Speaker
Author
Business Storyteller

MEET YAMINI NAIDU, CSP
Australia's Number 1 Business Storytelling Speaker - Captivating leaders and corporate audiences as the world's only economist turned business storyteller

For over 15 years, Yamini Naidu has been at the forefront of business storytelling Australia. Through her books, her masterclasses and her transformative speaking keynotes, Yamini has been connecting, engaging and inspiring audiences in the areas of business storytelling and leadership.

Why Storytelling?

Business storytelling helps us to stop wasting time on the unnecessary (more PowerPoint-heavy presentation stacks, overloading our audiences with ever more information).

Storytelling gives us a different strategy that is fresh and relatable in business, so we are not condemned to putting in the hard yards and wondering why it’s not working.

And storytelling helps us avoid the drunkard's search: it is not the most obvious or easiest place to look, but it will give us the richest rewards

What is the drunkard's search?

A police officer sees a drunken man intently searching the ground near a lamppost and asks him what he is looking for. The man replies that he is looking for his car keys, and the officer helps for a few min- utes without success. Then the police officer asks the man whether he is certain he dropped the keys near the lamppost.

‘No,’ comes the reply, ‘I lost the keys somewhere across the street’. ‘Why look here then?’ asks the surprised and irritated officer. ‘The light is much better here,’ the intoxicated man responds, as if stating the obvious.

Abraham Kaplan, the first philosopher to examine behavioural sciences systematically, referred to this as ‘the principle of the drunkard’s search’, a type of observational bias that occurs when people search for something only where it is easiest to look.

Yamini is an economist turned business storyteller and works with leaders and business professionals helping them craft, find and share stories that connect, engage and inspire. Whatever you are trying to achieve in business, storytelling can help you get there faster… guaranteed!

BUSINESS STORYTELLING FOR LEADERS

WORK WITH YAMINI

KEYNOTE SPEAKING

How to entertain, inform and inspire any audience. Yamini Naidu, CSP is not just a speaker, but a transformative experience.

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MASTERCLASSES

Immersive, Experiential and Participatory. We immerse you in the world of storytelling and then we get you to actually do it!

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X-FACTOR

When you hear the words X factor – you immediately start to wonder
What is my X factor? Do I even have one? What if I don’t have one?

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WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

We brought in Yamini Naidu into AHI because we thought we could build storytelling skill... although for many of us, to be truthful, we didn’t quite believe we had the ability. In less than 2.5 hours, Yamini convinced us otherwise. She helped us take a nar rative of nearly nothingness and help us make it extraordinary. She showed us the beauty of a good story and the science that drives it. It is a skill that will now sit with all of our participants forever... it will help us in our work, it will help us commu- nicate with our colleagues...and it will help me get my teenage children to clean their room. With great thanks, Yamini.

Mark Henderson, Chief Executive Officer, AHI (Australasian Housing Institute)

The ability to create a connection and shared under- standing with another person is a valuable human gift. The art of storytelling is powerful in creating that connection and understanding. Yamini Naidu is a master in the art of helping leaders to build sto- ries that create a vision for the future, creating con- nection and trust. I have worked with Yamini for eight years and I am constantly guided by the princi- ples she taught me as I know it will help me build a compelling message that people can relate to.

Noeleen Carey, Organisational Development Manager – Leadership, Workforce Transformation, Engagement and Change Management, RMIT University

I’ve yet to meet a person who hasn’t called themselves ‘Yamini’s #1 fan’ after seeing her speak. She is breathtaking in every way. Authentic and professional, hilarious and insightful, big on inspiration but even bigger on practical value. Audiences don’t just learn a few things or feel good for a few hours after seeing Yamini on stage. They find the courage and clarity to make immediate changes in their work, life and relationships, resulting in a tsunami of positive impact in their careers, families, organisations and communities. If you want a speaker who doesn’t just nail the brief, but leaves your audience enthralled, pick up the phone and call her agent ASAP!

Mykel Dixon, award-winning speaker and Creative Leadership Expert, author of Everyday Creative: A dangerous guide to making magic a work

Yamini presented an engaging and impactful storytelling masterclass to hundreds of members of our Business Chicks community. She delivered her unique presentation with passion, commitment and beautiful storytelling. The feedback from the audience was overwhelmingly positive — she truly captured people’s hearts and minds.

Olivia Ruello, CEO, Business Chicks

One of the greatest enduring skills of leaders is their ability to convey messages and learnings through Storytelling. It has been with us for centuries and will remain for many centuries to come. Yamini is to storytelling as apple is to pie. They go together in a natural way. The ability to convey messages through stories, with humour and feeling makes them memorable. Yamini makes us all better story- tellers and therefore leaders.

Peter Baines OAM, Founder, Hands Across Water

I have been privileged to have a long association with Yamini. She brings a positive spirit and infectious energy to her work and always leaves behind a lasting impression. More than 10 years on, people from my old team still comment on Yamini’s engaging educational sessions, with great content and challenging fun exercises that have made a real difference to their ability to connect with people in their lives.

John Burgin, Chairman ICT Committee, ANZ India Business Chamber