Storytelling is a safe space for creative thinking, negotiating differences, and establishing commonality. Storytelling empowers the speaker and improves communication through speaking and listening. Stories are the most efficient way of storing, retrieving, and conveying information. Since story hearing requires active participation on the part of the listener, stories are the most profoundly social form of communication.
Are things falling apart all around you? Have you been hit with discombobulation? This fast paced video turns our prevalent notions of sense making on its head. It’s always bothered me that when we talk about story we usually talk about stories requiring Beginnings, Middles, and Ends. I don’t disagree. I’ve finally been able to put my finger on what I felt compelled to articulate…
Watch and see what discombobulation, stories, and a new way of thinking about stories adds to your current way of thinking about them. Then be sure to add your voice to the conversation, after all stories beg us to co-create with each other.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has taught us a lot about the basic things we require. There are the necessities like bread…water but what about less tangible needs and how do these needs express themselves in our organizations?
My wife is a child and family therapist working with families affected by adoption. Like bread and water children subsist on the connections they form; without these their development becomes threatened. In her field they term this waltz of intimacy attachment. We know it when we see it…imagine a child on a beach with an approaching rough wave – and a mother’s securing hand is ready for the taking without a child searching or asking for it. This attachment…this bond becomes a sort of unconscious part of our DNA driving the fruition and articulation of relationships.
Maybe it boils down this…are we available and responsive to one another?
Watch this 2 minute video as a conversation starter...
Here are a couple of thoughts on how we can put stories to work to help us develop greater organizational awareness of the small and large things:
We use stories to explain other people's behavior and develop strategies for how to interact with them.
We are also capable of considering alternative behaviors that go against our ingrained ones by being aware of what stories describe our nature and by imagining alternative ones.
Stories are the templates upon which new behaviors can be projected onto and actualized. We use stories to gain an understanding of who we are. Collectively our stories paint an accurate picture of who we are. If we can access this information, we give ourselves freedom. In other words we can break out of an old story and temporarily adopt a new one.
And for the final shameless product plug for a guy who loves to share but also does need to make a living I have a wonderful book of group process activities that can be used to help people experience these critical skills.
I find myself drawn to the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow...
"Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness. So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another. Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence."
How do relationships in organizations stack up with Longfellow’s observation? Has technology accelerated our relationships or hindered them? Is there any way to gratify those human needs that infiltrate our workplaces in the oddest ways…our needs to be accepted, respected, and valued by others?
Like a blooming flower relationships take time. In the ethos of our organizations we are called to cultivate and nurture the people around us. Sunlight, water, time, and a host of other hard to traces forces work their complex magic…
There may be no short cuts to forming relationships but the shortest distance between two people is a story.
Draw the stories of people around corporate imperatives and watch how people are drawn to each other and become more engaged performers.
Spend 2 minutes with me reflecting by watching in this video and the share your thoughts...
In other words you can’t step twice into the same river. Habits are the ingrained patterns of behaviors and thoughts that we habituate. Change takes us outside our familiar zone of comfort.
There's a paradox here. Change is as natural to us as is habituation. Think about your body. Within seven years almost every cell in your body is replaced. There’s nothing permanent or stable about life. However, our perceptual system is designed to perceive the world as stable. If it weren't, we would have an awfully hard navigating the world.
For me change management is not about creating stability in the face of chaos; rather, it’s about giving people tools to imagine new possibilities.
What does a Greek philosopher, a raging river and the game of Fluxx have in common. Watch this two minute and see:
Create organizational and communication processes that are structured but flexible. Then let the possibilities emerge and the game begin.
How have you managed organizational communication and learning in your organization to support change/ How have stories been a part of that process? Have you considered how you might work with story-based communication processes to stimulate engaging, healthy responses to the raging change we find in our organizations?
These two ideas are hardly the beginning of a conversation. Can't say it all in two minutes and neither can one person.
Take a moment and reflect on the game of chess and then share your thoughts of the other ways chess informs our ideas of strategic organizational communication. And for crying out loud...if you've got a story about chess start divulging!
Fire is a wonderful metaphor for understanding some of the subtleties of stories. Spend two minutes with me and reflect on what light fire can cast on our understanding of stories...
Wow...2010...I'm not one to make resolutions but I am interested in trying something new. I thought I would begin to blog more frequently by including video messages as a part of my blog.
