There’s been an extraordinary news story in the US recently that seems to me to illustrate some of the ideas sitting behind the ManyStory approach very vividly. This was the story of the boys from Covington Catholic High School who were vilified for harassing and mocking a Native American Elder. The initial video clip that went viral on the internet, and a subsequent interview with Nathan Phillips, the Elder concerned, fired up a torrent of abuse and condemnation. Even the bo

I wrote this essay as part of the qualifying process to be a Thinking Partnership Coach, and thought that it might be of interest to readers of this blog. -- In this essay, I compare a Thinking Partnership approach to coaching, as developed by Nancy Kline (Kline, 1999) with the ManyStory approach described in my book Shifting Stories (Scott, 2016). There is much that is congruent between the two approaches, but also much that is different. In this essay, I examine both approa

For those interested in how the ManyStory Approach that I outline in Shifting Stories may be applied to coaching, I have developed a short (two hour) workshop. This consists of a brief introduction to the main ideas of the approach; a case study (the story of Julia, featured in the book, and in a video, here) and then a practical exercise in which participants work in pairs, one coaching the other, using this exercise. We conclude with a review of their experience of practici

This is an exercise I use on my Stories for Change Workshop, to give people an experience of the ManyStory Approach in practice. It normally works extremely well. It is in three 15 minute phases. You will need to work with a colleague, who is willing to share an unhelpful story that has caused, or is causing, problems for him or her. How to Loosen the Grip You have 15 minutes for this phase. Use that time to: 1 Ask questions of your colleague to explore his or her unhelpful

A number of people have expressed an interest in the psychology underlying the ManyStory Approach. I am not a psychologist, but do think that a working understanding of psychology is important for coaches and other change agents, and have read reasonably widely around the topic, as well as working with, and discussing ideas with, a number of friends who are psychologists. The first thing to say is that research (as quoted by the BACP on their website, and by De Haan in Relati

The application of a ManyStory Approach to learning and development is very fruitful, as I hope many of the chapters in the book (eg on coaching, change, and teams) have already made clear. The very process of helping people enrich their understanding and appreciate more, different perspectives, is by its nature educative. The ManyStory Approach has also informed some of my training programmes very directly, and I think there is huge scope for more work of this type. At the e

Working with the past is an interesting area for a coach or facilitator of change. One has to be careful, as it can lead into quite deep therapeutic waters, very rapidly. Nonetheless, we can’t (and shouldn’t) avoid encouraging people to think and talk about the past; after all, it is a rich source of learning, and reflecting on experience is a primary source of learning. However, we need to make sure we don’t encourage people to re-live the past, or regression may become an

In the book, I raise the question (at the end of Chapter 4): is it possible to be one’s own coach? I think the short answer is ‘yes,’ and the longer answer is ‘up to a point.’ On the one hand, I know many people, and I include myself, who can learn from books (for example), apply the learning to their practice, reflect on that, and continue to improve their practice in that way. So there is no absolute reason why somebody could not learn the ManyStory Approach from the book,