What about stories that you remember from childhood or from literature? They create metaphors and symbols that we use in everyday life to refer to some kind of truth that we learned through them. The proverbial goose who lays the golden egg, or the black sheep in the family. What about Afrikaans people saying “ek is nie die vark in hierdie verhaal nie” (I am not the pig in this story).

Stories make learning stick because they involve the left and the right brain, they excite the emotions and they connect concepts with one another in surprising but memorable ways. They make what is abstract suddenly concrete and doing so creates aha-moments that stay with you over time. Stories even give you practical solutions and show you things you can do to make your life different.

There is another untapped but extremely powerful way in which stories can make learning stick – not through their content, but through their structure.

If you have read the Bible, or studied Greek mythology, or heard fairy tales from your grandmother, studied some Shakespeare at school, or just seen a few Hollywood films, you would recognize this structure right away. It is the dramatic structure underlying almost all stories and serves the purpose of taking the main character in the story on a journey of self discovery and personal growth.

Stories take the hero on a journey of learning – a kind of learning that not only sticks with him/her the hero, but impacts their entire community and often the land itself: they lived happily ever after,  their people prospered, and their land was fruitful.

A story is designed to teach the hero lessons that will stick – can the same structure do the same for you and your team, client or audience?

There are three levels on which this story structure works: the fictional, the personal, and the communal.

1. The fictional level

When you read or listen to a story you can distinguish the elements of the structure quite easily. Knowing the elements can then help you understand the story and use it to make your own stories.

2. Your own life journey.

Whenever you experience change, uncertainty, or heightened emotion, Once you understand stories, you can apply their meaning to your own life. your story is moving through one of the stages of story structure.

3. The growth of a group, company or community

Entire communities may go through change and again the same pattern is recognizable. You can therefore use story structure to understand and shape the growth of a group, company or community.

If you understand how the story structure of the hero’s journey works, you can use it in the lives of other people to play an important role in their growth. You can

• shape information to fit into a story so that people are inspired to change;
• use it to design presentations and proposals
• design and organize workshops  and events that will help people open up to new ideas and change.

The three levels of the story’s function is very hard to separate from one another. The hero’s personal journey is woven into the journey of her own community.  In your own life too, the stories you read influence and mirror your life and your life influences and mirrors the lives of those around you. If you understand how this works, you may be able to use stories to manage your own growth and play a great role in shaping the stories of those of others.

Playing Mantis offers a one day workshop on Story Strategies for Facilitators where we explore how to use the structure of story as tool for designing learning experiences that will make the learning stick.

The Princess of the African Savannah

Retold from the original by Emily Bornoff. LAPA Publishers, 2010.

Once upon a time in the African Savannah there was a princess who was as beautiful as the landscape. Her eyes shone like the night stars, her hair was curly as the thorn trees and her skin as dark as the soil. She was beautiful, happy and friendly. Her father was a good king.

One day a prince came from a faraway country. He was handsome, young and courageous. The king invited him into his home. Soon the prince and the princess grew very fond of each other. The people who like to sing and dance and tell stories around the fires at night nudged each other saying: ‘One day those two will reign over us together…’

Then winter came and with winter came the dry season. The prince became restless and frustrated: ‘I can’t stand the dust and the dry grass. Out there are many lands waiting for me to discover them, I must leave.’

‘Oh, how I would love to come with you,’ said the princess, ‘but my place is with my people. We know that the dry season will pass and the rain will come again in summer.’

‘I must leave”, said the prince, “but I will return with the summer rain.’

‘And I will wait for you….’

She waited all winter and the next summer, but he did not return. She waited another winter and a summer and yet another. Still he did not come back.

One day an eagle came and sat on her shoulder.

‘Why are you sad, princess?’

‘My prince has not returned. Please go search for him and when you find him, remind him that I am still waiting.’

The eagle searched far and wide and when he was about to give up, he found the prince in a mountainous country by the sea. The prince was still young, courageous and handsome, but also had an embarrassed look about him.

When the eagle told him who he was, he dropped his head and said:

‘I made promises that I did not know I would not be able to keep. I was foolish and did not know I would find this beautiful land where my heart wants to stay forever. Please tell the princess I am sorry.’

The eagle returned to find the princess just like he left her, waiting.

