The art of the perfect example: how to share success stories without crushing souls

We have all been there. You are facilitating a workshop on market systems development, the energy is building, participants are engaged, and then you decide to share that perfect example...

You know the one - the beautifully documented case study with jaw-dropping numbers, elegant interventions, and outcomes that would make any donor weep tears of joy (does Katalyst ring a bell?).

But instead of inspired faces, you are suddenly looking at a room of people realising their own projects might as well be finger painting compared to this masterpiece. Congratulations - you have just weaponised your examples.

When good stories go bad

Imagine you are a project manager struggling to close the first 'innovative win-win-win business model' agreement. You enthusiastically share how another project catalysed a 400 per cent increase in smallholder incomes within 18 months. Maybe it was meant to motivate but it’s just fuel on fire. The project manager’s barely started and can’t even picture impact at scale.

We can easily forget that examples are not just information, but emotional experiences with every case study carrying an implicit message about what 'good' looks like. When this becomes 'you should be achieving miracles by Tuesday,' we have completely missed the point.

The magic happens when examples become stepping stones rather than monuments. I learnt  the hard way. I was sharing an elegant story at a workshop about catalysing an entire industry in 18 months. The participants were implementing their first pilot activities. They spent the rest of the day asking if they were 'doing it wrong' because their progress felt so incremental.

A team new to market facilitation doesn’t need to hear about complex multi-stakeholder platforms. They need to know that  sometimes success can be as simple as one shop owner trying a new product display. That’s their stepping stone, not someone else's summit.

The most powerful examples are rarely the polished final reports - they are the messy, honest stories that include the failures, pivots, and 'we had no idea what we were doing' moments. In my next workshop I changed tack and shared an example of a project that tried three different approaches before anything worked – complete with the confusion, the pivots and the failures. The room relaxed. People started sharing their own struggles and half-formed ideas.

Learning the hard way

A few years ago, I was facilitating a workshop explaining core value chains using one of my vegetable examples - farmers, traders, processors, retailers. It was working beautifully. Everyone was nodding, those satisfying 'aha!' moments were happening around the room.

Then a colleague raised her hand: "What about consultancy markets? How does this work for services?"
My mind went blank. Vegetables suddenly felt useless.

I had been caught off-guard, scrambling for a  case study on the spot. But this time, I paused,  took a breath and said something that felt terrifying: "I don't know. Let's figure it out together."

What happened next was magic. We dived into role-play. One of the colleagues became a business owner needing help, another played the consultant, and everyone else helped us map it out. The room transformed from passive listeners to active investigators. We mapped out the business owner's pain point, the consultant's expertise, referral networks, payment structures, follow-up relationships. It was messy. We backtracked constantly. People debated whether marketing services belonged in the 'core' chain or were supporting functions.

Did it follow my carefully prepared agenda? Not even close. Did they learn value chain thinking better than any pre-packaged example could have taught them? Absolutely.

Why co-creating is powerful

When I admitted I did not have all the answers, something shifted. I stopped being the expert and became a guide facilitating discovery. The participants weren’t just hearing someone else's example - they were creating their own, providing a level of relevance and buy-in that no external case study could match.

The stumbling and corrections were not roadblocks, but progress markers showing that value chain analysis is iterative and contextual, not formulaic.

These days when I am stumped, I say, for example "I don't know, but let's explore it together" or "That's a great question - what do you think?" -  turning the room into co-investigators rather than passive listeners.

And when sharing examples, I now watch for warning signs - glazed eyes, crossed arms, or silence that signals overwhelm. When I spot them, I  pause and ask: "What questions does this raise about your own context?" The responses show whether I am building confidence or intentionally crushing it

I have also learned that not every moment calls for an example. Sometimes, the best thing is to hold back and let participants wrestle with the ideas. I use examples to spark energy, unblock stuck thinking or when someone asks "has anyone ever tried...?" But I hold back when people are in flow, sharing their own ideas, or already deep in problem-solving.

Thinking like an artist

These days, I curate examples like a DJ curates a playlist. For teams just starting out, I share small wins - the shop owner who agreed to try a new product display, the farmer who tested one new technique. For advanced practitioners, I dive into complex multi-stakeholder challenges.

I tell failure stories before successes. "This intervention failed spectacularly in Nampula, but here's what we learned..." gives people permission to experiment without guarantees. Most importantly, I watch faces, not slides - watching for the warning signs of disengagement, stopping mid-example to ask: "Is this relevant to what you're facing in your context?"

I am still building my facilitator toolbox - but I’ve understood that great facilitation doesn’t make participants say, "wow, that other team was brilliant." But rather, “ I get this and have ideas for my own context.”

The goal isn’t to clone successful stories or dazzle with benchmarks. It’s to help practitioners shape their own path, one adapted intervention at a time.

Sometimes that means sharing the perfect example; more often it means having the courage to learn alongside participants when the answers aren’t clear.