My colleague, Alissa Schwartz dreamed in her sleep about a new facilitation structure where a group narrates its history. In a circle, ordered from youngest to oldest, each person shares everything they know about the group’s history. The mystery unfolds as the elders speak towards the end. In this blog I share an experience in which I applied this process.
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Within three weeks of Alissa sharing with me her dream, I had the opportunity to apply her structure twice! I was evaluating a consortium that supports African civil society organizations with Encompass a fellow facilitation, evaluation, and training company. The history of the consortium was very complex. Even by reviewing existing documentation, we had challenges understanding how approaches shifted over time.
At two meetings with multiple stakeholders, I facilitated History Circles. I made three modifications to Alissa’s design:
- I asked participants to order themselves from youngest to oldest in terms of their organizational membership and/or knowledge (instead of actual age);
- I allowed people who had already spoken to build upon someone else’s information, if they had forgotten to say something during their turn; and
- I sat at the center of the circle and graphic recorded their history on a timeline.
During the first meeting in Boston, the structure worked beautifully. The first people who spoke had the most simplistic views of the consortium’s history and described the moment they received their American funding as the beginning of the process. The last three people to speak carried the most knowledge and offered many stories about how the process began in Africa, among organizers, before any funding was received. The younger members listened with interest, and participants extended the storytelling during lunch, listening to an elder describe the consortium’s earlier years. It was a modern adaption of a traditional circle of elders. The total process lasted a little less than two hours.
I repeated the process in a meeting in Togo in West Africa. This time, it took only an hour, as most members were new to the consortium and had little to recount. For most participants, however, the pace of the structure was too slow, maybe because they were younger and more lively than members of the first group. Yet, participants appreciated the process of learning about their organizational history.
One African participant said: “This exercise is very helpful. We focus on the job and what people expect of us, and we don’t spend time on the history. This inspires us that when a tree grows, it gives flowers.”
The storytelling circle process has many strengths:
- It allows an outsider to hear most of the organizational or community history at one sitting;
- It allows the group to create a collective narrative of its own history;
- It supports a group reflection of a shared growth process; and
- It fosters awareness in the group of historical misinformation, as the newer members speak first, often sharing misperceptions that later get corrected when the “elders” speak.
I found three challenges to emerge during the process:
- Pace. Depending on the number of people involved, it can take a lot of time. It is also hard to time-manage individual contributions;
- Debrief. Once the last person is done talking, many participants are ready to take a break and do not want to continue in conversation; and
- Documentation. Corrections are made throughout the process, and as a graphic recorder or note-taker, you never know what will emerge from each person’s account.
Here’s what I did to overcome these challenges:
- Pace. The process works best with 10-12 people, at most. Remind participants not to repeat what has already been said;
- Debrief. After a break, I facilitated a quick-paced world café with 10 minutes per round; and
- Documentation. Before I began, I drew a timeline. As I recorded, I color-coded reoccurring information, such as meetings, problems, agreements, and practice.
We welcome other ideas about how to use and adapt a Storytelling History methodology. Try it out for yourself!