Workshops

I offer workshops and custom learning experiences on Public Narrative and Empathetic Leadership.

These workshops are highly interactive, where participants learn through individual practice, 1-on-1 coaching, and group exercises. They are adapted from the frameworks by Marshall Ganz as taught in the Public Narrative course offered at Harvard Kennedy School. They can be integrated with:

Currently, I offer the following workshops in-person and online, with formats ranging from 1.5 hours to 2 days.

Communicating as a leader is often reduced to the managerial, technical or analytical; this is simply not enough to inspire teams. It is no wonder that storytelling is widely acknowledged as one of the most important – and rare – skills in leaders.

Public Narrative is a storytelling practice that help leaders communicate their why, and motivate their people to act towards a shared purpose. It is rooted in the definition of leadership as the practice of enabling others to accepting responsibility to achieve a shared goal or purpose in the face of uncertainty.

A Public Narrative starts with the Self – narrating experiences that shape our own values and sense of responsibility, so that others may understand and relate to us. The Self connects with values of the Us, to make a sense of solidarity and community explicit and visible. These stories link together with a story of Now to motivate action towards a shared purpose.

Based on a course originally taught by Marshall Ganz at Harvard University, Public Narrative has over the last 25 years been the starting point of leadership programs, global summits and community campaigns. In addition to helping leaders come up with a wide applicable framework for storytelling, the experience builds trust, morale, and the EQ required to lead in today’s volatile world.

We look for leadership not just to coast us through the good times, but more importantly to guide us through the rough ones. We experience challenges in leadership not when our groups or teams face disruptions, but when they feel unable to act mindfully in the face of those disruptions. The purpose of leadership then becomes to help our people feel seen and understood, and to show that they have a choice in acting with purpose even in the face of grave disruption.

In this workshop, we will look at leadership challenges with four lenses: lenses of loss, difference, power and change. We will focus on the role that narrative – what we communicate and express – plays in enabling a group to overcome these challenges. The framework of the empathetic bridge is introduced as a narrative tool to enable mindful, agentic responses, and as we go through the sessions participants will learn to apply this towards their past or ongoing leadership challenges.