Gi Group Holding

Empathy - getting the most out of communication by putting ourselves in our audience’s shoes, so as to consider both their and our needs and ensure they are aligned or addressed.

Beginning.

Gi Group Holding is one of the world’s leading HR services and recruitment companies, providing the best service for the development of the labour market globally. Our conversations with them started because they understand that adding storytelling to the skillset of their senior management team and managers, will help them to embody and demonstrate a level of authentic, connected communication that fosters ever improving relationships with colleagues, clients and candidates alike.

As is the case with many organisations, Gi Group Holding has the challenges of change, restructure and acquisitions, that leadership and management must communicate well to those around them.

Recruitment requires the building of strong relationships, alongside an ability to quickly gain a deep understanding of a client’s needs and culture. Similar work is continuously underway in nurturing candidates to ensure the right person is suggested every time. This quality of communication with clients and candidates also needs to be present in how management lead their colleagues.

Middle.

Working with several groups of peers (from different divisions within Gi Group Holding) our workshop Sharing the Message (plus Making the Connection for the SMT) allowed them to develop both as individuals and as a whole, bringing together their different strengths and expertise to their roles, the subjects they chose to communicate and how they were communicated (present, interact, converse, lead…)

The workshops allowed participants to fully understand their subject and their audience, to use our techniques to find the right content to be interesting and memorable, keeping both themselves and their audiences engaged throughout. The exploration and digestion of some difficult subjects, within the boundaries of the workshop structure, proved extremely useful and transformative.

End.

Working through the process, built relationships across the divisions, branches and teams present. The participants left with an ability to explore a given subject, structure their thoughts and then deliver the best communication around it.

They developed their ability to communicate authentically and with great empathy, varying what they said and how they said it to best suit any given audience and situation. Participants gained confidence from a better understanding of their own communication style and found the skills to vary and adapt it to best land their messages with whoever they were communicating to, so that they felt involved, knew what the next steps were and wanted to take those steps.

We are delighted to hear of immediate application and adaption of the workshops’ learning and techniques by those who took part.

---

Tesco Underwriting

Hearts and Minds - The power of engagement to bring others with you through change.

‘As an analytical person I was dreading this session, but I loved it! I will use this going forward.’

Technical Claims Manager.

Beginning.

Tesco Underwriting are an underwriting, technical pricing and claims handling organisation that support Tesco Bank. They felt that senior management, alongside their colleagues, would benefit from adding storytelling to their communications repertoire, as an important method to share, communicate and involve colleagues in the journey, changes and transformations taking place across the organisation.

Middle.

Underwriting and its associated tasks require an analytical and technical mindset to ensure the right products are created and sold to meet the ever-changing needs of clients. This can at times feel a little dry, especially when communicating to those outside your field of expertise. We delivered storytelling workshops at two sites, ensuring key staff from all departments were able to broaden their communication toolkit and better connect and engage in meetings, over the phone, giving presentations or wherever the need may arise.

End.

Alongside a leaving with an adaptable piece of communication that could be used with colleagues and clients alike, the training enabled participants to closer reflect TU’s values at work in how they communicated: Be honest, Be connected, Be relentless, Be ambitious, Be curious.

---

Medical Protection Society

Leading the way with Storytelling – an organisation wide approach to communication.

“As a result of Sharing the Message my monthly report was much better received, it flowed more naturally and I have buy in from all who attended. The only questions raised were on how the committee could support the hand over actions. This has been a great course and I will continue to use it.”

Beginning.

The Medical Protection Society are the world’s leading member-owned, not-for-profit protection organisation for doctors, dentists and healthcare professionals.

MPS asked us to facilitate how their CEO and senior management team investigated and understood their large-scale modernisation programme. A key outcome of this was the improvements to both content and delivery of their face-to-face communication. This led to MPS engaging us to become part of their leadership in management learning offer.

Middle.

Each month we work with a group of 8 managers, initially this was in person in a 1-day workshop and now online across 2 half-days. Participants bring a subject for a presentation, report or meeting and using a dozen techniques from storytelling create a spoken piece that has greater clarity and meaning, offers direction or action to its audiences and allows the speaker to be present and confident and therefore more able to respond and connect with their audience.

End.

The popular training is resulting in a positive organisation wide transformation in how managers approach, prepare and give spoken (and written) communication at MPS. The interactive nature of the workshop is allowing colleagues, who may not usually work with each other (especially when groups include participants from international offices) to feedback and edit each other’s work allowing broader input on their thinking and content. Communication has become more purpose driven and therefore efficient, while also being authentic and personal to each speaker, language is clear with the use of the right descriptive language to make meaning vivid and tangible.

Versus Arthritis.

Make That Appeal Even More Appealing - Getting the most from high value partnerships.

‘I had the most fantastic experience at the workshop and have been talking about it NON STOP since. Genuinely, I haven’t participated in such an impactful and relevant training workshop in a very long time (possibly ever!)

Head of Professional Engagement

Beginning.

Versus Arthritis provide support for people with arthritis across the UK whilst also supporting world-class research and breakthrough treatment. 

Having delivered Sharing the Message to several groups within Versus Arthritis we were then asked to help their newly expanded High Value Partnership team. They wanted to find a shared and greater understanding of their new appeal and the projects that will be funded through it and for individuals in the team to expand their skills to be able to clearly and confidently communicate the appeal and the projects to their High Value Partners.

Middle.

We designed a day that would serve three purposes: bond the team closer; explore, find and create the best stories so Partners would better understand the mutual benefits of their support; and give participants the confidence and ability to share these stories in an engaging and memorable way, to create more meaningful interactions with their Partners.

End.

