Paper workbook · 14 sections · blank
Name: ______________________ Course: ______________________ Date: ____________
Tab 1
Discover experiences worth exploring.
What have I experienced that might contain a useful story?
Stories rarely arrive in polished form.
They begin as memories.
Something a manager once said to you. A project that went wrong. An employee who surprised you. A customer you could not satisfy. A decision you wish you could make again. A moment when you discovered that something you believed was wrong.
You may remember the incident clearly without understanding why you remember it. That is enough to begin.
A story contains two essential ingredients: events and change.
Events give the story movement. Change gives those events meaning. The work begins by finding experiences that may contain both.
Capture one: professional life
An experience I keep returning to is:
I think I remember it because:
Capture one: people
A person who changed how I think or work is:
The moment I associate with that person is:
Capture one: events
An event I can still picture clearly is:
Strong emotions are not proof that a story is useful.
They are clues that something mattered.
Field tool: bang on the lid
Before the event, what did I believe?
Afterward, what did I believe?
How did I feel about what I did?
Was my behavior typical for me?
Did anything about my response surprise me?
What does the incident reveal about the person I was then?
Who else was affected?
Why might I still remember this?
GO DEEPER — The uncomfortable truth about this experience may be that…
Do not force the answer. The purpose of questioning is not to manufacture meaning. It is to discover meaning that may already be there.
Field tool: story or just something that happened?
Did something happen?
Did one event cause, influence, or contribute to another?
Did someone make a meaningful choice or take action?
Did something change?
Could another person gain something from examining the experience?
Field note: follow the truth
A useful story does not require you to have behaved perfectly.
In fact, the version in which you immediately made the correct choice may be less useful than the version in which you resisted, misread the situation, acted out of insecurity, or needed several experiences before you changed.
Your task is not to make the past look better. Your task is to understand it well enough to use it responsibly.
FIND: field check
Tab 2
Decide what the story needs to accomplish.
Why am I telling this story to these learners now?
The question is not: “Is this a good story?”
The question is: “Is this the right story for what I need learners to do?”
Stories in learning are tools. Tools have jobs. Before shaping a story, determine the job.
Field tool: write the intent
I am telling this story because I want learners to…
After experiencing and discussing this story, I want learners to be better able or more willing to…
Try again without using the words understand, know, or appreciate.
These ideas are related, but they are not the same.
Intent belongs to the facilitator. It answers: Why am I using this story?
Point belongs to the learner. It answers: What meaning am I constructing from what I experienced?
You can plan your intent. You can shape the conditions under which learners encounter the story. You can ask questions. You can challenge interpretations. But you cannot fully control what another person notices, remembers, or connects to their own life.
That is not a flaw in storytelling. It is one of its strengths.
Field tool: performance target
Primary target
KNOWLEDGE — learners need help:
Story job: make abstract information concrete, connect ideas, reveal cause and effect, or show where knowledge applies.
SKILL — learners need help:
Story job: create a realistic context for action. Let them encounter what happens when a real person resists, misunderstands, changes direction, or introduces a complication.
ATTITUDE — performance depends partly on:
Story job: use personal stories, cautionary experiences, or perspective shifts to let learners examine consequences and experience another point of view. Use the story to open a door.
Story job, in my own words:
Field tool: why this story? why now? why them?
Why this story?
Why at this point in the learning experience?
Why is it appropriate for this audience?
The same story may work differently for:
Do not become loyal to the story.
A story bank is useful because the best story for one audience may be wrong for another. Remain loyal to the learning.
INTENT: field check
Tab 3
Find the events, causes, consequences, and change.
What actually happened?
Memories are messy. Stories cannot be.
Before you decide how to tell an experience, step back far enough to see the sequence.
The key question is not simply: What happened?
It is: What happened because of what happened before it?
That difference turns a list of incidents into a story.
Field tool: find the key event
What moment makes this story memorable?
If I removed that event, would the rest of the story still happen?
What changed because of it?