So on the this day of Epiphany I thought it was a great time to reflect and share the gift of video blogging. The gift will only be complete if you add your voice to the conversation and if whatever I share becomes a catalyst for your own insights.
“The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human power to reflect.”
Vaclav Havel
We all could do with a little more thinking. Introspection is under valued and unpracticed. It is another one of those seemingly fuzzy things left outside of the walls of business yet nothing could be more important to the success of an organization and the well being of its members. Our ability to reflect is a defining characteristic of being human. So why do most of us prefer our bliss of oblivious autopilot in lieu of a more mindful orientation to the world around us? It takes time, discipline, and commitment. Given the finite nature of these assets we do not part with them easily. Socially, as evidenced by our educational system, we do not make reflection a priority. In many instances we go out of our way to discourage it.
Reflection requires focusing our attention in a single direction with circumspection. The image of an hourglass is useful in understanding the state of mind we need to achieve in order to benefit from our efforts. Individual grains of sand pass through a narrow point before they drop into a large collection area. When we concentrate it is akin to the narrow point of an hourglass. When we review an experience and it yields a wealth of insights it is akin to the large open collection area that the grains of sand fall into. From that narrow point of concentration a new vista of perception becomes possible. Our minds open up to new possibilities. We are able to look at our experiences in a totally new way. A reflective mind discovers insights in otherwise meaningless experiences.
The insights we gain from reflection are transformed into knowledge, which become raw chunks of reusable information. Herein lays the greatest challenge. How do we use these chunks? Knowledge provides us with a construct to manage and manipulate abstractions mined from our experiences but we have to find a way of applying them to new situations. When we look for applicability of our knowledge by being attentive to the moment we discover points of intersection. A new experience has some correspondence to a previous one. We leverage the pattern capabilities of our minds and move knowledge into the present. This pattern match guides our behavior. Some benefits include avoiding mistakes we have made in the past, exhibiting a greater capacity for empathy, demonstrating new understanding, or acting with greater confidence. When it comes to interpersonal or intrapersonal dynamics, knowledge applied in the present is wisdom. Arguably, the greatest personal power that we can pursue is wisdom. While information by itself is useless and knowledge brings with it a certain degree of influence, wisdom deepens us. The bottom line is that we cannot be effective without reflection. The feedback gained from flexing our internal powers of observation is invaluable and cannot be procured through any other means.
Now that we have established the importance of reflecting, how do we do it? Reflection can be broken down into four parts:
1. Visualizing
2. Sitting
3. Inviting
4. Sifting
Part I. of Reflecting: Visualizing
Reflection is made possible through the use of visualization. The word visualizing can be misleading. We need to use all of our senses when we visualize. The more senses we can invoke the richer our visualizations will be. Saint Ignatius of Loyola wrote a guide for monks called The Spiritual Exercises. He like others before him had an intuitive grasp of how our minds work without the benefits of psychological research we have today. The spiritual exercises are a collection of guided visualizations on Jesus Christ’s life. Loyola instructs priest to begin imagining a scene from Jesus’ life by walking through the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings of it. The result is a vivid and personal re-experiencing of a story. Athletes offer another perspective on the power of visualization. Mental rehearsals have been shown to result in muscular activity that can be measured. These mental rehearsals enable athletes to practice, learn, and improve motor skills. They can also be used to strengthen cognitive and psycho-emotional skills such as concentration, focus, and stress management. Visualizations are effective because they are not just mental phenomena they engage our whole being.
In order to reflect on our experiences we must relive them. Visualization offers us this ability. We re-enter our past experiences as an observer. Our imaginations fuel our archival inquiry and engage us as active observers. Like the spiritual exercises, we can also reflect on stories outside of our personal experiences. Whatever we visualize is projected into a space where we can begin to manipulate it. In this way reflection has the potential to be more than an analytical rehashing of an experience. Visualization creates a story while analysis by itself creates a collection of linearly associated data points. If we are to win any insights from our experiences or effectively find connections between our experiences we will need to work with them as stories.
Before continuing with our story-based communication skills and leadership series I thought I would take a moment to share a recent question I got from an attendee of a recent webinar Shawn Callahan from Anecdote and I did on leadership.
