I don’t know if you’ve been wondering about the connection between coaching and stories? The more I explore this the more connections I can see but for now I’ll focus on three main ways that they go together.
1.We can make use of existing stories to gain insight into a situation. This gives people a fresh perspective, opening up new possibilities for change.
2. As coaches we spend a lot of time listening to the stories that people are telling – telling other people, and telling themselves – and start to pick out what’s important to them in those narratives: their values and beliefs, what’s precious to them, what might be holding them back.
3. Stories are a metaphor for life. You’ll hear people using this metaphor all the time: "he’s really lost the plot", "I can’t wait to move into the next chapter" and so on. And coaching is all about breathing new life into that story. The story that you are inhabiting now, and the story you want to be living – and telling – in the future.
Maya Angelou once said:
"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you"
For me that isn’t just about telling the story of what’s happened to you or what you’ve been doing up to now. It’s about having the confidence to tell the story of who you are and who you want to be. The person, the life, the story that is deep inside you: waiting to be told.