Field tool: timeline it
KEY EVENT
LEADING EVENT 1 — what happened immediately before the key event?
As a result…
LEADING EVENT 2 — what contributed to that event?
As a result…
CONSEQUENTIAL EVENT 1 — what happened because of the key event?
As a result…
CONSEQUENTIAL EVENT 2 — what happened next because of that?
The “as a result” test
Read the timeline aloud, inserting the phrase “As a result…” between each event.
If the sequence sounds false or strained, examine the relationship. You may be confusing “this happened after that” with “this happened because of that.”
Stories need sequence. Useful learning stories also need honest causality.
Be especially careful with:
You know what you experienced. You may not know everything that caused another person's decision. Separate what happened from what you inferred.
Field tool: find the change
BEFORE — I believed:
BEFORE — I did:
BEFORE — I expected:
BEFORE — I avoided:
AFTER — I believed:
AFTER — I did:
AFTER — I expected:
AFTER — I stopped avoiding / began doing:
Change is more useful when learners can see how it developed.
Avoid: “My manager gave me feedback, I understood immediately, and I never made the mistake again.”
Look instead for:
How the change developed
What did it take for me to change?
What part of that process could help someone else make a similar change?
Worked example: the night emails
Possible intent: help managers consider how communication from someone with positional authority can create expectations even when those expectations are never stated.
Leading conditions: a new manager enters a work culture where off-hours email is common. She begins sending messages to employees at night. Employees often respond immediately.
Key event: her manager points out that employees may feel pressure to respond because the message is coming from their manager.
Initial consequence: she resists the advice and focuses on what she sees as her manager's hypocrisy because he also emails her after hours.
Continuing consequence: his emails remind her how obligated she herself feels to respond.
Change: she recognizes that intention does not erase impact. Her employees may experience her messages the same way she experiences her manager's messages.
What makes it useful: the learning is not simply “don't email people at night.” The experience creates space to examine authority, unintended signals, role modeling, workplace norms, intention versus impact, and the difference between freedom to respond and perceived obligation.
Possible learner question: when does a request become an expectation even if no one says it is one?
MAP: field check
Tab 4
Give the experience a structure that serves your intent.
What does the learner need to experience?
Structure determines what learners experience first, what they notice, and what meaning they are prepared to construct.
You do not need a complicated formula. You need a structure that serves your intent.
Hero's journey
Useful when the story centers on a significant transformation, challenge, ordeal, and return.
Use when: the transformation itself matters and the experience has enough complexity to support a longer arc.
Watch for: overcomplicating a short workplace story.
Story spine
Normal → disruption → consequences → resolution → new normal.
Useful when you need momentum and causal flow.
Use when: you have events but they currently sound like “and then…and then…and then.”
Watch for: treating the prompts as a script rather than a construction aid.
For most field-guide work, begin here.
Field tool: story spine builder
Intent — what do I want this story to do?
Normal — how things were. “Once upon a time…”
Include only the time, place and people the learner needs.
Disruption — “Until one day…”
Consequence 1 — “Because of that…”
Consequence 2 — “Because of that…”
Resolution — “Until finally…”
New normal — “Ever since then…”
What the learner does NOT need to know:
Field tool: detail filter
For every detail, ask: does this help learners understand the action, change, or meaning? If not, cut it.
Watch for detail derail: software versions, internal department structures, every person's title, exact dates that do not matter, process steps unrelated to the conflict, technical explanations included only to prove expertise, and attempts to remember whether something happened Tuesday or Wednesday when the day has no bearing on the story.
Context helps learners enter the world. Detail can trap them there.
FIELD TOOL: INTENT
Possible meaning 1
Possible meaning 2
Possible meaning 3
Which question would help learners examine those possibilities?
That question becomes part of the story design.
Field tool: whose story is this?
The problem:
The ability to act:
The meaningful choice:
The change:
Field tool: change the camera
My version — what did I experience?
Their possible version — what might they have experienced?
What changes when the camera moves?
SHAPE: field check
Tab 5
Determine whether the story is a strong facilitation tool.