The question deals with manipulation and truthfulness of stories. Here is David's question in his own words and the resposne I emailed. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on the questions. It is a rich and very important question - lots of room here for deep reflection - so please add your voice...
I found myself later thinking of what was said about plausibility in stories. Perhaps it was a casual comment, somewhat unrelated to the main topic, but I believe that it's important to deepen into the issue of "manipulating" through storytelling. When I talk to people about how to improve communication and training skills at work, and explain how storytelling works, I sometimes get asked whether that's not plainly deceiving, as, in a way, it creates a parallel reality where facts match the storyteller's beliefs, values and messages. Just as in political propaganda, as they point out. This is a question I have some trouble answering, as I tend to appeal to personal ethics but some people find this argument too weak.
Stories can function as weapons. There are countless examples of how people abuse the power of tapping into the emotions and imaginations of others to coercively manipulate their constructs of reality. Clear violations such as con artists are easy to classify. However, the question is not a black or white one – thus why I quoted Mark Twain, “sometimes you have to lie a little bit to tell the truth.” At the end of this message I’ll share with you a traditional tale that was one of my mentor’s signature stories.
By their nature stories are fluid. Stories overlap memories with the context of the moment. I find stories in collages and clusters to be more truthful than pinning the entirety of a message in a single story. All the greatest stories are vast little universes with an orbit of small story fragments. The depth and veracity of stories is more easily perceived when scanning the pattern and intention of stories in proximity with one another. I am naturally distrustful of single isolated large perfect stories with clean beginning, middles, and ends and unmistakable story arcs. In many instances these stories have already been warped around the gravity of a pre-digested message. Stories are creative acts and furthermore I view them as co-creative stages on which themes, drama, and meaning emerge in a process of co-creation. The story is only one small part of the key. The decoding and collaborative sense making space generated by telling a story to trigger the stories of others is sacred. My experience has been that when this space opens up, storytelling and listening is authentic, deep, and responsive to the needs of the moment. The space falls apart when listening ceases and any one person returns to advancing a monocular agenda.
Stories told in the moment will adapt themselves to the language, vocabulary, and experience of listeners. It is a mark of an integrated storyteller to share stories in a way fitting to the audience. If that means elaborating upon an aspect of the story or coloring it with a nuance of detail previously untold or which stretches the factuality then I do not view this as either coercive or manipulative.
I feel your instincts of asking people to become aware of their intentions are a marvelous starting point. Stories allow us to imagine paradoxes and contradictions. So I feel that if we become wrapped up in equating honesty and integrity with authenticity we miss the richness of what stories have to offer us.
I hope my response is of some help to you.
Story of Lady Truth...
Thomas had done it all. At the age of 50 he had become CEO of a Fortune 100company; he had a beautiful family and all of the material things he could ever want. However, there was a gnawing question in Thomas’s mind. He remembered as a young boy listening to a gospel story about Jesus. In the story, Jesus is asked, “What is Truth?” Thomas had always wondered why Jesus never replied. So one day, Thomas turned to his wife and said, “Honey, I am so happy. Our life is wonderful. But I need to go on a quest for Truth.”
“Well, honey,” she replied, “if it is important to you, I think you should go. I’ll pack you a nice lunch, and you can give me power of attorney, and then you can head out tomorrow morning.”
The next morning, Thomas took his lunch and hit the road. He left his BMW in the garage; somehow he thought he should conduct his pilgrimage on foot. So Thomas walked and walked. He stopped at his company’s manufacturing plant. He had heard that workers hold the keys to Truth but he found no Truth there.
Next he went to the White House. He found a lot of hot air but no Truth. Then he stopped at the Vatican to speak with the Pope, but again he found no Truth. On and on he wandered, until he found himself in a very remote part of the world. At long last he saw a sign with an arrow pointing up a hill. The sign read, “Truth This Way.”
Thomas stumbled up the hill and came to a little shack with a blinking marquee, “The Truth Lives Here.” He nervously knocked on the door. A moment later the door began to creak open. Thomas craned his neck around the corner to get his first glimpse of Truth. What he saw made him jump back five feet. Standing before him was the oldest, most hideous creature he had ever seen. It was all hunched over. In a high-pitched, cackling voice, it said, “Yes, dear?”
“Oh, I am terribly sorry, I think I have the wrong house. I was looking for Truth.”