When he told her what the prince had said, she grew very angry: ‘You are a lying and deceitful bird. You were too lazy to do as I asked, and now you are making up stories! Go away and never return!’

The princess waited three more turns of the season and then she realised that the eagle had spoken the truth. And then she began to weep.

She wept without restraint. Her father tried to cheer her up with beads and new clothes. The people tried by singing songs and telling stories. Still the princess wept.

Soon the tears formed a puddle by her feet. The puddle became a stream, the stream turned into a river and the river transformed the landscape into a wet land.

With the water came the fish and then the water birds. Soon large game came like the hippo and the crocodile.

Still the princess wept.

The people built canoes and began to fish in the water. They cut the reads and started to make baskets. They hunted the large game that came to drink. Mothers washed clothes and children played in the water.

One day the eagle returned and sat down near the princess. When she saw him, she asked: ‘Why did you come back after I was so rude to you?’

‘Shhhh’ he replied, ‘just look up and see what your tears have created!’

The princess looked up and saw the people working and playing. She saw the landscape that had changed and said: ‘I want to go out in a canoe with my father.’

When she saw all there was to see, she realised that, although the land was very different from what she remembered, it was just as beautiful.

While the princess was always beautiful and friendly, over time her happiness too returned. But she was now also wise. When her father passed away some time thereafter she could be a worthy leader for her people. It was well with them and their land.

I chose this story for this story course because of its long twilight zones. A twilight zone is an in between place where it is neither day or night, where a hero wavers on a threshold betwixt and between.

Every story has two such twilight zones: one between the beginning and the middle of the story and one between the middle and the ending. The first shows the hero wavering before she accepts the Call to Adventure. The second sees her wavering between her old way of doing and accepting the new truth that the journey is teaching her.

Our princess’s first twilight zone starts when the winter first came, but it continues for the whole time that she waits for the prince, not accepting his departure. Her second twilight zone begins as her father and her people give up on her and continue with their lives in the new landscape her tears created. It ends as she finally looks up as prompted by the eagle, and decides to go out in a canoe with her father.

The transformational power of stories are locked up in how we handle our own twilight zones and how we support others through theirs.

Join the rest of the story class to learn how to harness the transformational power of story.

Tuesdays 19:30 to 21:00, from 8 Feb for 8 weeks at 6 Neetling str in Stellenbosch. Next week is the last of 2 free sessions for you to check out if you like it or not. If you missed the first one, please come 15 minutes earlier on the 15th.

I can’t wait to take you further on this adventure!

Petro

Last night I talked for almost 2 hours on Skype with a Spanish PhD student who interviewed me for her thesis on using the ‘symbolic frame’ for creating lasting transformation in people. I told her about our process and some of the shifts we had noticed. She asked me how I know that these shifts are lasting and did not just occur on a superficial cognitive level.

How lasting is the happy ever after?

I had my own ideas about this, but I thought I would give it back to you and allow you yourselves to comment on the short term benefits you experienced during the course as well as the lasting value it has for you. Feel free to comment on how lasting you think the shifts are. What does ‘happy ever after’ mean to you in this sense?

Your comments will be invaluable for everyone interested in trying out one of our story workshops as well as for me to somehow capture the impact of the work.

Thank you for taking the time to reflect and share your thoughts, I am looking forward to your comments.

When I asked participants in the Personal Success Story to form a continuum showing to what degree they are ready for transformation, most of them placed themselves close to the side that indicates they are sick of being where they are and in dire need of change.

Transformation becomes our definition of success as we embark on the success story together. Success very rarely have anything to do with external changes, but always refer to an internal shift or transformation that then has a direct effect on the outer world of the hero. The lonely Shrek in the first movie makes friends and finds true love not because someone outside of him started to care for him, but because he started to care for them. He chose to go after Fiona while still believing that she thinks he is an unlovable ogre.

There comes a point in everyone’s story, fictional or real, where a shift in perspective is crucial for successful transformation. In real life people look for this shift by reading books, attending seminars, talking to their friends and mentors, going to church and googling for info on the net. Yet all the info and talk and thinking in the world do not bring them to the point of making that internal behavioural shift – that moment that causes them never to be the same again – the moment that embodies their definition of success.

Then that same person goes on holiday, or has to deal with the death of a loved one, or a wedding, or they play a game of soccer with friends or they go for a hike in nature, or they create a piece of art, or join a dance class or just have a great meal with friends and suddenly old things have a new colour.

