36 by Justin O’Neill Eighteen years ago today I turned eighteen. Two whole lives spent coming of age. Interestingly, it actually feels like something is different this time around. Is it possible that we divide our lives into 18 year periods? What happens at age 54?
My final installment on working with stories in my facilitation practice. Stories to Remember who we are The best teachers tell stories. They will sit you down and tell you a story about someone or something that was facing the very situation in which you find yourself. All the great religious leaders told stories. Many of their stories focused on the fact that the wisdom we need is available to us right now. That wisdom may be ancient, but there is nothing new under the sun. I am a keen collector of teachings from Aborginal Elders. By teachings I don’t …
Stories to move us through grief Any time people have to accept loss, the grief cycle is triggered. To various degrees people experience shock and anger, denial, acceptance, letting go and reframing. This process is subtle for small things like having a trusted colleague moved to a different project but it can be full blown if people experience a trauma such as a death or a similar emotional upheaval. Change brings loss, and because change is constant, so is the emotional response to what is being lost. In other words, as my colleague Birgitt Williams is fond of saying, “there …
A second way that I use stories is perhaps the most traditional way: to hear a deeper truth embodied in the story. Stories as expressions of our truths I facilitate a great many meeting where the subject matter is dry: public policy, goals and objectives, interests and agreements. In many ways, a lot of the work I am called on to do involves holding space for richer communication between people. And for me that means truer communication. So, for example, when I am listening to a community member trying to describe a policy issue to a government person, I�ll ask …
How I use stories As a facilitator, I work a lot with stories. Both in organizational and community settings, stories and storytelling are important to my practice. We understand stories to be the fabric of our cultural and social worlds. Within organizations, storytelling is becoming more widely recognized as a critical mode for the transmission of knowledge. In this series of posts I want to discuss the ways in which my engagement with stories in Aboriginal communities and organizations has informed my practice as an organizational development consultant. My story about my work. I have a story that I tell …