In an era of artificial intelligence and hard data we need to value innate wisdom more than ever. For example, stories are something unique to human intelligence. Every voice matters when we are trying to understand someone else’s perspective. It shows a deep respect for other people’s thoughts and their lived experience.
Stories reveal how people respect themselves and the arguments they use to tackle their personal challenges. Listening to people stories is a sign of respect. It fosters trust and mutual understanding. When stories are shared, they can offer fresh insights and uncover different patterns of meaning.
Sensemaking
Stories can help us make sense of how people think and how they make sense of their reality. We all react to life’s challenges and opportunities differently. Stories give us clues into another person’s worldview and where mutual interests might lie. We can see more clearly how best to negotiate for cooperation, express our feelings without causing offence and when to offer a helpful opinion.
Accepting difficult facts
When engaged in conversation we begin to understand ourselves as individuals and as collectives. We extend our intelligence with data in the form of facts and ideas. Our subjective truth can be set against verifiable truth to helps us grapple with uncertainties and ambiguities. The data we get from stories enables us to challenge our own assumptions and generate new conversations.
Making assessments, not judgement
Stories reveal what we care about and how we prefer to take care of them. Learning from other people’s experiences allows us to see opportunities for growth and strengthen our relationships. We build our capacity to listen for what connects us. We collect and learn from other people’s wisdom and imagination develop. These stories help us understand how we can reframe our assessments to have a beneficial impact on our life and work. We open ourselves to alternative worldviews that we would otherwise be blind to.
Stories help us understand how we are influenced by local and global events. Differences can be valuable sources of learning about diverse cultural and social beliefs. We start to question the way systems influence our own views and attitudes. The power of words, moods and body language makes us more aware of how we should communicate if we want others to hear what we have to say and how it is affecting others.
Learning to listen
Stories bring us to the realisation that we don’t always know best. We question what we can learn from others, be they friends, colleagues or customers. Listening to different points of view can be challenging, but being open to learn from other people’s experience can transform our lives and our organisations. We get to know things that hard data alone cannot tell us, such as how to improve our presence and performance..
Learning from customers
In the 1990’s I directed a ‘Learning from Service Users Project’ that led to the improvements in the way some local government services were delivered. For example, a Special Needs Transport Service was made more reliable and better coordinated between the different service partners. A Schools Library Service transformed effectiveness by listening to teachers and allowing the team to self-organise work processes. But the stories of success were replicated in many other services. But then the energy from the project was withdrawn the learning was not embedded due to a lack of commitment from service leaders and customer service levels deteriorated again.
Empathy
It can be humbling to really listen to people’s stories and relate to their cares and concerns. We are in danger of relying on artificial intelligence tools to analyse and improve our work processes. As a result, we may neglect the importance of people’s views and needs, which can provide us with valuable data from our individual and collective intelligence.
A common complaint in the workplace is that managers are not listening, or the organisation’s mission. It does not seem to be aligned with the stories people are telling their managers on the frontline. As organisations look to embed artificial intelligence , the employee’s voice is not being heard when job design and the nature of working relationships are not being listened to by leaders. Listening to employee stories suggests that engagement in change is low when productivity gains override employee happiness, health and wellbeing.
Reaction and response
There is a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between talk and action. Leaders need to accept that people to feel listened to and have their cares and concerns respected. It is human to realist their potential, engaging in their own story that gives time and effort to those actions that are important to them.
Partnership working comes from coordinating commitments for mutual benefit. Time spent listening to people’s experiences and feelings is not wasted if the conversation is action focused. As in any story, satisfaction is the goal, be it fairy story or business contract. Someone provides the story for others to consume.
