Deep Stories; Deep Connection
Originally released in 2007, The Story, by The Brandi Carlile Band, reads strongly like a love song both about a life’s story visibly worn on a body and a deeper connection of knowing someone beyond the surface. I first heard this song 16 years ago, and it is anchored to many personal stories of my own, be they concerts with friends, weddings, dancing with my kids and even trips to new cities and countries to see Brandi Carlile perform. When I was listening to the song performed live in Fargo, ND this last weekend, two sections from the lyrics caught my attention differently than they have in the past.
This time, the lyrics connected me to my recent thinking about storytelling, design and school transformation. To me, the “power of stories” does exactly what Carla Silver shared in last week’s theme introduction, “When one person listens hard and intently to another person and surfaces their story, it is an act of love and validation. ‘I see you and you matter.’” That power though, can also inform our decisions as leaders and community influencers.
Investing in Processes to Learn
In Build for Change, a program launching this fall informed by over two years of implementing a similar model in Chicago (read more here), we’ll leverage design thinking to help teams deepen their application of empathy building techniques and use that empathy data to strengthen a culture of prototyping in the decisions (programs, policies, events, strategies, etc) that the school team is rolling out.
Teams will build empathy by going beyond the “stories” that can be observed on the surface by asking questions, seeking connection, making observations, and looking for root causes that are impacting specific students or groups. This model is powerful as a guided process to identify a priority focus group, a challenge they are experiencing, and then growing curious about what we can learn from their stories. As Carla stated, this is an opportunity for leaders to not just be storytellers, but also to be “story-listeners and story-surfacers”. In Build for Change, teams will spend the time to unpack what they need to learn more about and then create opportunities for stories to be shared directly by those who experienced the story.
"It [a design studio] provided a clear path to discovering effective ways to reach our most challenged and challenging students. We were able to hear and understand their voices more clearly." - Educator at K-7 Elementary School in Chicago
The program also creates a container for teams to learn and practice new methods for building and testing new ideas. A thriving culture of prototyping in a school can provide validation and respect for those individuals and groups that are the focus of the design process, and asks leaders to suspend implementation until there’s indication (through more story surfacing) that the new solution is impacting the challenge being experienced. This suspension of the final decision, for the purposes of co-design and iteration, saves time, money, resources and in most cases social capital.
"I felt that it [a design studio] gave a huge amount of time for my team and I to work together to discuss our design and solution that we wouldn't have previously had, or would have taken weeks/months to get to." - Educator at PK-8 in Chicago
Investing in Self-Awareness to Learn
Recently, I have become more aware of how my identity and experiences impact the stories I perceive and remain curious about. Ryan Burke, co-founder and senior partner at L+D, introduced a framing tool that helps me separate instances where the lens through which I perceive and process could be named to allow me, and others on my team, to collaborate and co-design more effectively.
The framing tool is actually a simple phrase: “The story I am telling myself is…”
This phrase acts as a mechanism to evaluate your own story and the stories you carry about other people, communities and the challenges they face or don’t face. It’s with this internal questioning that Ryan’s provocation has become so helpful to me. Ask yourself, members of your team or community, or the system at large:
What stories are we telling that we need to investigate more deeply?
What parts of our identity and of our own lived experience do we lean on that causes us to make assumptions and decisions on those assumptions?
Where can we have honest conversations about how we just don’t know what someone else needs?
And finally, are we willing to do the work, to disarm those personal stories, and allow those we are serving to tell their own stories?
Build for Change is a container that allows individuals and teams to lean into storytelling by observing, listening, interrogating, and co-designing with each other and with those being served. It's also an invitation to invest in collaboration and focused time on looking at complex human challenges. Problems may not be solved in the program, because complex human challenges are rooted in more deeply than and represent human needs. Brandi Carlile challenged us to dig deeper and accept we can't know a person by the lines across their face. Bring a team to Build for Change and work with us and other teams to listen, surface and take action.
Start Small: Connect across Lyrics
Music has the power to connect people and communities, and to make statements about life and the human experience. Find a song that you connect with and ask yourself why. What story do you have about that song or what are the lyrics telling you? Why does this song move you?
Then share it with a friend, or with someone across difference, and ask them about their song of choice. Challenge yourself to listen, connect and seek to understand.