Is this the right story?
A true story is not automatically a useful learning story. Test it before you invest time rehearsing it.
The book identifies four important characteristics of stories used for learning: connection, change, relevance, and entertainment. The field guide adds one final implementation question: does it facilitate performance?
That fifth question is a field-use diagnostic, not an additional story characteristic.
Field tool: the story test
Score each area from 0 to 3. 0 = absent, 1 = weak, 2 = usable, 3 = strong.
1. Connection
Score: 0 1 2 3 ____
2. Change
Score: 0 1 2 3 ____
3. Relevance
Score: 0 1 2 3 ____
4. Entertainment
Score: 0 1 2 3 ____
5. Performance — field-guide check
Score: 0 1 2 3 ____
Running total
______ / 15
“Nothing really happens.”
Return to MAP. Look for the event that caused something else to occur.
“It's too long.”
Return to INTENT. State the intent in one sentence. Remove anything that does not serve it.
“It's interesting, but not relevant.”
Return to TEST — Relevance. Look beneath the occupational setting for the human issue.
The universal element may be trust, pride, fear, identity, belonging, status, uncertainty, loss, ambition, or responsibility.
“I sound like the hero.”
Return to MAP — Change. Where were you uncertain? What did you get wrong? What did you have to learn?
“I have to explain the lesson afterward.”
Return to SHAPE — Point. Replace the explanation with a question.
“The story is funny, but the learning disappears.”
Return to INTENT. If the audience remembers the joke but not the decision, consequence, or change, entertainment has taken over the story's job.
TEST: field check
Tab 6
Turn the telling into a shared learning experience.
What will learners do with this story?
A story can be beautifully constructed and still become a lecture. Facilitating with story requires giving learners room to enter.
Once the story leaves you, listeners begin combining it with:
Do not fight that process. Use it.
Field tool: find the door
Entry points
Where exactly, in my story?
The point-construction ladder
Do not jump directly from story to lesson. Move through interpretation.
Level 1 NOTICE — “What did you notice?”
Level 2 INTERPRET — “Why do you think that happened?”
Level 3 CONNECT — “Where have you seen something similar?”
Level 4 CHALLENGE — “What might someone else interpret differently?”
Level 5 APPLY — “What would this look like in your work?”
Level 6 ACT — “What would you do differently?”
You do not need to use every level. Choose the level that serves your intent.
Field tool: plan the pauses
Pause 1 — after:
Pause 1 — ask:
Pause 1 — why:
Pause 2 — after:
Pause 2 — ask:
Pause 2 — why:
Pause 3 — after:
Pause 3 — ask:
Pause 3 — why:
Ask. Then stop.
Silence is part of facilitation. If you ask “What would you do?” and answer the question four seconds later, you did not really ask.
Give learners time to understand the question, search their experience, decide whether to take the interpersonal risk of answering, and form the answer.
Your discomfort is not evidence that the question failed. Wait.
Invite learner stories
Your experience is not the only source of story in the room. Learners can supply context that you cannot.
Try: “Where have you seen this happen?” · “Who has experienced something similar?” · “Think of a time when…” · “What happened the last time you tried this?” · “Does anyone have an example that challenges this?”
When a learner's story gets lost
Help without taking it away from them. Ask: What happened next? Then: How did you respond? Then: What happened because of that?
If the learner reaches the end but meaning remains unclear: How did you feel about what you did? Was that different from how you would have responded before? Did the experience change anything for you? Who benefited from the change?
You are helping the learner find their story. You are not assigning it a moral.
Field note: don't steal the story back
A learner may interpret your story in a way you did not expect. Before correcting them, ask: is the interpretation inaccurate—or merely different from mine?
If it is different, explore it. If it is inaccurate in a way that could harm learning, challenge it through questions and evidence.
FACILITATE: field check
Tab 7
Bring the experience to life authentically.
How can I help learners feel that they are there?
Storytelling is not recitation. It is the re-creation of experience.
You do not need to become an actor. You do need to become more available.
