I believe I first learned of UK-based Lisa Rossetti through a comment she made here on A Storied Career. We’ve had a number of exchanges since, and I’m delighted to welcome her as a Q&A subject. This Q&A will run over the next five days.

Bio: Lisa Rossetti has more than 20 years’ experience in training, mentoring and coaching. With a background in learning and development, she worked for 13+ years in a local Mental Health NHS Trust. Much of her work now focuses on supporting teams and team leaders in health and social-care settings, the public sector and third-sector organisations.

A qualified Leadership and co-active coach, Lisa is credentialled by the International Coach Federation (ACC) and is a member of the Association for Coaching, working to their ethical standards. Lisa is currently studying for a master’s degree in coaching for leadership, and a diploma in coach supervision.

She is an Ambassador for Women’s Enterprise and Mentor for the NWDA Mentoring Scheme, and has been a Business Mentor for the Graduate Enterprise Project for Liverpool John Moores’ University. She has successfully coached many start-up businesses in North West. She also offers supervision (coach-mentoring) to coaches to improve and safeguard the quality of their work.

In her spare time, Lisa volunteers her time and skills to support the volunteer environment and aims of Words of Peace Global and humanitarian initiatives of The Prem Rawat Foundation.

Lisa is returning this year to Ghana, where she spent her childhood, to collect stories of Courage, Perseverance and Hope from ghanaian women. These stories will form the foundation of an inspiring programme of resources for women entrepreneurs and social enterprises. Any assistance in achieving this goal would be most welcome!

Lisa’s interests include: Storytelling in organisations, Creative Writing, collaborative projects. Visit her Web site for more information.

Q&A with Lisa Rossetti, Question 1:

Q: Has storytelling always been a part of your coaching practice, or has it evolved into a component? Do you encounter any resistance to your using storytelling in coaching (especially from organizational clients), and if so, how do you sell them on the concept?

A: I do use a lot of metaphor and story techniques which come naturally to me, and work very powerfully.

I trained as a co-active coach with the Coach Training Institute. Co-active techniques and methodology are often highly creative and quite “Gestalt-y.” Some of the approaches I now recognise as intrinsically story-based, and very powerful for shifting limiting self-beliefs. Future Self is a technique I particularly remember learning and always incorporate in my coaching programmes. The coachee envisages their future vividly and tells the story of his or her Future Self. So the story element has always been there in my coaching. What seems to be happening now in my practice is a shift from coaching incorporating story techniques towards focusing on the story itself and drawing out the learning using a coach approach.

However, I want to remain flexible with what I can offer people. I find when I talk about stories in the context of personal development, team, or business vision, that it’s a very graspable concept. And a very healthy one, as the client places himself or herself as both author of their story and the main protagonist, the hero or heroine. It’s empowering and grants them personal authority. The structure of the story with its denouement or resolution is well embedded in us; we understand and accept that structure emotionally. Story is a wonderful sense-making tool and lends its own particular power to the coaching relationship. Just to ask a client “What’s the real story here?” sets in train a whole process of self-reflection and self-actualisation.

I find overtly promoting storytelling as an element of business coaching is still considered a bit radical here in UK, probably because the outcomes are not understood. I have seen some resistance in UK organisations to creative coaching and a preference for more process coaching models. Unfortunately, just when staff need motivation, leaders need inspiration and companies need innovation, creative activities tend to take a backseat. I suppose it is because we are experiencing times of change and uncertainty economically, and that’s when HR tends to play safe.

A key phrase I am using that seems to hit the mark is “The soft skills are the hard skills.” I explain that storytelling nurtures our softer skills like communication, engagement, intuition and empathy. You aren’t going to learn these things on a virtual learning platform any time soon. I’ve recently agreed to facilitate a couple of sessions with local health and social-care organisations, training their volunteer and management teams to use stories in their work with elderly service users. So hopefully perceptions of using story in learning and development are shifting.

The way I am selling the concept of storytelling is through demonstrating, e.g., giving presentations at conferences. I tell stories and ask participants to reflect on the stories in pairs or groups. Once they’ve experienced the power of stories, and they see a legitimate context for stories in their organisations, then it is a matter of exploring what their specific needs are. Depending on the audience, I make sure that there are credible references, and examples of how story is used practically in similar organisations. You have to make the benefits very obvious that are relevant for the audience. For example, there is research in UK that shows that storytelling improves nurses’ reflective practice, humanises the service and enables new staff to memorise important knowledge.