In this episode, host Beth Cougler Blom talks with Sumesh Khatua and Simrat Pahwa about the power of storytelling to create lasting impact in learning experiences. They explore how stories help drive clarity, build emotional connection, and support learning transfer both during and beyond structured learning sessions.
Beth, Sumesh, and Simrat also talk about:
- Designing learning with the end impact in mind
- Using storytelling to spark behaviour change and recall
- Building stories that are relatable, inclusive, and grounded in real life
- Navigating missteps and adapting in the moment
Engage with Sumesh Khatua and Simrat Pahwa
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Connect with Beth Cougler Blom
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Podcast production services by Mary Chan of Organized Sound Productions
Show Transcript
[Upbeat music playing]
[Episode intro]
Beth 00:00
Hi there, I’m Beth Cougler Blom, and this is Facilitating on Purpose. It’s the space where we talk about designing and facilitating learning.
Beth 00:09
As human beings in the world, I think many of us know that we connect through stories. And stories come up in our learning design and our facilitation work all the time, especially if we think intentionally about them, and work to come up with stories and provide examples, and find meaning, and create meaning for our participants through storytelling.
Beth 00:35
We’re going to dive into this aspect of our work in this episode. I’m really happy that I have two friends with me that are going to be my guests for the episode. I have Simrat Pahwa and Sumesh Khatua. These two worked together back in India when Simrat used to live there, and now she’s in Canada. But Sumesh remains in India, and the two of them got together with me, of course over Zoom, and we had this fantastic upcoming conversation about storytelling.
Beth 01:07
It was both lovely to be in the room with these two former co-workers and still long-time friends, and it was great to hear their perspectives about this topic. You’re going to hear them share considerations with us around storytelling, both inside learning experiences and around learning experiences. So there’s lots of richness to this conversation, and it’s wonderful both to hear about their passion for the topic of storytelling, but also their interest and respect for each other as long-time friends and people who respect each other’s work.
Beth 01:40
So, so happy to present this conversation with Simrat and Sumesh to you. Enjoy the show.
Beth 01:48
[Episode start] I’m so happy to see you two today. Thank you for joining me. I was thinking that we could start with the impact piece in our title of our episode, because when we met before, I know we really wanted to start there. And as good learning designers, when you start from the end, and maybe Sumesh, you can talk to us first about what impact is it that you’re trying to achieve in your learning and development department? You know, why are we doing all this anyway?
Sumesh 02:19
No, absolutely, Beth. I think what a fabulous question to get us started on this conversation. And you maybe answered part of the question yourself. Start with the end in mind. And one of the things that I have always, always tried passing across to my team and have practiced myself is we should be very clear about why we are doing what we are doing and what does that really mean for the business.
Sumesh 02:48
I think a lot of times in the world that we deal in, which is the learning and development world, there’s a lot of discussion about effort and the design that goes into doing things. But if you are doing anything, which is like putting together a learning solution, do you have that end in mind? Are you very clear about that business objective? And a few things that I have tried practicing myself is always ask the business on what are some of the success outcomes that we want to achieve at the end of this learning journey that we will take together.
Sumesh 03:27
I have got people to look at learning overall is break it out into three key aspects of learning: education, experience, and exposure. Education is what we talk about most, which is what happens in the classroom, the design that goes into making a program memorable, remarkable, all those things that goes in there. Experience is the learning that happens when people are doing the work at work, and that’s where the rubber hits the road. So you get to really know what reality is. And exposure is where you are learning from the people who are subject matter experts at the work that they do. And to me, driving impact is about thinking about all these three things together and in sync. If we think only about one aspect and not the others, the chances that the impact is not fully met is going to be very, very high.
Sumesh 04:38
I’m someone who enjoys MasterChef, by the way. So I have watched almost all episodes of MasterChef. And one of the things that I picked up from there that I always relate to learning is you might have the best ingredients, but if they don’t come together, you cannot make a great dish. So a lot of times people spend time on the ingredients rather than thinking about what the final dish would look like. And that, to me, is the impact that we should be focusing on.
Beth 05:14
And I love how you’ve taken it to a broader level than just thinking about what’s happening in the training room. Because that is probably a pitfall that maybe some of my clients, maybe some of the people that you work with, might make when they think they come to you and say, Oh yeah, let’s create something, let’s create that learning solution that you were talking about. But you’re really helping us think about this at a broader level, that it’s experience and its exposure too outside of that formal education system. That’s a great holistic way to look at it. Simrat, is this bringing up anything for you? What do you want to say about that impact piece? Yes.
Simrat 05:54
Absolutely, and thank you for this brilliant conversation about impact because I see a major shift happening from let’s just design this workshop to let’s come up with a learning solution, or the words like learning program or end-to-end learning, because that’s giving professionals like me a lot of opportunity to start thinking about the end that we want to go to.
Simrat 06:20
And when we start those kinds of conversations, we lead up to, oh, I want to see behaviour change, or I want to see our learners—perhaps, I’m just giving an example—like exhibit a particular value that they want their employees to show. And these conversations are giving us opportunity to talk about these three things, whether it’s education or experience or exposure, because that’s where the actual impact starts coming in. Because learning happens outside of the classroom.