That requires:
Field tool: authenticity check
Have I made enough sense of this experience to tell it without asking learners to take care of me emotionally?
Am I comfortable with learners interpreting my behavior differently from the way I do?
Does revealing this part of the story serve learners?
Am I sharing because it is useful—or because I need to share it?
You do not need to look good
Some of the most useful learning stories contain a mistake, an insecurity, a poor decision, resistance, confusion, failure, or a false assumption.
Vulnerability does not require dramatic confession. It may mean simply saying: “I didn't know.” “I was wrong.” “I was afraid.” “I did not handle that well.” “I thought I understood, but I didn't.”
Body language is part of the story
Eye contact — can you maintain connection with learners rather than disappearing into the memory?
Proximity — would moving closer create useful intimacy? Would distance better represent the moment?
Facial expression — what emotion occurred naturally? Are you allowing it to appear?
Gesture — can a gesture make the action visible?
Position — if two people were in different places, can you establish those places in the room?
Field tool: stage the story
Where are you?
Where is the other person?
Is there an important object?
Is there a movement worth showing?
Where will you face the learners?
Show and tell
What did the other person do?
What did the voice sound like?
What words mattered?
What did my own state make me do (avoid eye contact, talk quickly, grip something)?
Field tool: delivery markup
My marked-up telling notes
Field tool: rehearsal ladder
Rounds completed
Approximate length when told aloud
PERFORM: field check
Tab 8
Build a reusable cache of stories.
How could I use this experience again?
Do not wait until you are standing in front of learners to search your memory. Build a cache.
A useful story bank allows you to retrieve stories by purpose, not merely by title. The goal is not to collect hundreds of polished stories. The goal is to know what experiences you have available and what they can help learners examine.
Field tool: story card
Story name
One-line description
Primary topics
Other topic
Performance target
Possible audiences
This story could help learners: (1)
(2)
(3)
Key event
Change — before:
Change — after:
Best learner question
Approximate length
Risks / cautions — could this story:
Notes
Field tool: story remix
Original intent:
Leadership lens — influence, authority, trust, responsibility?
Communication lens — intention, interpretation, timing, channel?
Decision lens — what information did the protagonist have? What did they miss?
Change lens — what made change desirable, possible, or difficult?
Culture lens — what unwritten rule or norm influenced behavior?
Field tool: after-action story review
Audience:
Where I used it:
What learners responded to most strongly:
Where they entered the story:
An interpretation I did not expect:
A question that worked:
A question that did not work:
What I would shorten:
What I would make clearer:
Would I use it again?
Reference
Five experiences you already know well.
What do I already have available?
You do not need a massive story bank. Begin with five experiences you know well.
Story 1 — a mistake
What happened?
What changed?
What could learners examine through the story?
Story 2 — a success that wasn't simple
What made it difficult?
What did you have to change?
Story 3 — a change of mind
Old belief:
Experience that challenged it:
Current belief:
Story 4 — a person who changed you
What did they do?
What changed in you?
Story 5 — a cautionary experience
Choice:
Consequence:
What should learners examine rather than simply fear?
Field practice: from objective to story
Learning objective — what should learners be able to do?
Likely difficulty — what makes this performance difficult in real life?
Story need — which type of story might help?
Other type
Candidate experience
Intent
Key event
Change
Learner-entry question
Application question
Reference
Five weak stories and how they get rescued.
What is wrong with this story, and what fixes it?
Makeover 1: the anecdote
Weak version: “Once I had an employee read through an entire class. It was incredibly rude.”
Diagnose: interesting incident? Yes. Complete learning story? Not yet.
Questions: What did the facilitator do? What happened before? What happened afterward? Did the facilitator change? Did the experience alter how future disruptions were handled? What performance question could learners examine?
Field lesson: do not confuse memorability with meaning.
Makeover 2: the rambler
Problem: the storyteller explains department structure, reporting relationships, internal acronyms, three software systems, and the history of the project. The conflict arrives four minutes later.
