Premises that Shape Leadership Story Work

Stories and Story Work

This post is the third in a series about a breakthrough Leadership Coaching approach: Creating your Leadership Story. I have suggested that one of the most powerful ways for leaders to see how you lead, understand the reasons you lead as you do, and make significant improvements in your leadership effectiveness, is through understanding and learning to work with your deep systemic story. In the first two posts, I described the territory of stories and story work, outlined some of the key ideas that underlie the approach, and suggested ways you can begin to see your own story. In this post, I will describe the premises, or working hypotheses, that shape story coaching and mention how these premises can help guide you on your journey.

Premises Underlying Story Work

1. We each have a few core, systemic stories.

Your stories are deeply held, because you have been creating and living them out for a long time. They have identifiable plot lines and character structures, including the roles you tend to play. They are fully systemic in nature. Your core stories are systemic in that they reflect how you have learned to operate, survive, and be successful in systems. They are systemic in that they are about your relationships and interactions with other systems—key individuals, groups, and communities–and with other key forces at play in your life. One colleague suggested that we call them relationship stories.

2. We formed the basic structure of our stories—plot lines, character structure, and roles we tend to play—in the first system of which we were a part.

In that first system, which for most of you was your original family, you learned who you are, how to be, and how to behave in systems. Certainly, over your life you have, by living, embellished and expanded your story. But, you created the core plotline during your early experiences, and that core tends to remain relatively intact unless you do specific work to modify it.

3. Our systemic stories have a significant impact on our behavior in the present, especially as the stakes go up.

Your stories are not just about the past. They are part of who you are, today. (See last weeks post about reframing our model of time.) They form the lenses through which you see and interact with your world. And, the higher the stakes are for you, the more likely your systemic stories are to become engaged and play themselves out in your present day thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

Your stories are always operating to some degree. But, when the stakes are high, you tend to experience their impact much more clearly. Sometimes, in very high stakes situations, you may feel almost compelled to behave in certain ways, even though on some level you know those behaviors won’t get the results you want.

Usually, when you have this kind of experience, your deep systemic story has become fully engaged and is, metaphorically, “telling” you how to behave in order to protect yourself and deal effectively with real or imagined risks in situations you experience as high stakes.

4. Seeing your systemic story, being aware of how it influences your leadership behavior, and learning to work with it, is very high leverage for you as a leader.

You hold your stories very deeply, and you are sometimes so close to them that you can’t see them (like trying to see your own face without a mirror). But your deep stories do not have to be permanently embedded, invisible cages. In fact, they can become sources of energy and growth. You can learn to see your stories and how they both help and constrain you. As Peter Block once said, “The first step in getting out of the cage you are in is to see the cage you are in.”

And, you can learn to reframe your stories, see them anew, and use them as a source of wisdom about living in a complex world. Remember that these are the stories you have told yourself about your experiences, not just things that have happened to you. (See last week’s post about how we create our individual and social reality.) You are not a victim here. If you created the stories, you can change them. It is a learnable skill to see your story and reframe it–see it anew, as a source of grace, strength, forgiveness and wisdom rather than as a source of hurt and constraint. Then. you can modify the parts that hold you back and create a new leadership story that is more aligned with desired results and higher leadership performance.

Where do we go from here?

What you can do:

In earlier posts, I have suggested that you

• Practice observing yourself doing what you are doing, particularly in important, high stakes situations. As David Kantor says, “learn to use 15% of your mind to observe yourself and let the other 85% deal with content.”
• Learn to pay attention to your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in these situations.
• Then, ask yourself, “What is the story I am telling myself about this situation?” Notice the storyline that tends to emerge

Now, add to the above:

• Ask “is this way of thinking, behaving, and feeling a new experience for me, or have I experienced it before? Most people respond to this question with an answer like, “Oh, I’ve always done that; I’ve always been this way.” If that is your answer, you can be almost certain that you are beginning to see the plotline of your deep story.

