Work with Business Storytelling Subject Matter Expert and Master Facilitator, Jordan Bower
Improve how your team influences & engages in a Business Storytelling Training Workshop
It’s a noisy world—and your team needs to deliver engaging, persuasive messages that can generate buy-in, guide decision making and drive impact.
In this fluff-free storytelling workshop for business teams, work with facilitator and subject matter expert, Jordan Bower, to develop your team’s strategic business storytelling tools, skills, and mindsets.
Jordan Bower has led business storytelling training for nearly 200 companies, including:
Craft compelling narratives that express insight, credibility & value.
Storytelling is the art and science of meaning making. In business, great storytellers from CEOs to individual contributors use skills like creativity, clarity, and emotional intelligence to convey engaging, impactful messages. Used effectively, these skills can change how you present data, express the value of your solutions, and guide stakeholders past change resistance.
This definition of business storytelling goes far beyond “how to tell a story.” These fundamental skills, mindsets, and strategies of business storytelling can apply to many different forms of workplace communication, including decks, presentation structure, reports, emails, data, case studies, and much more…
In this highly engaging training, your team will learn the art and science of business storytelling through tailored examples and facilitated exercises. Then, working together, you’ll develop real, outside-the-box solutions to apply your new insights—generating immediate and actionable impact.
Get storytelling training tailored to your team or corporate division:
Executive and senior leadership teams who need to communicate the bigger strategic narrative
Customer-facing and go-to-market teams, like sales & marketing, who want to differentiate in a crowded market
Internal teams, like product, operations and finance, that need to sell ideas and earn stakeholder buy-in
Data-oriented teams who want to elevate the impact of their data—and stop presenting spreadsheets
Any functional or cross-functional team that wants to improve how you engage, persuade and connect
How Your Business Storytelling Training Is Structured
Work together with your team to shift your mindsets, apply your insights, and develop tailored, outside-the-box solutions for how you can use strategic storytelling to drive real business results.
1. Learn by Studying Best Practice Examples
Studying carefully selected best practice examples tailored to your team and industry. Discuss cutting-edge changes to communications, like generative AI, and combine those insights with time-tested business storytelling principles, drawing from the arts, narrative theory and cutting edge neuroscience
2. Participate in Experiential Exercises
Practice business storytelling concepts in structured exercises, working with your team in pairs and small groups. Give and receive peer feedback, and support one another as you incorporate your individualized insights.
3. Apply to Your Real Communications Goals
Immediately put your insights to work. Apply new learned principles to the real messaging that your team produces, such as Powerpoint decks, reports, videos, social media, emails, team identities, strategic narratives and more—achieving immediate ROI.
4. Develop Your Tailored Action Plan
Identify accessible improvements that your team can attain—at whatever level of change is right for you. Strategize how to deploy valuable time and resources to make the greatest improvement at the lowest effort, guided by Jordan’s insight and subject matter expertise.
Types of Stories Your Storytelling Training Will Improve:
Stakeholder presentations and pitches
White papers, reports and thought leadership
Data-driven storytelling
Change and transformational messaging
Customer-facing messaging, like brand and content
Team identities and positioning
High-level strategic narratives, like vision, culture, purpose, investment, and your North Star
Unexpected Storytelling Skills Your Team Will Develop
Active listening
Emotional intelligence
Creative problem solving
Narrative structure
Confidence and audience engagement
Giving and receiving peer feedback
Balancing the personal and professional
Visual thinking and graphical presentation
Achieve Transformative Outcomes for your Team
Develop your “influence without authority,” improving how you can engage and persuade cross-functional teams
Go beyond one message to create a “constellation of narratives”—so you can adapt to different audiences
Improve the impact of complex ideas and data, distilling insights into simple, narrative forms
Build your confidence and ability to engage others, becoming someone who can hold audiences’ attention
Address objections and resistance to change through counter-narratives that can reframe and clarify
Discuss how your messaging strategies and tactics can change to adapt to the opportunities and threats of AI
"Jordan’s business storytelling training connected perfectly with where the team was at, challenged us perfectly and left us with a revived energy and call to action to tell stories with form and purposeful function. I’m super grateful!!”
— Karen Stanton, Chief Marketing Officer, IFF
The Business Case for Business Storytelling
How we communicate in business is changing. From shifts in customer, stakeholder and employee expectations to new technologies like AI, business teams at every level and function need new ways of engaging their audiences.
