The power of storytelling

“I realized the importance of having a story today is what really separates companies. People don’t just wear our shoes; they tell our story.”
Blake Mycoskie, TOMS

At Advantage, we’re trying our best to walk our talk and apply the lessons we also help teach in our mission to help organizations develop great people.

That’s why we decided to use advice from our thought leader partner Kelly Dozois of Ocean Beach Consulting, creator of Influencing with Story, and begin each of our recent national sales meeting virtual sessions with a client success story to inspire the future of our work.

In a series of 4 virtual sessions over 2 weeks, we heard stories about successful leadership and employee development going on during the past year in the midst of and in spite of the interference wrought by the global pandemic:

• A health care organization implementing learning journeys to build their collective emotional intelligence, coach physicians, and bring to life a culture of well being and putting consumers first with BlueEQ.
• Organizations in finance, food, and technology sending thousands of their leaders and individual contributors through a Multipliers learning journey as a catalyst for culture change.
• A global manufacturing organization driving employee engagement and retention with AccelerateMe career development training from Career Revolution.
• An award-winning learning journey at a global software company bringing new managers up to speed and now helping their salespeople tap into their customers’ mindsets with 1st90mobile learning in flow of work.
• A medical device company implementing custom versions of Decision Mojo from Ten Thousand Feet to transform their growing organization into one that’s able to make better, more strategic decisions at scale.
• A fast-growing food and beverage company using Influencing with Story from Ocean Beach Consulting to bring to life new leadership behaviors and help employees across North America effectively tell the story of their brand.
• A global HVAC/building security conglomerate implementing custom virtual simulations on Celemi’s Cesim Firm platform to support team collaboration, decision-making, digital transformation, and more.
• A new program from Paradox Strategies helping leaders learn how to ignite and sustain innovation within their organizations by bringing to life concepts from a break-though, award-winning book on innovation, Collective Genius.
• A story happening in the moment last week while Advantage Partner Rob Grossman and Kelly Dozois worked together to present an in-person learning event on influence for a client in Pennsylvania. They had to quickly pivot to present it virtually on Day 2 when snow, sleet, and ice forced participants to have to stay home. (They were prepared for that contingency and, as it turned out, everyone loved it!)

Hearing these success stories is helping to motivate and inspire our partners to recreate similar learning journeys in new and exciting ways for our clients this year.

Could your organization become one of our success stories next year? We’d love to help make that happen. Ask us how.

One great thing for 03.011.22 – Revisit our webinar with Kelly Dozois to tap into the power of storytelling. (Get her free story tool!)