The creature smiled and said, “Well, you’ve found me. Please come inside.” So Thomas went inside and began to learn about Truth. For years Thomas stayed by the creature’s side, absorbing all of the intricacies of Truth. He was amazed at the things he learned. Then one day he turned to it and said, “Truth, I have learned so much from you, but now I must go home and share my wisdom and knowledge with others. I do not know where to begin. What should I tell people?”
The hideous old creature leaned forward and said, “Well, dear, tell them I am young and beautiful.”
In the words of Mark Twain, “Sometimes you have to lie a little bit to tell the truth.”
In this entry we pick up with the third competency of modeling of the Interaction Ring of the Story-Based Communication Skills model. In previous entries we explored the tow other skills of being able to select a story and tell a story. There are two aspects of the model skills. Here's the first of two discussion on the story-based communication skill of modeling.
While interviewing an executive at Dreyer’s Ice Cream I heard a wonderful story that is a perfect example of how stories are created by actions. This story takes places towards the beginning of the company’s history. It was a day or two before Christmas Eve and the receptionist working the phones was not busy. There had been almost no calls for the day. When the President walked by her desk the receptionist asked him if she could leave early. The President thought to himself, “I have one of three possible responses. I can tell her what she wants to hear and instruct her to forward the phones into voice mail and to go home early and have a wonderful holiday. I can tell her that every call is important and that by greeting each customer personally she helps the company succeed. Or I can tell her to make the decision herself.” The President decided to let the receptionist make her own decision. To this day he’s not sure what she decided nor does he care. She was the best person to make the decision and he trusted her to make it. This story is retold at every employee orientation. The President enacted the values of the culture he espoused and it left an indelible mark in the minds of his employees.
We don’t realize how significant our actions can be. Ad hoc water cooler conversations are riddled with stories of people’s behavior. Imagine your actions in terms of what stories they might generate. There is no need to be paranoid. Every person will not perceive our actions no matter how noble our intentions may be positively but we need to be more purposeful in how we go about them. A good modeler lives by example.
Exercise: Modeling Competency – Creating Stories through Actions
Identify a key message you want to communicate. Perhaps it’s a message you have tried communicating several times but it has failed to stick or maybe it’s a new idea you have been trying to advance. Consider what actions you could take to model it. One of my favorite examples comes from a client who was having difficulty with their quality control department. The CEO of the company held a luncheon and had everyone’s lunches purposely mixed up. Sometimes these actions will be single acts that have a big dramatic effect as in the quality control example however; sometimes you may need to try a series of actions. Think of what actions you can take to model your message. Will anyone else be involved in the actions you need to take? Why do you think these actions will be effective?
There are times when you cannot directly reach your target audience. In these instances you need to mold the actions of others. You need to act as a coach by helping others determine what actions they can take that have the potential to create stories. Guide them to look for opportunities that are a natural part of the organization’s activities. These are great places to look because when we introduce variation in otherwise stable behaviors they are likely to be noticed. When you are coaching someone have them consider the impact of their actions and how others might respond. Help them prepare for the possibility that their actions may not create a positive story. How will they handle any negative ramifications? Ask them to imagine how any of these can be transformed into positive ones?
All of these skills can be measured with the only assessment in the world that measured story-based communication skills (recognized in 2008 with an HR Leadership Award from the Asia Pacific HRM Congress).
I also have a book of self-development exercises to work on these skills with yourself or others. All of these exercises that map to the nine skills of the competency model
9. Build in more room for story sharing when designing learning
Time to retire heavily scripted courses. Facilitating experiential learning with stories is not for the faint of heart. It requires guts, courage, authenticity, and an ability to think on your feet. Here’s the secret: once you become accustomed to being in less control and collaborating with a group the richer and more significant the learning will be. We must be willing to surrender a certain amount of our positional power to be effective. Chuck Hodell, (2000) in his book, ISD From the Ground Up, makes this point in a subtle way by saying, “The better the course goes, the less chance there is that anyone will appreciate the effort that went into it” (p. 185). If you make stories a core part of your experiential learning strategy during an event though, you will be wiped out. As we discussed earlier in the chapter stories require active listening and this make them exhausting as well as exhilarating. Stories are the most effective when used as a tool to facilitate participant collaboration.
