Lately, I’ve been having fun leading these “grateful encounters” storytelling experiences. It’s been a very meaningful experience to bring people together to reflect and share a “forgotten but unforgettable” story of an experience (from someone) they are grateful for. I lead these experiences both in-person and virtually, and both approaches can be very high-impact. At the retreat/workshop, I share the “origin story” of how these workshops started…it’s a good one :).
I’ve designed a lot of programs over the years that have been mostly for clients. This is a new workshop-retreat-keynote I felt moved to create for myself and to to impact others (and the world in a small positive way). You can watch this 2 minute video and do the reflective activity to join us in spirit.
Grateful Encounters Story Finding Reflection
Stories of People Who Changed Our Lives (Even If They Don’t Remember It)
Jot down the stories, experiences, and people that come to mind.
Gratitude Workshop Overview
Reflect and Share Grateful Encounters: Stories of People Who Changed Our Lives
This inspiring experience will help you find, develop, and share your stories of gratitude.
Discover and share the tale of that brief, transformative interaction—a life-changing moment you’re forever grateful for, even if it’s long been forgotten by the other person (or even you). Listen to stories from others in this gratitude workshop and leave feeling inspired (and grateful).
On your own journey, there were undoubtedly people that helped you – some for a specific instance and perhaps other people who have helped you over the years. Perhaps, you took the direction you did or made a decision because of your connection with them. While the memory of the interaction (or even of the individual’s name) may have faded, the feeling of gratitude likely remains.
This experiential workshop on story finding, making, and sharing is designed to help you not only make meaning of your experiences but also use story to inspire in your own journey. We will guide you through activities to help you reflect and develop your own story to tell.
Gratitude Workshop Storytelling and Listening Experience
The focus of the gratitude story (and workshop or training) can change based on the purpose for gathering the group…and there are many different directions we can go. We’ve even done a focus on something you are grateful for about your organization…or a co-worker, client, new innovation or even challenging experience. Please reach out if you are interest in bringing one of our gratitude soft skills training workshops (or even a storytelling for leaders workshop) to your group.
When the groups are small enough I love to jump in there to listen to the stories. This gratitude workshop is a transformative experience where participants (and myself) leave inspired and with an insight they didn’t know they had.
What Happens in a Gratitude Storytelling Workshop
The structure is simple, which is part of why it works. I guide people through finding a story, shaping it, and telling it, and the whole arc fits comfortably into an hour or stretches into a half-day retreat if we want to go deeper.
We start with reflection rather than discussion. I give people quiet time and a few prompts that help them search their own history for a person who changed something for them. Most people expect to land on a mentor or a parent. What usually surfaces instead is someone smaller and stranger: a manager who said one sentence in a hallway, a stranger on a bus, a teacher whose name has gone but whose comment has not. The prompts are designed to get past the obvious answer.
Then people shape the story. I share a light structure for building a short story that lands, and participants storyboard theirs. This is the design thinking part, and it matters. A story you have prototyped is very different from a story you are improvising, and people who think they are bad at storytelling usually discover they were mostly just unprepared.
Then they tell it, usually in pairs or small groups first. Telling a story to one person you just met is a much lower bar than telling it to a room, and almost everyone clears it. The listening is where the workshop earns its keep. Participants often tell me afterward that hearing someone else’s story moved them more than telling their own.
We close by making meaning of what happened. What did you notice about the person you chose? What does that say about what you value, or about the kind of influence you might be having on someone right now without knowing it? That last question tends to sit with people.
How These Gratitude Workshops Started
I have designed a lot of programs over the years, and most of them were built for a client’s requirement. This one I built because I wanted it to exist. I started by organizing gratitude storytelling retreats and workshops myself, for friends and for anyone who wanted to come, and kept refining them from there.
What surprised me is how well it travels. I expected it to work at retreats and in personal development settings. It also works at a corporate offsite, at a conference, and on a video call with people in five time zones. The virtual version is genuinely strong, which I did not anticipate.
The other thing I did not anticipate is how often it changes the room. Groups that have worked together for years learn something about each other in forty minutes that years of meetings did not surface. That is not a soft outcome. Teams that know each other differently work together differently.
Gratitude Workshop and Retreat Formats
Conference Keynote or Session
A working session of 45 to 75 minutes where the audience does the reflection and the telling rather than watching me do it.
Team or Leadership Offsite Segment
Often placed on the first evening or the morning of day two, where the connection it builds changes how the rest of the offsite goes.
Half-Day Gratitude Retreat
More reflection time, more stories heard, and room for the meaning-making to go further.
Virtual Gratitude Workshop
Works well for distributed teams, and the breakout structure gives everyone a real turn.
Year-End and Milestone Gatherings
Anniversaries, team transitions, and end-of-year sessions where reflection is already the mood.
Gratitude Training for Teams and Leaders
Many people reach out asking for gratitude training. Most of the time they are looking for something more meaningful than a lecture on why gratitude is good for you. They want their team to actually experience it together. That is how I design these sessions. Participants practice gratitude by finding, telling, and listening to real stories, and they leave with a practice they can keep using at work.
Gratitude Training for Teams
For teams, the session builds connection and trust quickly. People share a grateful encounter from their own lives, listen closely to each other, and then turn toward the team: who has helped them here, and how could they let that person know? Many groups end by writing or speaking a specific thank-you to a colleague, which often becomes the most talked-about moment of the day. We can also design a simple team ritual, like a short gratitude round at the start of a monthly meeting, so the practice continues after the workshop.
Gratitude Training for Leaders
For leaders, the focus shifts to recognition and culture. Specific, sincere appreciation is one of the simplest leadership tools there is, and also one of the most overlooked. Leaders practice noticing contributions, telling the story of what someone did and why it mattered, and building appreciation into how they lead their teams. This works well as part of a storytelling for leaders workshop, a leadership development program, or a leadership offsite.
Gratitude training can run as a conference session, a segment of a team or leadership offsite, a half-day retreat, or a virtual workshop, using the formats described above.
Contact Us About Gratitude Training
Choosing the Focus for Your Group
The focus of the gratitude story can shift depending on why the group is gathering. We have pointed it at a colleague, a client, a difficult experience that turned out to matter, or something people are grateful for about the organization itself. If you have a purpose in mind, we can design the prompt around it.
If you are weighing this against a more skills-focused session, the storytelling for leaders workshop is the version built around business communication, and the softest of the soft skills training covers the broader territory. This one is quieter and more personal, and people tend to remember it longer.
What is a gathering you would love to design for the people in your life?