Getting to the core of each person in the room? In six hours? With 38 people?

It can’t be done using powerpoints from the front of the room! Getting to Core is done through a combination of introspection and testing the impression one makes on others who will respond honestly. We started with groups of six at a table, using a simple storyelling guessing game that allows people to share personal information, to get people energized and familiar with each other, to laugh and challenge. This table group became the home base for people during the day, and it was important to build relationships as a foundation for peer coaching skills.

Next, smaller groups from the table team practiced taking turns telling a short folktale, after a brief preparation period. In telling a tale, it’s not so important what telling chops one brings to it, but what each teller finds in that story that he or she connects with. Each triad member received unconditional listening from peers, and, at the end, received “appreciations” (a term we learned from storyteller Doug Lipman).

Was it startling for people to receive only honestly appreciative feedback from others? Yes! The path to Core is not through someone else’s corrective view, but from receiving glimpses of how others see and reflect the essence of you. You don’t know how you come across to people until they tell you. Others see us with greater clarity than we might guess; although we rarely ask for or offer that view to one another. Perhaps we assume that people know who they are and how they appear to us? They don’t unless we find a safe and sincere way to tell them. We all need a mirror to see who we are, and the best mirror is others who can offer a clear reflection. Even if what they are offering is their personal perception, when we ask and receive positive personal feedback from others, the information we receive may differ in the way people express it, but usually ‘rhymes.’ There are a few things that we are at our very Core that others perceive.

Next, it was time for a challenge: in the words of Seth Godin, in his TED presentation on “Tribes”, “what movement will you create?” In other words, what were you born to do? What gift do you have that the world needs? Participants digested this question over lunch, and when they returned it was time for a visual association exercise on this question, and on a second question: “so, what is holding you back?” Answering these two questions requires a deeper stage of phronesis (the Greek word for “social wisdom,” or dialogue). Dyads from the home table team engaged each other in these questions, as preparation for a deep dive into taking a leap into the story of ME.

There are lots of ways to approach this story, and this is where we did some storytelling coaching. But how one chooses to approach it is less important than getting to Core and finding a way to begin to articulate it. Triad team members prepared individually, then told their story to peer coaches, who in addition to listening intently and appreciating, then added a new layer of response. This part involves feedback that does not seek to correct, which is presumptive. You never tell a storyteller, “no, tell it this way!” Instead, you offer your experince of the telling; what connected you, where you disconnected or got lost; something that for reasons of your own contributed to or derailed your experience of the telling. This is an iterative process that can be used to hone a story to a solid nugget of pure Core.

We ended the workshop with more appreciations and with raucously voiced commitments, and the room was dancing with high energy and excitement. Many people said they felt the experience had changed their lives.

One young man, who stayed a few minutes to help pick up afterward, said, “I just graduated, and I was scared to death. Now, I know what to do.”

Coming from positions where they are accustomed to having the authority to get the work done, it is not the easiest thing to step into the advocate role, where they have a title but no positional authority. Their span of responsibility is all the employees in their business unit. They don’t always have the automatic support of local management, and when economic times are challenging, development may not be at the top of a local manager’s list.

This week, we conducted a storytelling workshop. The goal was to develop success stories targeted to the stakeholders who make the decisions to direct resources to employee development. The most important thing was for each employee development leader to identify a compelling story and use a peer-coaching model to get encouragement, feedback and useful suggestions.

Some people didn’t know that the amazing thing they had created or witnessed back at work was a “story” they could and should share. We are all creative, but sometimes we don’t recognize a nugget of gold sitting right at our feet, the very nugget that will make our stakeholders’ eyes bulge! “You bet we want that!”

So why story? Ideas must be actionable. Storytelling is all about actions: when we can see it, hear it, taste it, smell it, touch it, it’s ours. Stories have a paradoxical reality: I may be telling it, but you are imagining it using elements of your reality. The more exact a picture I paint of my reality, the more clearly you can see the connection to your own–down to the color of the mud on your boots.

Being in a group process like a storytelling workshop gives us access to collective ‘juice’ that we can use to supercharge our own creative energies. As a group, we give each storyteller honest encouragement. We let the teller know where we connect the most, where we get snagged, what we like and want more of. We help brainstorm ideas if a teller asks for help through a stuck place.

Through facilitation and peer coaching, each advocate found a great success story, and got to test and develop it for prime time. Each person’s unique perceptions and values were reflected in what story they chose to tell, the facts and impresssions that went into it, and how they chose to tell it.  What’s important to each of us counts. That’s when a story is not just ‘telling tales’ at work, but creating a persuasive picture of success that other people can get excited about.