CREATING AND RUNNING WRITING WORKSHOPS

Over recent years I've created and hosted my fair share of writing workshops. Especially when working for The Clearing. While there we developed a series of Tone of Voice workshops for Tesco to help the brand's many representatives better communicate its values. 

We toured these day-long sessions around the country: from Hertfordshire to Dundee; Cardiff to Clerkenwell, helping customer service teams, internal communications teams, and employee branding teams get to grips with what the new face of Tesco should sound like.

We used art, copy, theatre, film and even the occasional Keynote slide to devise a thorough and thoroughly enjoyable workshop – and ultimately delivered it to over 200 people across a dozen or so small groups. The follow up was fantastic, with over 90% of participants saying they found the training to be valuable and something they planned to use thereafter.

Workshops like these are great for many different reasons. But mostly because they're a great leveller. As ice breakers go, there's nothing quite like having someone in senior management share a carefully crafted writing task aloud, while the rest of their team listen and feed back.

I believe writing workshops work best when they're open and interactive. So creating exercises that bring people together around shared tasks has always been a big part of my favoured approach. And what always strikes me about them is just how much natural ability almost everyone has. Giving people an environment where they can rediscover and express it is a real privilege.

If you'd like to chat about ways to better implement your brand's values and voice, feel free to drop me a line.