Simrat 06:47
It’s only, well, it’s 10% or even 20% that happens in the classroom. And I say 10, 20, because there’s a lot of research, the more relatable you make it, the more enriched in terms of experience that people have in the classroom can really elevate its success to 20% of the entire impact. So it happens outside the classroom, it happens every way, every part of the…we spend 80% of our time at our jobs. So we are learning at different times of the day in different kinds of experiences. So how do we, as learning professionals, design for learning that sticks, that they have opportunities. And when I say ‘they’ I mean learners have opportunities outside of the classroom to really be able to apply the knowledge that they’ve learned.
Simrat 07:37
Not to say that what they’ve learned is not important, but the education is trying to ready them to go and apply it through their experiences or through their exposure. So impact absolutely will come, because I’m moving as a learner from my unconscious competence, and it’s a journey. It’s not just happens in the classroom, right?
Beth 08:01
Absolutely. And you’ve helped us remember who’s at the heart of this whole process. You’ve talked about behaviour change. That’s our ultimate goal, isn’t it, for our learners? And sometimes I think people who are newer to this field, or really aren’t in the field but we’re working with them, they don’t really know that. And that’s our role to help them remember and to know that that is really why we’re all here, isn’t it? We’re really interested in behaviour change, whether it’s at work or even back in someone’s life, if that’s our goal. But how does storytelling fit into this? Sumesh, you told me it was a real passion of yours. How did you come to this and why is storytelling important for you?
Sumesh 08:41
Let me break this out in two parts. Let me add to the conversation that we were having and then tie it in with the storytelling and why I think it’s a critical element that we should focus on. So we were talking about impact. We spoke about the three E’s, which is education, experience, exposure. And then Simrat kind of spoke about how it is an end-to-end solution that people are really talking about these days, alluded to learner being at the centre.
Sumesh 09:13
So if you ask the learner today, the learner today is someone who is trying to get their work done. With the pace of change that’s happening around us, they have to continuously either upskill or reskill. And I’m sure they have family needs that they have to take care of. So here is a learner who is already overpowered with the demands of what they have to manage.
Sumesh 09:40
So one of the key concepts that all of us have been trying to work on is can learning happen in the flow of work? You don’t have to move out, right? When you’re doing your work, can I ensure that I make learning accessible to you there? A very crude and simple example is, hey, we all work on Excel sheets, but how many of us remember all the formulas that we have to put in in the Excel sheet?
Sumesh 10:13
When I need, all I have to do is type a ‘what if’ and ‘how to’ to get the information that I need. I don’t have to do a course for me to get that done, right? So that’s a very elementary example of what learning in the flow of work would look like. Now for with everything that’s happening and the need for getting something just in time so that I can keep moving ahead, what becomes important is the recall part of it. Do I recall that I have something available that I can reach and bring it back into my day-to-day work? And I think that’s where communication becomes very critical. And I think in communication, if communication has to stick, storytelling has to be at the pinnacle of what we are trying to achieve.
Sumesh 11:12
Now, the way people remember something is by incidents, by moments that they recall. What storytelling allows you to do is to create those moments. Think about a time when, Beth, you walked outside your house. And I can stop there and I have got you to think about few of those moments when you stepped out of your house. Or I could start my story by saying, imagine that morning when you got up from your bed and reached out for that glass of water. Now I can take this story forward and make it really, really personal based on who I’m having a conversation with.
Sumesh 11:59
So to me, storytelling has the power of building recall, making it personal, making it about you. And like we were talking earlier, ensuring that we are able to tie that thread, we started with three, I’m going to add a fourth element to that. So we started with education, experience, exposure, but we all know all these three E’s will fail if we don’t take care of one thing, which is the environment. So let’s add that fourth E to the conversation and the power of storytelling is to really build that environment which holds these three E’s together.
Beth 12:45
I love that you’re teaching us through stories, even as you’re talking with us, Sumesh [chuckles], you’ve already brought up the MasterChef example. When you talked about the Excel spreadsheets, I immediately thought of a conversation I had with my husband recently who was never formally taught in how to use Excel [laughs] and really could use that Google to try to find those formulas. So even just in this conversation, you’re showing us ways to use examples, use stories, and just even these little tiny ways, but they become these hooks and you’re helping us paint the picture of that story in our mind, right? We don’t always know where it’s going to go because we can’t be in someone else’s mind, but we can start and make those inroads.
Simrat, what’s this bringing up for you? Where are you going in your mind with the storytelling and how do you use it for this impact we’re looking for?
Simrat 13:37
It’s interesting. Stories always kind of take you somewhere and you start thinking. So I’m glad you asked me some of the, where’s your mind at? Because certainly as you both were talking, I was also wondering and trying to imagine few things, right? It’s interesting how Sumesh says about environment that you’re in, because that is the powerful impact of storytelling.
Simrat 13:58
This reminds me of an opportunity that I saw in one of my jobs and we didn’t have an onboarding program. And I really had to go pitch to my VP that we really needed it. They were thinking about orientation, but hey, my needs analysis told me they don’t even have an onboarding program. So storytelling helped me create that impact. And I did not even, not only won the orientation project, I won the onboarding project. So I really created work for myself through that storytelling piece. So I think that’s what an impact could be.
Simrat 14:37
And I used storytelling to them to explain what my findings were. And I was new, so I used my own story and I said, hey, Simrat just joined this company two months ago and she’s still scrambling because she doesn’t know what all systems can she use. She doesn’t know, yes, she doesn’t have orientation. She has not met key departments. She’s not met the company values or [has] not understood those, but really she even doesn’t have skills to perform her job. So she’s feeling lost right now.
