Guideline for Working with a Group's Stories - Part 6 of 9

6. Elicit more stories than you tell

The shortest distance between two people is a story. One of the chief reasons to tell a story is to elicit them. Stories act as triggers. We want to draw stories out of people. As the number of personal experiences shared increases, so does the quality and quantity of experiential learning. Even if someone does not share his or her story out loud, our story will set off a series of internal reflective events. People scan their index of personal experiences to find ones that match or resonate with the ones we tell them. It is not always a direct one-to-one correspondence. In other words, the stories we elicit in others will not always have an easy to see relationship to our own. We are after connections.

In order to elicit stories in others we need to work on three levels:

LEVEL NAME DESCRIPTION

LEVEL 1
Trust
• Building history with others
• Creating joint stories
• Having shared experiences

LEVEL 2
Climate of Sharing
• Willingness to share our own experiences and be vulnerable
• Inviting others to share
• Demonstrate resonance and understanding of others experiences
• Pacing

LEVEL 3
Attending
• Rephrasing questions
• Developing alternative questions
• Matching others’ language