Even very technical topics or regulatory forms of learning can benefit from building in time for knowledge sharing through stories. Of course topics that are softer in nature require lots of time and space for stories. As we have become more and more harried in our daily lives we have lost the art of conversation. Good conversations are full of stories. When we design learning, less will always be more. I use other forms of instruction to give people variety and a break from the intense, reflective nature of dialogue through stories. Group dialogue saturated with stories needs to be at the heart of experiential learning. Even when we create event-driven experiences for people in learning, we are in essence giving them new stories to reflect on. In this way stories are effective because they help us enact our intentions and thoughts rather than announce them. More traditional forms of instructional design are focused on instructing and telling us what we need to know. Stories always lead by offering examples and an endless playground for our imaginations to unearth new treasures.
As a general guideline if you have not developed the course and there is very little room in the material for deviations or discussion, spend a few minutes at the beginning of the day of a multi-day session, after breaks, at the end of a learning module or any place where debriefs or questions have been built into the course, to share and elicit stories from the group. When facilitating other people’s course materials I have been known to give people a break from didactic lecturing by giving folks some quiet time to digest the material on their own. This is followed by a quick recapitulation and an opportunity for people to ask questions. This usually gives me a few minutes to query the group for experiences and stories relevant to the material just read. Admittedly, some courses will not lend themselves to the use of stories. Or they may require you as facilitator to pinpoint spots in the courses and fine tune the stories you tell. Remember if you tell a story and there is not enough time for people to respond with their stories, whatever story you tell will be best served by a self-less attitude. Your story should not be about impressing others or driving a simple point home. Your story needs to be rich enough that it is evoking people’s experiences. Ideally you want to be able to process this with folks but if there is not enough time just be sure your story is rich enough to cause people to reflect and synthesize their experiences in new ways.
Whether we are conscious of doing it or not we are constantly evaluating the authenticity of others. Whenever we detect even a hint of falseness or any other form of selfishness or negative intentions in someone we shut them out. Any hope of building a bridge constructed with mutual active listening is completely destroyed and most of the time there is very little chance of rebuilding it once we lose the trust of others. You might share an experience or two as a means of engendering credibility with a group. However, avoid telling stories for self-aggrandizement. It never achieves the kind of long lasting impacts of reflective, experiential learning that stories are perfectly suited for.
5. Make sure there is congruence between your stories and your behavior
We lessen the potential of our personal stories when our actions and stories do not correspond with each other. No one is asking you to be perfect. When leading a group we often need to accentuate ideals. If there is a blatant contradiction between stories we tell and how we act, we will ruin the climate of trust, openness, and reflection we have created by working with stories.
Stories are not for the faint of heart. Stories open the space between us and others. They are a scared tool for deeper reflection and insight. We have to let go of our need to control the thoughts, reflections, and learning processes of others. In their truest sense, stories are not a behavioral tool for hitting the right button in others to produce a desired, predictable outcome. The experiential nature of story demands vulnerability. Are we willing to learn in front of others? Can we remove the artificial boundaries that we erect in learning environments to protect our authority? Stories broaden our awareness before they focus it. Imagine an hour glass. The top of the glass is wide. The sand drops down through a narrow crack before it falls into a wide basin below. Stories are similar in this respect. As we explore the interconnections between our stories and their relationship to other people’s experiences the learning environment might feel scattered and chaotic. People might ask, “Where is this going?” Inevitably you will ask yourself the same question. Until suddenly the story drops through the narrow hole of analytical discourse and opens into a new vista of insight and meaning. The story has been a catalyst for learning and is a new buoy for anchoring future ones. None of this is possible if we do not make ourselves vulnerable with a group. Sharing a personal story is a wonderful way of softening a group and modeling the openness stories require to work their magic.
Over the next series of posts I'd like to share with you nine general guidelines I have found useful when working with groups and their stories.
1. Be Able to Expand or Collapse a Story
Stories can vary in length. Stories can be as short as a sentence or two. In fact I have been in situations in which a single word becomes associated with a story already known by the group or that has emerged from my time with them. For example, consider the sentence, “The emperor has no clothes.” If a group of learners were wrestling with a theme of mass denial, the reference to the classic Hans Christian Andersen story of an emperor who is wearing no clothes, and the reluctance of people to point this out, could bring quick clarity to learners.