Simrat 15:10
So while we do need orientation, we need a three-month onboarding because there’s a lot of gap and both of these together will help Simrat perform her job better. I didn’t have to say more. It was 15-minute conversation and I showed a few numbers about my findings and we walked out of the room saying, go ahead and work on these projects. So that’s the impact I find the storytelling is the more relatable it is, the more empathy it creates and the more value it creates to do anything really. Not only just designing a learning experience, a workshop or an end-to-end solution, but even at everyday life, it’s a story that gets me, you could think about any example where storytelling would actually give you a lot of impact. You’re hungry and you’re looking, you don’t know what will help you and as you kind of talk about, somebody talks about food or share a story, you realize, oh, you know, I didn’t realize that I was actually hungry, but that story made you feel and understand that and you just kind of, you know, just went about your way, but that’s the impact. It makes you think and it makes you relate to something.
Beth 16:25
And you said it makes you feel. It makes you think and feel and relate, yeah. And I’m thankful that you brought up the way we can use storytelling to lead us down the path of creating some sort of learning solution or to be able to tell the impact of what happened back then, when we did that learning solution and what were the stories that came out of it.
Beth 16:46
Because the three of us, we have a combo of working inside an organization and working for ourselves. And so those of us who are self-employed, I think particularly when we’re talking with clients, trying to get the work or following up at the end of the project, if we can bring storytelling in, that helps us have impact for our own businesses, our own work as well. Sumesh, I know that in the pre-meeting, we talked about why we would tell stories and you had something to share there about goals. Can you give us a little bit more about if we’re trying to do X, what should we do? Like what are those different goals that we might be trying to do with our stories?
Sumesh 17:26
Yeah, absolutely. But again, like my last response, I’ll try and break this down into two parts. So think about from an organization standpoint, and then we’ll make it about learning. But from an organization standpoint, why is storytelling important? Storytelling is the only medium through which you can articulate the vision for your organization. Everything else is just very static. But when the CEO of your organization stands up and narrates a story about that moment when the pandemic hit and your organization was able to take care of all the employees by ensuring that there was safety, there was insurance, they had what was required. Now you know you are in an organization that cares.
Sumesh 18:26
The derivative value of what a story can communicate about the vision that your organization shares is really very, very powerful. Now a story, for a story to stick, and I’m getting to Beth, your question, right? But for a story to stick, it cannot be like a jigsaw puzzle. Because we are mostly trained to think in a linear fashion when we are listening to someone. So a story has to have a start, it has to have a middle, and it has to have an end. That’s the difference between impactful stories and stories that were just shared and they missed out on the mark.
Sumesh 19:16
So what is the start? The start is really about understanding what are you trying to achieve? For example, if you are, and let’s go back to the example that Simrat shared, if you are trying to persuade someone about a solution that you strongly feel about, the way you project your own voice and the way you share your story is about making it personal to say how much it means to you. Whereas if you are sharing a story just to entertain, now your voice really communicates that you are trying to entertain and you are not emotional about it. Whereas if you are trying to influence, maybe you want more money, right, to do what you have to do, the way you pitch that, that story has to be different. And to me, when you have identified what you want to achieve, your starting of the story really sets that particular objective that you want to achieve.
Sumesh 20:27
What is happening in the middle, right? We all watch movies. I’m hoping we all watch movies. I shouldn’t be making generalized statements. When you watch a movie, the most boring part of a movie is the middle part of a movie because everyone thinks we have this figured out. Now think about the last movie you watched and what was the time you got up and walked out to get your popcorn. That was not the starting. It was not the end. It was the middle part of the movie where you said, yeah, if I walk out for five minutes and come back, it does not make a difference. So in your story, can you hold that interest in the middle part by creating enough suspense/conflict that you are talking about? And at the end, no one likes things unresolved. Everyone likes it to be resolved, right?
Sumesh 21:29
So at the end, bring in the resolution to the conflict or the suspense that you have created. So I think some of these key elements when you are sharing a story kind of makes it a lot more authentic and also remarkable for people to remember and say, hey, you know what? I met you at that function where you spoke about this. That’s it. That’s a recall. That’s a memory, right? It got everything that we were talking about started from that.
Beth 22:00
I love that you brought up the storytelling arc, basically, and movies, because it’s such a classic example of that arc or that pattern that we, if we really looked back or floated up to the top over many, many, many movies, they would follow that same arc. [chuckles] Where the middle is a little boring before there’s the rising action and all those other pieces that I forget.
But I’ve used that kind of arc to design e-learning, especially scenario-based learning, right? And just to place the learner in the story and all those kinds of things. Simrat, what about you? Do you think about the structure of a story like that or those goal or purpose pieces that Sumesh was talking about?
Simrat 22:40
Absolutely, and I think it’s important. Otherwise, it becomes just another story. So what distinguishes, going back to the movies example, what distinguishes a regular soap or drama, that’s a story too, and it has boring and thing, but when you have a conflict or something going on, you want to know what the end result is. You always want to know, but do soaps or dramas help you recall? Not really than a movie perhaps, or now you can advance it to corporate settings or workshops.
Simrat 23:13
If you know where you’re going in the end, that’s when you craft what story will help you get there. Let’s say designing a workshop or designing any learning. So why am I telling this story? What characters do I use in the story? What message do I want to stick at the end of the story so that, you know, going back to Sumesh’s example of being in a function and then you recall. So what makes, what will make people recall the story? So I think all of these elements go in when you’re creating a story. Now that could be a false one or a created one or a simulated one, or it could be an actual authentic story.
