Monday, May 12, 2008
Listen, or thy tongue will make thee deaf
May 12, 2008
Madelyn in the fog of Anthony Gormley's Cube last year at the Hayward. It doesn't have much to do with the piece, but Madelyn, after all, is the reason Steph and I were there in the first place, so it vaguely counts and I like it.
This is an edited version of a paper Stephanie Colton and Victoria Ward gave at the Smithsonian conference in Washington a couple of years back. It explores two pieces of work from the Sparknow portfolio. We use these to explore two linked questions:
The first relates to listening. What is the story-listening role of leaders? The second question relates to the layers of meaning and insight held within our stories. Related to this are some subsidiary questions:
- How much complexity should we seek to acknowledge when we deal with stories?
- How can fact and fiction be used to raise important questions?
- How should organisations handle contradictory versions of the past?
- How do you get young people to find the useful learning in revisionist versions of past episodes?
- How do we encourage leaders to honour both the practical and the (uncomfortable) emotional aspects of the stories they tell and listen to?