As a facilitator, it is your job to decide what the right amount of detail for a story is. If you are using a story as an energizer or to give the group a chance to catch its breath, lavishing a story with rich detail may be a wonderful way of massaging people’s tired brains and emotions. On the other hand, if you are stringing together a complex set of interconnections between ideas in a discussion and key learnings, your story will be more succinct. The composition of the group also factors into your decision of how much detail to include. This necessitates that you can reconstitute a story with either less or more detail, depending on your analysis of the group and its needs.
Even if you are not the one telling a story, it is your job as a facilitator to guide participants to share their stories with the appropriate amount of detail. This is done by acting as a good model, anticipating the tendencies of individuals, and, if necessary, giving them some constraints before they launch into their telling.
One of the ways I have been able to wrap mind around stories is to think about some of the different ways they function and the unique effects these functions have. Here's a summary chart:
Stories are used to:
Stories have the following effects:
1.Empower a speaker
2.Create an environment
3.Bind and bond individuals
Entertain
Create trust and openness between yourself and others
Elicit stories from others
4.Engage our minds in active listening
5.Negotiate differences
Listen actively in order to:
Understand context and perspective
Identify the root cause of a problem
Uncover resistance and hidden agendas
Shift perspectives in order to:
See each other
Experience empathy
Enter new frames of reference
Hold diverse points of view
Become aware of operating biases and values
6.Encode information
7.Act as tools for thinking
8.Serve as weapons
9.Bring about healing
Create a working metaphor to illuminate an opinion, rationale, vision, or decision.
Establish connections between different ideas and concepts to support an opinion or decision
Think outside the box to generate creative solutions and breakthroughs.
When you tell a story to a group think in terms of how it will help you set the stage and model the ground rules you wish to follow for a learning event. As a general rule of thumb, if we are a little vulnerable, circumspect, and reflective, and if we don’t take ourselves too seriously, our intentions will spread through the group and positively affect its behaviors. People will also form better bonds with one another. Each story told exposes more points of connections between people.
Steer away from using stories to just to encode information. Stories that encode predigested messages such as allegories or fables offer the weakest form of communication and learning. For example,
The Fox and the Lion
When a fox that had never yet seen a Lion, fell in with him by chance for the first time in the forest, he was so frightened that he nearly died with fear. On meeting him for the second time, he was still much alarmed, but not to the same extent as at first. On seeing him the third time, he so increased in boldness that he went up to him and commenced a familiar conversation with him. Acquaintance softens prejudices.
The story above illustrates a point but lacks richness since it is being used as a vehicle to deliver a simple message. Encoding information is only one function of stories and any story will always have information encoded in it. When we limit stories in a premeditated way to carrying one or two simple messages, we throw away the opportunity for complexity to emerge. Although it is probably one of the most familiar functions of stories, it is often the least useful one for creating compelling experiential dialogues that can catapult learners to new insights. Experiential learning requires us to help people suspend their habitual ways of thinking to make room for new perspectives.
The most important function of stories is that they require active listening. By their nature stories trick us into hearing ourselves and each other in deeper and fuller ways. When people listen actively to one another they enter the world of another person. Our understanding of another person’s story is gained by working with bits and pieces of our own stories to find common connections between the story being shared and our own experiences. While we are dependent upon our experiences to construct meaning out of what another person shares with us, we are less likely to narrowly fixate on evaluating their story in terms of our world view. Like dreams that can present contradictory elements yet still be real (e.g. swimming and flying at the same time, or a person that appears in the dream is two people at the same time) stories invite us to work with conflicting things. When we actively listen to someone’s story we are not as emotionally invested in our point of view. Differences become opportunities. Empathy can be a wonderful byproduct of stories. Since experiential learning bridges the gap between people’s current knowledge and desired learning, stories facilitate leaps of imagination that might never be realized by other modes of instruction.
Stories are wonderful tools for thinking. You can place people vicariously into a story and use it to work through new ideas and solutions. For example, if we you were leading a discussion on leadership you might ask the group to explore how the story and characters of the Wizard of Oz offer insights into the nature of leadership. As long as people know the story they will jump right into it and use it as template for abstract thinking. The energy this creates in a group is contagious. The story mode of discussion will touch every kind of thinking and communication style in the room. Creative types will love coming up with zany connections between the Wizard of Oz and leadership while more analytical types of people will enjoy exploring the details and nuances of the connections being found.
