Leaders who become comfortable consistently enacting these nine principles of stories will set in motion a ripple of positive effects that lead to organizational results…

Here's a distillation of the key story behaviors I have learned over the years in developing story leaders:

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 leader, 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 leader 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.


2. Incorporate material relevant to the group into stories

Good storytellers know how to customize a story to a group. Think back to when you were a kid and your teacher personalized a story by using your name or one of your favorite things as a detail in the story. Didn’t you feel engaged and excited to become an integral part of the story? Was your imagination stimulated? The same is true for adult learners. We love to see ourselves in the situations being painted by a compelling story. Our techniques for incorporating relevant material into stories with adult learners can be as simple as weaving in a personal fact to richer ones such as referencing other people’s personal stories. As you become more adept at this you will find yourself naturally weaving in all sorts of artifacts from the group’s process or history. In this way stories cease to be stale since they offer tellers a way to stay invigorated. The very act of weaving in new material with the story will create opportunities for the teller to uncover new nooks and crannies of meaning.


3. Be willing to be vulnerable with a group

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.


4. Be authentic

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.

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.


7. Be open, respectful, and non-judgmental of the stories people share

Treat all stories with respect. When someone shares a story they have given us a part of themselves. Handle it accordingly. The fragile pieces of our identity rest in our narratives. Never feel entitled to know anyone’s story. People will share what they want, when they are ready, and in a manner that does not violate their sense of themselves. However, you will be surprised at how willing and eager people are to exit the precarious myth of their separateness and embrace a sense of belonging granted by tying their experiences to those of others in a tapestry of shared consciousness.

The most vivid pictures we own are the stories in our hearts. Stories support a lattice of human experience. Each new story acts as a tendril tying us to the past, making the present significant, and giving shape to the future. Stories by their nature are a microcosm of who and how we are, so be sure you’re always respectful and non-judgmental. We can never fully understand the mysteries of someone else’s journey. Stories have no need to compete with one another and stories exist to coexist with each other. Act as an unbiased, self-aware, gracious curator and stories will usher in a cornucopia of delights and wisdom.


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 leader. 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.


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 leader 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.

Although these nine guidelines for leaders are simple and clear they need to be supported by real skills. It’s never as easy as it sounds. There are nine innate story-based communication skills that can be developed and cultivated.

Closing thought…

“The only reason to share a story is to elicit stories from ourselves and others. Spend more time eliciting stories than telling them. Actively listen to the stories and watch how they can improve communications and build satisfying, productive, rewarding relationships.”

Here's a short video you might enjoy reflecting on getting into the organizational story flow...


OK: So give me a call…415-948-8087. Here’s the long version of the pitch…

Anything worthwhile that looks easy on the surface requires the time, skill and gifts of someone wired to bring that into the world. I have been graced with the God given gifts of facilitation…and the understanding and articulation of techniques and organizing principles of story-based communication skills .

Let me guide you in applying these principles in concrete ways that relate to the challenges your organization is tackling. The application of these skills, the architecture of solutions aligned to organizational objectives and the facilitation of this stuff requires a gracious pro. It’s mine to give and of course it's how I make a living….I have a passion for inciting insight in others. Let’s get to work today email me – terrence@makingstories.net or better yet call me – 415-948-8087.

Blessings,
Terrence