Tales for Coaching

Using Stories and Metaphors with Individuals and Small Groups

Margaret Parkin

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780749461010
• eBook ISBN: 9780749461027
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Coaching is rapidly proving to be an invaluable aid to personal development and a successful way to enhance performance within organizations of all types. More and more people are also discovering how to use storytelling to bring about change and reinforce learning. Tales for Coaching combines these two approaches into a powerful and effective technique to assist personal change.

Showing you how and when to use stories to maximum effect, whether you are coaching an individual or a group, the author demonstrates how your coaching can have greater impact with the effective use of storytelling. Complete with sample stories that can be read aloud in a variety of coaching situations, Tales for Coaching includes 50 tales that will immediately help coaches, trainers, managers and educators to reinforce key messages or stimulate fresh thinking.

Part 1

Are you sitting comfortably?

1

Introducing storytelling

The story begins

Are you sitting comfortably? I hope so, because if you are it means that you recognize that well-known phrase, probably from your childhood days, as heralding the beginning of a story. Indeed, that’s just what this book is about: it’s a story about storytelling, from its ancient beginnings and original purpose to, most importantly, the part it has to play today in the modern business world – particularly for those of us whose role involves coaching, training and the development of others.

If you are sitting comfortably, in eager anticipation, you can consider yourself to be part of an age-old tradition that dates back to the beginning of time – well before the birth of Christ and certainly prior to the advent of the written word. Indeed, this was the original and primary function of storytelling. It was the means of passing on information and knowledge orally from one person to another, or from one tribe to another, or from one village to another, in much the same way as we currently rely on television, radio, newspapers or the Internet to keep us up to date and help us make sense of what is going on in the world.

Storytelling has always been an essential and universal human characteristic. The history of every society in every part of the world includes its own version of storytelling – and most societies continue to have storytelling activities in some shape or form today. Over the years, storytellers themselves have taken on many different names and guises throughout the world – griots in West Africa, troubadours and minstrels in Western Europe, pandits in Hindu India, bards in the Celtic world.

During the Middle Ages, people began to realize just how dependent they were on the storytellers for reliable information and knowledge, and as their power and influence became apparent, the profession itself gained in respect and admiration. Some storytellers were frequent visitors at court, and were recognized as highly influential with the king or queen of the time. Very often it was the jester who was the only member of court who could get away with telling the truth – albeit cleverly veiled in the guise of a joke or story – without having his head cut off! Using bizarre animals as story characters helped these early storytellers to satirize the political events of the day; they could make fun of their leaders without fear of retribution. And so, fables and allegories and metaphors were born, and thousands of years later, we are still using them. Although they now might be in a different format – situation comedy, political satire or pantomime – their intention is still to point out the follies and frailties of human behaviour.

Good storytellers found themselves to be much in demand during the Middle Ages, which naturally led to many of them becoming quite affluent. In some cultures it was even seen as something of a status symbol – whether you could afford a professional storyteller for your tribal gathering – in just the same way that for some children in our modern day culture a party isn’t a proper party without the hiring of Mr Chuckles, the child entertainer, and just as some organizations would feel cheated without the obligatory motivational rousing of the ‘after dinner speaker’. However, as with all high-profile jobs, along with the fame and fortune came the acceptance of responsibility, and in some cultures, the storytellers, prior to being allowed to practise their art, were actually required to take a solemn vow, in which they declared that any information they passed on to others would be:

• accurate;
• interesting;
• memorable.

Indeed, in some modern-day storytelling societies the same sort of vows still apply, and any would-be storyteller has to commit to abiding by them. Just think what a difference it might make to the quality of the communication within organizations if this was a pledge that could be introduced there!

The simple passing on of topical information was not the only function performed by the original storytellers. They also had an important role to play in building communities, and preserving and sharing historical data. In ancient times, tribes would gather round their campfires at night to tell stories of their heroic deeds and accomplishments. These stories would then be passed on from one to another and would gradually spread, like a ripple effect, to more and more people within the community. Eventually everyone would be talking a shared language that came to represent the tribe’s cultural values and history, which in turn helped them to make sense of their world and their part in it.

Today, although people in organizations might gather round the photocopier or in the staff restaurant rather than round an actual ‘campfire’, the process of swapping stories with each other is just the same as it was a thousand years ago – and it serves the same important function. People laughing or crying together at the sharing of a story builds the community and bonds people together.

The original storytellers were also involved in education and the transfer of cumulative wisdom, which ensured the continuity of experience from one generation to the next. In communities the world over there has been, and still is, a tradition of the old educating the young. Milbre Burch, a storyteller in Pasadena, California, says:

Storytelling has its roots in the tribal traditions of oral cultures back when memory was the library. Elders passed on their wisdom through the vessel of story. Storytelling is still transgenerational today – it appeals to multi-age audiences.

