“When you over-prescribe, you under-surprise.”
When I think about the core of storywise work, I try to remember not to use the formulaic goal-path formula. You know the script: What is your goal? What is real? What are your options? What will you willingly do. The old GROW model. Or its variations of Find your Purpose and Start with Why! Blah Blah…
But Why start with Why? And what is the Purpose of Purpose? Why are we so obsessed with GOALS. As if they are ever so clear that all we have to do is act to achieve them. As if life was as simple as changing a tire.
What if your Goal is to find your GOAL? What if your purpose is to find your purpose? What if the next urgent step is not to find your way but to get lost, and interrupt this logical lock step which tries to make sense of a system that at its core is a contradiction. Think Global markets, foreign relations, military threats, presidential elections, Wall Street. We impose our need for sense on the world, and we have not the patience for sense to emerge. Our obsessive need for an answer often leads to us asking nonsensical questions. We want Yes or No but what if both are wrong? Watch a Presidential Candidate debate to see how many questions are asked for the benefit of who is asking.
When we as coaches get too prescriptive, where we ask people to tell us a story of an obstacle they overcame, or their greatest success, we get what we asked for- its the story we want. But Is it the story they want? There is no surprise. It is dead on arrival. Appreciative Inquiry is already leading the witness. Don’t tell us the bad news. We must be positive.
But if I ask,
–Tell me a story that contains the burning issue for you,
-Tell me the story that is dying to get a safe space to be told,
– Tell me a story that you had never dreamed of sharing till now.
Then you get sparks, surprise, amazement. You as a coach are drawn into a mystery of revelation. The teller gets even more interested in their own story. How on earth did I tell that story? they say. Why that story now? They amaze themselves.
Cultural and Political and Religious Stories soon grow stale, become cliches, sound like dogma, and then they suddenly resurrect when their predictability dies on the altar of surprise. Jesus is a sexual being? Lincoln was a stand up comedian? Obama enjoys basketball far more than politics? Donald Trump isn’t bald? When a story has no room for surprise, it is dead.
When you under- prescribe, you leave room for over-surprise.