Are stories the key to learning?
I was reading over the weekend about the best selling book hitting Japan called "What if the Female Manager of a High-School Baseball Team read Drucker’s ‘Management".
The novel tells the story of a young girl helping with the coaching of her failing school baseball team. She stumbles across Peter Drucker's Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices book and uses it to revitalise her teams fortunes.
The book has so far sold over 1 million copies in Japan and there are talks of an English translation coming soon, whilst it has also boosted sales of the original Drucker book.
I've long been a fan of John Seely Brown, who proposes that stories are essential in the propagation of knowledge.
Do we need to use more stories in management training?
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Absolutely!
Just to prove it as well we assess our CMI Level 7 Diploma in Strategic Management & Leadership through a 20k word academic portfolio which has to tell the story of how the participants have led and managed an innovative project.
A story involves personal involvement and honest reflection and the opportunity to 'tell it as it is'. Very difficult if sitting an exam, analysing a case study or submiiting a third party consultant's report.......
It's quite a challenge though for most people to learn this new 'skill', but once gained they never look back. In my mind it's one of the most powerful tools available for helping people 'reframe' existing knowledge and situations.
I think so. I haven't read the book and suspect it is more fictional than perhaps many corporate stories, but lets not forget that case studies are used extensively in business literature to get across a message. The best business writers for me are exceptional story tellers as much as exceptional thinkers.
...not just in management training, but in business generally! The use of narrative and metaphor is a powerful and underestimated management and leadership tool. I recently read a couple of excellent books on the subject, and I'd highly recommend them as essential reading for anyone who wants to be a more effective communicator. They are both by Stephen Denning and published by Wiley. The first (2005) is entitled "The Leader's Guide to Storytelling: Mastering The Art and Discipline of Business Narrative". The other - published two years later - is "The Secret Language of Leadership", subtitled "How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative". As a recently-retired Civil Servant (and now a self-employed Infopreneur) I'm totally sold on the value of storytelling, both as a way of getting people to buy into organisational change and as a method of marketing.
Hi Malcolm. Your first post in the forums, and a good one at that. Great to have you on board.
I read The Secret Language of Leadership at the turn of the year and agree it is exceptional. He provides a story matrix type diagram, detailing how different types of story can be used in different stages, and I use this extensively when giving presentations.
I'll join you in recommending it to others (I read it from the CMI library by the way if anyone wants to borrow it from there).
Interesting question. We use stories as we grow up to learn about life, morals etc so it seems only natural that this is carried on into out occupational training. We know it works (on the whole).
However, I do think the story and the message needs to be carefuly thought through before it is communicated in anyway. Does it fit the overall objectives of what you are trying to achieve during the training? If done poorly it could cause more damage than good.
I also think it depends on the particular learning styles of the people involved, for some it may not be enough they may need other methods in addition to help get the message across. It also depends on the person presenting the story. I'm sure we can all think of people we have known who aren't that great at telling stories...again this could negate the message being given.
Overall I agree we need them and they are useful - if given by someone who is good at using them in training, if the story is relevant and if other methods are used in conjunction with this to get the message across.
Stories, case exercises, media articles all have their place in learning and development. Anything that helps to contextualise learning and make it real can be beneficial both in developing knowledge but also the many other aspects of learning such as exploring personal attitudes and behaviour. It is important that we don't see the story as an end in itself but to reflect on it and draw learning from it. An effective facilitator will be skilled in such techniques and be able to help delegates on their journey to draw out learning in a variety of ways.
Thanks for the kind welcome, Adi. I was a little wary about commenting so soon after joining the forum, and before I'd really got to know everyone... but they seem a nice bunch, so I thought I'd just plunge straight in!
Good to meet you all, and am looking forward to participating further as time allows (off to distant parts for the next 8-10 weeks, but still hope to look in occasionally if I can get to an Internet cafe).
I had an interesting conversation with Dr Howard Awbery recently. He's the author of the Pixie Dust series of books. He uses stories to get across management ideas and theories. A very interesting guy. I'll hopefully be interviewing him for the blog shortly.
Nice article here on the power of stories
http://qaspire.com/blog/2010/08/06/engagement-leadership-and-power-of-storytelling/