The Power of Story

We are exploring the Power of Stories by creating a collection of our own stories and collectively review them for common themes. We will then organise the themes into a model of power in story and test to see how well our model fits.

Pace - by Jon Jenkins
The Secret - by Janet Danforth
The Trip To Mahmad - by Jon C. Jenkins
When the story comes alive through my own experience – by Stephen Thorpe

Pace
Jon Jenkins

What I mean by spirit, in this sense, is the event when something happens to a group that occasions an image, a feeling of awe (the simultaneous precognitive experience of fear and fascination), and an act of will and leaves a kind of residue.

I was a team leader for a community development project in a village called Pace in Mississippi. Pace is about 10 miles from where the three civil rights organizers were killed 10 years earlier.

The village was mostly black with a few rich white farmers. Members of both communities supported the idea of the project but there was tension. On the third day about 100 people were sitting in a large hall waiting for the plenary to begin. As the starting time passed and then an hour and then an hour and a half, we became more and more restless. We sang songs and told jokes.

One of the white rich farmers and a black teacher came into the hall and to the front of the room. They explained that a dilapidated building owned by the farmer and collapsed and killed the high school aged niece of the teacher. The girl had taken off from school to attend the consultation. She died on her way to the meeting. Silence filled the room. Images ran through my mind and a jumble of emotions ran through me: remembering the beautiful young woman, fear that an already tense situation could become dangerous, sorrow for the mother, concern about the rest of the group, a picture of the old buildings in the block long business district and many others.

The aunt then said that the funeral was to be held on the coming Saturday. It was to be attended by members of the community only. The girl’s family were together and doing as well as could be expected. The farmer had taken a tractor and destroyed the rest of the old building. She then said that the girl’s mother wanted the consultation to go on. It was too important to be stopped.

In this tragedy something magical had happened.

The Secret
Janet Danforth CPF IAF Assessor

I was sweating as I approached the conference room. I knew I had to take the workshop at the IAF Conference, but it was the last place on earth I wanted to be. Things technical are not my strong suit, and watching my profession morph into one requiring technological accouterments was not my idea of fun.

My friend, Cameron Fraser said this particular workshop would demonstrate the best technology he had used to support collaborative sessions with teams in different locations. He told me I had to learn more about it.

I knew he was right, too. Clients were beginning to ask if we would facilitate geographically distributed IT teams. We said "yes" and now I needed to find out how to use technology to support these teams.

It was the 90's and it seemed everywhere I looked at that conference technologists were pushing the latest, greatest solutions for meeting the challenge of facilitating teams made up of people in vastly differing locations.

I'll share something with you; I have dyslexia which gets in the way when I communicate with written words and numbers. Number inversion and misspelling is something I'm great at. When I facilitate face-to-face meetings I've developed all sorts of compensation techniques that allow me to be effective and efficient in helping teams achieve their purpose, while keeping my secret to myself.

I was scared to death that real-time typing in a public would blow my cover. If teams saw my inability to spell, if they saw me invert numbers, what would happen to my reputation? I wanted none of it.

During the workshop I listened to the instructors tout the benefits of their product. I waited and worried that any minute we would be invited to actually belly up to the computers in the room and test the thing. I could smell my fear.

About a half-hour into the session the time I dreaded came. My colleagues seemed eager to test drive the product. They seemed thrilled with the prospect of adding this to their offerings for clients. All I could think about was exposure, and all that would entail.

I think having dyslexia makes me especially aware of those for whom writing and typing is not a good way to communicate. Sometimes the physical aspect of sharing in writing is just too difficult, and they tend to stay silent. It is easier for the facilitator to protect them in face to face meetings, through careful choice of processes, than on-line.

I know I didn't fully participate in the session that day. I was spending the bulk of the time thinking about how this change would affect me, and people who communicate the way I do.

Over the years I've learned to communicate better real time. I have gone public about my disability and a giant weight has been lifted from me. My clients don't seem to mind the extra step or two I sometimes inject into the work.

I still worry about the contributions we my miss from valuable team members who are learning disabled like me or in some other way. The beauty of facilitation is that we have the tools and the expertise to gather information from people in what ever way they need to give it. The challenge of facilitation is to remember that there are people like me who cloak their learning disabilities in a variety of behaviors some of which my even appear to be dysfunctional.

The Trip To Mahmad
Jon C. Jenkins

I had been invited to India to help with the first consultation for a cluster of villages for the Institute of Cultural Affairs on the subcontinent. It was held in Sevagram the village of Gandhi's ashram in central Maharastra. The consult involved several surrounding villages. The consult was difficult there were lots of logistic problems. There were lots of questions about how the consult should be done and what the final document should look like.

We completed the writing, handed the translation over and started back to Bombay by train. It was good to be done, it was good to be going to Bombay and it was nice traveling with people who had worked hard together for the past four weeks.

When we arrived in Mahmad, the train stopped and waited at the station. We were used to the delays of Indian trains and so continued our conversation with worrying about it. The conductor then explained that the train had stopped because there had been an accident up the line and the train would go no farther.

A couple of us were sent to get refunds on tickets; a couple to go to the bus station for tickets and the rest got the luggage. When we all met at the bus station, thousands of stranded travelers were trying to get busses to Bombay and we were not any where near the front. It would be at least a day and more likely several days before either the track would be cleared or we would get a bus out. We decided to try the long distance taxi drivers. We were discouraged but knew that persistence was not a guarantee of success but the only road available.

