Guideline for Working with a Group's Stories - Part 8 of 9

8. Connect stories to one another

Treat each story as a building block that can be pieced together with another one to generate greater understanding. Stories left in isolation are like cold statues in abandoned temples erected as grand testimonies of heroic accomplishments but devoid of depth and significance. I developed a group facilitation technique called Story Collaging™ (described in Part II of this book) for helping groups see the connections between stories. Leave no stone unturned. As members of a group create a shared history, lots and lots of stories will naturally emerge. Your job is to remember these stories and constantly look for how they relate to one another. You are also tasked with inciting others in the group to do the same thing.

Stories are reflection in motion. One story leads to another and before you know it you have a mosaic of experiences crisscrossing with one another. Stories are like the tiny pieces of glass in a stained glass window. Every time the sun shines through new colors and shades of meaning emerge. Story listeners function like the sun in our image of a stained glass window. This is one of the most exciting things I do as a facilitator. I never know what will surface. The stronger the connections between the stories and the greater the number of connections between them directly correlates with the quality of learning.