A story is a great way to open a plenary session. There is the story of the
two axe-men in a log-chopping competition to find the world champion. It is hot, tiring work and after one hour the first man stops for a rest. The other slogs on getting ever more confident of winning as he notices his opponent stopping frequently for rests. At the end of the day the judge counts the logs chopped and the second man is flabbergasted to find his opponent has chopped more. He asks “what is your secret?” and the first man says “I stopped every hour to sharpen my axe!”.
This story (told to me by a colleague Ralph Lewis) opens up a discussion about performance and making time for learning. For senior managers (who are perhaps leaders of axe-men) they are inspired to think about the conditions they create for others to sharpen the axe. This first use of storytelling (
to inspire our briefing sessions) motivates our constant gathering and adapting stories from real life.
A less obvious but perhaps even more powerful use, is in
enabling others to express their stories. We experimented with storytelling in an off-line project called “Breakout Stories” and have applied our lessons from this during leadership programmes with global organisations including the British Council, Ciba, Nokia and Philips.
How we use this narrative approach is to ask people to tell stories of past, present or future:
- Past: to recognise roots, heritage, formative experiences, celebrate success, lay ghosts to rest, let go of baggage, draw a line under the past, release them to move on and bring their energy into the present
- Present: to open eyes, extend awareness, explore reality as it is, meet other stakeholders, gather multiple perspectives both on the challenges and the resources available to them, find common purpose and ambition
- Future: to visualise a desired future in which the deep intent or ambition is lived out and fully realised, and the steps on the journey can then be laid out as the basis for project milestones and resource deployment.
Storytelling is a way that we release and channel people’s energy.