Winning Communication Skills - London

The MINAB, St. Ethelburga's and the London Inter Faith Centre have designed a workshop on communication skills exclusively for faith leaders, to build better bridges with the community and communicate vision with others. This was an unique opportunity held on 5th July 2011 to bring Imams and Priests together to enhance their skills in communities with their local communities and to share experiences.

The workshop focused on communicating to others is by sharing stories, especially personal stories, as these can express very directly who we are and what is important to us.

Stories convey a lot of information very fast, and can be very memorable and engaging.  Stories help others to connect with us as people and break down stereotypes.

Religious teachers have always used stories to engage others.  As ministers, we can learn to use our own personal experiences to create stories that help others to connect with who we are and what we are trying to achieve.

This workshop explored how we can become better leaders and better communicators by making good use of our own stories.  It included:
•    identifying the stories that will engage others
•    using basic storytelling skills to improve impact
•    ideas and inspiration for putting stories to work
•    discussion about the role of story in religion
•    time to share your own story with other faith leaders.

The workshop was Led by Joanna Yates MA, BSc., an occupational psychologist who works with storytelling in the corporate world.  She also runs a true life storytelling club in Maida Vale called Spark.

                                              London Inter Faith Centre