Story-listening for Better Relationships and Better Marketing

Below is the first in a series of articles and workshops on Story-telling and Story-listening from the website http://www.haloandnoose.com/

The branches of your intelligence grow new leaves in the wind of listening (Rumi)

Why deep story - listening?

In 1869 Lucy Lloyd recorded Bushman Kabbo’s description of storytelling: “I must first sit a little, listen, watching for a story I want to hear, I sit waiting for it, that it may float into my ear.”

Story telling in organizations is becoming a buzz word. But what of story listening? We all understand the way we respond when we feel listened to. But often in business, office deadlines, hidden agendas, corporate politics and even culture (This is the only way we do things around here) filter the kind of listening that encourages and initiates true dialogue.
How do we listen to colleagues and customer’s stories? How do we take time to sit and allow the story to float into our ear? How do we listen to what is going on in the organization? And how well do we listen those who are our reason for being in business, our customers? If as Kahlil Gibran said “work is love made visible”, and if as Paul Tillich said “the first duty of love is to listen”, then work in which we value others has a lot to do with listening. In this article we consider listening to those that we serve. And here we mean listening without preconceptions, without distraction, with total attention and mindfulness, with the purpose of understanding and learning and responding creatively, with the head and with the heart. It begins with listening to colleagues.

Read more about Story-telling & Story-listening on http://www.haloandnoose.com/