Stories are far more than books we bury our noses in; they are the fabric of our culture and history, and the foundations of our progress. A world without stories is no world at all.

Storytelling is such an innate feature of the human condition, from the way we understand ourselves to the world we live in. If we can harness this powerful tool to design our workshops, the results can potentially be transformative.

Bastian Küntzel is one of the best people to learn from if you are interested in the power of storytelling – especially in the context of workshop design. Sharing lessons from his book, The Learner’s Journey, Bastian joins me on this episode of workshops work to explain how storytelling can be utilised as a design tool to facilitate change that sticks.

Find out about:

• How Bastian got started as a facilitator and his early experience of intercultural communication helped him understand deeper commonalities in participants
• Why storytelling is such a powerful design principle for workshops
• What the eight steps to story design are
• How to apply the eight steps to workshops – at both the design and output stages
• Why storytelling is one of the easiest design principles to incorporate into any workshop

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Questions and Answers

[01:21] When did you start calling yourself a facilitator?

[03:00] What is the difference between a facilitator and a trainer?

[04:19] What is the difference between an educator and a trainer?

[06:11] How did you find the transition from working with young people to corporations?

[09:35] How did your experience of intercultural communication help you get started in facilitation?

[11:48] How did you get into storytelling?

[15:36] Can you guide us through the 8 step storytelling process and how it applies to workshops?

[47:52] What makes a workshop fail?

[48:59] What is the one takeaway you want the audience to have?

Links to check

• Hero’s Journey
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces
• Joseph Campbell
• Dan Harmon
• Dan Harmon’s Story Structure 101: Super Basic Shit
• Bastian’s book
• A webinar Bastian delivered about The Learner’s Journey

Connect with Bastian

• Bastian’s website

Any thoughts? Share them with us!

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