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 is always grief in the room.” Working with grief is a key skill for facilitators and storytelling turns out to be an important way people move through loss and get to a reframing stage in their lives, with an ability to see possibility in the future.

Sudden change triggers a defensive mechanism. We get our backs up, express shock and experience anger at the way our world has been shaken. And then, as if to stem the tide, we engage in denial strategies to try to stave off the reality of the situation. To move through this and accept the fact of change, it helps to be able to remember and honour what has been lost. And so stories become a very important part of the grieving process. This is why we create space for stories at funerals. In Maori culture, friends and family gather in the whara nui (big house) with the body of the deceased to tell the unvarnished truth of the life which has ended. Relatives get to hear the full story, the good and bad (and sometimes the ugly) as people come to remember the dead.

This process helps the whole community to remember the person and to accept the death. It also serves as a catharsis to enable people to move on. Likewise, in organizational life, telling stories is a very important way to deal with large scale changes.

I was recently working with an organization that was experiencing a lot of staff dissension and management turnover. People seemed to be fighting over everything and there seemed to be no one cause for all the trouble. After talking with people for a while it became clear that the organization was facing a fundamental shift in its mandate and direction. This shift had come from the Board of Directors and had been refused by the Executive Director, a founder of the organization. He left angrily and the staff morale broke down after that. Over the course of a year, a once thriving and important regional organization became impotent and toxic.

This shift in direction was a very difficult thing to accept for the people who had worked for a long time in the organization. Many of them weren’t prepared to accept the change and it became clear that they were trying to hold on to the status quo as much as possible. Letting go was hard.

So, in preparation for a strategic planning retreat, we held a day of story telling, where the employees and the Board together could tell stories about the organization and the founder and the great work that had been accomplished. People honoured one another and the mood of the gathering was solemn but, like the aftermath of a storm, seemed to be clearing. The storytelling session gave the staff a chance to remember what had been and tangibly let it go, sometimes with humour, sometimes with tears. After several hours of storytelling, people became clearer, more able to envision an uncertain future. It made the subsequent work a little easier because people were more open to new things.

Story telling like this creates openness in a situation that feels like the walls are closing in. When people are under stress and in conflict it is usually a sign that the emotional space they share has become too small. Storytelling sessions, in the truly natural, round-the-campfire, natural mode can have the effect of both releasing emotional energy and building a new shared emotional space. And sometimes to move forward, that is the kind of ground you need to have sown.

Next, how remembering stories from the past help us to move forward secure in the knowledge of who we are.

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 her to tell a story about what she means. Suddenly authenticity gets introduced into the equation. Telling a story from a personal perspective puts a face on a policy issue, reminds us what is important and helps to sew together a relationship between people who may have very different positions, responsibilities and power. Especially in working with community and government people, using stories is a tacit acknowledgment of the inherent power that each person brings to the process. We are all endowed with are stories and as Thomas King says, stories are all that we are.

Years ago I heard Utah Philips tell a story. He told of a time when he was a young man and he had an opportunity to visit a cowboy who knew dozens of songs from the great cattle drives of the 19th century. The cowboy lived in a small house in New Mexico and was dying. It was a tremendous opportunity to get these songs from the mouth of a man who had been on these cattle drives so Phillips arranged a visit.

When he arrived at the cowboy�s house he was met at the door by a nurse who said that although the cowboy was in poor health, he was looking forward to the visit. It would take a few minutes to get him ready so Phillips was invited to make himself at home in the living room.

Phillips began perusing the bookshelves and was immediately struck by the huge number of books from the ultra conservative John Birch Society. His initial reaction was to ask himself what he was doing there, about to have a conversation with a man who was bound to feed him political babble that Phillips would find deeply offensive.

And then he caught himself and he realized that he wasn�t there to talk politics with the cowboy, he was there to get songs. He realized that talking politics with the cowboy would only result in a conversation full of canned ideas recited from a book. Phillips was after the truth, and in concluding the story he said, �if you ask people about what they truly know. They will always tell you the truth.� And what they truly know is not contained in the books they read, it is contained in the stories about who they are and what they do and what is close to their heart.

That story has informed my approach to learning about what is important to people ever since. Whether I am working in a consultation process or helping a team find their way through a project, I�ll always go to the stories of the people in the room, and invite that level of truth to come forward.

It�s important to note that the stories don�t ever have to pass any objective test for truth either. These kinds of stories are not stories intended for the world of metrics. They can only be measured in terms of the impact they have in creating a shared cultural space. They give us glimpses of what people know, of what people value and therefore they contribute to the overall cohesion of a group, organization or a community.

Think of the stories you know, the myths that you share with others in a group. What do these myths tell you about the group? What is the �inside� information you are privy to, information which can only be gathered by an insider through knowing the stories of the group. What do those stories tell you about the Spirit of the place? Each group is unique because of the stories that create its shared space.

Stories to bring the world into being

And as much a stories can contribute to an abstract set of values, stories are used to make things concrete. Let me tell you what I mean�(see that?)

Years ago, I first twigged to the power of stories in a meeting with government and community people on Aboriginal family violence. The meeting was being held in Ottawa, which like most capital cities tends to exist on a plain far removed from everyday life. The conversation began in a very dry and technical manner, about the amount of money available for family violence prevention and the restrictions of the mandate to spend that money and so on. There was no connection to the real world until one community member started to tell a story about a recent case of family violence in her community. Suddenly the stories came poring forth, and it was all we could do as facilitators to record the underlying points that were being made. Much to the amazement of the government folks, by the end of a day of storytelling we had compiled a list of policy recommendations without a single person talking about mandates, program spending authorities or regulations. Each of these stories was a concrete reminder of what was true, and as facilitators we acted as translators, shifting the language from one ear to another, trying to represent and honour what was being said in a way that was understandable and useful to the government folks. And while all of this was going on, a heart connection was being made between everyone in the room an everyone became a little more real to each other through the listening and the telling.