Simrat 23:51
So when we think of all these kinds of different elements, that’s when our story becomes really impactful and we are able to actually craft one, right? That’s what I put in a thought, whether I’m creating a story or even an example. So imagine you are doing an Excel sheet and you are now thinking of what kind of formula will help you get there. So start in the end and then talking about where do you want the learners to go? What do you want them to recall in the end? I would love that in the e-learning that they are doing, they recall, oh, I could go to Google or use watch to help videos with an Excel sheet. I’m not expecting them to become masters or I’m not teaching them how to use Excel in my course, really. I’m really helping them to use their critical thinking skills when they’re in the problem, what they do. So the end result really helps me think of what story do I want to use.
Sumesh 24:45
Let me give you an example to demonstrate what we are talking about. So imagine, as someone who is building a learning solution, the ask of you is, please invite in the set of learners that customer should be at the centre of everything that you build. Now, there are multiple ways you can go about it. You can have a 10 Slido with concepts talking about needs, wants, demands. You can talk about why customer is always right. I would say question mark, but I leave that for another discussion.
Sumesh 25:20
Or you can say, do you recall how the Khan Academy started? Now, the Khan Academy, if any one of you, and we were talking about our kids and where they are in their career, based on what they are studying, if they have to really learn something deep, I have seen a lot of kids fall back on Khan Academy. Now, an interesting part is how Khan Academy started.
Sumesh 25:49
It so happened that the founder of Khan Academy is this gentleman called Salman Khan, who is famously known as Sal Khan, was teaching his niece and nephew maths. And one fine day, he could not make it to teach them. So he decides to record a video and send it to them. And they absolutely loved it. They got back to him saying, Uncle, it’s not that we don’t like you, but we really enjoyed the video that you created. So could you create more videos and send it to us rather than us meeting you in person? And they called out the benefits. This led Salman Khan to create more videos. So where would he host the video? He started hosting it on YouTube. When he hosted the videos on YouTube, there are more people who came up and started requesting him to create more videos because they saw a great value. And when the customers started seeing value, it created Khan Academy, which is a huge giant in the education sector.
Sumesh 27:05
But could you believe it? It’s still nonprofit, runs only on grants. And that’s the kind of product you build when you build keeping your customer at the heart of everything. Same message, not 10 slides. But you drive the message that you are really wanting to give to people. And that, in some way, is the impact of storytelling. So anyone who is listening might forget everything else. But hopefully, you will remember how Khan Academy got started.
Beth 27:38
So what about the relevance and meaning piece? Because I’m a learning and development professional. I know Salman Khan’s story. And so when you started to tell the story, I thought, yes, yes, so maybe I’ll have forgotten some details and he’s gonna fill it in a little bit. But I remember the initial story of him working with his niece and nephew. But what if I were someone not in the field or in a different discipline in your organization and you’re telling something like, how do you make sure that you’re creating and bringing in those examples and stories that are gonna hold relevance and meaning, or at least a little bit, right? Because you have to choose the ones that are gonna work, right?
Sumesh 28:17
A few things that I always take care is do your homework, know your audience goes back to the basics, but start with that, absolutely know who you are having that interaction with so that that allows you to craft your stories in a manner that are more relatable. That’s point number one.
Sumesh 28:38
Point number two, if you are doing this in an organization, know the organization’s background. So you can quote an example. You know what? Your organization 20 years back really helped set X, Y, Z. Now I’m listening to you. I think you know what you are talking. You’ve built your credibility. You’ve got my interest because you’re talking about things that are relatable to me. Third, talk about things that are in general acceptable. Talk about happiness, talk about sadness, right? So can your story invoke some of those emotions when you are talking about those?
Sumesh 29:18
So I think there is a sense of customization plus as someone who is a facilitator, as someone who is interacting with different sets, you really need to have some of your stories prepared and then navigate based on the audience that you are having an interaction with.
Sumesh 29:38
So let me take another example. So if you ask most chefs, what they do is they have the base prepared for some of the curries that they are making. Now what they do is once they have done step one, two, three, if Beth wants a certain dish versus Simrat wants something else, they will start mixing and build from the base that they have created. Storytelling to me is exactly like that. You need to understand what are the kind of stories that you can tell and land effective. Have those prepared and then navigate based on who you are interacting with. That’s the way I try and manage that.
Beth 30:28
I love that. And Simrat, I know you and I have had conversations before about the people we’re working with as learning or instructional designers, those subject matter experts, like when I can work with the SME and I can get them to tell me more about their work, then I can get more from them, right? Like what do you say about that?
Simrat 30:47
Absolutely, and I’ll take on what Sumesh really said. There’s a lot of pre-work, there’s a lot of homework that’s involved to make the stories craftable and relatable. To craft the stories, to make it relatable. Some of the work that you really touched upon is to work with your experts. Whether you are a self-business owner in learning or you are working in a corporate, your subject matter experts are your go-to. Starting from the CEO to the functional experts who do the job day in and day out. Working closely with them ensures that helps me, that my stories are aligned.
Simrat 31:23
I can only code an example saying 20 years ago, this happened or in pandemic, your organization did this. But I can say that with confidence only when I’ve worked closely with the SMEs to learn about those stories, policies, challenges, anything that could come in their everyday work.
