Lights Up
The Singapore International Story Telling Festival (SISF) returns for another highly-anticipated season. Co-organised by the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS) and The Arts House, SISF brings together acclaimed international storytellers to nurture and empower audiences through a wealth of activities from 24 August to 9 September 2007. For more information visit http://www.bookcouncil.sg/sisf
The Singapore Writers centre (SWC) brings you a series of exclusive articles on the relevance of stories from the storytelling maestros themselves. Discover the breadth and width of storytelling applications ranging from personal development to corporate advancement.
Storytelling: A Strategic Business Art
By Dilip Mukerjea
LIFE EVOLVES…
Life evolves, not from atoms and molecules…but from stories. In fact, our atoms and molecules are evolving stories. Each human being is a story in utero, waiting to unfold.
A picture may be equal to a thousand words; sometimes, a word might equal a thousand pictures. But a story consists of an infinitude of words and pictures…with each retelling, its form and function morph into fresh dimensions of perception.
POSSIBILITIES WITHIN STORIES
Our most meaningful relationships are enacted through stories—they bind and bond us to one another—and the quickest path between souls is a bridge of stories.
A story might be as short as a phrase, and as long as infinity. And a story well told is infused with kinetic energy: it can facilitate rapport between people, and harmony within cultures, because our minds work via links, connections, and associations.
Stories unfold a vast vista of possibilities by enabling us to encompass multiple points of view simultaneously. Listening to stories creates a sense of expanded consciousness: where we are encouraged to reflect on our similarities, appreciate diverse perspectives, and to negotiate our differences.
One of the greatest benefits of stories is to inspire reflection—old and new, concrete and abstract, logic and imagination—they all come together to bring new levels of meaning into evolving contexts.
Stories are a prime medium for modeling ideas, acquiring fresh knowledge, comprehending complex emotions, and analyzing situations; and most wondrously, stories are an exquisite mechanism for managing ambiguity and paradoxes.
BUSINESS BENEFITS
The best managers of people are often those who are the best managers of stories. And a story narrated with compelling finesse can dynamically link to business objectives. Organisational EQ soars when managers are able to elicit, and become aware of, their employees’ stories, and when they themselves are adept at narrating their own stories. Through the devices of imagination—imagery, analogies, metaphors, drama, and an array of visual and other sensory stimuli—a bond is established between personal and organizational realities. The potential benefits include:
• Employees become energized, enthused, and eager to contribute ideas and perspectives.
• Work becomes compelling, creative, and collaborative, not a drudge masquerading as a job!
• There are fewer management silos and layers.
• Paranoia gives way to productivity.
• A culture change has inspired future-readiness via entrepreneurial behaviour.
• The organization is infused with Learning Leaders, each a Leading Learner.
Thus, in such a context, stories accelerate commerce! Businesses move rapidly, impelled by agile organizational cultures. Stories build competitively adaptive, dynamically flexible minds. Ideas proliferate, and dance to the ebb and flow of a vigorous marketspace. In time, our experiences become our remembrances: in the form of stories, with lessons learned, knowledge built and shared, and ideas executed.
ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING
Learning is fluid, and organisational learning is best achieved via a fluid flow of communication. This is often enacted via creative conversations, most eloquently articulated via stories. People are our greatest sources of information: Their lives glisten with meaning when organisational rupture morphs into workplace rapture.
Our lives are moving targets. In our search for meaning, we find it difficult to excavate a finite purpose in the thicket of spreadsheets, databases, and ‘administrivial’ minutia. Stories help us see the substance and significance of issues. They facilitate understanding, inspire rapport, and stimulate action.
The largest galactic cluster is larger than the smallest known particle by a factor of the number one with about thirty-seven zeroes following it. Impossible to imagine. Yet, stories, moving from mind to mind on a caravanserai of images, are replete with possibilities that dwarf the largest of numbers.
The master unsolved problem of biology is how the hundred billion neurons of the human brain work together to create consciousness. But this gift of consciousness is where stories come from. The nebula of pathways might include the Cretan labyrinths of cyberspace, the dark depths of one’s subconscious, the happy imagination of a child, or the chaotic anecdotal library within the brain of a frenzied executive. Stories integrate art and science, and kindle a synthesised awareness which begins in wonder and ends with wisdom.
In one sense, stories are civilisation’s first abstract art form. Our word for imagination derives from the Greek phantasia, which itself is derived from phaos (“light”) because it is not possible to see without light. Stories draw out the light from our imaginations…and cast light upon our lives. A mosaic breaks up space into sharply distinctive pieces — and yet produces a coherent image. In such a way, stories are like great art, which can communicate before it is understood.