Stories as weapons or tools for healing are the last two functions of stories. When someone uses a story to coerce a point of view or manipulate people’s perceptions to serve their agenda it becomes dangerous. Influence is a natural and ever present facet of communicating but when the power of stories is used to maliciously mislead people it constitutes an abuse.
Whether we use stories as a weapon consciously or not it’s a violation of people’s imagination and disrespects the space of active listening created by stories. Here’s an example. I was attending a costal planning meeting. During the course of heated debate on where boundaries of a no-fishing zone should be drawn someone held up a picture of a handicapped person fishing off a pier that was located in an area of the no-fishing zone being proposed. A picture is worth a thousand words and a story is worth a thousand pictures. Put the two together and you have a powerful punch. The commissioners at the meeting were taken by the picture and its story about providing access to handicapped people to fishing. It affected their vote. The pier depicted in the picture was not included in commission’s no-fishing zone. Later it was discovered that the picture had been posed; the person in the picture was not even handicapped. The picture and its story had been used as a weapon.
Conversely, stories can be used for healing. There is a rich tradition of the role of narrative in many therapeutic practices. Facilitating group processes even in an organizational setting can unearth some intense emotions and perceptions. Revisiting a story and examining how the story relates to other experiences adds unpredictable layers of meaning and dimensionality. During the process of sharing a story, dialoging with others about it and reflecting, the story is released from the past and given meaning in the present. In this way stories provide the raw material for encouraging new insights that can lead to creative solutions and the possibility of healing.
When stories commingle with each other pathways emerge. Stories can unlock novel ways of seeing ourselves and making sense of the world. I was facilitating a leadership workshop where after sharing many experiences a senior level executive became aware of how he had a habit of showing disrespect towards his colleagues. Without any sermonizing or prescription on my part or the group, this executive saw a pattern in his stories. These stories projected a reality he was not satisfied with and one which he wished to alter. Through the stories he gained an invaluable lens that helped him to see himself more honestly and which gave him the courage to free himself from repeating self-defeating stories.
As you become more aware of how the nine functions of stories operate you will get better at naturally leveraging their unique effects to facilitate breakthrough communication and learning. I no longer think about it. Sharing stories and eliciting people’s stories is what I do every time I am leading a conversation with a group. I have developed sensitivity to how these functions of stories and their unique effects impact group processes. I strive to seize the opportunities they create while remaining attentive to the ethical implications of putting people in learning situations they may not want to be. Stories can be raw and not everyone wants to either look at themselves or be exposed in front of others. There are no hard and fast rules about this stuff, as you develop a feel for healthy boundaries learn to watch people in the group carefully to discern subtle cues as to how much they are willing to share and how deeply they want to reflect on it with the group.
Explicit – information is presented in a direct, precise and clear manner.
Implicit – information is encoded in packets of compelling and memorable nuggets.
Logical – information is organized in an easy to follow linear fashion.
Evocative – information is more emotional in nature and lends itself to less structured types of presentations (including non-linear threads that can be followed and navigated based on people’s needs and interests).
Controlled – information is structured to leave as little as possible to people’s interpretation.
Emergent – information is meant to trigger people’s experiences, personal associations, and linkages.
Sense Giving – information is used to minimize uncertainty by offering tangible and discernable chunks of meaning.
Sense Making – information requires people to generate more of their own meaning and in some instances may leave people feeling uncertain as to the nature of the information until they do make sense of it for themselves.
Bear in mind both buckets are critical to the success of effective organizational communications. It’s just we tend to think of stories as another tool in the first bucket; we need to understand that stories operate best when they act as stimuli as opposed to information containers.
Stories achieve their greatest punch when they are used to create interlocking webs of meaning. A story used as a solitary chunk of communication is far less effective than when we find innovative ways to string associations of stories together. If one story paints a powerful picture what will several well integrated stories do, especially if we invite people to co-create them with us? Although this may seem counter intuitive, stories used to stimulate the storytelling of others yield the best results.
