Storytelling Workshops for Organizations and Teams
I lead practical, highly participatory business storytelling workshops and communication training for companies, nonprofit and policy organizations, and groups of performers or creative professionals. Participants learn how to find the real point of a story, shape complex material, and communicate it in a way people understand, trust, and remember.
They leave with repeatable tools and training they can use to help one another develop stronger stories.
Leading a storytelling workshop for PagerDuty.
“Having Jeff Simmermon speak at our PagerDuty Pop-Up series was an absolute highlight for our team. Jeff brought energy, humor, and practical value to his storytelling session while delivering a concrete framework our employees could use.
They walked away with techniques they could immediately apply to make complex ideas clear and engaging, whether communicating with customers, internal stakeholders, or leadership.
Jeff has a rare talent for keeping a room laughing while delivering lessons that stick. I’d jump at the chance to bring Jeff back for future events!”
A Practical Storytelling Framework
I teach a repeatable five-part structure—You, Need, Go, Get, Return—that turns storytelling into a practical recipe rather than a mysterious talent. Participants use it to find the essential elements of a story, identify its central conflict, and decide which details move it forward.
The framework is simple enough to remember and flexible enough to use in executive communications, policy and advocacy work, presentations, and personal performance.
What Participants Learn
Depending on the group and its goals, participants learn how to:
Find the central conflict that gives a story its meaning
Turn complicated material into a clear narrative
Distinguish a complete story from an anecdote or collection of facts
Establish emotional stakes without oversharing
Use specific details, personality, and humor effectively
Identify what an audience needs to know, and what can be cut
Give and apply useful story feedback
Develop stronger stories without relying on a professional coach every time
Workshops Built Around Your People and Goals
A leadership team preparing for presentations needs something different from policy experts explaining technical work, or performers developing personal material.
I adapt the workshop’s examples, exercises, and emphasis to the people in the room and the situations where they need their stories to work. Sessions can focus on executive communication, presentations, pitches, organizational narratives, advocacy, public engagement, or live performance.
Anyone can read a book about storytelling, but this is something that, much like juggling and cooking, you really can only learn by doing. Participants examine and critique real examples, test their own material, receive direct feedback, and learn by helping diagnose one another’s stories.
Say It So It Lands
A Hands-On Business Storytelling Workshop To Make Your Message Stick
Say It So It Lands is a focused, hands-on introduction to my storytelling framework. Participants use it to turn partial stories, rough anecdotes, and complicated experiences into clear narratives with a point.
Through live instruction, guided examples, individual exercises, and group discussion, participants apply the framework to their own material and learn how to use it without a professional coach in the room.
It can stand alone as an introductory workshop or be adapted as part of a longer training program.
Six-Week Workshops for Performers
I also lead small six-week Zoom workshops for stand-up comedians, storytellers, and other performers developing personal material for stage or audio.
Promotional artwork from a previous six-week performer workshop.
Weekly sessions combine story structure, narrative arc, joke writing, performance technique, live practice, direct feedback, and individual coaching. Participants develop and revise one live-ready story while learning a repeatable process they can use on future material.
Cohorts are capped at eight people so everyone receives substantial attention and performance time.
Workshop and Group-Coaching Experience
I’ve led storytelling workshops for corporate teams, economists and policy experts, nonprofit professionals, and performers. I’ve also developed and led a collaborative group-coaching process for PBS’s Stories From the Stage, helping storytellers around the country strengthen their material, learn from one another, and prepare for a live taping.
Whether participants are explaining technical work or developing personal material, I teach a clear method they can continue using after the workshop ends.
We brought Jeff in to lead a series of storytelling workshops for the 12 students in our Creative Career Design Fellowship. Jeff successfully translated our goal into an actionable lesson plan built around his framework for storytelling. The students loved his workshops. In the end-of-program assessment, they rated Jeff’s work as one of the top three most valuable activities during the semester-long program.
Ro Reddick
Assistant Director, NYU Production Lab