Zynia - Motivational metaphors for Training and Development

Story Telling for change

I’d been invited to facilitate a management team away day for an NHS Partnership Trust. They had just undergone a review, a number of significant changes were about to be thrust upon them and the implications for changes in working arrangements were worrying managers and staff alike.

This job had all the potential to be something of a poisoned chalice. I’d planned how to get the issues out and then come up with a strategy to get the group to suggest ways forward and to prioritise them, but how to deal with the nature of change and the range of feelings it stirred up.

And then I happened to hit on a story set in the ‘far away and long ago’ about a girl who feels disempowered by her circumstances and complains to her mother about this. Her mother wisely says nothing but simply takes the girl into the kitchen and places 3 pots of water on the stove to boil. Into one she places a carrot, into another she places an egg and into the third she places tea leaves. As they cook the mother takes out the carrot, the egg and pours the tea and asks her daughter what she observes about them. The girl remarks that the egg once fragile is now hard, the carrot, once hard is now soft, and although the tea leaves have not essentially changed the environment has been changed by them.

I introduced the team away day by relating the story up to the point of placing the pots on the stove to boil, abandoned it there and took no feedback. But I still got it, the non-verbal type; some participants were looking uncomfortable and exchanging embarrassed, puzzled glances with others, other participants were acknowledging the story with nods and others were looking out of the window.

At the end of the day after all the highs and lows of identifying issues, ways forward, prioritising and committing to them I closed by repeating the story and taking it to its conclusion. This time I sought verbal feedback and consistently there was understanding and recognition that we have choices in how we respond to change; we can be hardened by change, we can soften and mellow or we can be instruments in changing the environment ourselves.

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