Next Post

As I have written these posts, I realize that I have talked mostly about the model, the ideas, and the frameworks we use in story work. I have not provided real examples of people’s stories, how the stories impact them, and how people have learned to see, reframe and change their stories. Providing examples is difficult to do without violating confidentiality, because most of the examples are from people I have worked with. In the next post, I will try to accomplish both—provide a few examples that stay true to the essence of the stories and also preserve confidentiality by fictionalizing the examples so that their sources remain anonymous.

Good journey, and to be continued….

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If you would like to learn more about story work and/or consider story coaching, feel free to call or email me at:

Steven P. Ober EdD
President: Chrysalis Executive Coaching & Consulting
Partner: Systems Perspectives, LLC
Office: PO Box 278, Oakham, MA 01068
Home: 278 Crocker Nye Rd., Oakham, MA 01068
O: 508.882.1025 M: 978.590.4219
Email: [email protected]
www.ChrysalisCoaching.org http://SystemsPerspectivesLLC.com

Steve is a senior executive coach and consultant. He has developed and successfully uses a powerful approach to leadership coaching, Creating your Leadership Story, which enables leaders to make deep, lasting improvements in their leadership effectives in short periods of time.

Coaching is about change. Clients are attracted to coaching because of the emphasis on taking action and being held accountable. They may be competent and successful in many areas of their lives, but there is a situation where they can’t seem to make the changes they desire on their own. The coach enhances motivation, action and compliance by asking: “What will you do? By when? How will you let me know you did it?”

In addition to forwarding action, the coach helps the client deepen their learning about themselves and their circumstances. Clients learn from the actions they take or don’t take. The coach will ask questions such as: “What did you learn about yourself from this situation? What would you do differently next time? How can you apply this insight to other areas of your life?”

With forward action, there is movement, results and accomplishments. With learning there is self awareness, self reliance and insight. If the coach only forwards the action, the client will get burned out. If the coach only deepens the learning, there is nothing concrete for the client to act upon. Working together action and learning creates a successful coaching experience.

In what ways do you forward action and deepen your learning?

For more resources, see the Library topic Personal and Professional Coaching.

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Pam Solberg-Tapper MHSA, PCC – I spark savvy business leaders to fire up their cutting edge, be extraordinary and do great things for their world. How can I help you? Contact me at [email protected] ~ Linkedin ~ 218-340-3330

Key Ideas Underlying Story Work

“There is nothing so practical as a good theory.” Kurt Lewin

In last week’s post, I suggested that one of the most powerful ways to understand yourself as a leader and as a human being, and to align your energy to create the results you want in life, is to understand your systemic story. I defined systemic story as the story you have told yourself about your experience in systems–your internal narrative about your experience of the human condition.

Key Ideas

Today, I will outline a few of the key ideas that underlie this approach to stories. These ideas fall into two groups

• Ideas about how we create our social reality: Social Constructionism, Symbolic Interactionism, and the Ladder of Inference
• Ideas about how we experience time, the past, and the present: Reframing our Model of Time

Social Constructionism, Symbolic Interactionism, and the Ladder of Inference

Social Constructionism

Story work is based on Social Constructionism, which suggests that we largely, some would even say wholly, construct our individual and social reality through the internal narratives (stories) we tell ourselves about our experiences. What is our individual and social reality? Is it something objective and “out there”, or is it something we create? Is it what actually happens to us or is it our interpretation of what happens to us? And what is our past—what occurred, or our memory, our stories, our internal narrative about what occurred? Social consructionism suggests that, in terms of our experienced past, and in terms of what most influences our behavior, the stories we have told ourselves about our past, and the ones we tell ourselves about what happens today, are more real than what “actually happened.”

Symbolic Interactionism

To put it another way, we are not simply stimulus-response creatures. We are stimulus-interpretation-response creatures. This idea is sometimes referred to as symbolic interactionism. We are meaning making creatures. Our experience of reality and our response to it has as much or more to do with our interpretation of events (stimuli), and the meaning we give to them, as it does with the events themselves.

