What is a story...

....and why do we tell stories?

In the context of a Learning Festival, stories describe experiences and what we have learned from those experiences.A story is the foundation of our personal learning. When we tell our story or when we write it down, we are doing more than 'documenting' our experience, we begin to learn more from our experience.

When we write down our story, we make our experience available to others. It now has the possibility to help others.

Hints and tips for telling stories

Here are some guidelines from Jean Legastelois on telling stories. Jean, a journalist, is a member of the Constellation. His suggestions have been a useful guide for us as we learned to tell stories.

• Be story-minded

  • When story-minded people come across a potential story, a bell rings in their head.

  • With a little practice, you begin to hear stories as people speak.

• Catch the story

  • You have to dedicate time to a story.

  • Listen to people.

  • Question and question again to get the facts that you need.

• Credibility

  • Ask the basic questions.

  • Who (acted)?

  • What (happened)?

  • Where?

  • When?

  • Why?

  • How?

• Is there a turning point?

  • Be clear about what makes this an interesting story.

  • Did something change?

  • When did people decide to do something?

• What is the message?

  • What does the story say?

  • What is the message of the story?

• What is the headline?

  • Make the headline specific. A good headline cannot be used twice, because every story is different.

• The main message is the backbone of the story

  • The golden rule: one message from one story.

You can download a more detailed discussion of these guidelines on a separate page story telling guidelines.

Some people have also found a template useful when they want to help someone to tell their story. We do not use this template as a set of questions to ask the person telling you the story. Your job is to listen carefully to the story and ask the questions that you need to ask to make sense of the story. But we have found the template useful as a check list to make sure that we have gathered all the information that we need in order to document the story.You can find the story telling template on this page.

EXERCISE: Telling a story

This exercise is best done in pairs. Either face-to-face or via Skype. Can you think of a story that shows how someone could improve their performance of a particular practice in the Self Assessment? It might be a personal experience. You might have observed it. Someone might have told you about it. You might have found the story during a Salt visit. Or it could have happened in your day-to-day work or life.

Think how you will tell the story to your colleague. You want to be brief. Five minutes is a good target.

Now arrange in pairs for each of you to share your stories.

The first person tells their story and the second person listens and asks questions bearing in mind the guideline and the template introduced above. Now the listener writes the story down. You need a title (or a headline). And the story should give you a message. Every story is different, but you should aim for around 300 words to tell the story. The writer of the story now returns the written text to the owner of the story.

The second person now tells their story to the first person.

And now it is time for the second person to tell THEIR story. And the process is repeated.

The owners of the stories now look at the work of the story writer. How do you feel about the work of your colleague? Are there things that you would like to add? To take out? Modify your story until you are happy with it. Post your story on the forum.

What have you learned about telling stories from this exercise?

The wonder of stories

When you listen to someone else’s story, you will often find that what you learn from it is different from what the narrator learned. This is not a problem of stories. It is the wonder of stories.

When we listen to a story we cannot help but consider it in the context of our own unique set of experiences. Hence what we learn can be different from what someone else learns.