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There were outward-facing communications teams, like sales and marketing, who were responsible for the messaging going to customers. Generally, these brand messages were created once every few years—if you found a good one, like “Just Do It” or “Diamonds are Forever,” then you might not need to think about messaging again for a lifetime.
Then, there were inward-facing communications teams, like corporate comms and change management, who were mainly responsible for passing down top-heavy messaging from executive leaders. Messaging was one-directional—from them to us.
From today’s perspective, this seems almost unbelievable.
Today, every aspect of business communication has been disrupted, from how we communicate with the market to how we communicate with each other. New technologies have changed not just how we communicate, but what we are expected to say—and also how often we are expected to respond.
New and ever-shifting customer and employee expectations are demanding that we communicate more than what we sell, but also why we do it and what makes it valuable.
Internally, new organizational structures like matrixed organizations, work-from-home and cross-functional teams are creating new communication channels, and new expectations for internal teams to engage and contextualize their data-driven insights to their stakeholders. Communications has expanded far beyond the old form of one-way communication, becoming a multi-dimensional conversation with a thousand different voices—all of it unfolding chaotically in real time. And, at the highest level, what people everywhere are searching for is new narratives—to generate purpose, meaning and direction.
All of this is in the realm of what I consider “business storytelling.” It’s a huge evolution from the old idea of delivering a static, practiced story to an attentive and undistracted audience in a pitch or a presentation. And it’s a fundamental rethink of how you can be an effective communicator at work.
The goal of this business storytelling training is to guide your team to explore this new communications landscape, so you can make specific, targeted adjustments that will immediately elevate your ability to create impact with your stakeholders.
Specific learning objectives include:
Introducing a new definition of business storytelling that focuses on contextualizing information, presenting it concisely, and delivering it with impact
Learning fundamental principles of business storytelling that can be applied to many different forms of business messaging
Studying how today’s best business communicators are turning business storytelling on its head—both for internal stakeholders and external audiences
Building your team’s competence and confidence in developing this crucial communications skill set
Working together as a team to think outside-the-box about communication, identifying specific improvements and supporting each other with peer feedback
Developing a customized action plan for taking your new, tailored insights and putting them immediately to work.
Start your team’s storytelling journey!
Strategic business storytelling is the foundational skill driving the future of work. It’s so much more than telling a story—it’s crafting and framing a persuasive message in your audience’s mind, leading to greater engagement, more valuable insight, and tangible business impact.
I would love to guide your team through your storytelling learning journey! Contact me today.
Business Storytelling Training Logistics
Business Storytelling Training Workshop
Delivery: In-person or virtual format, up to 50 participants
Length: In-person—half day, one day, one and a half, and two day options. Virtual sessions tailored to your needs.
Content: Participants develop a strategic storytelling mindset and then apply it immediately to the real stakeholder messaging used in your work. The goal is use techniques and creativity to make messaging more effective.
Structure: Training combines best practice examples, paired and small group exercises, facilitated discussions, and plenty of real practice
Audience: Customized for any functional or cross-functional team, based on research we perform in advance.
Outcome: A new perspective on the value of business storytelling; customized steps to implement the learning; clear and immediate ways to improve existing existing team narratives.
Facilitator: Every business storytelling training is led by Jordan Bower.
Meet Business Storytelling Trainer, Jordan Bower
Jordan Bower is an expert consultant, coach, facilitator, thought leader, and subject matter expert in business storytelling.
He specializes in leadership storytelling workshops, developing strategic narratives, and facilitating narrative/cultural change. Through his storytelling workshops, Jordan has helped thousands of business professionals in a wide range of divisional functions, including executives, sales, marketing, product, operations, finance and more. Jordan has worked with nearly 200 companies in the US, Canada, and around the world,
As a thought leader, Jordan has spoken widely about leadership storytelling at many events and podcasts. He also works 1:1 as an executive coach, with clients that have ranged from corporate executives to venture capitalists to thought leaders, start-up founders and US Congressman.
Jordan is based in Vancouver, BC. He serves clients around the world.
Recent Examples of Business Storytelling Workshops
Rakuten Rewards Operations Team, San Francisco
I worked with an internal operations team to help them improve how they were seen internally—helping develop an inspiring team identity and transformative vision.
International Flavors & Fragrances Global Brand Team, New York
I helped the global marketing team shift their perspective on how to engage their market—moving from discussing facts and features to expressing narrative.