All these are examples of experiences that bring change: experiential learning. If transformation is your definition of success, these are the kinds of experiences you seek. Typically they have the following 4 aspects in common:

1. A change of scenery/setting
2. Involvement of the body i.e. movement
3. Emotional connection i.e. a heart response and
4. The presence of others – including the presence of nature or the creative muse

I went to my kinesiologist 2 months ago with a most debilitating pain in my back. She says to me: you think and struggle too much in your head and do not move enough in your body. She prescribed a half hour of walking twice a week so that my mental struggles can come into perspective and move from my head into my body.

Although these shifts can happen to anyone at any time, there is a particular moment in a story designed for it. A place in the story where it is most likely to occur because of all the story stages that preceded it. This moment is typically two thirds into the story just before act three. Some writers refer to it as the pause before the climax, that calm before the storm. It is the moment when the hero seems to have lost and the journey seems to be a failure, then something happens that allows him/her to see the bigger picture and the greater good.

This is the moment where Shrek in the first movie realises it is no longer about getting his swamp back, but it is now about getting his love back. It is where Brave Heart realises it is no longer just about his family, but about is entire tribe.

I saw shifts occur in all the Personal Success Story workshop except for the one who was on the furthest end of the continuum regarding his need for change. This participant also happens to be Burgert, who is my business partner, and whose definition of success for this workshop would not have been personal success, but the successful completion of the workshop in creating transformation for our participants.

Congratulations to all of you who were brave enough to come to this very experiential workshop and allowed the processes to impact your lives. I trust that the experience will reveal its layers of truth for you ongoing over the next few months so that you can achieve the change that matches your definition of success.

Click her for the Personal Success Story Notes

Petro Janse van Vuuren

Then that same person goes on holiday, or has to deal with the death of a loved one, or a wedding, or they play a game of soccer with friends or they go for a hike in nature, or they create a piece of art, or join a dance class or just have a great meal with friends and suddenly old things have a new colour.

All these are examples of experiences that bring change: experiential learning. Typically they have the following 4 aspects in common:

1. A change of scenery/setting
2. Involvement of the body i.e. movement
3. Emotional connection i.e. a heart response and
4. The presence of others – including the presence of nature or the creative muse

I went to my kinesiologist 2 months ago with a most debilitating pain in my back. She says to me: you think and struggle too much in your head and do not move enough in your body. She prescribed a half hour of walking twice a week so that my mental struggles can come into perspective and move from my head into my body.

This advice was one of the reasons that prompted me to start the story class because I knew I did not have enough work that allowed me to move – too many ideas in my head and not enough physical outlet for them. Of course acting out stories adds people, a change of scenery and the emotional connection, creating the ideal opportunity for gut level shifts to occur.

Although these shifts can happen to anyone at any time, there is a particular moment in a story designed for it. A place in the story where it is most likely to occur because of all the story stages that preceded it. This moment is typically two thirds into the story just before act three. Some writers refer to it as the pause before the climax, that calm before the storm. It is the moment when the hero seems to have lost and the journey seems to be a failure, then something happens that allows him/her to see the bigger picture and the greater good.

This is the moment where Shrek in the first movie realises it is no longer about getting his swamp back, but it is now about getting his love back. It is where Brave Heart realises it is no longer just about his family, but about is entire tribe. It is the moment where the facilitator realises it is not about the plan and the timeline, but about commitment to a group and including all the voices of the participant. It is also the moment when the travellers in the Underworld enter into the court of Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld.

Last week’s class was all about Stage 4 of the journey: The Ordeal. The conversation we had about how to deal with absence in the group evoked the distinctive kind of energy that is characteristic of the Ordeal. When we therefore stood up from the table and began to:

1. Change the scenery from this world into story world, then from the upper world of Bellashréne to the Underworld
2. Move our bodies to create images of protagonist, antagonist, contagonist and guide
3. Engage our emotions in response to the story and
4. Work collaboratively with one another,

I could see each character making the shift we are talking about and transforming to a higher level of consciousness.

I saw Fai Lilly stretched to breaking point trying to see into the Underworld and then letting it go, finding her peace in the Upper World.

I saw Friar Charles full of fear trying to protect and fend off threats finally surrendering to the powers of the Underworld ending on the floor squealing with glee.