In many indigenous cultures, the world is said to be created from a story. In this example, I am trying to show that it is possible to tap this teaching, and to share with one another the stories of our jouneys in order to create a community, a team or an organization based on the truth of lived experience. The role of the facilitator then becomes one of inviting forth stories, being a good listener and being a helpful translator where required. Most importantly the facilitator must hold space for the myths to do their work.

This particular example also points to another very important way I use stories in my facilitation practice: in the process of grief and healing. That is the subject of the next post.

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 about what I do. My work focuses on First Nations and Aboriginal communities and organizations primarily in Canada. I work as a facilitator serving the evolution of groups and communities. I sometimes describe what I do as “organizational and community development” but more recently I have come to see my work as “applied decolonization” primarily because I focus more and more with groups on finding their own solutions within themselves instead of relying on external, and often colonial structures, to provide answers. For me, “decolonization” means finding ways to constantly open up ourselves and our communities against all of those forces that would close us down.

To do this, it is important that we draw on the stories of individuals, groups, organizations, communities and cultures to be able to understand and express the inherent gifts that help us to move on.

Indigenous communities and people have a rich tradition of storytelling. Telling stories serves a variety of purposes from transmitting personal and cultural knowledge, to healing, to helping people understand what is true and real. In the contemporary world it seems as if story telling is a lost art, but in my work, where stories are invited forward, it doesn’t take long to recover the method as people realize that storytelling is about connecting with what we actually know.

This series of posts is about the ways in which I work with stories. I am interested in readers’ thoughts to these methods and suggestions for extending them deeper.

Talking about what’s real

Stories help us to understand what is real. They do this in two ways. First, by understanding the stories we have about ourselves and the world we can understand how we frame the world. Second being invited to tell our stories we automatically undertake both introspection and expression the twin acts of creating shared truth and meaning.

As individuals, we are constantly negotiating our place between what we personally feel is real and true and what is collectively held to be real and true. We examine our world through the stories we hold about it and this shapes our reaction to things.

When we perceive an event in the external world, we do so through our stories. For example if we see two people in conflict, our perception of the situation is determined by stories such as those about power, respect, peacemaking and independence. These stories are so powerful that they actually create different versions of reality and we quickly lose sight of what is real.

Consider a common example. We witness a shouting match between a manager and a subordinate in an organization. If we believe that those with power should use it responsibly, we might conclude that the manager is in the wrong and that the subordinate is right in defending herself.

If we believe that people should be loyal and respectful to authority, we might see the subordinate as the problem for engaging in inappropriate behaviour with her boss.

On the other hand, if we have a strong story about peace, for example that people should be peaceful at all times, then we might conclude that both are wrong, and that both bear some responsibility for finding a different way to resolve their conflict.

Furthermore, if we have stories about ourselves either as peacemakers (I help keep the peace) or as people who value independence (I need to let them resolve this situation), it will colour our relationship to the event.

So what is real? Having uninvestigated stories about what is real actually impedes our ability to see the situation for what it is. It closes down our ability to relate to both people in the conflict and sets us in conflict with those that hold different stories about the situation. If I am facilitating a situation like this, it makes sense to hear from people about what they perceive, but it also helps to go deeper and invite an exploration of the stories that each person holds because these are the things that will drive our relationship with the situation and each other. It is fine to have stories about the world for they help us to mediate our relationship with reality, but to hold them without knowing what they are pits us against others with deeply held stories and beliefs. We see our own reality as the only reality, without understanding how others see things. After a process of introspection, we can share our stories with each other in a way that both holds open space for innumerable interpretations of the world while at the same time recognizing that the actually reality of the situation is bigger than what we alone perceive.

Understanding the stories we hold about the world is a deeply introspective process. It can be facilitated with a number of practices that connect us as individuals with ourselves. I personally use meditation and other contemplative practices and, increasingly, what Byron Katie calls “The Work” which is a powerful way of compassionately investigating the underlying stories we carry with us, and around which we construct our identity.

These processes are useful for investigating the “shoulds” that plague us. When we use the word “should” we tell a story that argues with reality: if people “should” be peaceful and they clearly aren’t, we will create stress for ourselves until we can tell ourselves a more real story. A more real story might be one that acknowledges that people get into conflicts. It helps then to position myself to conflict: once I recognize the reality, I am no longer surprised or shocked by it and I can work to resolve it if that is what I choose to do. Understanding my story helps me to move beyond the powerless state of “you should stop fighting” and into a more active role of peacemaking.

Once we begin to understand our personal stories, we can then use storytelling to express the way we see the world, and that is the subject of the next post.

Many of you know that I am a devoted Toronto Maple Leafs fan. Tonight though, I share most of Canada’s fervent hopes that the Calgary Flames will win the final game of the Stanley Cup Final and bring the Cup back to Canada.

Go FLAMES!

And no matter where you are in the world you can follow the action at Calgary’s FAN 960 radio and when the game’s over, join the fun at Hockey Pundits.

Tom Atlee is one of my heros. For years he has been running the very excellent Co-Intelligence Institute from which I gather lots of information and inspiration. Recently he sent out an email on the emergence of collective intelligence as a field of practice here’s what he has to say:

The links in that post could make for a fine week’s worth of reading.