Story Craft- Part Two
I am always amazed by my guest faculty. I must have heard Noa Baum teach a dozen or more times and yet, I always come away with new insights. Noa runs an intense workshop on storycraft and you had better be ready. Because our numbers were uneven, I got to sit in to make up a pair and hence, got a chance to experience the workshop as a participant, working with Brandon, and Jennifer and Hashim and Janelle. What a thrill to work with each of them.
What struck me was the power of the listening and what “Listening with Delight” does to the story that the teller is sharing. The listener, says Noa, acts as a magnet to draw out the best story. If we are not being enlivened by the stories we are hearing, we might start to ask about how we are listening.
The second point that always startles me with its truth is about the relationship between the Story and the Listener. A story has a Teller and a Listener, says Noa, and the Teller has to be in control of his Telling, and able to read the Listener. They are the areas of competence a storyteller must work at. However the Teller is never in control of the relationship between the Story and the Listener. The story as heard by the listener becomes totally something else.
If someone did try and control that relationship and insist that the Listener only hear the story one way, that is propaganda or brainwashing. The literary theorists invented this obtuse phrase, ‘the play of signifiers” but they got one word right-play. The joy of storytelling is that we give permission to the listener to play with our story and make it their own.
It is what we always teach our students on our peace programs, that what you express might be meaningful to you, but what matters is what gets heard. What you say in the end is what people think you said, and if you have triggered their imaginations to go on their own inner journey, the story they are in might be even more powerful and moving than the story you are telling them. How amazing is that?
Without the cost of a plane ticket, stories transport us to another place in time and another time in place. What a gift. Thank you Noa.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL OUR MEMBERS AND FRIENDS
As families gather and friends reunite, we take this time to express our deep gratitude to all members of the AmeriCorps Project Change family and all our partners and supporters, without whom our work of service would not be possible. Someone once described gratitude as “the memory of the heart.” I love that because memories summon up feelings that we discover are never lost, that are still alive in us. One day of joy can help us endure a month of misery or heartache.
I believe that days like Thanksgiving that occur in a regular cycle are good reminders that sometimes, whatever else we eat in celebration, we need most of all to feed the heart. No matter what dinner you sit down to, I hope that this week, all of you receive a special message or a hug or that some old friend reaches out from years past to say Hi and Thank You. My dear friend Michael White, the father of narrative therapy used to call these “Giving Back Practices.”
The French language is remarkable in how it takes the word for heart “coeur” and creates a family of words in english like “Courage” and “Encourage.” So let us all be encouraged this Thanksgiving, and that the spirit of selfless service continues to shine from AmeriCorps to a nation that can so easily get distracted by urgencies of the moment.
Take Heart. And Happy Thanksgiving.
How To Craft a Story- Noa Baum
This Friday, AmeriCorps Project Change members will be treated to a Master Class in Story Craft 
from a Master Teller and Performer Noa Baum. Noa is originally from Israel where she studied acting and came to UC Davis to be with her American husband and further develop her craft. She is famous for the One Woman Show “A Land Twice Promised” the stories of three generations of Israeli and Palestinian women, a show she has taken around the world.
At this seminar, Noa will help the team find a story from their lives and develop it into powerful testimony. She will also teach members how the power of the story resides with the power of the listener, to draw a story out of the teller. She models what “Listening with Delight” means and how powerful an experience that is for any teller. It proves the point that we rarely have that quality of listening in our lives, and rarely do we give it to anyone. And more’s the pity. Noa is a long time friend of the Project Change director and they have collaborated on many projects before, including the famous Golden Fleece Story Group in Washington DC , the Washington Ireland Peace program, and New Story Leadership. For more information on Noa and her work, go to her web site.
The Power of Mindfulness
Today the AmeriCorps Team at Project Change are being trained to live and work more mindfully. Their teacher Gregory Robison, is an expert, having run the John Main Center at Georgetown University for the last few years.
AmeriCorps members are dealing with high risk and high need populations of young people, and every friday, when we meet for training, we share some of the challenges each member faces. Kids who are angry and distracted, kids who are battling the odds at home, and can’t really focus on school. When an AmeriCorps member seeks to make an impact on the troubled lives of young people, the risk is that Troubles spread like an infection to upset everybody. Members take the stress of their work home, and lose sleep worrying about that kid who get into a fight and was suspended, or concerned about that secret that that teen shared with her and not sure who else to share it with. Stress is part of the job description even if its not written in the formal contract. So there has to be ways that members can deal with it and be creative about how they care for themselves.
The old story of being a helper used to stress heroic self sacrifice, and that if one were to wear oneself out for others, that this was noble. Nowadays, we tend to see this old story as dysfunctional and misguided. What good are we to anyone in need if we are not meeting our own human needs? So the training today is meant to introduce and re-enforce some of the practices members can be encouraged to use and to teach others. Living mindfully means we don’t lose what is on offer in this moment, and refusing to allow the worries of the past or the fears of the future degrade the texture of everyday experience.
Social Styles- What is your Style of working with people
Today, Project Change is treated to a chance to learn about Social Styles and how we each have a way or working with others that is quite distinct. Former Lockheed Martin Executive will introduce a new way of looking at our particular ways of interacting. Are we amiable or analytic? Are we driven or Driven? John has worked with our international programs for almost 20 years, where he was the mainstay Myers Briggs expert. We look forward today to another enlightening workshop.
Training this Friday-How Versatile Are You?