I saw Bluh, the lonesome outcast connecting with others and making friends.

I saw Lollie the dancer abandon her need to understand allowing the dance to penetrate not just her own body but radiate into the entire Underworld.

I saw Ishtar the Betrothed and Evelyn the Loved find friendship in each other and peace in themselves.

I also saw myself as Queen of the Underworld first lose control and then regain her dignity.

Such is the power of acting and such is the power of doing it in a story with others.

Thank you all for your undivided commitment to the journey!

What lies ahead are mere formalities: events that directly flow from these shifts:
1. Finding the Duke Tamuz
2. Paying the price for his release
3. The birth of the triplets
4. The preservation of friendships
5. The return to Bellashréne.

Looking forward!

Petro Janse van Vuuren

I arrived at the class this week, knowing that lollie the dancer would not be present and I have made room for her absence in the planning. Just then 2 more participants excused themselves. So we started our journey to the Underworld with only 3 people, one of whom was not present last week.

How does a facilitator respond to absenteeism? This question is crucial because life happens and you need to be adaptable. This does not mean there is no cost  to all involved. I thought it may be useful for myself as well as for the participants and everyone else in similar circumstances to see why we miss absent people so much.  What is the cost of absenteeism for all sides and what the responsibility of each agent is to minimize this cost.

Let me clarify the context in which these costs are applicable: Learning situations that

1. are collaborative and rely on team work
2. seek to ignite creative thinking and problem solving
3. are designed over a period of time to build one on top the other towards a  particular desired outcome (not stand alone lessons)
4. employs experiential interactive methods where the learning is not found in notes and reading material.

For a soft ware company such a process could be a 2 day sprint for designing a particular piece of software. For a theatre company it could be rehearsing a play, for a business it could be strategic planning for the coming year.

People who excuse themselves from the process typically think they are the only ones paying a price and they weigh that cost and decide that they are willing to pay it. They are yusually unaware of other costs they are paying and the costs for the other agents:

Silenced voices

Absent participants silence their own voices which means they lose the chance to make choices that wilol impact them and may therefore lead to frustration when having to deal with others’ choices on your behalf. This means you also lose a sense of freedom and control.

Present participants lose the chance to learn how to integrate a large variety of different ideas (because some voices are silent). This means that one of the main objectives of the process i.e. learning to listen to diverse ideas and collaborating  is lost.

Yet, no one feels the high price of silenced voices as much as the facilitator to whom the inclusion of voices and the importance of the collaborative effort carries the  most value. The facilitator has probably spent years in training learning how to be a true facilitator that does not provide answers and does not influence the out come of the project with their own agenda. Facilitators typically have to unlearn the urge to be the saviour of the group and provide the answers and learn the ultimate value of only creating the space for participants to find their own voices and hear their own answers. Absenteeism therefore asks the facilitator a very hing price.

Trust

Absent participants lose a certain amount of trust from the present participants. Often this loss is very big and frustration can be very high. Other times, as in our case, participants are very forgiving and flow with what happens and still a small amount of trust is always sacrificed.

The facilitator therefore need to make provision for this loss of trust and find ways to mend the schism on top of having to rework the plan and make other adjustments.

Lost time

When next a participant who was absent rejoins a group, it will take 15 to 20 minutes to reintegrate the participant into the group. This usually is not a problem, because everyone takes that amount of time to get back into it and they enjoy the chance to share where they are with the member who was absent.

However, when half your group was not there, it will take 15-20 minutes for every absent member. In our case that amounts to 45-50 min i.e. more than half the class time. The reason for it taking so long is that for every extra participant the amount of relationships that need to be re-established after absence increases exponentially.

For the facilitator this creates more frustration than for the participants because she carries the responsibility of keeping the big picture and overall learning process in mind. Somehow, somewhere this lost time will have to be found.

Prescription instead of diversity

All the lost input impoverishes the final product making it less enriching, less inclusive and far less aesthetic. Overall, when voices are kept silent and group decisions are left to a few, the process becomes scripted by the present participants. And script leads to prescription and this in turn leads to a loss of diversity, colour and depth. The whole process looses levels of meaning and of beauty.

