Enlarge Storytelling group working together to tell a story with a poem.

Posted: September 3rd, 2009 Rhiannon Fionn-Bowman

On Sept. 1 more than 30 community members gathered in Freedom Park's Mahlon Adams Center to learn how to become better storytellers.

The group, lead by Gita Gulati-Partee and Evangeline Weiss of OpenSource Leadership Strategies of Durham, focused on three goals:

* Community Building: Learning how to engage people across lines of difference

* Exploring creative options – like poetry and art – as storytelling methods

* Contributing: Adding their vision, their story, to the community

Why teach storytelling? Gulati-Partee says storytelling is important because it is a way to deepen connections and relationships.

Stories can be told at work, within teams, at home and as part of daily correspondence. They can be told to share an experience, solve a problem or offer guidance.

"They don't always have to be happy stories, either," added Weiss.

The event began with a unique introduction. Each table of four to six people was asked to introduce themselves by telling the story of their name. Some people were well versed and others weren't sure their name was story-worthy.

Sergio Rocha, a realtor who is also on the board of the Latin American Coalition, joked that he thinks his Peruvian parents simply ran out of names since he is the youngest of six children.

The group then practiced eliciting stories from others by asking Crossroads employees questions about the organization. Questions ranged from, "What accomplishment are you most proud of?" to, "If Crossroads were a fruit, what type of fruit would you be?"

(The panel answered that they'd be a tangelo, which is a hybrid between a tangerine and pomelo or grapefruit.)

The group spent time listing what makes for a good story and what makes for a not-so-good story. That's when they discovered that people evaluate stories through their own unique lenses.

"Even a story I disagree with," said Brian Foreman, "is a story I can learn from."

One participant said she dislikes repetition while another pointed out that in some cultures where stories are passed down generation to generation verbally, like in many African tribes, repetition is an important memory tool.

One of the lessons learned: Different types of people are attracted to different types of storytelling. Some people tell their story through their non-verbal interactions, some through poetry or art. Others might interview their peers and tell someone else's story. And, some might prefer to tell their story to a recorder or video camera.

Point is: There is no one right way to tell your story. They can be simple or complex, full of action or relayed in hushed tones. Stories can be as easy as standing in a line in some sort of ranked order, like the one the group stood in where everyone was ranked by the length of time they've lived in the Queen City. They can be as complex as a thousand-word tome.

Something else the group took away, according to Weiss and Gulati-Partee, there are three things necessary to fulfill the promise of storytelling: The right people, the right questions and the right tools.

The good news is each storyteller gets to decide for themselves what "right" means.

Want more info? Open Source Leadership.

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