Catch Dilip Mukerjea and his seminar Braintales at the annual Singapore International Story Telling Festival from 24 August to 9 September 2007. For more information, visit http://www.bookcouncil.sg/sisf
Dilip Mukerjea
Dilip is the Owner and Managing Director of ‘Braindancing International’ and “Buzan Centre Singapore Pte Ltd,” organisations specifically dedicated to advancing human performance across multiple domains. Focus is directed on developing Intellectual & Emotional Capital for the Learning Economy, via strategies encompassing Creative Problem Solving, Mind Mapping®, i-Mapping™, Speed Reading, Memory Enhancement, and Lifescaping™. Dilip has been publicly acclaimed as “phenomenally creative and easily one of the world’s top ten Master Mind Mappers” by Tony Buzan himself. Familiar with the cultures of both ‘East’ and ‘West’, where he has lived and worked extensively, he has also traveled to well over 30 countries around the world. Experienced as a public speaker on international platforms, and a versatile seminar presenter, Mr. Mukerjea is involved in developing further skills that will significantly enhance anyone’s creative and innovative capacity. His accomplishments have been recognised and included in the Millennium Edition of Who’s Who of the World and in The Baron’s 500: Leaders for the New Century. http://www.brain-dancing.com
Storytelling and Teaching
by Dr Fran Stallings
Since time immemorial, people have used stories to hold their listeners’ attention while transmitting important information. It still works today:
“How could that be? Why did they do that? Here’s how it started…”
“That reminds me of the time…”
“Let me tell you a story…”
It’s amazing how a classroom full of students perk up when they hear those words. People (of all ages) listen to stories. It’s almost as though our ears are tuned to the story form.
Our ancestors knew this. Long before literacy created external records, human memory had to carry all their histories, all their hard-won survival battles. Our ancestors found that story-shaped information was more readily heard—and indelibly retained. They shaped their subject matter into Beginning, Middle, End; focused on appealing characters; crafted tales using key words; repeated phrases for rhythm; and bound it with familiar opening and closing phrases. Listeners could not help paying attention, and the information was easily recalled.
Recent research suggests that our brains have a special knack for understanding and retaining information in the form of stories. According to learning theorist Roger C. Schank (Institute for the Learning Sciences at Northwestern University, U.S.A.), stories are at the core of human intelligence.
Years ago, I told ancient Egyptian legends to my daughter’s World History classmates. Their young teacher Terry Hughes, noting their absorption, vowed that he would put the “story” back into history—and now has collected tales from ancient China to South America. His graduates regularly return after visiting world historical sites “—because of you, Mr. Hughes.” Stories are both readily accepted and indelible.
Maybe it’s because stories clarify meaning. As educator/novelist Aidan Chambers wrote, “Story allows us to make information productive. Without Story, information is nothing but a lot of bricks lying about waiting for someone to make constructive use of them.” I believe this is true not just in History or Literature, but also in Science, where a hypothesis tries to connect the Beginning (starting conditions) and Middle (data produced) with a meaningful End (conclusion). Having grown up in a storytelling family, I naturally used Story when I taught university biology and botany. Story kept my students awake, helped them make sense of all the information, and (they tell me) stuck with them long afterwards.
We may think that once children can read, they don’t need to hear stories any more. That is far from true! Literature teachers in California “hook” reluctant readers by orally telling the start of a novel, then breaking off at a key point. “What happens next? Turn to page 15.” Foreign language teachers sprinkle new vocabulary words into lively stories told in a mix of English and the foreign tongue, so that their students grasp the meaning from its useful context. Math teachers have always used “word problems,” but the more fascinating the story, the more motivated their students are to solve it.
When students have a chance to retell the stories they have heard, the benefits to their language skills multiply. Their poise, self-confidence, and oral fluency blossom. Their reading skills increase as they seek new stories of their own to tell. And their practice in oral word-weaving pays off in their ability to write original material, non-fiction as well as fiction. I trained a second-grade teacher to coach her students in storytelling, although she apologized that this class was the most immature and ill-prepared she had ever encountered in thirty years of teaching. By spring however she enthused, “This is the most gifted group of writers I have ever had!” Each child had polished a unique repertory of stories to tell. I believe that oral practice had built the foundation of their writing skills.
A teacher doesn’t need to be an actor or a professional storyteller to use stories in the classroom. Such is the allure of stories that students don’t care about style, they just want to hear another one (or the same story over again). With practice and attention to the students’ responses, educators find that their “story voice” develops on its own. My colleague Papa Joe advised, “How do you become a storyteller? By telling stories. How do you become a better storyteller? By telling more stories!”
Any story worth telling, has something to teach. In this world of countless stories there are myriad which fit any curriculum. I look forward to sharing some of them at the upcoming Singapore International Story Telling Festival 24 Aug – 9 Sept 2007. For more information visit http://www.bookcouncil.sg/sisf
Fran is an internationally known storyteller, author, and recording artist with a PhD in Biology. She tells world folktales and original creations enlivened with audience participation in action and song. Formerly an assistant professor of biology, Fran now uses the traditional art of storytelling to impart modern science concepts and content while sharing timeless lessons of understanding and respect for our planet’s living things. Her tales of our fellow creatures and the environment have earned her the title Earthteller. Her workshops in the U.S., Japan, Egypt and Singapore have trained thousands of students and teachers in the storyteller’s craft. She has helped zoo docents and park rangers become storyteachers. An Artist in Residence with the Oklahoma Arts Council for 15 years, she knows how to integrate ancient arts into the modern curriculum. Fran has collected a repertory of nearly 400 traditional tales plus original stories and songs. Her articles and stories are widely reprinted. She also has a special collection of folktales from Japan, learned during residencies there and on American tours with her Japanese colleague, Hiroko Fujita.
