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Using the African Dilemma Tale in facilitation

Group Resource

The following story was developed for an Africa healthcare organisation in order to give people a picture of “where we are” following interviews conducted in the discovery phase of a change project. The story is designed as a point of feedback and reflection and is deliberately left as a cliff-hanger in the African storytelling tradition; what happens next is dependent on the listeners who are challenged to tell the rest of the story. In old Africa, these stories are called African Dilemma Tales. Such stories may be allegorical – many of the things described may not actually have happened and the characters might not be real. The story is designed to create a shared understanding that we are all involved in a process and that our values, attitudes and beliefs create the experience of the complex system we call an organisation. The story also allows us to talk about complex realities in a new way.

Submitted by storytelling on 26 February 2010 - 10:39am. categories [ ]