I continue to be amazed at the generosity of spirit in the storytelling community. There is such an aura of sharing. Copious, rich material is offered on Web sites. Practitioners generously give of their time to answer questions and promote their craft.

The latest gem I’ve found is a fabulous 50-page booklet, Story Guide: Building Bridges Using Narrative Technique, on the site of Sparknow, a knowledge and communication consultancy. Want a slew of ideas for how to apply storytelling ideas to support knowledge sharing, change, and communication in organizations? Here they are, free for the taking. These exercises are also great for building community.

The exercises and guidelines include:

• Warmups and icebreakers
• Questions for drawing stories out of participants
• a 7-element structure for shaping and sharing stories (with handout)
• Checklists
• Object and display exercise
• Postcards technique
• Jumpstart stories (Seth Kahan’s technique)
• The half-a-story technique
• The future story technique, with handout (Madelyn Blair’s technique)
• Story-in-a-story technique
• Troubleshooting log

There’s not a lot in the booklet about how and why story works — but plenty of other books and articles address those topics. What the booklet does offer is illustrations of how the techniques are actually applied.

It was created partially by and for SDC, the Swiss Aid Agency, but any organization can use it.

You can download the booklet here.

There’s a phrase I love from the booklet — “experience capitalization” — capitalizing on sharing experiences.