6 Reasons for Story Practice
Story Practice is about being able to handle the tools that enable you to make the most of metaphors and narrative. Story Practice facilitates the movement between the imaginary and the ‘real world’ to assist clients to find new solutions or strategies, and to expand understanding.
Story Practice therefore enables you to
- Make the most of your stories, to capture and connect the internal work that your story has begun.
You’ve told a great story and people have been moved or challenged. They have something to think about, they now understand, but what happens next? You can discuss individual’s own responses, but Story Practice goes further. The Story Practitioner has a set of tools and frameworks to enable clients to work with the ideas they are now considering. To explore how these relate to their daily lives and work expectations, finding further information in the story and using key scenes as reminders when challenges arise. - Provide a safe, but productive space for a team to discuss challenging issues.
As a team looks at ongoing issues or faces transition, members can be guarded about what they will say. Story Practice sets up a world of metaphor in which characters and situations relate to the team’s issues, but they can be discussed indirectly, worked with within the world of the story. Each member is aware of what the metaphor means for themselves, but direct confrontation is avoided and feelings of accusation or judgement as softened. - Guide clients in the use of their imagination to find new creative solutions.
A well chosen story will provide an example of change or success to a client that can be related to their own life or business. The Story Practitioner has the tools and skills to help a client move back and forth between ‘real world’ expectations and possibilities within the story, so that they engage their imagination. Creative thought, freed from the immediacy of expectations and habits, by being placed in imaginary world, allows for new ideas to be discovered. The Story Practitioner knows how assist a client in finding how these new discoveries in the story provide new strategies for their ‘real word’ situation. - Recognise the archetypes and common themes that channel or confine your clients.
The influence of stories is so pervasive we often do not even recognise it.
The Story Practitioner is aware of the stories and archetypes that are common to all humanity, as well as those in the surrounding culture. These are not only fairytales and folk stories, but those narratives which are woven within society that tell us what to expect in life, forming our outlook and our sense of self. With this knowledge, the Story Practitioner guides clients towards a better understanding of how their work, company and brand fits with the community’s needs and expectations, whilst also enabling them to adapt or break free from a story or archetype that has limited their potential, both personally and corporately.