Organisational Storytelling Speaker
Building a Storytelling Ecosystem:
How leaders who understand the stories already alive in their organisation can build cultures that move faster, hold together under pressure, and take people with them.
Your organisation is alive with stories. How do you help shape them?
Stories are already circulating in your organisation and shaping how your people understand their work, their leaders, and their future. These stories are building, or eroding, your culture, every day, regardless of what's in the strategy. Most organisations invest heavily in communication, in town halls and in leadership messaging and are still frustrated that their messages aren’t getting through.
Dr Luella Forbes explains why this is the case, and what to do differently.
Drawing on her doctoral research on organisational storytelling, trust, and change alongside 25 years of experience inside some of the UK and Australia's largest change and transformation programs, Luella argues that storytelling is not a one off event restricted to town halls or product and strategy launches. And that good storytellers shape the stories that everyone tells, use stories to shape sense making, and harness the storytelling ecosystem of the organisation to build and create culture.
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Senior Leaders
Middle Managers
HR and L&D forums
Organisational development events
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Keynote / Speech
Workshop (0.5 days)
Custom Training Package
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Luella splits her time between the UK and Australia and is available to speak in the following locations:
Australia & Asia
UK & Europe
What story is your organisation telling?
Attendees leave with:
A new mental model for culture: organisations as storytelling ecosystems, not storytelling occasions, and what this means for how they lead and the stories they tell
The different story types operating inside every organisation: vision and strategy stories, values and behaviour stories, group storytelling that helps people understand what is happening and why, and the informal stories that act as the organisation's barometer.
An ability to identify the strengths and gaps in their organisation’s storytelling and what it means for culture.
How to read the informal stories circulating in your organisation and use them as a diagnostic to know which story your culture needs next
A view on what it means when they are broadcasting versus to conducting stories and the first steps to building an ecosystem rather than sending messages.
Meet Dr Luella Forbes
Luella Forbes is one of a small number of practitioners globally who bring both 25 years of applied consulting experience and peer-reviewed doctoral research credentials to the field of organisational storytelling.
Her doctorate, completed at Durham University (UK) and emlyon business school (France), examined the role and impact of stories in managing organisational change: how stories can be used to create change; the importance of trust to creating change; the role that middle managers play in carrying organisational storytelling.
Before founding her consulting and speaking business, The Narratologist, Luella was a Director, People and Change at KPMG, and has worked on and led major change programmes across some of Australia's largest organisations in financial services, healthcare, government, and infrastructure - including spearheading the development of the VaccinateWA system during the COVID response in Western Australia.
She hosts the Career Stories podcast, with Associate Professor Michelle Gander from Murdoch University's Business School, and is a professional speaker available for corporate keynotes, leadership conferences, and HR and L&D forums. She splits her time between the UK and Australia and available for conferences in surrounding regions.
CREDENTIALS:
Double Doctorate in Organisational storytelling trust and leading change
25 years working in large scale transformation
Expertise focused on mergers and restructures
Former Head of Change for Mercer, Pacific
Former Director, People and Change, KPMG
Host, Career Stories podcast