Simrat 31:39
The prep also includes, I would say working with characters. So to make a story relatable, I need to use a character that helps the listener relate to the story or envision perhaps themselves in a similar situation. And that perhaps will also help them recall at a different scenario because it would have triggered any emotions such as happiness or sadness or excitement or nervousness. So these are the few things that go really into preparation of a story. And I also find some sort of application. So it’s good to say about the start and the middle. And then what happens? So what if, you know, what if you were sad and what if you were happy in the story? What happened after? So the application for it or a real life situation that helped you handle that particular emergency at work. All of this together helps you craft a story, which at the end of the day could be much more relatable than just any other story.
Simrat 32:48
Because if we do all of these prep works, then it also helps us clarify some ambiguity. Or what happened? Or what if that happened in that story? Or what if Khan Academy, he made the videos differently? Or, you know, there are multiple questions that can come as you are sharing a story. And then all of this prep work will help you automatically clarify a few things. Define the purpose at the end of the day as to what the story was intended for. And the learner just takes what they want from that story.
Beth 33:21
You talked about character, and I think that’s where many of us can struggle. I know I’ve been in that situation where you’re choosing one character [chuckles] for the story and who is that? You know, how can we be inclusive to all of our learners and who are we going to choose to be that character? And what’s their name and what do they look like? And do you two think about that kind of inclusion piece related to storytelling?How do we get it right?
Sumesh 33:49
So let me give you an example Beth. Beth, you wrote a book, Design to Engage, a few years back. This was about creating and facilitating great learning experience for any group.
Beth 33:59
Wow, thank you for the promo there. [laughs]
Sumesh 34:01
I’ll text you my bank account number for that! [laughs]
Beth 34:06
Yeah, OK! [laughs]
Sumesh 34:05
But think about in today’s world where agentic AI and without taking the name of the college, one of the colleges replaced their professor with an AI system because now it allows folks to ask questions, clarify from the AI system on what is it that they are asking. Now, is this something which we can use in a facilitation method as well? Folks, all of you listening, I’ll just try to give you an example of how do you select what character to use? Use the one who would be most engaged.
Sumesh 34:48
So Beth was all yours because I was speaking about her book that she wrote. So if you did your homework, you would really know who are the characters in the group that you are facilitating that you can use based on who is present in the classroom. And the way to engage that is by doing—and I know Simrat and I are sounding like a broken record talking about doing that work, but that’s the difference between a memorable experience and the one that someone would not remember after 15 days.
Sumesh 35:22
Because the moment you have put in that effort and the characters are present in the classroom or in the meeting room where you are weaving these conversations, you have got engagement, you have got interest, you tell people you care, this matters to you and that’s where you start. So that’s part one of Beth’s question. Part two of Beth’s question around inclusivity, being mindful about what we are doing outside, absolutely yes. The last thing you want to do is really rub people the wrong way by not being sensitive about what we are saying in a classroom and you can just change the entire mood of the conversation that’s happening by saying something that did not or does not land well.
Sumesh 36:18
A few things that I do to be prepared for it and most of my work is internal for organization, but a few things that I do whenever there is an external facilitation opportunity is be very clear about the values of the organization that you are speaking or having an interaction with because there are folks there who align absolutely to the values. That’s why they are there in the organization. So don’t end up saying something that will not sit well with them. Second, be very careful about what are the inclusion, diversity, equity practices that the organization has. These are things which are already available on net for anyone who wants to read about it.
Sumesh 37:05
So the moment you have created, you’ve kind of garnered this information and now you are building a story, you are mindful to talk about, hey, you know what, three guys walked out of the office for a drink. Instead of that, you can say, hey, three people walked out of the office for a drink and there was Beth, there was Simrat, and then there was Sumesh. Look, the diversity that they had, even when they stepped out for a drink, now that allows you to build that connection that you are looking for with the group.
Simrat 37:45
Absolutely. And I want to add here, Beth, to what you asked, what do I do to make it inclusive? A story will have more than one character, always. So I’m going to go back to the example I shared about, hey, Simrat has joined this company, two months, I’m trying to figure out orientation, but hey, I actually, you know, I haven’t been onboarded myself very well. So while I gave that example, and it only reflected me as a character, I had done my homework and chosen different roles from the other, from that company to said, X did not have it. So I had an operations manager who did not have onboarding. And I had a very senior tenured employee who back then never had an onboarding, until date doesn’t actually have it. You know, she always got information that was available through different platforms.
Simrat 38:32
So how I make it inclusive is we make the characters, I would say to everybody who’s ever listening is make it as diverse as you can. If there’s somebody from the Gen X, we have a lot of Gen X and Gen Y and gen like categories now, right? So I would try, I would pick up characters from different gens. I would also pick up characters from different genders and people who come from different backgrounds.
Simrat 38:58
And we are fortunately in Canada, very rich in terms of diversification, because we have people from all over the world, who were who maybe came from a tribal set up, or maybe came from a, I don’t know, generational family set up or a middle class family or what culture have you may. So that’s, that’s how I make it more inclusive.
Simrat 39:20
And now with more awareness about, you know, the LGBT community, or you talk about any sort of community that the more I learn, we try to include them. And you can see examples, Disney, you can see examples in various shows that I used to watch as a child have characters now, from different diverse backgrounds. So I think that is really helpful. And I, the example Sumesh shared was very powerful too. So three people, you describe those three characters, not just say three, you know, guys walked out for a drink. But you are really kind of saying who these three people are, right? And it just lands very differently. And someone somewhere identifies themselves with those characters and it triggers some emotion.
