"If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive." - Barry Lopez

Story telling is an art and like many arts it can be learnt. As adults, we think stories are for kids. Despite being so-called matured-sophisticated adult, we ourselves get sucked into soap operas, become fans of Peter Jackson and likes, who have basically used audio-visual media to tell stories. As a matter of fact, some of stories we watch on screens are purely fictional. And yes, we pay for it only to make storyteller richer forever for a momentary entertainment.

Story telling as an excellent resource for trainers Story telling can be an excellent way of starting a workshop or can be used as a summary towards end as a review. Personally as a participant in many sessions, I have found stories used at end of session made a deep impact. In fact, as a participant. I still remember my colleagues Customer service training some 3 years ago, where he ended his session with story* of man who made difference by saving star fish on beach. He finished it with a punch line 'Let's make difference'. Well I still remember it. I have also observed that many NLP master trainers use stories as useful resource to make a point.

Story when properly narrated can enhance learning and it can be narrated in many ways that suit all learning styles. Story telling need not be a mere auditory presentation; it can be narrated in many ways using various educational media like:

"PowerPoint presentation with animation and sound"Story telling with some dramatization "Puppet show"Flash shows "Cartoons on flipcharts"OHP slides with visuals "Role-plays / skids" "Stories can also be chunked as Case studies (Case studies are effectively used as a teaching method in many management schools like Harvard Business school)

Stories as Case studies Stories can also be used as an excellent case study to achieve learning outcomes. The following is a simple story presented as a case study to participants. This story, like many, has a moral.

Situation: One day a sculptor came to The King's court with three idols. The idols were perfectly identical in appearance but there was something different in their internal make-up.

Challenge: The sculptor presented idols to Emperor and said, "Grand Sire, these idols look alike, but only one of them is worth looking and to be treasured. Please allow me to challenge thy wise men of court to pick best idol and tell me reason for his choice."

I received following paragraph in an email other day. Please read it first, then we'll talk about it...

According to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr ltteers in a wrod are, olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer be at rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but wrod as a wlohe.

Interesting isn't it? What's it got to do with facilitation? Good question. My commitment to write and publish useful content on this subject every week is a strong inspiration for me to look for connections anywhere and everywhere. Fortunately, with everything in universe ultimately connected, you can always find them. Here's what I see.

The paragraph I ask you to read above has three striking characteristics that I believe are connected to facilitation and how groups function.

1) Each word in paragraph is contained in a consensual manner. By that I mean, first and last letter of each word are "correct." By correct, I mean that each of us who can read English language and can spell, agree on the proper characters that begin and end each word. Without that agreement, words would be unintelligible.

2) The words form a coherent paragraph that define a clear context. If words were randomly joined without conveying something that made sense, it would become gibberish. Consider this sentence:

Wrod rset porbelm tihs taht iprmoetnt frist is ltteer be wouthit mses huamn bcuseae lteter.

This is a random selection of some of same words in above paragraph that aren't arranged to convey any meaning. Without context of coherent speech, it's far more difficult to decipher meaning of individual words.