This what Ken wrote:
> I would like to have some dialogue with interested people about the use
> of storytelling as a way of coaching employees. I have a background in
> corporate education and organizational development. Recently, I've
> returned to Columbia University to pursue advanced work in computers and
> cognition. Seems to me that in this modern world the simple art of
> storytelling is undervalued as a teaching technique for use by managers
> in business. Does this perhaps "niche" area interest you? Please
> respond.
Parents (most of the times the Grand Parents - as most of the
parents are now-a-days busy making the money or watching the TV) in
India use story telling as one of the major tools to help children
develop their personality. Indians from time immemorial has been
influenced by the stories. In fact it is through story telling that
the great epics like Raamayana and Mahabharatha and other
Spiritual Literature were kept alive.
In majority of the occasions adults use it as a trick to lull the
kids to sleep, ignoring the fact that whatever is told would trigger
a serious of thought processes and eventually end up in owing or
disowning certain moral values/facts of life. I am certain that each
one of us here would have concrete experiences in this regard.
Story telling is both an ART and BEHAVIOUR. ART in the sense that
the way it is told and the linkages it makes to the real world
situations in which the Listener is involved makes an impact on
the Listener. Such impacts some times can be ever lasting. Thus the
teller of stories makes an impact with his knack of using story as a
tool to trigger the behaviour he wanted from the Listener. This
behaviour can be socially desirable or undesirable. BEHAVIOUR in the
sense that when the teller indulges in the similar behaviour which
was explained in the stories he told, such behaviour impacts the
Listener's behaviour and some times ends up in modifying it too.
This simple fact applies very much when story telling is used in the
the organisational context. The concept of mental models probably
has so much of relevance to the use of this tool of story telling.
With Love
--IVNS RAJU <IVNSR@ANAND.NDDB.ERNET.IN>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>