Coaching and the art of storytelling

Solution Focused and narrative coaching invites clients to tell their stories in ways that make them stronger. In a sense, coaching is an invitation to story-tell in which the coach is both an audience and a collaborator not unlike in a role-playing game (shoutout to Jan Müller for the idea). Janet Bavelas, Linda Coates and Trudy Johnson (2000) showed that the attention that listeners pay to a narrator’s story is an integral part of the story-telling. As listener and collaborator, the coach is an integral part of enabling the client to tell their story in ways that invite the change that the client wants to affect. Wouldn’t it make sense then, for coaches to spend some time learning about what makes for a good story? After all, it’s the stories that clients will continue to tell themselves. It is stories about their dreams, hopes, identities. Wouldn’t it be well invested time to learn how to invite clients to tell these stories in an engaging and thereby potentially more sustainable way? (I have no way to prove this, just vague recollections from the book “Made to stick” by Chip and Dan Heath (2000) that seemed to link quality of a story to its ability to “stick”).

Show don’t tell

One of the triggers for this blogpost was me reading a book for a Spanish book-club whose main aim is to learn Spanish and to have something to discuss. We were reading a book (the name shall not be mentioned) in which the characters belabor the point the book is trying to make. Tons of scenes with “talking heads”. Nothing is happening, we are not shown who the characters are by what they do or how they respond or the shape of their inner voices. We are being told by the characters in the conversations that they have. May I say: BO-RING! The whole story could have been a pseudo-philosophical treatise of two pages, and you’d have learned the same thing. For me, a good story shows and does not tell. “Show don’t tell” is also a very important point in improv theater: Stories in which we observe the changes rather than being told about them are more engaging.

In coaching, we can make use of this by asking clients for details when they are telling us stories that make them stronger. We can be very interested in the strengthening moments, inviting the clients’ attention to them, for example by asking: “Wow, that sounds like it was difficult – what enabled you to respond the way you did?” or “Where did you find out that you could…” or something like that. And then we can ask about details, about what, who, where, how exactly, who else was there, how they responded etc. Note: we are not inviting the “talking heads” version of the story by asking for abstractions and interpretations (e.g. value systems, personality typey, you know my pet peeves by now).

Ma

One of the greatest storytellers of our time, Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl’s Castle), perfected the art of the pause in storytelling. When asked by Roger Ebert about the “gratuitous motions” in his films, Hayao Miyazaki responded: “We have a word for that in Japanese. It's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally. […] The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb. "The people who make the movies are scared of silence, so they want to paper and plaster it over. […] They're worried that the audience will get bored. They might go up and get some popcorn.”

As coaches, we can learn to use silence and pauses intentionally. When the client has said something significant or is just reveling in a beautiful scene (maybe after a miracle type question), we don’t come barging in with a follow-on question. We have learned to sit in silence admiring the view. We have learned to give ourselves permission to do nothing and have stopped feeling “useless” if we are not moving the story forward. Our clients won’t get up to get popcorn, I am sure!

Light and Shadow

Another element of good storytelling is knowing what to bring to the front and what can stay in the background. The background is important for mood setting (think: “It was a dark and stormy night”) but the story happens in the foreground.

As coaches we can invite some descriptions into the foreground of our clients’ story and some into the background depending on what we show interest in, what we focus our intention on. Now, you might think this is “manipulative”, but we do that in conversation all the time. Everyone does it (cf. Bavelas, Coates & Johnson, 2000). By small and simple gestures and sounds, we help shape the narrative of our clients (Korman, 2010, Bavelas & Tomori, 2007). In Bavelas & Tomori (2007), we find an interesting example contrasting client-centered and Solution Focused therapy:

Client-centered

“Client: … and ah, doomed to fail – not that I will die or anything. I think doomed to fail and to be there for children, in a positive, cheerful, warm, loving way. And being a single parent, like I will be, their support system to a large extent. And it scares me to think of their main support as being exhausted and irritated and—

Rogers: [paraphrasing client] I just feel I may be not able to make it. I may be doomed to failure by the very circumstances.”

Client: Right

Solution Focused

“Client: Well, right now I’m dealing with a drinking problem.”

De Shazer: Um-hum

Client: Yeah

De Shazer: OK, and ah

Client: Sometime I drink—

De Shazer: You say, right now.

The client-centered therapist focused his attention on the doom to failure, the Solution Focused therapist focuses on the possibility of exceptions of other parts of the story in which the client was not drinking or is not drinking.

As coaches, we, too, can invite light into hopeful and strengthening parts of our clients’ story. The more you tell a story, the more it becomes “real” for you. You either become the person who is able to not drink some time or you are the person who is doomed to failure. In the above client-centered example, I would have asked about the client’s hopes and dreams: “So you really want to be there for your kids in a cheerful, warm, loving way – how come this is important to you” (or something like that.

As coaches, we are collaborators in our clients’ stories and as such, we should learn to invite stories that make our clients stronger and help them to affect the change that they are seeking. Learning story-telling basics is not only fun but also very useful for coaches.

If you want to join us in our weekly story-telling, collaborating and answering all sorts of questions about our courses, why not join us for our free meetup and exchange?

References:

Bavelas, J., Coates, L. & Johnson, T. (2000). Listeners as Co-Narrators. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 79, No. 6. 941-952

Bavelas, J. &. Tomori, C. (2007). Using microanalysis of communication to compare Solution-Focused and Client-Centered therapies. Journal of Family Therapy, 18(3), 25–43.

Heath, Chip; Heath, Dan (2010). Made to Stick. Why some ideas survive and others die. New York: Random House (A Random House trade paperback).

Korman, H. (2010). Making the process of co-construction visible. InterAction, 2(2), 102–110.

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