Inner and Outer Skills for Women Change Agents
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change”
Brene Brown
To understand and share who you are, to build trust, to listen to and understand others, to create shared vision and team connection, & to persuade, inspire and engage…. you need the skills of the storyteller.
Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.” Brene Brown
Every one who work with or leads human beings, needs to practice the story arts. Our workplaces need the skills and heart of the storytelling leader, and we need women leaders.
If you want to be calm & at ease on the inside, and capable, collaborative, and kind on the outside, then Story Wise Impact is for you.
Story Wise Impact is a 6 month program to support 8 women like you, feminists, heretics and subversives, working at the edge to effect transformational change for women, workplaces and the world, not just through the impact of the work you do, but in how you go about that work.
Story Wise Impact is designed for all women working, or intending to work with others, in a formal workplace, a creative or entrepreneurial team or in a collaborative partnership. It is also designed to foster connection and peer support for women within the program.
Change
The changes we want to create in the world are as simple as respect and as complex as brain surgery. They are as necessary as breathing and yet as stubborn as stone, they defeat us day after day, and call us back to stand and be counted day after day.
We are outliers, pioneers, visionaries and collaborators in need of each other and the inner and outer skills to lead change. If your vision for change pushes you to the edge of the world as it is, and you know there’s a better way, then Story Wise Impact is for you.
If you lead, partner, collaborate, pitch, present or persuade, Story Wise Impact will develop, connect, inspire, support and surprise you.
At the end of this program you will be able to:
1. Lead Yourself & Others: You will live into a better version of yourself, more self aware and confident, understanding your values and history, excited by your purpose and grounded with daily practices that enable you to lead yourself and others.
2. Connect Through Stories: You will have a suite of story skills, for telling stories and drawing others into sharing stories. You will develop a bag of your own stories you can use to connect, persuade, show who you are, what you believe and what you value.
3. Hold Space/Facilitate Meetings: You will learn and experience the power of holding space, listening, creating shared vision, building group cohesion and making decisions with structured processes, and deep personal centring.
4. Speak with Confidence: You will learn how to craft and present a compelling ten minute signature talk or pitch. We will explore confidence, structure, delivery and style, to weave story with message, who you are with the change you want to see in the world.
Group and Individual Work
Story Wise Impact combines the strength, connection and delight of working with a group of women, with the reflection, clarity, accountability and support that comes from individual coaching.
There is enormous power in the collective wisdom of a group of women; the group becomes much greater than the sum of its parts. In the Story Wise Impact program the group also enables participants to practise their group facilitation skills, experience the impact of processes on group development and have a live audience for practising storytelling and presenting.
Story Wise Impact also includes up to 8 one-hour individual coaching sessions, and so the well known and amazing benefits of individual coaching – being heard, personal planning, thinking aloud, being accountable, being guided by questions and having the time and space to reflect deeply – are also available to you in this program.
The Four Story Wise Impact Arts
Participating in Story Wise Impact will develop your skills in four areas critical for anyone navigating the waters of initiating and driving change:
1. Personal Work: Develop yourself, practise self awareness, mindfulness, personal habits and resilience. Bring the super power of meaning and purpose to what you do and to be the change you want to see in the world.
2. Storytelling: Learn to be a storyteller and story catcher, know and articulate who you are through your stories, create the space and time to hear others stories. Draw on the power of stories to explain, persuade and connect; develop a set of story skills and the story mindset.
3. Group skills: Learn the skills to hold space and facilitate groups, through a balanced use of long form circle, with a talking piece and story sharing, offset by use of the daily short sharp huddle meetings. Not only work with logical process but also understand and adapt to group energy, developing group trust, shared vision and effectiveness.
4. Public speaking: Learn how to persuade, present and pitch; to speak compellingly, hone your message, weave it with stories, and win people over to your cause.
Curriculum
Roughly half the curriculum is a weaving and deepening of practices relating to the four Story Wise Impact arts. The start of each day will include a combination of self development and group process tools, practices, personal reflection and story sharing.
The other half of the curriculum, and the second part of each day will introduce new information and skills, from the four Story Wise Impact arts, with practical and experiential application of the new skills.
The sessions will include:
Session One: Introduction to story sharing and group processes. Developing self awareness: mindfulness practices, habit development, life balance.
Session Two: Personal strengths and values. Storytelling: finding, crafting, structure, performance, meaning-making, practice.
Session Three: Sharing crafted stories and feedback. Leadership stories for visioning, values and leading. Deeper reflective work on personal stories. Developing a story bank.
Session Four: Story listening and gathering, story ethics. Group process and facilitation tools, participatory process tools. Public speaking concepts.