Think of story-based communication strategies as cloud chambers in your organization…
Cloud Chamber - apparatus that detects high-energy particles passing through a supersaturated vapor; each particle ionizes molecules along its path and small droplets condense on them to produce a visible track (definition courtesy of www.answer.com)
Stories act as organizational cloud chambers. They create a space of dialogue and sense making. This “story space” is where people interact with each other’s stories in different ways. Some interactions might occur as people reflect and react to organizational collaterals peppered with stories, some interactions might happen when we create formal and informal opportunities for people to respond to the stories we use to incite dialogue, and still other interactions, once we have put the initial stories out there, will happen without us doing anything whatsoever to orchestrate them. As stories elicit more stories by bouncing off of each other, organizational trajectories of meaning and understanding emerge. People’s actions provide a visible albeit subtle and ghostly trace of the impact of story-based communications.
Stories are not another lever in a machine. Machines or systems take known controlled inputs that produce reliable and consistent outputs. Stories are more chaotic. Once you stir up or perturbate the social fabric of individual nodes of sense making (aka the people in an organization) unexpected behaviors emerge. What is lost in control is gained in the propagating strength of the communication signal and the rolling waves of self-directed behaviors it has the potential to create. Communications function less like instructions and more like picture frames waiting to be filled with collages of vibrant photographs.
Stories fold in and out of themselves to reveal subtle worlds of meanings, purpose, and connections.
They are gentle transporters bound by time but that travel beyond the boundaries of what we have experienced at any given point in time.
Stories free us to move through a landscape of change. We leave the dusty road of the familiar and embrace a void where we can find the freedom to chose and perceive new realities and project worlds of our own making.
Stories can either crush illusions we have become enslaved to due to habit or they can lift our veils of fear and familiarity and give us a glimpse of new ways of being. Here we will find a place where we can be our unique selves while in communion with others.
Terrence L. Gargiulo
May stories... Stir you heart, Inform your thoughts and guide your actions
Here are some thoughts that give shape to some of the ways I have come to think about stories...
Stories are fundamental to how we communicate, learn and think.
The shortest distance between two people is a story.
Stories are less about telling and more about listening and eliciting.
The only reason to tell is a story is to trigger more stories and insights from within ourselves or draw out (elicit) the stories of thers.
We have all the story equipment to connect with yourself and others in rich ways. How often are we using it? Do we use it in conscious and purposeful ways? Do we create environments that encourage others to share their stories?
Stories go beyond the obvious ways that we use them to encode information.
Play with the counter-intuitive notions that stories are implicit in nature; encoding messages clear cut messages to move learning, emotions, ideas or values is only the tip of the iceberg and perhaps the least important capacity of stories.
To be called a story - a story does not need to have a clear beginning, middle and end or recognizable story trajectory. By accepting this we are neither negating story in its obvious forms or diluting the notion of stories.
Stories create spaces of trust and relationships. They are living entities made real and present by the reflecting, remembering, and imagining of people engaged with each other.
Stories achieve their greatest power in concert with each other.
Stories are emergent in nature.
Through stories we enact versus announce our intentions.
Our actions impregnate the moment with new stories creating possibilities and ripples of sense making and future sense giving of others.
Terrence L. Gargiulo, MMHS is an eight times author, international speaker, organizational development consultant and group process facilitator specializing in the use of stories. He holds a Master of Management in Human Services from the Florence Heller School, at Brandeis University, and is a recipient of Inc. Magazine's Marketing Master Award, the 2008 HR Leadership Award from the Asia Pacific HRM Congress, and is a member of Brandeis University’s athletic Hall of Fame. He has appeared on Fox TV, CN8, and on CNN radio among others.
Books: Making Stories: A Practical Guide for Organizational Leaders and Human Resource Specialists, The Strategic Use of Stories in Organizational Communication and Learning, On Cloud Nine: Weathering Many Generations in the Workplace, Stories at Work: Using Stories to Improve Communications and Build Relationships, Building Business Acumen for Trainers, Once Upon a Time: Using Story-based Activities to Develop Breakthrough Communication Skills, In the Land of Difficult People: 24 Timeless Tales Reveal How to Tame Beasts at Work, The Trainer’s Portable Mentor.
Terrence is a frequent speaker at international and national conferences.
Are things falling apart all around you? Have you been hit with discombobulation? This fast paced video turns our prevalent notions of sense making on its head. It’s always bothered me that when we talk about story we usually talk about stories requiring Beginnings, Middles, and Ends. I don’t disagree. I’ve finally been able to put my finger on what I felt compelled to articulate…
