COURSE NUMBER: MBA291S.11

COURSE TITLE: Storytelling for Leadership

UNITS OF CREDIT: 1

INSTRUCTOR: Sharif Karmally

PREREQUISITE(S): None

CLASS FORMAT: In class presentations, skill building exercises, one on one presence and presentation coaching, lecture and one self-reflection project.

REQUIRED READINGS: Two textbooks on Storytelling, two articles and several video viewings.

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: A mixture of class participation, storytelling presentations, and a self-reflection project.

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:

The journey to authentic leadership begins with understanding the stories of your life. Your life story provides the context for your experiences and through it, you can find the inspiration to make an impact on the world.

The ability to create and tell certain kinds of stories is not only a useful tool, but an essential prerequisite to being an inspirational, authentic leader. Stories provide visual maps and images for conveying who we are, where we came from and why we are going in a particular direction. Storytelling is data with a heart and soul. You will learn to harvest your own experiences for powerful lessons and identify the authentic moments that resonate with the audience. For leaders, whose job it is to manage change, storytelling facilitates learning and is a vehicle to assist others in overcoming obstacles, generating enthusiasm and team-work, sharing knowledge and ultimately leading to building trust and connection. It is an effective way to communicate to various stakeholders at every level of an organization. This session will give you strategies, skills and tools for connecting to and speaking from the place of your rich life experiences and true, natural voice.
The goals of this elective are for you to internalize the fundamental principles behind stories that educate, influence, motivate, inspire and connect. You will practice the three elements of telling powerful leadership stories:

· Story Structure: crafting concise and powerful stories from personal experience that paints a picture and lands the message. Clear beginning (vertical take off), middle, end and learning.
· Story Content: defining the intent; the learning, theme, topic or teaching behind telling the story,
· Story Delivery: using voice, breath and focus to connect with the audience and be fully present and authentic while storytelling.

There will be an in class analysis, in terms of structure, story and delivery of several CEO’S that use stories in their presentations. These case studies provide you with real world examples of how to communicate narratives that are the building blocks of how to inspire, motivate, persuade and build trust, as a leader.

You will practice crafting and telling 'Who I Am Stories”? These are our leadership journey stories. Stories of inspiration, motivation and influence. There will be crafting and telling four leadership journey stories, outside reading, video viewing, a visual story project (River of Life) and one written homework assignment.

CAREER FIELD: Working with narrative/story is an often effective approach with any and every audience across all career fields: the worlds of science, engineering, technology, finance, heatlhcare, corporate, non profit, and academia.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: Sharif Karmally, MBA

Helping people embrace their leadership stories and use them to enact change is what brings Sharif to life. Since 2014, Sharif has been part of the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute and a Professional Faculty member at Berkeley-Haas, teaching courses on leadership, communications, and storytelling. Sharif has worked closely with Arina Isaacson over that time, including co-teaching this elective with her.

In addition to his teaching work, Sharif is the Head of Product Marketing for the Education market at Adobe. Sharif leads a team focused on empowering students and educators to unlock their full creative potential, tell rich visual stories, and build the future through engaging apps and experiences. Sharif draws on his career in Technology and his former career in Investment Banking to translate class material into strategies that students can use in their everyday life.

When Sharif is not working, you might catch him performing at All Out Comedy Theater in Oakland, where he is a cast member for the Saturday night main stage show. Sharif has been performing improv theater since 2013, and he draws on its principles and exercises when teaching concepts like presence, spontaneity, creativity, collaboration, and communication.