Bimrao Tupe and I led the way by virtue of being engrossed in conversation and not noticing that the others were trailing behind. We turned a corner down a darkish alley that opened into a kind of field. I looked off to my left and realized we were walking through the red light district and all of the young women were convinced we were likely customers. I became embarrassed and turned to the front. There was a girl of 14 or 15 with a thin see through rag for a sarong with no underskirt. She was picking through a garbage pile. Her face was distorted in a way that made me think that she was retarded.

When I saw her, a newsreel of images began to flash through my mind. I saw a little boy in Sicily in the early 1960s begging for cigarettes. I saw a young Filipina in Manila with a look so joyless that I could almost taste the brutality of drugs and prostitution she lives with. I saw a leper that sat on the steps of the ICA house in Bombay and remembered his wife and children who slept on the curb a half block away. I saw a man wrapped in cellophane walking down a mountain road in Japan. I saw winos in Chicago. I saw a woman whose boy friend in a drunken rage nearly blinded her with her own high heels. I saw a grammar school friend scarred for life in a fire that had started in his apartment the landlord maintained in a substandard condition. I saw a girl so strung out on heroin I knew she would be dead in months.

I felt the burden of the whole of human suffering drop on me. Not only did I know I was responsible for this destruction of human dignity but I could actually do something about it. I was responsible not in a cause and effect way but I was obliged to act because I could respond. The burden grew heavier with the knowledge that effective action required much more than doing something about the mad girl in front of me.

Every once in a while this little mad girl, now my friend, appears at my side and asks, "What are you doing with your life?"

When the story comes alive through my own experience
Stephen Thorpe

I have a story in mind that was told to me by my PhD supervisor - Dr. Philip Carter. I believe it is a Chinese story originally. I'll present the story here and then follow it with how it comes alive in my own life.

A man is walking down his street and he falls into a large hole.
It is dark and wet in the hole and he gets angry, angry at just about everyone.
He tries to find his way out, but he just can't do it.
Eventually someone passing by takes pity on him and helps him out of the hole.

On the Second day as he goes down his street to check out that hole again.
He looks into the hole, gets too close and falls in.
It is still dark and wet in the hole. Again he gets angry, angry at himself.
Eventually, with a lot of effort, he manages to find his way out of the hole.

On the third day... the man again walks down his street again.
He knows the hole is there and pretends not to see the hole and closes his eyes.
Once again he falls into the hole.
This time he remembers and finds his way out of the hole.

On the fourth day... the man walks cautiously down the street.
He sees the hole and this time walks around it. He is pleased.
But the world goes dark again. He has fallen into a second hole.
He climbs out of the second hole and walks home.

On the fifth day the man goes for a walk....
.. and chooses to walk down a different street.

In my recent life I have had a few struggles with my university with access to support funding for my PhD. There's a fund of about NZ$1000 to pay for books, equipment and attendance at conferences (those sorts of things).

The first time I applied for some partial funding to attend the IAF North American conference in Texas (2002). I had discussed it with my supervisor and he agreed it was a great idea. So I got the forms organised, paid for my registration and booked a flight. As a bonus I had arranged to travel with Dale Hunter, whom I had started working with at Zenergy. She was the IAF Australasian Regional Representative and had written 4 books on group work and facilitation. Unfortunately a week before going my funding was declined by the vice-chancellor of research in the faculty. I was pretty furious as it would mean I would need to organise a loan from somewhere in order to go (and I had to pay $2500 for my flight in 4 days time). In the end it took 8 meetings with different people in the faculty and I did get some funding towards my trip, with some serious help from my supervisor.

The second challenge I had with funding was when I wanted to attend the Australasian Facilitators conference (2005). Three new people on the faculty were now in charge of co-ordinating the PhD funding. They had created a new policy which meant that our funding was now within the operating budget of the faculty, it was no longer discretionary, and any funding that we didn't use would no longer carry over each year. So down the funding drama hole I went! I sent out a global email to all other PhD students asking if they had any issues with this new policy like me.

Many agreed, however I got a very strong reaction from the faculty. They saw my approach as being adversarial and inappropriate. My supervisor saw my approach as acting out my issues with authority and un-cooperative. In the end it took several emails and 3 meetings to
organise the funding several months after the conference.

The last challenge I had with funding was when I applied for funding for our Freeconference calls (the After Action review), and for our www.onlinestory.net website. Both of which were declined by a new acting head of faculty. Instead of getting into the drama this time, I thought "If I only I can take my own advice and apply some creativity here..." So after seeing about 8 different choices, I organised a meeting with the new acting head of faculty last Friday. We had a chat about my thesis and what the funding was for. Not only did he agree to fund the calls and the website, he also asked how else the faculty can help.

I called my supervisor after the meeting and reminded him of the story he'd told me and how my life seemed to be mirrored in the story.
"Do you remember how the story ends?" he asked.
"No...I can't quite remember". I said to him.
"The man goes for a walk....and chooses to walk down a different street". He replied.

So that's the powerful challenge in the story for me. How to create change in myself so that I see my wider choices and don't even go down that street. Each time I fall in the hole I learn something new about myself.

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