Work

Storytelling as interactive intervention

Very few people realise that storytelling is more than just telling stories.

To let stories work for you, you have to listen differently and understand, engage and cocreate a new narrative.

I developed a storytelling method to persuade, seduce, convince and change behaviour in social networks.

Now your story of change becomes their story, that saves lives, helps transitions, drives organizational and social change.

Training and workshops

Training storytelling intervention

Learn what makes narrative intervention work. How stories kill, change and cure organizations and communities. How to listen differently, understand, engage and cocreate stories. Why certain stories hype, change behaviour and cause social epidemics. Make stories contribute to the success of your project or organization.
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  Workshop making sense of science

Presentations of valuable research are often boring and seldom understood by non scientists. I developed a short workshop to teach experts how to engage their audience and tell a compelling story about their work. And why that story will stick, is cited, retold, making a difference.
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Workshop narrative evaluation

In this one day, post academic workshop, professionals in healthcare, education and M&E, are taught how to save time on reports and checklists. We make monitoring, evaluating and communicating into a learning journey. Leading to meaningful change. The workshop is in English or Dutch.
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Guest lectures, workshops and training

Ask me to design a taylor made program, in English or Dutch. Go to contact

Stories and customers

A story from the field

Binta’s story

An interpreter narrates:

When we were young we used to sit down at night to tell our stories. When the sun sets, people in the village sit together in a circle and tell each other stories. It is called Gatana Gatanankuiu. Maybe from our grandmothers, you know. We were all sitting down and one girl listened to all our stories. She always told her story last. Binta listened very well, very attentively, she picks from all the other stories and told her own story. She combined all the stories, picks the theme from everyone and forms her own story. Is this what you do with the story of change?

(MSF Story of Change. Sokoto Nigeria, Noma project pilot.)

On a hot summers day a daughter visited her dementing mother in the nursing home, in front 3, full and untouched cups; with milk, water and cold tea. That evening the daughter sent a furious mail to the director of the nursing home.

When the words “inspection” and “media” appear in one complaint, all alarm bells go off, the director narrates.

She invited the daughter, team manager and location manager early the next morning. We were shocked rigid with your mail and I want to use your story to change the organization and increase the quality of care. That takes time. They agreed on three months.

We started collecting stories with health professionals, nurses, carers, family members and managers. Those stories were shared by an organizational coach, at the start of narrative interventions.

One year later we retraced the respondents and collected another set of stories for evaluation. In comparison, the new stories clearly showed an improvement in quality of care but also in work pleasure.

Family members were more involved and engaged with care and communication. Overall, the organization had improved considerably. Narrative intervention proved to be a learning journey.

Story of a complaint

Monitoring and evaluation story

Three full cups (revisited)

A teammanager narrates:

Fact was that this lady’s daughter and I meet regularly at painting lessons. We were always talking about her parents. With a lot of children’s sentiment and worry about all sorts of things. Yes, and then we talk about these things [at the nursinghome]. Well, that really helped, it made her see things differently.

I was happy to hear the 3 cups story and next time I see the team manager I will compliment her and tell her like: “look this is what I hear, this is profit!”. It is also good to be appreciated and that you share it with each other.

Anyway, I do like to hear this story; of course you try to flip negative publicity. She told me that things really got a lot better, “I feel heard and understood”.

I though wow, that is the organisation I work for. So that worked already; it turned from negativity into positivity.

(Nursing Home organisation, after storytelling interventions; Caused by a complaint from a daughter finding her mother with three full cups of liquid, on a hot summers day).

Suzanne’s story

I am passionate about what stories do, their dynamics. Twenty years ago my colleagues just glared at me… My journey lead to a Msc research and thesis about the role of stories in a hostile take-over. With this fresh knowledge I started my practice and further developed narrative interventions. Thanks to fantastic clients, with the guts to change, I co-created new methods for successful and sustainable change. I work with storytelling for clients in (behavioural) change projects, write books, teach at universities and give presentations. And enjoy every moment of my customers’ success and my contribution to social projects.