The Social Styles Profile has four quadrants that test whether you lean towards a personal style of Asking or Telling, and spread across sectors named Amiable, Driven, Analytical, and Expres
sive. But there is more. Another critical self learning tool focuses on VERSATILITY – the ability to meet what Harvard Professor Ron Heifetz calls Adaptive Challenges. Versatility, they say, is the best predictor of success and the key to interpersonal effectiveness.
The Team this Friday will fill in some forms that will reveal how they score on the Versatility Scale. When you work with someone, you have your own style, your own preferred way of working. If you are going to be successful, your team have to change and adapt to how you get things done. But that is only half the story. You have to adapt and change to how they perceive you. It is like a dance, and the moves that go with different kinds of music. If all you can do is waltz when the music suggests a tango, then you are literally out of step.
The Project Change team have already come up with work challenges and they are learning to adapt, learning to adjust their expectations and renegotiate some of their roles. We are looking forward to sharing some of those experiences as our expert John Dold takes us through the workshop this Friday.
Making an Impact we can Measure
AmeriCorps has a few short snappy sayings that sum up the spirit of the work. One is “Getting Things Done” which says that the Project Change Team are all about ACTION, rolling up their sleeves and getting stuck in. Another that probably is used less but is just as important is that Project Change is about making an impact that we can measure. Too often, the NGO business relies on the presumption that, if ones actions are good, you must be doing good. However, that is not enough. Unless we can measure it, and use the feedback to learn how we can do even better, we are actually working blind.
All this is to provide the context of today’s important meeting with Doctor Gila Shusterman who is our professional research scientist who guides Project Change in the process of measuring impact. The outcome that we have pledged to deliver is about academic engagement-(ED27) showing that because of our work, students K-12 in our school and after school programs are doing better at school. They have a more positive attitude towards school and are relating in positive ways to their teachers and peers and everyone else involved in their education.
Doctor Gila will be providing her expert training for the team after lunch on November 6th 2015 to prepare the team to deliver their Pre- Test to their students. Then she returns in the afternoon on March 11th 2016 to help us get ready for the Post Test of the young people we are working with.
We look forward to an exciting year where we are eager to prove that we are making a difference.
Supervisors Training This Friday
This Friday, Project Change hosts the Supervisors of our 7 Partner Sites to come and share their experiences and learn more about AmeriCorps and the importance of the role that they play. Since many of them are graduates of Project Change itself, the meeting is also a sort of Alumni gathering too. We will share best practices and explore ways that the Supervisor Team can be the team that stands behind the Team.
Peer Coaching Helping AmeriCorps to GROW
Last Friday, the team were treated to a special training from Lynne Feingold, master coach and one of the leaders of the peer to peer coaching network in the Federal Government. Lynne took the group through a series of exercises that began with centering and focusing on your breathing. It is a simple and yet fundamental skill that prepares one to be a Listener. We come to our meetings so distracted at times, that we aren’t even listening to ourselves, let alone ready to give attention to someone else.
Next Lynn demonstrated the power of the Question- how a problem or an issue has a context, or arises from a situation, and that if we are going to be helpful to one another, we need to ask the sort of open ended questions that draw out the salient details. Questions such as Why only invite interpretation, taking us into the mind of the member, rather into the situation that the member finds themselves. The goal of the first set of questions is to see what you see, hear what you see, feel what you feel. Its a basic of storytelling, to transport us there, give us your experience so we can walk around inside it and perhaps offer you a different or fresh perspective.
Stay tuned for the next excerpt about this special Project Change process.
Getting Ready for Guest Faculty- Peer-to-Peer Group Coaching
Project Change
got off to a great start, with four Friday meetings during the month of September to get everyone into the AmeriCorps groove. The highlight was our trip to Camp Letts, on a beautiful day where the team braved the dreaded zip wire in the morning and lazily canoed the river in the afternoon, and concluded with a camp fire and stories. Thanks to our guides Meredith and Richelle and a big shout out to the Supervisors and staff from our partner sites who joined us in a fun day.
October is a special month of guest trainings which begin on October 9th with M
aster Coach Lynne Feingold introducing the formal practice of Peer to Peer Group Coaching. The team have already started this activitity with the Bells and Whistles check-in time that starts every meeting. If a member has a challenge and they want more feedback, they request time from the group to have a conversation. During that time, the group acts as a coaching team, and asks questions to unfold the situation, then deeper questions to expose the assumptions behind the dilemma, and then to help the person come up with a positive plan of action that they are willing to hold themselves accountable for at the next meeting.
This is the specia
l practice that grew out of last years team, and something that members enjoyed and learned to practice as a life skill that could be applied to other areas of their work.
Sometimes we get so enmeshed in our own problems, we lose sight of the wider possibilities that a discerning listener can help us tease out. The process is not meant to be about giving advice, or replace therapy. Rather the process is meant to help a person listen to more deeply to what they are intending underneath what they are saying. The one critical axiom for group coaching is, except in exceptions, never to to ask Why. Why? Because Why is a question that invites people to get more into their head, rather then laying out the situation for others to observe. Why invites interpretation when what coaching asks for is observation.
Posts by Paul Costello1
I am always amazed by my guest faculty. I must have heard Noa Baum teach a dozen or more times and yet, I always come away with new insights. Noa runs an intense workshop on storycraft and you had better be ready. Because our numbers were uneven, I got to sit in to make up a pair and hence, got a chance to experience the workshop as a participant, working with Brandon, and Jennifer and Hashim and Janelle. What a thrill to work with each of them.