In our case this is especially true because one of the participants is working with an existing story in mind. This is not a problem so long as there are enough voices that force her to stretch the boundaries of her story. But with 3 people absent and only one friend who was also present the previous class, the story suddenly became the dominant voice and this raises red flags for me as the facilitator.

On one hand the facilitator is grateful for a participant with a strong idea of where they want the process to go. At the same time it creates a dominant culture that is hard to penetrate once the absent voices as back again.

Loss of transformational power

All the lost time accumulates toward the end of the programme and shortens the time for applying and integrating  the outcome into the real life situation it was designed for. This is probably the most important reason why you are missed when you are absent. Yet, only the facilitator is fully aware of this cost.

How many times have you attended a course or a workshop that left you with the question: So what? How do I use this in my everyday life?

Most processes are well designed around the climactic moment of insight and learning. Many processes fall short on the responsibility to help participants apply that insight and build it into a customised plan for their real life contexts. But if a process have that planned into it, absenteeism can greatly impact on the time set out for it towards the end.

In our case, we would feel the impact most on the second to last day when we are supposed to reflect on the journey and shape it into a tellable story. If there are too many loose ends this will create anxiety, frustration and possibly loss of closure and satisfaction. This means that the transformational power of the process is watered down because it is left unfinished.

IT also means that the transition back into one’s real life context is not cushioned with no buffer. This leaves the participant vulnerable to the very problems they came to the workshop to solve. I recently added 3 hours to my Personal Success Story workshop because the cushioning or return phase of the process was just not enough. Too many people left feeling vulnerable and without clarity as to the path ahead.

My solution for the story class:

Can everyone who was absent please come an hour earlier (6:30) tomorrow so that we can all be closer to the same page when the rest arrive?

This way the only cost is to the absent participants in terms of time and inconvenience and myself as facilitator. But this cost is minimal since I score in contact time and in regaining the momentum of the story.

KTS Banner displayed in every community

Since September last year (2009) a handful of people including myself, started to dream about a mammoth project that will stretch across the entire Stellenbosch district during the Soccer World Cup. While many saw either dollar signs or red flags, we saw a great opportunity for transforming our communities by focussing on kids and young people.

What if we could use world cup fever (or fevah) as a Call to Adventure and community transformation?

The Keep Them Safe project was born.

Today I am thrilled to report that there are holiday programmes running in 13 communities across Stellenbosch targeting kids and young people. The programme is called ‘The Perfect Pitch’ , it will run for 4 weeks and is entirely managed by teams of people from the communities themselves. Today I begin telling our story.

The purpose of the story

From the start I was privileged to contribute my knowledge of story and mythic journeys to help design the entire project as a journey of growth and transformation for all involved.

The story structure of a mythic journey has as its main purpose the transformation of the hero, also called protagonist. The entire story is designed to fulfill this function and every character in the story play his or her role in such a way that the hero can grow. The only difference between the hero and anyone else in the story is transformation and everything and everyone else is there purely to contribute to this.

It follows therefore, that it may be possible to use the structure of story to design a journey of transformation for other people. If you understand how to design a story so that the hero transforms, you can use this knowledge to design events and programmes that would let the participants transform and grow. This is what we did for Keep Them Safe.
Using the 5 basic stages of the mythic journey as well as its sub components, we designed such a journey of growth. As you read about my process, keep in mind that the same principles will be true for any other programme or event you want to design.

The title of the story

Before getting to the first stages, we must first determine the title of the story. The title refers to the protagonist and the challenge of the journey. To keep titles short, one or the other usually valls away eventually, but to get to the final title, both elements need to be clarified. A good example is Sleeping Beauty i.e. the girl who needed to wake” or Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Many stories only have the name of the protagonist e.g. Hanzel and Grettel , others only have the challenge e.g. Titanic. Of course stories have other titles too, but the most common titles are the ones referring to the protagonist and his challenge.

Early on we discovered that The Keep Them Safe project has two titles referring to two different protagonists and two different challenges. Since then I realised that this is true of most projects and it is essential to take the two (and sometimes three) stories apart.

For us the stories were:

Keep them Safe: The story of community leaders working together to keep their young people safe.

The Perfect Pitch: The story of young people creating a perfect pitch for their own lives and their communities.

Today is the first day that these two stories are in exactly the same stage i.e. The Journey itself. So with both stories now running on their own and gaining momentum, let me tell you how we got here, and why the two stories did not overlap until today…