Leading Through Transition: Strategic Storytelling with Laura Colket

Facilitate a storytelling process to build community and help people and teams sift through the disorientation of transition together
About this Event

Nonprofits today are being asked to do the impossible: hold steady through funding volatility, generational leadership handoffs, and a rapidly shifting cultural and political landscape — all while staying true to the mission that got them here. It's tempting to treat storytelling as a communications function, something reserved for the annual report or the year-end appeal. But story is also one of the most underused strategic tools an organization has for navigating change from the inside out.

Through this workshop, participants will learn how to:

• Utilize storytelling as a diagnostic tool to surface which organizational practices and norms still serve the mission — and which were built for a different era
• Tell their own story of leadership in relation to their organization, developing a clearer understanding of how and why they lead — and what that means for leading through this particular moment of transition
• Facilitate a storytelling process to build community and help people and teams sift through the disorientation of transition together
• Translate that internal narrative work into external storytelling that humanizes the organization for funders, board members, and the community — helping people see not just what the work is, but who it's for

Participants leave with a practical framework for facilitating this work inside their own organizations, plus tools adaptable for both internal culture-building and external communications and fundraising.

About the Presenter
Dr. Laura Colket is the founder of Whole Human Leadership. In this capacity, she supports leaders to bring more somatic awareness, mindfulness, creativity, play and joy into their personal and professional lives so they can lead from a place of authentic connection and alignment rather than disconnection and burnout. Through somatic coaching, leadership cohorts, workshops and consulting, she helps people become the best versions of themselves so that they, their communities, and their organizations can thrive.

Dr. Colket is an experienced educator and leader with 20+ years of experience in the education and nonprofit sectors, and holds a doctorate in Educational Leadership and a master’s in Intercultural Communication, both from the University of Pennsylvania. She has lived and worked in Grenada, Haiti, Morocco and Thailand. She has expertise in program design, curriculum development, faculty development, organizational research, human-centered AI integration, global education, constructive dialogue, policy development, storytelling, teambuilding, somatic awareness and leadership development.

Her edited volume, ‘Becoming: Transformative Storytelling for Education’s Future’, is a collection of powerful stories about teaching, learning and leadership. It provides a framework for readers to reflect on (and tell) their own stories, in order to fuel personal, professional, and organizational transformation. Her latest book (in progress) provides a 'leaders as healers' framework, focusing on creating more humanizing workplace cultures. She is also creating a healing-centered leadership card deck, to support nervous system regulation alongside creative and purposeful leadership development.

This event is in-person only

Masks are optional at this event

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