Beth 40:06
It seems like we have a lot of power, right, that we don’t maybe realize that we have, because we are the ones often who get to craft the stories that are used in learning experiences. And for me, it’s like I want to bring in other people to help me with that too, because I’m a white middle-aged woman and I can’t see it all.
Beth 40:26
I can’t see all the opportunities. I mean, I can see a lot because I, you know, EDI or DEI, I do my own learning in it and so on, but it really makes me think about the importance of getting, like working with colleagues or getting my design drafts reviewed or bringing in—the client will often have a working group or a committee of some kind or anything to say there about just working with others in our roles to diversify our stories and to keep that relevance in mind?
Simrat 40:57
So I’ll start and Sumesh, please add on. I like what you said about getting your stuff reviewed. I’ve always reviewed my, so again, SME is my power. My subject matter expert is really my power, right? And I want to leverage it to the maximum as much as I can. And we review stories and we ask them what landed. I’ve secretly also tried to ask some of the learners in a non-formal setting of what lands and what’s, is it anything that’s triggering anger or frustration or any story that, or any character that kind of rubs you off? Like these kinds of questions.
Simrat 41:34
And these are really my water cooler chats or my coffee chats. They are not formal meeting set up. It’s really water cooler chat. Or I would test and try it as an internal L&D professional. It really makes it easy because you spend time with the learners in different ways, right? You have public internal forms that you meet at or you have, there’s a lot of more potentials of coffee chats.
Simrat 41:59
As a self-business owner, I would think that you would get less time with the learners, but asking your requesters or your subject matter experts about the learners, if you can review some content or even do a pilot, where you do a soft pilot of testing it out with different people who are actually ultimately going to be your end users. It’s in IT, they call it an end user testing, right? Where you kind of just simulate. And now with AI, I think it’s, I love the prompt engineering that I’ve been reading about because you ask the AI, put your material up there or story there and say, imagine you were that learner. So you personify them as a learner and give them the story and say what landed. So that I find has, I’ve not tried it, I’ve read about it. So I’m gonna try it in the next learning experience I create. But those are a few ways that you can test out your stories and see how impactful would they be. That’s what I would say.
Beth 42:58
It’s interesting that you both have brought up AI and I feel like, you know, this will be a double length episode if we go in that direction. But it’s a caution and a benefit, isn’t it, to think about using AI to help us craft stories because we know bias exists in there.
And I’ve literally, in that prompting, said, you know, don’t do that thing that you’re doing. That is, you know, it’s not just the automatic man that’s the doctor or whatever it is, right? So we have to be on guard for its “help” [smiles] or not, don’t we?
Sumesh 43:27
Yeah, so let me put both of you in this spot for a second. So think about a Canadian superhero. And I’ll give you the first one. Think about the second. So if I say, Captain, what comes to your mind? What is the next name that you can think of? Captain followed by what? [Pause] Any superhero that comes to your mind?
Beth 43:51
[Laughs throughout] Well, as a Canadian, I hate to say this at this time, but actually Captain America came to mind and I don’t even know that comic strip and I’m not American and we have such a conflict going on right now, but what’s your, what’s your point, Sumesh? I’m going to take us off in a new direction we don’t want to go in.
Sumesh 44:10
So what I understand is there are two superheroes, very, very famous in Canada. One is called Captain Canuck, and the other is Alpha Flight. And imagine if you said Captain America. So imagine if these two groups plus Thanos were to meet for a coffee. Now Thanos is the antagonist in the movie that you were talking about, Beth, which is Captain America. So the point I’m trying to make is very simple. If you do a little bit of research and figure out what will stick, what will not stick, you know how to navigate.
Sumesh 44:49
Now I went ahead and completed what I was saying only because this was in a podcast and I was trying to make a point. But when you are starting out with a story and you are unsure if it will land or not land, it is always advisable to do a check so that you have an opportunity to navigate. So the moment I hear from Beth, “Captain America”, then I navigate my story to say, do you remember the time when Captain America was the person who could pick up that hammer that only Thor could pick up?
Sumesh 45:28
So my story changes from what I was saying, and that goes back to preparedness, right? What Simrat said is like A grade stuff. If you are able to validate your stories, you have that time and opportunity to do that, absolutely go ahead and do it. But if you don’t have that time, don’t walk on a landmine, right? [smiles] Do a little bit of test before you build on your story and share more about it so that you know what is landing and what is not landing for the group that you have. So to me, that’s really a critical aspect of how we are going about it, right? So that’s an example, Beth, that I just wanted to share to drive the point.
Beth 46:10
Well, it goes back to that water cooler chat thing that you were talking about Simrat, because I, you know, if we kept talking about it, I would have to divulge like I have no idea what I’m talking about. Like I don’t know Captain America at all. And you know, superhero stuff, not necessarily my bag, right? But we’d find something else, wouldn’t we? Like if I was your learner, your potential learner, you’d pull it out of me, the thing that was going to be most relevant.
Simrat 46:33
This reminds me of a great story, Sumesh, walking on a landmine. So yes, I said A grade stuff, but sometimes we did not have the time. So it remind me of a story of we were creating a leadership program and one of the sessions was the beginning. So we had a course in a day and this was all classroom workshops with certain alternative mechanisms throughout weaved in into the program, but most of it was classroom.