(Burch, 1997)

In our modern-day organizations we can still witness this transfer of cumulative wisdom, when those people whom anthropologist Peg Neuhauser (1993) refers to as ‘the tribal elders’ (highly respected or senior members of the organization) are called upon to share their memories as part of an induction or orientation programme to educate new employees in ‘the way we do things’. If these stories are told positively and enthusiastically, in line with good storytelling traditions, and, most importantly, are congruent with organizational behaviour, their effects can be far more powerful and believable than any corporate video, newsletter or handbook that you might employ. Researchers have shown personal storytelling to be the most credible and memorable form of communication.

However, if the stories are incompatible with organizational behaviour, then both storyteller and story lose all credibility. Peg Neuhauser goes on to say: ‘If you tell a story to illustrate facts, events or “the way things are done around here”, and the story does not match the listeners’ experience, the stories are likely to be rejected.’

I worked once with a human resources director who, on the same day that he very piously told a group of trainee managers how important it was, in performance management, never to act rashly when making a decision that affected others, dismissed an employee on the spot for ‘his negative attitude’ and was later taken to court for unfair dismissal. His particular brand of storytelling and related behaviour became legendary – for the wrong reasons!

In ancient Eastern cultures, storytelling was used particularly as a gentle yet powerful form of counselling and therapy. In those days, if a person visited the doctor suffering from depression, rather than receiving a prescription for Prozac or another anti-depressant that we might expect today, it was common practice for the doctor to ‘prescribe’ a fairy story, myth or traditional tale, which bore some similarity to the patient’s own dilemma and on which they were expected to meditate. It was felt that contemplation of the story would provide the patient with a metaphor or different perspective to consider and offer clarity to the problem that he or she was facing. In his book, The Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim (1991) says:

The figures and events of fairy tales also personify and illustrate inner conflicts, but they suggest ever so subtly how these conflicts may be solved, and what the next steps in the development toward a higher humanity might be.

(Bettelheim, 1991)

Traditional stories can often provide a source of comfort for the listener by introducing a ‘helper’, ‘guide’ or other protective person, who always appears just at the right moment, in order to help the protagonist on his/her journey. The helper can take many forms – a fairy godmother, a guardian angel, a Buddha – or perhaps some sort of conscience figure who stands on your shoulder and whispers advice in your ear.

In the field of therapy, this tradition has been carried on very successfully into contemporary practice. Therapists have for some time accepted and used storytelling as an effective yet non-invasive form of therapy. In the 1960s and 1970s, Milton Erickson was renowned for his use of metaphorical ‘teaching tales’ that would amuse, surprise or even shock clients into affecting some change in their lives. The neurolinguistic programming (NLP) school and Gestalt school of therapy all include stories and metaphors as part of their toolkit for creative thinking and problem solving.

These then were – and still remain – the three main functions of storytelling:

• to pass on information and knowledge;
• to educate and encourage the transfer of cumulative wisdom from one generation to the next;
• to encourage personal healing and creative problem solving.

Until the mid 1400s, storytelling was riding high in popularity and doing very nicely, thank you. After Gutenberg invented his printing press in 1450, people became far more interested in seeing stories in print and the storytelling profession understandably took something of a drop in terms of its popularity and perceived usefulness. In a famous essay entitled, ‘The Storyteller’ written in 1936, Walter Benjamin took a pessimistic view of the future of storytelling:

The art of storytelling is coming to an end. Less and less frequently do we encounter people with an ability to tell a tale properly. More and more often there is embarrassment all around when a wish to tell a story is expressed.

(Benjamin, quoted in Rosen, 1987)

One might easily believe that to be true, particularly with the advent of radio, television and film – and now, of course, information technology and all that that brings. One could say that in modern times, the apparent need for an oral storyteller has almost evaporated, except that, paradoxically, over the last fifty years storytelling activity is actually on the increase! Jack Zipes, Professor at the University of Minnesota and Patron of the Society for Storytelling, says:

Storytelling is everywhere – in the schools and libraries, in homes and in the TV tubes, in the pubs and restaurants, during the lunch breaks, in airports and train stations, on the phone, in the theatres and cinemas. Contrary to what Benjamin believed, storytelling was not about to perish in the 1930s and certainly does not appear to be on the verge of perishing today.

(Zipes, 1996)

In fact, since the 1970s in particular there has been a steady increase in the number of professional and semi-professional storytellers throughout the world, and an equal number of societies and organizations to help them do it. (See the back of this book for a list of the best known.) There are also a growing number of storytelling festivals, symposia and workshops operating around the world. The public-speaking organization, Toastmasters...

Table of contents

• Cover page
• Title page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: Are You Sitting Comfortably?
• Part 2: Then I’ll Begin…
• References and Further Reading
• Useful Addresses and Contacts
• Index