Session Five: Public speaking: Topic, thesis, structure – main points, stories and statistics, confidence and performance.
Session Six: Practise delivery of signature speech, and group feedback. Reflections on the program and individual and group commitments.
Commitment
In between sessions there will be ongoing ‘homework’, readings, story writing and practising, speech writing and coaching sessions. There will also be some partner practice and feedback sessions. There will a group conference call to check in on progress. Depending on how you usually work, time and work involved is not linear, but more likely to come in waves, driven by deadline – a coaching session, the next daylong workshop, a performance. An estimated time commitment in between monthly workshop days of 2 hours a week.
About Kate Lawrence
My vision is to create a deep and transformative program for feminist activists, leaders and change agents, that develops skills, personal growth and peer support, in the crucible of a women’s circle, supported in between with individual coaching.
I have been on my own inner journey of personal awareness and growth, meditating, journaling and exploring different ways of self discovery for 16 years. I have sat in circle with women many times and believe it to be the most powerful process we have to be heard and to hear, to make sense and to belong, to learn and to love, to heal and to grow.
For over 17 years I was a practising community lawyer. I have strong sense of structure and logical order, as well as a deep faith in humanity and stories. I have experience in private law firms, small community not for profit workplaces as well as large government agencies and local government.
For the last seven years I have been crafting, and telling stories, from folk tales through to personal stories, teaching others to tell stories and hosting storytelling events. I have won the Melbourne Moth story slam twice and I have spoken on the TEDx stage about the power and meaning of personal storytelling.
In between the law and storytelling I worked for local government and the CFA, in community development, emergency preparedness and recovery. I studied group facilitation and became fascinated with learning the skills to hold space, to enable collaboration and participatory processes.
If you want to bring a message of change to your world, if you want develop your inner and outer leadership skills, connect with others on the same path, and lead, present and create stories, and Story Wise Impact sounds like it is for you, register your interest and be the first to know when registrations are open.
What’s Involved
The first Story Wise Impact program begins in April 2018. Numbers are limited to 8 women. The program comprises the following:
Workshops: Six day long workshops on the third Friday of the month, in a beautiful bush setting in Macedon, a relaxing hour’s train ride from Southern Cross.
Dates in 2018 are: April 20, May 18, June 15, July 20, August 17, September 21
Time: 9am – 4.30pm each day.
Group Call: In between the workshops we’ll have a group online check-in, to answer any questions, provide accountability and embed any learnings.
Individual Coaching: Over the course of the program each participant can access to up to 8 x 1 hour sessions of personal coaching with Kate to work on whatever is most relevant to her.
Cost: $2950
or $2750 ($200 discount) if paid in full by 28 February. Otherwise, two instalments of $1475 due on 31 March and 31 July. This instalment arrangement enables the cost to be spread across two financial years. $500 deposit to secure your place. (This price is discounted as this is the first time the program has been offered.)
Employer supported and/or funded: If you are in paid employment and wish to seek support from your employer to attend the program, through employment leave, paid or unpaid, and/or financial contribution to the cost of the program, please download the draft letter of support for you to adapt and send to your manager or employer, explaining the program, the development of employee skills, and the benefits for the workplace.
Self funded: Tax deductibility: This program is a professional development course and as such will in most cases be tax deductible.
Resources: As this is the first time this program has been delivered, participants will be provided with the program manual as the program progresses. The materials will cover activities and teachings in the workshops, with materials and resources to support you during and after the program.
Bonus: In celebration of the first Story Wise Impact program, participants can choose to take the individual coaching sessions as a two day Speakers Retreat. This option allows you to stay for 1 – 3 nights in either Macedon or Brunswick and work with Kate between between 10 and 4 each day. This can be a fantastic way to clear your mind and schedule, and create time to enable you to really focus on the work of developing stories and/or a speech. More information about speakers retreats is available here.
To secure your place please complete and submit the Expression of Interest Questionnaire.
All coaching sessions and/or retreats must occur before the last day of the program, Sept 21.
About the Venue for Story Wise Impact
Macedon is a small bush town just 65 km from Melbourne, a relaxing hour’s train ride or drive up the Calder freeway.
The venue is Elfie’s House, a separate cottage on our 6 acre property on the edge of the township, about 1km from the train station. Sessions will be timed too coordinate with trains to and from Melbourne and we can drive you to and from the station. If you are driving there is plenty of parking.
Part of the aim of this program is to give you time out of your normal routine, to be in a beautiful natural setting, and slow down. The venue enables plenty of space to walk, write, sit, eat, relax and think, as well as learn, share, work and have conversations. The cottage is next to my home and is used at other times as an airbnb accommodation so you can find out more about it our here.