Simrat 47:00
So first couple of courses each day happened and how we saw, we would do feedback at the end of the day and the feedback said, I wish there were more long-term care home stories, stories were more hospital setting because my facilitator came up from a hospital, her expertise was teaching in a hospital setting. So her examples were mostly women, mostly nursing, or there were men involved as well, however, inclusive, inclusivity, or landing on a mine, walking on a landmine, and so I could sense that the stories were not landing. So we had to shift.
Simrat 47:40
That prompted me validating those examples with the person who had given the feedback and I’m like, hey, tell me more. And that’s how I learned the stories were not landing as they should be. And so we changed following the fourth session, we started bringing in long-term care home examples. And that’s what prompted doing some coffee chats to my facilitator with the long-term care home professionals because most of them were administrators of long-term care homes and we were teaching them about leadership skills.
Simrat 48:11
So while they could relate to the hospital setting, they were not fully immersed for them to recall an example because they were really walking into a long-term care home every day and doing their job, right? So it’s interesting how storytelling, you might prep as much as you can, but you have to test the waters and observe. And this also brings to another, not related to this podcast perhaps, but when we are designing learning experiences while we are crafting storytelling to create that impact, we need to be sensitive on what feedback is coming in. Be proactive and seek your learner’s feedback. And at this age, our learners: adults, if we forget our ego hat and we wear our critical thinking hat or seeking information hat, they will tell us, they will tell you what’s working and what’s not working because at the end of the day, both of you want to invest time in creating that impact and learn something out of it. So that’s what came up to me.
Beth 49:16
Yeah. And you’re talking about, we’re talking about storytelling and in many ways we’ve been talking about ourselves telling the stories. You know, either as designers of the learning experience or facilitators of the learning experience—or conversation if we’re just talking about one-to-one conversations.
But we can also, this is the importance of creating participatory learning environments, isn’t it? Because we can create things to happen that allow our learners to tell the stories in the experience. And we don’t know what they’re going to tell, but we can create that environment. Again, we go back to environment and we can create that environment so stories come forward from the people involved.
Simrat 49:55
And they will tell us. And if you give them the importance, they want to feel they all enjoy getting that importance and showcase so if we did share one thing also that we did during the hospital piece was when we started sharing examples of hospital because we have all of those stories, right? We wanted to weave in, weave those into the program.
Simrat 50:14
We also started saying, What do you recall from here? Has anything something similar happened in your setting? Was one of the ways that our participants started sharing their long term care stories versus and the hospital. And then we started kind of combining those. You know, how Sumesh says you might have powerful ingredients if they don’t talk to each other. The dish doesn’t come out of the MasterChef level dish, right? So to be that impact.
Beth 50:40
I like how you brought it back to food. [laughs] That brought him in!
Sumesh 50:44
I actually have a very personal incident to share. Simrat actually might remember or she was just, she and I were maybe at that time just starting to work together and stuff. I was actually in a session, cannot take the name of the session because of proprietary challenges. I was actually attending a session where there were a lot of sharing that were happening through shared emotions. People were sharing things and we reached a point where we were asked by the facilitator to step out and call someone and say something that we want to say, but are holding ourselves back and we haven’t shared that. I walked out of the classroom, went to a place which was called Gazebo, picked up my phone, called my now wife, and proposed her over the phone in the middle of the class.
Sumesh 51:42
Because that’s how much we had shared things and we had all got into that emotion of how comfortable we felt sharing our emotions and that’s what I did. The power that a facilitator in the class can generate can be life-changing. The moment we identify that power and are authentic towards it, develop our own style, I think storytelling is a mechanism to really connect with the group and help do life-changing things. This is me saying how that moment changed my life. We’ve now been married for 16 years, but I proposed to her over the phone. She still teases me saying, you could have done this better, but at least I got that out.
Beth 52:37
It makes for a good story. [laughs] Definitely.
Sumesh 52:40
[Laughs] Absolutely.
Beth 52:41
I want to thank you two for spending so much time with us today and I’ve just loved the directions this conversation has gone. There are so many more things that we could talk about [chuckles] related to storytelling but we do have to stop somewhere don’t we? Are there things that you want to just say each of you to wrap up our thoughts around storytelling for impact?
Sumesh 53:02
Few things that I want to just cap and ensure that we have got this right. So imagine a time where no one had mobile phones, then people started having mobile phones, and then mobile phones started having camera. Now, cameras have mobile phones. It’s the other way around when people go and buy things at the market. The point I’m trying to make is very simple. Something which was a luxury few years back, which is a camera in a mobile phone, today has become a necessity.
Sumesh 53:36
So if that’s true for a product, that’s true for our skill sets as well. Hence, the more we are thinking about how we upskill, reskill ourselves, it’s going to be really critical. Now, in the realm of storytelling that we are talking about, what is that upskilling once you have created that base, as facilitators that we have to do, keep ourselves updated on what’s happening around us, or else our stories would sound very stale. They will sound from an era that our learners will not relate to.
Sumesh 54:11
Second, we need to do a prep about the audience that we are interacting with. Third, and most critical, if you still haven’t discovered your own style, discover your own style. Fourth, we all make mistakes. If you make a mistake while telling a story, crack a joke on yourself and own it like a king or a queen that you ever were. So just go with the flow, have fun, enjoy. Beth, thank you so much for having me on the podcast.