The Ladder of Inference

As Chris Argyris’ Ladder of Inference suggests, we are bombarded by stimuli, by things happening all around us. Instantaneously, we screen out some of the stimuli and take in some of it, because we can’t effectively process everything. Next, we add meaning to, make interpretations of, make attributions about what we have taken in. Then, we reach a conclusion and decide what to do. Most often our conclusions and actions are several steps removed from the actual data—they are based more on the meaning we have added to the data than on the events, data, and stimuli themselves.

Putting the Ideas Together

Where do our screening frameworks, interpretations, ascribed meanings, and attributions come from? Social Constructionism suggests that they come from our internal narrative–from our stories. Put another way, our interpretations of events, and the meaning we give to them, are as much information about ourselves and about our stories as they are information about what actually occurred. So, if you want to learn something about your inner self, pay attention to how you interpret difficult situations.

In the last post, I suggested that you begin learning your story by noticing how you handle situations, particularly tough and challenging ones. Now, go another level and pay attention to what you are telling yourself about those situations and what you are telling yourself they mean. Ask yourself, “What is the story I am telling myself about this situation?” What you are telling yourself, particularly in very challenging, high stakes situations is a window into your systemic story.

Reframing how we think about time

Secondly, story work reflects a different model of time. How we think about and experience time is really shaped by our mental model of time, or our theory of time, not just by the “objective reality” we call time. As Charlie Kiefer would say, the way we experience time is “between our ears”, that is, our experience of time is a function of the way we think about time.

We usually talk and think about time using a linear model—the past, and our past experiences, were a long time ago, we are very distant from them now, and we will get more and more distant from them as “time passes.” We think about a linear sequence of events that makes up our lives to this point. We talk about timelines—straight lines depicting the passage time from one point to another.

A different and more systemic way to think about time and our past is that they are like rings in a tree. We start with a core and grow around it; we build on what we experience rather than moving away from it.* Key experiences, and the stories we have created about them, are always with us—they are very much a part of our present. They are, in a very real sense, as much a part of the present as an event that is happening right now, because we are experiencing and interpreting today’s event through lenses we have created—through the lenses of our stories. Like Jesus said about the poor, “our stories we always have with us.” They are part of what makes us who we are. Perhaps people who say, “we deal with the present, not the past” or, “We don’t talk about the past” are drawing a false dichotomy. Our life experiences are part of one organic, systemic whole rather than being “what was in the past // what is in the present.”

*I learned this model of time in a conversation with Paul Bennett, author of the powerful book Loving Grief.

Next Steps

So, in the journey of learning to see your own systemic story, pay attention to how you handle challenging situations—what you think about them, how you feel about them, and what you do about them. Then, ask yourself “What is the story I am telling myself about this situation?” As you practice observing and reflecting, you will find that your thoughts, feelings and behaviors do indeed fit into a storyline that reflects how you have learned to survive and succeed in systems.

In our next post, we will talk about the premises, or working hypotheses, that shape story work; they will help you see how you created your story, how it plays out in your work and life, and how you can make desired changes.

To be continued….

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If you would like to learn more about story work and/or consider story coaching, feel free to call or email me at:

Steven P. Ober EdD
President: Chrysalis Executive Coaching & Consulting
Partner: Systems Perspectives, LLC
Office: PO Box 278, Oakham, MA 01068
Home: 278 Crocker Nye Rd., Oakham, MA 01068
O: 508.882.1025 M: 978.590.4219
Email: [email protected]
www.ChrysalisCoaching.org http://SystemsPerspectivesLLC.com

Steve is a senior executive coach and consultant. He has developed and successfully uses a powerful approach to leadership coaching, Creating your Leadership Story, which enables leaders to make deep, lasting improvements in their leadership effectives in short periods of time.

This Blog is By Kathie Allen, CPCC, ACC – Guest Writer

As a coach, it has often occurred to me that my clients are afraid to “want” things. They live in a place of wishing but they never take action to go after it.

