We want to conduct a workshop in which the participants can learn:

• to create trust by storytelling
• how to use a metaphorical story to create a more open attitude towards change
• to create their own stories to be used in meetings, personal contacts and conferences

In the workshop we will both give mini-lecturettes and exercises. So we expect the participants to be very active and to share events from their personal life-history

Stories, like fairy tales, are in any community an important vehicle to pass cultural values from one generation to the next. Every child likes a fairy tale, and every grown-ups still appreciates a good story.

A story can be a metaphor if it has a significance beyond the obvious reality of the narrative. This is the case if you are telling a story about something out of a different context, in another time and other circumstances, but nevertheless with a pointed significance for the situation of your audience. The story operates as a metaphor. On the conscious level you are just listening to a story. But since it also has on a deeper level a metaphorical significance, the audience will hear mostly unconsciously a suggestion, a tip, about how to deal with the situation it has become stuck in. In this way, telling a story with a metaphorical significance becomes an intervention.

A well told metaphor gives us an inside view of things we are often not aware of. Stories speak directly to the deepest layers of beliefs, values, resources, hopes, fears and needs of people.

This kind of storytelling is a powerful way of influencing others for managers. If a message is hidden in a story waiting to be found by the client or some other audience, the listener will be seduced to pick up the message with the least resistance.

Telling a personal story, in addition, gives the listener an intimate view into the world of the narrator, which would otherwise remain hidden, sometimes even for the teller. A good story is a bridging device between the world of the teller and the world of the listener.

Managers are especially interested in the question of how to influence other people without raising their resistance. They hope they can make others become more aware of what affects their own behaviour, and eventually help them to change restrictive behaviour patterns.

Although not everyone is good at it, many managers have learned how to make other people’s relations and behaviour patterns explicit in order to create changes in them.

In many cases these kind of interventions are indeed effective. Making things explicit works even better when the manager confronts his colleagues with the effect of their own behaviour on others, especially if the collegues realise they don’t want to create this effect.

The main idea behind this strategy is that, once you are aware of and realise what you are doing, you will choose either to continue or to change your behaviour.

Sometimes however, this approach does not work. One reason for this can be that this person is not prepared to accept this sort of feedback from the manager, either because the relationship with the manager is not strong enough or because this person feels that what the manager is doing amounts to a threat. Another reason can also be that the manager (for whatever reason) is unable to impart this kind of confrontational feedback in such a way that the other person both understands and accepts it.

In other words, making things explicit is a direct, logical way of convincing someone to stop doing (or saying) things the way they do and to start doing other things or to do those same things differently.

But this also can create resistance and as resistance very often has emotional foundations, a logical analysis will not help.

Whenever we see that our confrontations create resistance we are often tempted to either withdraw (and in so doing we do not reach what we intended to reach) or be stronger and better prepared to confront. In other words if something isn’t working we often try again and mostly harder !

Perhaps we should try something different.

Storytelling is indeed a powerful device for influencing someone's (behavioural) patterns without raising resistance. It raises questions and opens creative avenues to new behaviour and untapped options. This is especially helpful when you feel it your duty to help another person find their direction, to become aware of their underlying needs and wishes and to find a way of coping with barriers that prevent them from being more aligned with their sense of life and the situation at hand.

We have been using the technique of storytelling to convey a message in many concrete situations:

- at the start of a conference or a meeting to create the right atmosphere;

- with an audience whom we want to arouse but who we are expecting to be defensive if we should ask them in an explicit way to move into action;

- in contacts where we have as yet not gained their confidence, thereby allowing us to give direct advice;

- during a conference, when people are blocked emotionally and who, if so remaining that way, might not have been able to reach their goals;

- in preparation for the next step, when we wanted to make an appeal to the creative and emotional potential of a group;

- anytime, when we just felt like telling a story.

Sometimes it is more useful to tell the story in an informal situation, standing at the coffee machine or during a break, instead of telling it during a formal meeting .

Storytelling in the context of an organisation is, as in most stories, about significant experiences, adventure, amusing incidents, risks, heroes and villains.

We shall be discussing how to use your own fund of experiences as a source for storytelling with this aim in mind. We shall explain how to draw from your own experiences and the lessons life has taught you, in order to create personal stories that can be used effectively as metaphors in the context of learning and changing of patterns. We will demonstrate how to build a bridge between your own life story and that of the people you want to influence. And you will see how it influences your own perspective as well.

In our contribution to this workshop we will explore how to construct and to tell stories which will make it possible for you not only to transmit a message but also to create possibilities for others.

The book " A story has to be told " will be available (price: 25 US $ )during at the conference.

More and more consultants and managers are using metaphors as interventions in their work. On the one hand because storytelling increases their effectiveness as advisor or manager, on the other hand because by doing so they enlarge the opportunities for development of their clients, colleagues and themselves.

In recent years the authors gave workshops on numerous occasions about the use and the art of working with metaphors. And as often happens with new skills, they became more and more enthusiastic about the concept. Many of the participants asked for more: more background, more depth and more stories. So they wrote this book.

In every case but one every metaphor in this book comes from their own pen. Each of the ten chapters includes at least one complete metaphor and is supported by both the theoretical background as well as the practical tips to test your own way of telling a story and adding to it.

The book takes the form of a book of fairy tales, inclusive of charming self-drawn illustrations, and its attractive design and lay-out is all down to Jef Winnepenninckx, professor at the St Lucas Institute in Brussels.

The art of storytelling is published in English by De Stichting Associatie voor OrganisatieOntwikkeling) in Ouddorp in the Netherlands. The book is not available in bookshops but can be ordered in Belgium through the Association for Organisation Development (Associatie voor OrganisatieOntwikkeling) te. 32 16 63 37 87; fax 32 16 602 76 - e-mail wuestenberg.diesfeldt @ glo.be).