Storytelling is an important tool for any entrepreneur or social impact leader to communicate the vision and mission of their company or organization. It is how entrepreneurs and social impact leaders build new relationships and maintain existing ones with their stakeholders, it is also how they can get funding and other kinds of support to launch their businesses and scale up their operations to reach more customers or beneficiaries.
But here’s the thing: When we tell stories, we often forget about the audience we are telling the story to. Additionally, not having the right techniques and tools very often render our storytelling effort futile.
Understanding the challenges faced by under-resourced entrepreneurs and social impact leaders in storytelling, Accenture and Foundation for Shared Impact (FSI) collaborated to host the “Accenture x FSI: Accent on the Impact – Storytelling Workshop” on 18 March, at the Accenture Interactive Studio, for the leaders at eight organizations.
Selected from the Community Partners and ethnically diverse entrepreneurs we work with through our Community Connections Program and Community Business Support team, the participants are Gowld Art Centre, Music Children Foundation, Chatteris Educational Foundation, Project Ethnic Minority Empowerment, The Institute of Leadership and Management, Sisnu Sisters, FINYE HK, and Seekr.
The workshop was facilitated by Benjamin Chu, Accenture Strategy & Consulting, and led by May May Wong, Accenture Song, Lead Trainer. Robert Hah, Accenture Strategy & Consulting, MD Sponsor, was also present to share invaluable advice on storytelling during an interactive exercise. We would like to thank Accenture for curating bespoke, relevant, and engaging workshop content not least by conducting pre-session interviews with each of the participants to identify some common pain points:
- Communicating the mission and vision to the general public
- Illustrating the journey and impact to funders and donors
- Creating motivation for internal staff and volunteers
To get a baseline understanding of the participants’ storytelling knowledge and skills, the Accenture team kick-started the workshop by asking each participant to tell the story of their organization in one minute.
After the introductory exercise, May May presented the participants with practical frameworks that can be applied to their own storytelling, including the tools to set the objective of the story, understand the audience, construct the story, and ultimately, deliver it in the most effective way.
May May stressed the importance of crafting a story that resonates with the audience emotionally: “The important thing to remember is to not make people feel like they have to guess your mission and purpose. Understand what your audience cares about, so that you can leverage that to motivate them to take an action, such as making a contribution to the organization.”
Knowing your audience’s interest areas doesn’t only give you a tool to get their attention, but it also affects the formats and channels with which you’ll be delivering the story: when you have a better understanding of the different stakeholder groups you are engaged with, their roles and attributes, and personality traits, you can then design targeted communication strategies for different stakeholder groups.
Having established the importance of knowing one’s audience, May May then showed the participants how they can do that through Empathy Interviews
Empathy Interview is a tool that can be used to gain a deeper understanding of others by asking questions about themselves, their interests, what makes them tick etc.
To help participants put their learning into action, the Accenture team tasked them with the challenge of creating a compelling story of their organization to invite Robert Hah to make a donation. Participants were given one minute to think through the questions, which they would ask Robert in the 10-minute session that followed. Despite the brevity of the session, participants were able to solicit abundant information about Robert.
Participants were then given an exercise to construct and present a story that would resonate with Robert.
After the presentation, the Accenture team offered detailed tips and advice on the presentation skills and delivery of stories, how they can project themselves to make sure the audience can see and hear them, varying the tone of their speech, pacing their speech, and using pauses for effect and to give the audience time to absorb and reflect on their messages.
So how did the participants do in their storytelling skills after the workshop? Robert said the final pitch was a night-and-day kind of difference compared to their first pitch: “The problem statements are a lot clearer, and participants are able to articulate the solutions they are bringing to address the problem.”
The participants are tasked with writing a storytelling project proposal as we speak. Based on their proposals, some of the participants will be selected to join the one-month mentorship engagement from 17 April to 12 May, where Accenture consultants will provide one-on-one consultations to guide the participants through an in-depth storytelling journey. Stay tuned to this space for more updates!
“Our collaboration with FSI provides a unique opportunity for Accenture practitioners to leverage their professional skills to make positive social impact to our community,” said Robert. “My team continues to be inspired by the amazing contributions that FSI and the supported entities have across Hong Kong.”
If you are a corporate or independent skilled volunteer looking to volunteer your time, skills, and expertise for under-resourced entrepreneurs and social impact leaders, get in touch with us at cbs@shared-impact.com!