Mölynlycke Health, Commercial Team Senior Leaders, Atlanta
I helped the senior leaders on Mölynlycke’s commercial team discuss new approaches and narratives for inspiring their internal teams through change.
Protective Life, Sales Team, Cincinnati
I helped the wholesalers on the Protective Sales Team explore new approaches for building trust and standing out with their busy financial clients.
"We came into our training looking for ways to talk about a complex product that we were struggling to message—even internally. Working with Jordan, we figured out exactly what stories we should be telling and why.”
—Head of Product, Unbounce.
Beyond Your Workshop: How Jordan Can Help
From intensive change journeys to full-day workshops to one-hour keynotes, Jordan Bower improves communication, shifts mindsets and actualize culture change—for you, your team, and your organization.
Change Journeys
Redefine narratives around strategy, purpose, culture, sales and product to engender the adaptive and dynamic organization of the future. Start by backcasting a new vision, then identify roadblocks to change, and support your team through new systems, mindsets, and habits.
Storytelling Workshops
Get change started through catalytic team workshops that build skills in business and leadership storytelling. Find novel, more effective ways of getting your message heard and leading your audience to a call-to-action—no matter whether you communicate with external or internal stakeholders.
Keynote Speeches
Bring in Jordan to enlighten and inspire people at your conference or event. With a unique perspective, deep industry experience, and a storytelling-informed communication-style, Jordan will help your attendees shift your perspective and level up your creative vision.
Leadership Coaching
Catalyze your own change journey and develop essential leadership skills, like creative problem solving, emotional intelligence and business storytelling. Build your capacity to guide others through change by getting Jordan’s help moving through change yourself.
FAQs
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Very! We keep the energy up with real world examples of effective business storytelling, dynamic content and facilitation style, and plenty of structured exercises in pairs and peer learning groups.
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This training takes a principle-based approach to business storytelling. That means the principles can be applied broadly to any kind of business communication. We address written and verbal communication in emails, reports, Powerpoint decks, presentations, videos, social media and much, much more.
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Yes! The principles learned in this workshop apply to storytelling with data and other visuals. Participants learn how to clarify their message, find the emotional core and relate it to their stakeholders or other audiences. Then, they practice applying these ideas to real examples of their workplace messaging.
However, this storytelling training is not a detailed focus on infographic design. If you’re looking for something like that, we highly recommend Storytelling with Data.
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My process-oriented approach means that we can apply this workshop to many different organizational teams, including executives, sales, marketing, product, finance, operations, design, change management, HR, cross-functional teams and more.
Every team in your business can benefit from attending my corporate storytelling workshop!
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Before every storytelling training, I conduct detailed research, including 1:1 interviews with selected members of your team, as well as review of the content/messaging that your team creates, such as Powerpoint decks, white papers, emails, reports, presentations, etc.
Based on this research, I customize the examples and exercises included in the workshop. My facilitation style also means that every workshop depends on your participation—which makes every workshop a little different.
After the storytelling workshop, I follow-up with you to help you digest your insights—and figure out what to do next.
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No! The workshop uses a mix of structured exercises, peer-learning groups and large group sessions to introduce and learn the material. Your team will participate in exercises in pairs and groups of four, but no one will be obligated to present anything in front of the entire group.
Of course, if you want to remove public speaking entirely, that’s definitely possible—let’s discuss how we can tailor your training to your team.
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Yes! I have custom designed the content, and I deliver it in a tailored way to every group. I have successfully delivered nearly 200 storytelling workshops!
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Yes! Your team will receive additional materials, recommended readings, and tools to continue developing their storytelling skills after the workshop. These are customized based on what we discuss during the session.
Additionally, I will meet with your leadership after the workshop to reflect on the learning experience and to recommend customized next steps.
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Yes! For many clients, your storytelling training for teams is the catalyst for a transformative journey that has the goal of improving how you communicate. There are a number of ways I can help you along this journey as a consultant, facilitator, subject matter expert and coach. I would be happy to discuss this with you in detail!
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By learning to think of yourselves as business storytellers, your team can take traditional corporate communications like reports, presentations and pitches, and improve them so that they are more memorable and engaging.
Storytelling techniques can apply to many corporate functions, such as understanding your audience and building creative confidence. These and many other topics are covered in this corporate storytelling training.
Let’s start a conversation!
I will reply to you personally.