What is it that you want? What do you want to “Have? Be? Do”? Make a “bucket” list of your desires! Identify those things that will add depth to your life and life to your years so they have a chance to become a reality. Find a friend (or a coach) to record all the things you want to “Have, Be, Do” as you speak. Tell the truth! You will be surprised at what comes out of your mouth.

I encourage my clients to categorize the most important things on their lists, and begin to take action to make those dreams become reality. I check in with them frequently to see how they are doing. And you know what? They make most of those dreams come true!

For more resources, see the Library topic Personal and Professional Coaching.

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Kathie Allen, CPCC, ACC – Professional Life and Leadership Coach. Kathie loves to work with people who believe in the greater good and those in search of deeper meaning for their lives. Contact Kathie: 218-326-9267 • [email protected]

Steve Ober is now co-hosting the leadership blog and that means that readers will be getting a deep and interesting dive into systemic leadership. In the coming months I will continue to provide an overview of some of the more prominent leadership theories, approaches, and practices. I just concluded a four week introduction on transformational leadership and will follow this up with a similar overview of adaptive leadership, followed by examinations of charismatic, dynamical, servant, and authentic leadership. This series will include some guest submissions by writers that are intimately familiar with these various leadership theories, models, and approaches.

Introduction to Adaptive Leadership

The ideas and practices surrounding adaptive leadership have been advanced in large part by Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky in the books “Leadership without Easy Answers” and “Leadership on the Line” and more recently with the help of Alexander Grashow in the book “The Practice of Adaptive Leadership”. This introduction, and the upcoming blog entries, will draw in large part from the work of these three subject matter experts.

What is Adaptive Leadership?

Heifetz et al believe that leadership is, at its essence, about influencing change that builds and enables the capacity of individuals and organizations to thrive. Specifically, that leadership is the practice of mobilizing groups of people to tackle tough challenges and thrive. The bottom line is that leaders need to understand the importance of adaptation and are able to employ the relevant processes and tools to build the adaptive capacity of organizations.

What does it mean to be adaptive?

The word “adaptive” in adaptive leadership is drawn from evolutionary biology and refers to the process that organisms follow if they are going to survive and thrive. The three components of this process (applied to organizations) are to 1) preserve the organizational elements necessary for survival, 2) remove (or modify) the elements that are no longer necessary or useful, and 3) create (aka innovate) new arrangements that enable the organization to thrive.

What does it mean to thrive?

In adaptive leadership, to thrive is to develop new capabilities and strategies to address changes in the environment (e.g. industry) and realize strategic vision and goals. The key for an adaptive leader is to understand what it means for a specific organization to thrive, and then help make that happen. To thrive is to successfully adapt to circumstances, make desired changes, and stay anchored to what is best about the organization in the process. This requires an appreciation for the core values, purposes (whether explicit or implicit), and the history of the organization.

What are Adaptive Leadership competencies?

The adaptive leadership approach views leadership more as a process than a set of competencies. Having said this, the following are some skills, attitudes, and implied qualities that align with adaptive leadership.

• The adaptive leader needs to be able to connect organizational change to the core values, capabilities, and dreams of the relevant stakeholders
• The adaptive leader seeks to foster a culture that collects and honors diversity of opinion and uses this collective knowledge for the good of the organization
• The adaptive leader knows that change and learning can be painful for people, and is able to anticipate and counteract any reluctant behavior related to the pain
• The adaptive leader understands that large scale change is an incremental process and that he/she needs to be persistent and willing to withstand pressure to take shortcuts

What is the theory that informs adaptive leadership?

The theory that informs adaptive leadership appears to be more about the nature of organizations than about the nature of leadership. In the writings of Heifetz et al, the clearest theoretical underpinning is the speculation that organizations adhere to the same processes outlined in evolutionary biology. It is the task of the leader to understand this theoretical framework (metaphor?) and use it to guide and strengthen the organization. If you are familiar with adaptive leadership, let me know if you agree or disagree with this notion that its theoretical focus is on organizations rather than on leadership.

What’s next?

The next few weeks will entail a more detailed examination of the unique elements of adaptive leadership and some of the different adaptive leadership tools and practices.