Story Telling with large groups

[Larry Peterson]

Thomas:

I find that surfacing the stories in a large organization through interviews
is a great approach.  It can be done using some of the perspectives of
Appreciative Inquiry, looking for the energy and positive momentum.  The
stories that shape the culture as described by Harrison can also provide
important learning.  The feedback to the group can be done in a variety of
ways, if there is the time to prepare.  The key thing for me is to recognize
that they are the stories that are going around and shape perception.
Post-modernists would say that they are the only reality.  Others say that
they set the context for understanding what actually happened. In either
case, they shape the energy and culture of the organization.

On the evening before an OS event, I have sometimes enabled a group to
reflect on its context through a variety of ways of getting the story of the
organization out in relation to the theme at hand.  One approach has been to
get people to form groups in relation to how long they have been in the
organization and then tell stories as to how the issues at hand were being
dealt with at that point in the organization's history.  This surfaces a lot
of interesting information about the people and the organization -- like who
are the elders, these issues have come up before in different ways, etc.

Larry

Larry Peterson
Associates in Transformation
41 Appleton Ave.,
Toronto, ON, Canada, M6E 3A4
416.653.4829
Fax 416.653.0609

lpasoc at inforamp.net
www.inforamp.net/~lpasoc
www.openspaceworld.com

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