What story are you part of?
Posted by Andrew 24 August 2009
A few weeks ago I caught up with Sam Hardy, Director at the Australia Centre for peace and Conflict Studies.
As a PhD student who had supposedly gone to the dark side (having been practicing Law to now working in Mediation) she found herself wanting to explore deeper the human stories around injury. Advertising in local papers and other networks it wasn’t long before she had herself a diary full of meetings with people who were willing to share their stories. She introduced herself as a researcher and placed her digital audio recorder on the table and listened. It was only at the end of the interview, after the participant had shared their story that Sam asked them a question. It was “Have you spoken with a lawyer?”
Once she had finished all her interviews she sat back and looked at the stories. She separated the stories into those who had spoken with a lawyer and those who hadn’t. She noticed something striking about the two sets of stories, and with some further analysis she was able to articulate exactly what it was. Sam found that those people who had spoken with a lawyer told their stories in a Melodrama narrative genre. Their stories were ‘victim’ stories with a passive protagonist. In contrast, she found that those who hadn’t spoken with a lawyer were corresponding to a Tragedy tale. A tale where they, as protagonist, are an active participant in the telling. In many of the cases she even found humour within the telling. Like for example the researcher who had been barbed by a platypus who went on to become a celebrity because, really, how many people in the world are barbed by a platypus and live to tell the tale? Not many!
When I met with a senior inspector from Vic Police and shared this story he responded with how he had been in a workplace injury where he had broken his back and how the system of care that mobilised around him was taking him into a darker space than where he wanted to be. He didn’t want to be treated like a victim. He made an active and intentional move to recover outside that system of care. He said the experience has helped him to become a more empathetic leader and manager because of it.
So what’s the moral of this story?
Maybe it’s like the great quote I picked up from a trip to the Banff Leadership centre.
“How am I to know what I’m to do unless I answer to which story I’m part of”.
Which story do you want to be part of? What genre is your story? What story are you helping to create right now?