Rescue: state the intent. Identify what context learners truly need. Cut everything else.
Field lesson: context gets the learner into the story. Excess detail keeps the story from starting.
Makeover 3: the perfect hero
Weak version: “I saw the problem immediately, confronted it, solved it, and everyone thanked me.”
Rescue questions: What made the problem difficult? What did you initially misunderstand? What tradeoff did you face? What did someone else contribute? What did the experience change in you?
Field lesson: learners need agency. They do not need mythology.
Makeover 4: the moral
Weak ending: “And that's why you should always give feedback immediately.”
Facilitated ending: “What do you think my delay communicated to the employee?” Follow with: “What would have been different if I had addressed it earlier?” Then: “Where does this show up in your own work?”
Field lesson: do not close meaning too soon.
Makeover 5: the entertainer
Problem: everyone laughs. No one remembers why the story was told.
Rescue: return to intent. Keep the amusing elements that naturally support the experience. Cut jokes, side stories, or embellishments that turn attention away from the learning.
Field lesson: entertainment serves the story. The story serves performance.
Diagnose my own story
Which makeover does my story most resemble?
What I will change:
Reference
The short forms, for when you are already working.
What is the fastest version of this tool?
Tool 1 — story finder
Memory:
Why I remember it:
Possible change:
Possible use:
Tool 2 — intent card
Audience:
Learning objective:
I am telling this story because I want learners to:
Tool 3 — timeline
Leading event
Leading event
KEY EVENT
Consequence
Consequence
CHANGE
Tool 4 — ICAP
Intent — what do I want the story to do?
Context — where am I taking them?
Action — what are the leading, key, and consequential events?
Point — how will learners construct meaning?
Tool 5 — story test (short form)
The area I most need to strengthen is:
Tool 6 — learner entry
Where will I stop?
What will I ask?
What will I do after asking?
Tool 7 — performance markup
Marks I will use
Tool 8 — story bank entry
Name:
Topics:
Audience:
Intent:
Key event:
Change:
Best question:
Length:
Cautions:
Reference
For when the class has already started.
Can I use this story right now?
You have five minutes before class. You suddenly remember a story that might work. Do this.
The five-minute story build
1. INTENT — why am I telling it?
2. MAP — what is the key event?
2. MAP — what changed?
3. SHAPE — what context is essential?
3. SHAPE — what can I cut?
4. FACILITATE — where can learners enter?
4. FACILITATE — what will I ask?
5. TEST — does it connect, show change, remain relevant, and contain enough interest to hold attention?
The 30-second story decision
Check what is true right now
Reference
The last look before you walk into the room.
Am I ready to tell this story?
Purpose
Story
Audience
Facilitation
Delivery
Transfer
Reference
The five-part process, on a single page.
How do the eight tabs fit the five-part process?
Search your experiences. Follow the truth. Determine what you need the story to do. Choose a story that connects, shows change, remains relevant, and contains enough interest to engage.
Find the meaning at the center of the experience. Remember: the broad point the story supports and the point learners construct from the story are not necessarily identical.
Identify leading events → key event → consequential events. Look for causality. Find the change.
Use a structure appropriate to the story. For ICAP: Intent — what do I want it to do? Context — where am I taking them? Action — what happens? Point — how will learners gain from it?
Reveal yourself authentically. Invite learners in. Use your body deliberately. Show as well as tell. Ask. Wait. Let learners construct meaning.
After the story
Do not ask only: “Did they like it?”
Ask: What did they notice? What did they discuss? What did the story help them see? What connection did they make? What will they do differently?
That is the difference between telling a story and facilitating with one.
You do not need to become a professional storyteller. You need to become more observant.
Notice what happens. Notice what stays with you. Notice when an experience changes what you believe or how you act.
Then do the work. Find the events. Find the change. Understand why the story belongs in the learning experience. Shape it without strangling it. Invite learners inside. Give them enough room to make meaning.
And when the story is finished, save what you learned about telling it. Because the next time you need a story, you may discover that you already have one.
6 reference sections available online.
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