Beth 54:47
Thank you. Simrat, what do you want to say to end us?
Simrat 54:50
Yeah, thanks. I think Sumesh really summed up. You can tell that he always used stories how impactfully at every conversation today, every dialogue that we’ve had, right? So I guess he really ended it at a very powerful note. It’s always about upskilling and reskilling. We might think what’s A grade today might become standard of our work in coming years. And it comes very soon. I should not even say years, right? It comes in months. Yeah, just practicing and trying to see what lands, what doesn’t land, what you can change, because mistakes will happen.
Simrat 55:23
And you know, the idea is just you’ll always, not all the time do we park our cars the right way the first time, but we fix it, right? So it’s all about how we fix it. And it’s all about how we craft another story and use that as a story, how I corrected my parking for the next time. So that’s the impact. And that’s the power. So all the best, everybody. Enjoy storytelling, it’s powerful. And Beth, thank you. This was my first time. And I’m so thrilled to be on a podcast. I’ve never done this before. So thank you for having me. What started as a conversation and idea brought us together. So thank you. It was a wonderful time. I haven’t talked like this with Sumesh in what, I don’t know, 15 years. So I’m very excited. So thank you very much.
Beth 56:06
It’s been wonderful to have you.
Simrat 56:07
I have a lot of gratitude.
Beth 56:08
Oh, me too. [Simrat: Yeah.] Thanks again.
Beth 56:12
[Episode outro] I really want to thank both Sumesh and Simrat for coming with me on the episode and sharing their perspectives on storytelling. We actually laughed afterward a little bit because that whole question that Sumesh asked me about the Canadian superhero really had me stumped for a moment. I don’t know if you heard the pause [laughs] that happened after he asked that question because my mind, talk about storytelling, I was trying to figure out what like any kind of Canadian superhero was in my mind. And I was just racing to try to answer the question. And of course I went to an American example first.
Beth 56:48
But I thought it was such a beautiful illustration of his point that he asked me the question, he realized right away I wasn’t going to be able to go in the direction that he wanted, and of course he pivoted very quickly to an American example. But little did he know I had no idea anything about Captain America either. So [laughs] he really put me on the spot there, but it was actually a really fun way to illustrate how we do have to flex in the moment when we’re trying to figure out what’s meaningful to our learners. We can do all the research in the world as he had suggested for us to do, but when it comes right down to it, if something isn’t landing or we’re actually making the person or people stressed out by not being able to please us, not being able to answer the question, then we’ve got to pivot and go into the area where we think it’s going to be more meaningful and relevant for them. So we had a little laugh about the Canadian superheroes that I really have no idea about. It’s just not part of my experience at all. He being in India knew probably way more than I do about just superheroes in general, but definitely Canadian superheroes. I’m going to have to go look up Captain Canuck and the other one that he mentioned just so I know who the heck they are. [laughs]
Beth 58:00
But so nice to think about storytelling for a while. It’s actually a topic I’ve been diving into in a couple of different ways recently. I just went to a couple of workshops with our local Storytellers Guild and I really recommend doing something like that yourself if you’re interested in developing your ability around telling stories in multiple ways. The Storytellers Guild, of course, is more performance-based, I would say, in some respects. So we just have to recognize that. But if you dive down into the skills of storytelling, there are tons of things that we can learn from storytelling guilds or other people who teach just general storytelling that we can bring into our facilitation and our learning design work. And sometimes there’s cautions around that as well. But definitely for both what Simrat shared and what Sumesh shared, really interesting to have this conversation and this learning around using stories in our work, and particularly to drive impact for the organization and of course for our learners as well. So thanks again to both of them for coming on the show and helping us learn about this important topic.
Beth 59:12
Coming up on the podcast for the last episode for season three, it’s a solo episode with me and it’s going to be Learning That Lasts. Now, if you have been really paying attention, you would have heard me introduce that this episode was going to be the next episode for this episode, episode 59. But I decided at the last minute to switch the order of the episodes because I’ve got some stuff going on in my life right now that was making it a little bit hard for me to do the solo recording. So I reached out to Mary, my audio editor, and I said, I don’t think anyone’s going to notice if I switch the order around and do the solo episode last and the episode with Sumesh and Simrat second last for the season. But of course, then I remembered that at the end of episode 58, I had set up this episode that it was going to be coming next to number 59 and that didn’t happen. So if you were really paying attention, you would have noticed that. But in the grand scheme of things, who cares? Because either way, you’re getting one guest episode and one solo episode to end the season. Regardless of all that rigamarole with the order of episodes—that’s a little bit of a behind the scenes look, I guess, to what it means to host a podcast and [chuckles] find time for it in and amongst a busy career actually doing the work—the episode itself is going to focus on how we design learning that has lasting impact.
Beth 01:00:42
How do we design learning that lands and lasts beyond the session for the learners at the heart of the experience? How do we make those learning experiences more memorable so that they don’t just remember the things in the hours or a few days after the session that they remember it hopefully for months and years to come? That’s the focus of the next episode and I look forward to seeing you then.
[Show outro] Thank you for listening to Facilitating on Purpose. If you were inspired by something in this episode, please share it with a friend or a colleague to help them expand their facilitation practice too. To find the show notes, give me feedback, or submit ideas for future episodes, visit facilitatingonpurpose.com. Special thanks to Mary Chan at Organized Sound Productions for producing this episode. Happy facilitating.
