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Feature Article: Hope for the Future
"There have been civilizations that did not use the wheel,
but there are no civilizations that did not use story."
Ursula Le Guin
I sat down to write my newsletter a few weeks ago planning a very up-beat message about how we can come together in
conversation to restore hope for the future. I was going to build on the ideas of Margaret Wheatley and Lynne Twist and Julio
Olalla to inspire you to recognize the power of purposeful
conversation. Then I heard the horrific news from Virginia Tech.
Suddenly, I was despairing rather than full of hope –overwhelmed by the enormity of this terrible tragedy. Feeling
depressed and unable to work, I decided to watch the memorial convocation being held on the Tech campus.
What I saw and heard was a profoundly moving conversation –a
conversation that brought people together to weep, share their grief, console one another, and to remember the victims; a
conversation offering love, support, connection and yes, even
hope for the future. At the end of the service, inspired by a poem
written and spoken by faculty member and poet, Nikki Giovanni, the crowd spontaneously broke into the Tech cheer – the very
cheer usually employed to inspire Tech teams to victory. These familiar words echoed through the hall with powerful energy.
More and more people began to join in the chant. As I watched, something remarkable happened. The mood in the hall shifted
from despair to hope –hope created by inspirational, unifying language that said “somehow we will get through this together
for together we are far greater than any one of us is alone.”
That afternoon at Virginia Tech, I watched and listened as
university, government and religious leaders used the power of language to connect to the human spirit. Their words made us
feel our connection to each other; they helped us believe we would smile again; they reminded us of pain and suffering
experienced by innocent victims all over this world; they created
a change in the mood and the thinking of many who listened. Each of these strong and effective leaders wove an empowering
narrative bringing people together with hope and confidence in
the future. What a lesson in leadership under very difficult circumstances.
Nikki Giovanni’s poem was a narrative with a purpose. It told
the story of the Virginia Tech community -- strong, resilient and
united in spirit. Provocative language reassured. “We are
strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than
we think and not yet quite what we want to be.” Her words empowered listeners declaring that it’s up to us to create the
future. “We are alive to imagination and open to possibility. We
will continue to invent the future.” These lines take us from where we are to where we can be -- leading us to a future we
can help create. Certainly, not all leaders are poets. However, leaders who can master storytelling are able to persuade,
inspire, influence and motivate people to action.
“Telling a good story is the oldest tool of influence
in human history. It’s like a mini-documentary of what you have seen so others can see it too.” Annette Simmons
Leadership Lessons: Organizational Storytelling
Since time began, we humans have used storytelling to share
news, teach survival skills, establish moral and ethical rules,
and to explain the cosmos. What is new is that storytelling is
now recognized as a powerful technology that’s taking its place in corporate America alongside the traditional business
communication. Stories work because they revolve around what
matters to people. “Most of our experience, our knowledge and
our thinking is organized as stories. Story is the fundamental instrument of thought,” writes Mark Turner in his book The Literary Mind. “Rational capacities depend on it. It is our chief
means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning and of explaining.”
Leadership is about inspiring people to act, and stories can do
just that. Whether you are in an organization, a concerned citizen, a physician, a teacher, and/or a parent,
learning to use the emotionally compelling narrative is an essential to get the results you want. Daniel Pink,
in his ground-breaking book, A Whole New Mind, provides many examples of the way that organizations
have embraced storytelling to supplement, not replace, analytical thinking. 3M gives its top executives
storytelling lessons. NASA has begun using storytelling in its knowledge management initiatives. Xerox,
recognizing that its repair personnel learned to fix machines by trading stories rather than by reading
manuals, has collected its stories into a database called Eureka that Fortune estimates is worth $100
million to the company.
A recent Booz Allen review concludes that the most powerful role of stories today is to ignite and drive
changes in management policy and practices. I am reminded of the workshops on preventing sexual
harassment that I have conducted in my career. Over the years, I’ve heard many stories, some shocking,
some comical, some with happy endings, and others with devastating consequences. I learned very quickly
to choose from these stories to bring home the impact on real people of harassment and other forms of
discrimination. I will never forget one young man who had walked in the room with dread, sure he was
wasting his time and furious that staff was strongly advised to attend. At the end of that session he
acknowledged he had been profoundly changed by the stories the woman sitting beside him shared about
her experiences before the existence of any legal protection against discrimination in the workplace. Real
life stories pack an emotional punch to bring home the message far more effectively than boring statistics
and recitations of policy accompanied by a very dull stack of Power Point slides.
Steve Denning, a leading expert on organizational storytelling, makes a strong case for purposeful narratives
because stories can reach large numbers of people amazingly rapidly. People get the idea in a flash and
what’s more, the technology is free. “The purposeful narrative accomplishes business results in ways that
traditional abstract modes of communication can’t,” according to Steve Denning. All of us are already
storytellers and we can learn how to use storytelling to get business results. He has created a handy
Storytelling Catalog to help you tell the right story and the right time.
