Anecdote Circles and the Power of Listening

Episode 7 of the second Series of the Show Up! podcast was released this week. I found the conversation with Tony Quinlan, CEO and Chief Storyteller at Narrate, fascinating!

Tony deals with complexity - something many of us leading in today’s workplaces have to face into. His unique angle is the way he uses stories to cut through that complexity and uncover the real heroes and villains, myths and legends that drive behaviours within an organisation.

There were two techniques he mentioned that really stood out for me.

First was the use of multiple stories to refine concepts and bring them to life. When one person shares a story related to a concept everyone enhances their understanding in some way. A second story brings a new perspective, and influences everyone’s understanding again.

Once you accumulate multiple stories you have a refined understanding of that concept - where it starts and ends for different people, different ways of looking at it, how it lands in the real world. This is especially important if you want to get the benefits from a diverse team where you’ve brought people together precisely because they have different ways of looking at the world.

If you - as the team leader - only tell your story and treat that as the truth you risk missing a deeper understanding of the issues at hand. You need to hear the stories of your diverse team mates to really tap the value of cognitive diversity.

The multiple stories principle reminds me of a technique advanced musicians use, called variation practice. This involves playing slightly different versions of a piece of music - varying rhythm, or tempo, or articulations in subtle ways.

They are effectively telling a different story with the same notes. This helps them hone the ability to tell exactly the story they want to tell. Motor skills sharpen. They hear more precisely. The memory of the story gets embedded. Ultimately, they are able to craft the narrative more carefully because they understand it better.

The other technique Tony discussed, about 15 minutes into the episode, was Anecdote Circles. There were many layers to this. One I saw was the use of this as a practical method of accumulating these multiple stories.

Simply put, you get a team together in a circle and ask them to tell stories for and hour or two. What are the examples of things going well? Or, often easier to start with, examples of things not going well?

It’s important to get past the superficial and the gossip when you do this. Dig down through the layers. Peel the onion. Get deep into why these things went well or badly.

This is particularly powerful when you’re bringing a new team together. This happens a lot in the world I know best - consulting. In consulting, project teams are assembled to solve a problem at pace. They are addressing difficult, complex challenges and need to work as a team at the extremes of efficiency and effectiveness to get the job done.

In my experience, time pressure is intense on these projects. It’s go-go-go from the start. Rarely do those teams take the time to consciously and deliberately tell stories from previous projects.

How powerful would it be to do that? It need only take an hour or two. And would often pay back that time multiple times over with the efficiency and effectiveness gained from hearing and analysing these stories.

Here’s how I plan to use this on my next consulting project.

At the kick-off, we’ll extend the time to add a 90 minute slot for an Anecdote Circle with the client team and our project team together. I’ll ask people to think about their stories and share them with the group.

I imagine it will feel a little like one of my men’s circles, which can start slowly and then build over time as people feel more comfortable and realise that the stories resonate with others. I will listen, take notes, and ask questions. I’ll strive to welcome every story and hold space for them to emerge. Even if they are difficult for me to hear personally.

After we’ve done that we’ll have a collection of narratives to refer back to. When challenges emerge in the project we can turn to those stories to understand where similar things have happened before, and have a powerful way to break through them more quickly. I’m excited at the thought of that.

Tony has inspired me to dig deeper into the power of storytelling in my own work. I think it will be eye-opening.

How might you use this with your own team?