Participants started the day working in small teams using storytelling to techniques to gain a coherent, collective, base narrative and to grow a greater shared understanding of the appeal and who they need to communicate it to. With the team work was the opportunity to share, across seniority and job role, expertise and different communication approaches and style. What was learnt in the morning was taken by individuals to develop in to their own pieces of communication, relevant to their needs and partners. The day ended with everyone having gained something from their exploration with each other and being better able to apply storytelling to connect with and engage specific audiences to ensure their continued or newfound support for the charity’s current appeal and for future projects to come .

NHS, Wakefield CCG

This Is Who We Are - Sharing the CCG story.

“TheWholeStory ran a fantastic workshop with NHS Wakefield CCG as part of our Board development. We are really keen to use storytelling to positively convey the vision and priorities of the CCG to our patients, member practices, partners and staff. Learning and practising the skills of storytelling with TheWholeStory was interactive, insightful, and extremely memorable.”

Chief Officer Designate, Wakefield Clinical Commissioning Group.

Beginning

We were recommended to the board’s OD consultant by colleagues, who had attended workshops we delivered to Management in Partnership members. The board were preparing for authorisation, and wanted their collective experience and expertise to come together to create a compelling story for Wakefield CCG. This would be of further help when communicating the changes and benefits that were coming into place, whether speaking to patients, clinicians, councillors or other stakeholders.

Middle

We were asked for a half-day workshop that would allow the board to work collectively on the CCG’s story; helping each other confront and answer the difficult questions they foresaw being asked. They then individualised each story, making it relevant to their specialism and their target audience.

End

By incorporating all the techniques learnt, each board member had a well constructed, 3-minute piece they could tell confidently, clearly and engagingly. A few were told, giving an opportunity to offer group feedback, and creating a much stronger and cohesive understanding as a team of their joint values and goals.

---

Research Partnership

Shining a Light - Finding then creating the insight story to quickly and easily illustrate in-depth research.

“We asked theWholeStory to come and give a storytelling training session to all our Directors with the aim of helping them to find the story in their global market research findings. All the attendees came back enthusing about the course and how useful it was. All said it exceeded their expectations and all said they would recommend it to others.”

Marketing Director, Research Partnership.

Beginning.

Research Partnership are a global pharmaceutical market research company who already recognised the importance of story to effectively communicate, but wished to refine and extend their use of storytelling to ensure they stood out in how they communicated and shared their results to clients. The Marketing Director took part in one of our taster workshops and went on to commission training for the company’s Directors to help them find the story which best encapsulated key research findings and insights. This story could be told as an animation for clients or would become part of their face to face presentations.

Middle.

Over the course of a series of workshops, the Directors considered which qualities they wished to adopt from what they believed or had experienced as good storytelling: clarity, engagement and memorability. Our practical process enabled them to practice those qualities whilst exploring and better understanding how to extract the story from a large amount of research data. The stories created were the and most effective ways to illustrate and communicated the points they wished their audience to focus on and remember.

End.

During the delivery of the workshop to 3 different groups from Research Partnership’s UK, Asian and US offices, the Directors noticed immediately the power of examining their findings through the lens of storytelling. Presenting insights from previously unconsidered perspectives gave their research new weight and impact. They came away being able to present in a more interesting and efficient style with a greater enthusiasm for what they communicate.

---

Samaritans.

Persuasion and Reassurance - Upskilling in-house facilitators and sales team.

“Thanks for the training session that you held for us last Friday. The whole team really enjoyed it and felt like they had really benefitted from the session.”

Strategic Network Rail programme manager - Samaritans.

Beginning.

The Samaritans provide the essential service of patient, non-judgemental people at the end of a line to talk to, 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, in their mission to make sure fewer people die by suicide. They also reach out to organisations, running workshops in prisons, schools, the military and businesses.

We were asked to come and help the team, who both promote and deliver the rail industry suicide prevention programme. Our approach would help them to talk about the difficult subject to the rail industry in a way that ensured they would set time aside for a workshop and would develop how the team could deliver the workshop engagingly.

Middle.

Staff took part in a storytelling workshop that gave them the content to sensitively promote the workshops by finding ways to talk openly and honestly about the difficult aspects of the sessions and by clearly describing the immediate and future benefits gained by participants taking part in the Samaritans’ training. 

End.

The informal and safe learning atmosphere we created and the way the session was delivered, demonstrated facilitation techniques that participants added to their tool kits. They gained a story bank, created by those present, which could be selected from to best suit each audience, to reassure and persuade them with the benefits of the Samaritans’ training for them, the rail industry and the public. The storytelling skills they used in the workshop could be taken away to apply to their overall communication; to ensure they chose the right detail and can relate to their audiences so need and purpose is aligned and understood.

---

National Park City, London.

Spread the Word! - increase awareness and participation of potential stakeholders.

“One of the most powerful things Josh did for us, is to help us think deeply about what we wanted to say and how to say it, so that it resonated both with us and our audience.”

Founder, National Park City.

Beginning.

London became the world’s first National Park City in 2019, a movement with a mission to make the city greener, healthier and wilder for all its inhabitants. theWholeStory believe deeply in both their mission and grassroots community, and have been volunteering our services to them since 2018 (with Josh being extremely proud to have become one of their first cohort of NPC Rangers.)

Middle.

Our workshops equipped a wide variety of NPC members (from founders to trustees, to volunteers on the ground) with communication skills to be able to increase awareness of and participation in the National Park City project. The participants were able to hear about each other’s involvement in NPC during the process of learning techniques to build and share stories, which added to their arsenal of content to promote the movement and initiated more connections and collaboration between them.

End.

With each workshop, a new cohort of National Park City ambassadors had the stories and skills to share a unified NPC message whist individualising it to suit their great variety of potential audiences across London, from the Mayor of London to other international cities, from businesses to allotment societies, from schools to friends of local park groups and beyond.

---