can be used to re-frame and re-size problems and provide useful metaphors for the boardroom, office and individual. Showing you how and when to use stories to maximum effect, Tales for Change will immediately help managers, trainers, educators and coaches to reinforce key messages or stimulate fresh thinking. The book includes 50 tried and tested tales that can be used in a change management context. These tales can be used to communicate ideas, aid memorable learning, encourage brainstorming sessions, develop training and reflection as well as help those involved to cope with the stress of change, increase emotional intelligence levels and increase creativity.

Despite the high-tech tools available to salespeople today, the most personal method still works best. Through storytelling, a salesperson can explain products or services in ways that resonate, connect people to the mission, and help determine what decisions are made. A well-crafted story can pack the emotional punch to turn routine presentations into productive relationships. In Sell with a Story, organizational storytelling expert and author Paul Smith focuses his popular and proven formula to the sales arena. Smith identifies the ingredients of the most effective sales stories and reveals how to: Select the right story Craft a compelling and memorable narrative Incorporate challenge, conflict, and resolution• And more Learning from model stories, skill-building exercises, and enlightening examples from Microsoft, Costco, Xerox, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hewlett-Packard, and other top companies, you will soon be able to turn their personal experiences into stories that introduce yourself, build rapport, address objections, add value to the product, bring data to life, create a sense of urgency…and most importantly, sell! If you want to become a better communicator and transform your sales results, Sell with a Story is for you.

Whether you’re trying to communicate a vision, sell an idea, or inspire commitment, storytelling is a powerful business tool that can mean the difference between lackluster enthusiasm and a rallying cry. Addressing a wide variety of business challenges, including specific stories to help you overcome twenty-one difficult situations, Lead with a Story gives you theability to engage an audience the way logic and bullet points alone never could. This how-to guidebook shows readers how powerful stories can help define culture and values, engender creativity and innovation, foster collaboration, build relationships, provide coaching and feedback, and lead change. Whether in a speech or a memo, communicated to one person or a thousand, storytelling is an essential skill for today’s leaders. Many highly successful companies use storytelling as a leadership tool. At Nike, all senior executives are designated “corporate storytellers.” 3M banned bullet points years ago and replaced them with a process of writing “strategic narratives.” Procter & Gamble hired Hollywood directors to teach its executives storytelling techniques. Some forward-thinking business schools have even added storytelling courses to their management curriculum. Complete with examples from these and many other high-profile companies, Lead with a Story gives readers the guidance they need to spin a narrative to stunning effect.

Story is everywhere in human lives and cultures and it features strongly in the processes of teaching and learning. Story can be called narrative, case study, critical incident, life history, anecdote, scenario, illustration or example, creative writing, storytelling; it is a unit of communication, it is in the products of the media industries, in therapy and in our daily acts of reflecting. Stories are 'told' in many ways - they are spoken, written, filmed, mimed or acted, presented as cartoons and in new media formats and through all these, they are associated with both teaching and learning processes but in different ways and at different levels. As a result of growing interest and simultaneous confusion about story, it is timely to untangle the various meanings of story so that we can draw out and extend its value and use. Using Story aims to clarify what we mean by story, to seek out where story occurs in education and life and to explore the processes by which we learn from story. In this way the book intends to ‘bring story into the open’ and improve its use. Building on her wealth of experience in the field, Jenny Moon explores the theory of story and demonstrates both its current uses and new ways in which to enrich and enliven teaching, learning and research processes. Ideal for anyone involved in education, personal or professional development or with a more general interest in story, the book begins by considering the range of what is meant by story, and then considers the theory behind the meanings. In the large final part of the book, Jenny provides a rich patchwork of different uses of story in education that cut across forms of story, story activities, disciplines and applications all of which will aid the use of story.