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STORYTELLING CATALOG
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If your objective is:
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You will need a
story that:
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In telling it, you
will need to:
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Your story will inspire such
responses as:
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Sparking action
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Describes how a successful change was implemented in the past, but allows
listeners to imagine how it might work in their situation
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Avoid excessive detail that takes the audience’s mind off its own
challenge
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“Just imagine…”
“What if…”
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Communicating who you are
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Provides audience-engaging drama and reveals some strength or
vulnerability from your past
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Include meaningful details, but make sure the audience has the time
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“I didn’t know that about him!”
Now I see what she’s driving at.”
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Transmitting values
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Feels familiar to the audience and will prompt discussion about the
issues raised by the value being promoted
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Use believable characters and situations, and never forget that the story
must be consistent with your own actions
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“That’s so right!”
Why don’t we do that all the time?”
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Fostering collaboration
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Movingly recounts a situation that listeners have also experienced and
that prompts them to share their own stories about the topic
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Ensure that a set agenda doesn’t squelch this swapping of stories—that
you have an action plan ready to tap the energy unleashed by this narrative chain reaction
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“That reminds me of the time that I…”
“Hey, I’ve got a story like that.”
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Taming the grapevine
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Highlights, often through the use of gentle humor, some aspect of a rumor
that reveals it to be untrue or unlikely
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Avoid the temptation to be mean-spirited, and be sure that the rumor is
indeed false
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“No Kidding!”
“I’d never thought about it like that before!”
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Sharing knowledge
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Focuses on mistakes made and shows how they were corrected and why the
solution worked
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Solicit alternative and possibly better solutions
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“There but for the grace of God…”
“Wow! We’d better watch that from now on.”
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Leading people into the future
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Evokes the future by taking the listener from where they are to where
they need to be
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Be sure of your storytelling skills or use a story in which the past
serves as a springboard to the future
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“When do we start?”
“Let’s do it!”
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“Your word is the power that you have to create the events in your life. It is through the word that you manifest everything.”
Don Miguel Ruiz
TIPS, TOOLS AND PRACTICES: We Are Our Stories
You are a hero…yes YOU! “But I’ve never done anything brave,” you protest. I’ve led a pretty ordinary life up
until now. Never have I rescued even a puppy from a burning building.” Yet you are a hero. You are the Hero
of a fascinating and utterly important story—the story of your life. Each of us creates our own story…it’s the
way we make meaning of the events of our life. Here’s the way it works: 1. An event occurs. 2. We make up
a story about it (interpretations, explanations, conclusions). 3. We take our story as The Truth. 4. We forget
we’ve made it up. 5. We begin living our story! This internal narrative about our life holds great power over us
until we become aware that we have created it in the first place. Now, here’s the cool part. When we
recognize that we are creating our story, then at any point in time, we can create a different story. So the
question is not “Am I right or wrong?” The better question is “How’s my story working for me?” (Language and the Pursuit of Happiness, Chalmers Brothers)
A simple, yet powerful technology to help us change our stories is described by Marilee Adams in her book, Change Your Questions, Change Your Life. She calls it QuestionThinking. Great results begin with great
questions. The ability to think productively rather than reactively lies at the heart of QuestionThinking. The
aim is to shift our orientation from fixing a problem by hunting for answers, to solving a problem by first
coming up with better questions. If we can’t make this shift, we’ll just keep recycling the same old answers. Remember—if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got. Imagine the
shift in perspective that occurred when nomads stopped asking, “How do we get to the water?” and changed
the question to “How do we get the water to us?”
The kinds of questions we ask ourselves can keep us stuck, drive us to despair and failure, or they can
inspire us, open up new possibilities, and move us to success. Adams identifies two categories of
questions that create very different results—Learner Questions and Judger Questions. We all ask both
kinds of questions and we have the power to choose which ones to ask in any moment.
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LEARNER-JUDGER QUESTIONS
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Judger Questions
What’s wrong?
Who’s to blame?
How can I prove I’m right?
How could I lose?
How can I be in control?
How could I get hurt?
Why is that other person
so clueless and frustrating?
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Learner Questions
What works?
What am I responsible for?
What are the facts?
What’s useful about this?
What are my choices?
What can I learn?
What is the other person
feeling, needing, wanting?
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© 2008 Bette George & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
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or by an electronic means is granted, provided that it includes this notice: “Copyright 2008 by Bette George &
Associates, Inc. From Conversations on Leadership and Life
, an e-newsletter by Bette George, website: www.bettegeorge.com email: bette@bettegeorge.com.”
Conversations on Leadership and Life is a bi-monthly e-newsletter written by Bette George of Bette George
& Associates. In each issue, Bette offers best practice tips and resources, innovative ideas and inspiration
to help you begin to create the change you want to see in yourself, your workplace, your community.
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