Two Sides of a Story

“People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.” – Terry Pratchett

Stories hold meaning and power; they evoke emotion, create connection, paint pictures, and teach us. Over time we absorb stories, and they help us navigate the world, as well as define who we are.

There is nothing I love more than a story; being invited into another world. I think it is one of the reasons that I became a coach, to bear witness to lives of others, and learn. And in the role, I have also understood the power of telling a story. I believe that both lenses on a story have a place in a coaching relationship, and support transformation.

I vividly remember sitting in a room with a senior client and talking about their discomfort with being in the spotlight. A simple “Tell me…” question took him to straight to a moment from his childhood, and he began telling me a story about being in a church hall, tucked under his mother’s seat. I could see him there, visualise the room, guess at the colour of the chair, and feel my body echo with the emotion that I imagined in him. My own picture would not have been accurate, nor was it needed. My only role in that moment was to hear him out and hold the space for him to pull at the threads of the connections in his mind and heart between that moment and the one we were in. And then, with compassion, get curious about the resources now available to him as an adult, and how these might shift his relationship with being the in the centre of attention.

There have been numerous occasions in my career when a coachee has (seemingly) moved at random into a story about something that, on the surface, is not directly connected to our topic — but clearly has deep meaning and relevance for them. The telling of these stories is important. It allows them to convey something that they don’t yet have the words for, and staying with the story and the metaphors or similes it contains has allowed us to work more meaningfully with the underlying emotions, beliefs and/or values that often sit at the heart of stuckness or change.

Most explicitly, I tend to work with stories at the start of a coaching relationship, using lifelines to build understanding and trust, as well as draw out red threads that often then play on throughout our coaching relationship. I think it is one of the highest privileges as a coach to hear someone walk back through time and realise the things that have shaped them and the choices they have made. The act of re-telling their story can be hugely illuminating, and if I listen well, I can say almost nothing at all, and still enable them to find patterns and resources, as well as let go of things that no longer serve them.

For one coachee, a story helped him realise how much he was driven by a need to prove himself, having been diagnosed with dyslexia when he was young. Telling his story highlighted how far he has moved beyond being equal and into the realms of extraordinary, without ever giving himself credit or acknowledging that he was more than enough.

And, whenever I ask someone to share their story in this way, I share mine first. It was a powerful learning for me, a decade ago, to watch a peer talk about their lifeline in a group coaching session and feel the energy in the room shift and soften as people stopped interacting with the role and start engaging with the person. It changed my approach to building relationships in a coaching context.

Telling my story is my way of inviting my coachees to go deeper; I aim to model vulnerability and offer them something important to me upfront, in acknowledgement of all the important asks I will make of them throughout our work together. And always in service of them. Through my story, my coachees learn far more about me than my bio could ever tell them: what drives me, how I relate to others, and most importantly, how I will work with them and the values that underpin my approach.

Every time I tell the story of my life (in 20-30 minutes!), some new connection and understanding emerges for me, and having done this literally hundreds of times now, that says a lot about the power of telling a story.

Some of the questions I ask (and answer) are:

What would you call your story so far? What chapters feel most significant?
Who are the main characters in your story?
What are the moments that most stay with you? How have they shaped you?
What patterns do you see in the highs? And the lows?
When, and with whom, did you learn the most?
What has driven your important decisions?
What does your story say about how you see yourself?
How have your moved through challenges?
What resources have emerged for you? Both within and without
What would be the moral of your story to date?

So, what’s your story?