This one works well as a lunch and learn: accessible from the first minute, nothing to prepare, and easy to join for one hour of the day.
Robert Wolfe is a leadership coach, storytelling trainer and innovation facilitator at the THNK School of Creative Leadership. Wolfe was born in Australia and educated in the Netherlands (studying business administration at Nyenrode and international politics at the UvA), lived in London where he wrote a book on business strategy, worked as a management trainer in Sydney. Robert became a personal coach, wrote several Dutch-language youth novels, taught improvisational acting and plays cricket.
All sessions by Robert →Not available until April 2025 - you can book Storytelling with Lauren Maxwell instead.
Robert Wolfe lets you experience how you can use a story from your own life to convey a message and convince the people around you to follow you. A leadership skill that has garnered a lot of attention in the past decade and has proven to be crucial for business leaders.
Robert shows examples of the best storytelling and provides insights into easy-to-apply storytelling techniques.
During the expert session, Robert Wolfe engages the audience through a mix of storytelling and interactive exercises using the Mentimeter app. He shares personal anecdotes and business cases illustrating the importance of effective storytelling in creating human connections and influencing decision-making.
The expert also introduces various storytelling techniques, such as narrating in present tense and incorporating sensory details, while encouraging audience participation through real-time polls and discussions. These activities help the audience grasp the practical uses of storytelling in diverse scenarios and inspire them to apply these techniques in their own work.
Incorporating captivating narratives into professional settings can create human connections, evoke emotions that aid decision-making, and enhance memory recall.
Utilizing storytelling techniques such as present tense narration, high-tension openings, sensory detail incorporation, vulnerability, and reverse engineering can significantly increase audience engagement and impact.
Choosing stories that resonate with your audience's important values is essential for inspiring action and overcoming objections in various communication scenarios.
In this expert session, Robert Wolfe, a renowned storytelling specialist, shares insights on effective storytelling in professional settings. Robert starts by recounting a personal story from 1982 when he attended a baseball game with his mother.
In this narrative, he highlights the power of capturing an audience's attention through engaging stories. He shares how a man making jokes and giving away free ice creams held the crowd spellbound, while another disrupted the atmosphere with racist language.
Robert emphasizes the importance of standing up for what one believes in, even in uncomfortable or risky environments.
The discussion then transitions to the significance of storytelling in business contexts. The panel explores various reasons for using stories as a means of communication, such as creating human connections, evoking emotions that aid decision-making, and enhancing memory recall.
Robert shares an example of Antonio Deasio, a psychiatrist who discovered the importance of feelings in decision-making through a patient named Elliott. This story illustrates how a lack of emotion made it difficult for Elliott to make decisions.
Thus, storytelling emerges as a powerful tool to help influence and guide individuals toward favorable choices.
Robert then delves deeper into storytelling techniques, explaining the impact of narrating a story in present tense versus past tense. He argues that using present tense makes the story more vivid and allows the audience to immerse themselves in the moment.
Next, he introduces "vertical takeoff," a technique that involves starting a story with a high-tension moment to grab the audience's attention. This method is useful when following other storytellers or trying to mix things up for variety.
Robert also shares his favorite technique, called "lots of lots," which involves incorporating sensory details into the story to create a more immersive experience for the audience. He invites a volunteer from the session to demonstrate this technique.
Lastly, Robert emphasizes the importance of vulnerability in storytelling, which creates an emotional journey and fosters compassion between people. He shares that allowing vulnerability in a story can lead to unexpected emotional changes and stronger connections with the audience.
Throughout the session, Robert encourages participants to recognize techniques in examples that can be applied to their own presentations for maximum impact. The expert continues by discussing the concept of reverse engineering, starting with the end in mind.
He argues that the end is a call to action, emphasizing its importance in any speech or presentation. By defining the desired outcome, one can analyze and understand the reasons for affirmative (yes values) and negative (no values) responses from the audience.
This process allows the speaker to identify potential objections and find ways to address them, ultimately leading to a more compelling call to action.
Robert's engaging and insightful session emphasizes the power of choosing the right stories and values to connect with audiences and inspire action. He provides various examples throughout the discussion, utilizing interactive tools like the Mentimeter app to encourage audience engagement and participation.
The session concludes with Robert inviting attendees to share their thoughts on his questions in the chat and asking if anyone has any final questions for him. He also offers alternative ways for those experiencing issues with the survey link to access it, before thanking everyone for their participation and expressing interest in conducting longer storytelling workshops.
From the survey every participant gets when the session ends, in their own words.
Great Session and amazing speaker! Thanks a lot!
Absolutely great session. Everything from the production to the actual content presented. A lot of information to take away.
It was a great session! thank you for the storytelling tips and the engagement with the audience through the chat :)
Great speaker, well structured session, interesting insights. Enjoyed it!.
Great speaker, great topic, great presentation. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Learning sessions like this are so important because they show you what is important, but maybe has been left out in day to day work life.
For me somerimes the langues. I have to look fast what some worths mean. I liken it en thanks
The importance of storytelling has been confirmed. Great structure. Thank you!
It is interactive, and the block above says exactly how for this session. Nobody has to speak up who does not want to: the chat and the polls carry most of it, and the questions can come in anonymously.
Not available until April 2025 - you can book Storytelling with Lauren Maxwell instead. Robert Wolfe lets you experience how you can use a story from your own life to convey a message and convince the people around you to follow you. It is built for a general working audience: no prior knowledge is assumed, and people who already know the subject get the research and the practical side rather than an introduction.
Yes, and it is one of the sessions we would suggest for it. There is nothing to prepare, it is accessible from the first minute, and an hour over lunch is enough to do it justice.
Robert Wolfe is one of the experts we auditioned ourselves, and we produce every session so we see how each one lands. Participants rate this session 4.4 out of 5, across 749 responses, and rate Robert personally 4.6 out of 5.
It runs 45 min / 15 min: the talk, then live questions. All you do is pick a date. We brief Robert, produce the session, host and moderate it, run the Q&A, and send you the report within an hour of the end.
A team, a department, an employee network or every single employee at once, with no cap and no per-seat price. It runs inside your own Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Google Meet, or on a branded page we build. No integration, no login, no company device or e-mail.
The session is delivered in English, Dutch. You can add high accuracy live subtitles in 8, 16 or 24 languages, so everyone follows in their own. That is a paid option, priced by the number of languages you need.
No, and that is by design. There is nothing to install, nothing to integrate and no connection to your systems, so there is nothing for IT to validate: we join your own Teams, Zoom or Meet as a guest speaker, or we host a page and your people open a link. No software, no accounts, and no data of yours that we can reach. It is why hundreds of companies, among them some of the largest technology and financial firms in the world, were able to start within a day.
We never receive or hold personal data about your employees. Because the session runs in your own environment, attendance and identity stay with you, and what we report back is aggregated: numbers, ratings and survey answers, not people. That is also why IT approval usually takes minutes rather than weeks.
You keep the recording and can share it internally. You also get attendance over time, participant ratings for the content and the speaker, the survey answers, and the topics your people asked for next.
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