Page 158 - Appreciative Leadership

The Courage of Inspiration 131

Appreciative Leadership is a choice to be positive and to help
people, even when they are having a hard time or not performing at
their best. It is a choice that awakens the creative spirit in support of
collaboration and high performance.

Learn to Talk Story

While working with a leading telecommunication company in Hawaii,
we were introduced to the concept of talk story. “Great teachers tell

stories. They don’t lecture about lists of ideas. In Hawaii we call this
talk story. Whenever we have something important to say, we say it in
a story. It is much more interesting to hear and much easier to remem-
ber. Our culture is a story culture. All aspects of our history and cul-
ture are passed from generation to generation in stories. We know
who we are because we talk story.”
We all learn who we are through stories. Traditions—at work and
at home—are shared and maintained in story. Think about the stories

your first supervisor told you about what it means to work. Or the sto-
ries your grandparents told you. Or the stories you’ve heard around the
coffee pot at work recently. What have you learned from these stories?

One of our clients, the CEO of a major telecommunications company
had this realization about stories, “That means that our organization

culture is the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and then we
forget they are stories.” He went on to say, “Then, to change our cul-

ture we need to change our stories.” 3
Stories are inspiring. They invite deep listening, respect, and

learning. Some stories inspire change. Drawing on the work of
4
Lev Vygotsky, the narrative therapist Michael White points out that
stories stimulate change when they are within a range of proximal
development. Th at is, if a story is either too similar or too diff er-
5
ent from people’s current reality, it will not inspire them or move

them to action. A similar story does not offer a new vision or give
hope; a story that is too different creates anxiety. In neither case

do people feel drawn to live into the new narrative. Appreciative
Leadership inspires with stories that resonate with people’s values,