Have you ever exchanged stories about an important part of your life with someone and noticed that your relationship with that person changed after the experience? Five women from The Adoption Exchange didjust that. Not only did they notice the change within their own relationships, they also realized that sharing stories has enormous potential for transforming socio-organizational relationships whose primary purpose is information exchange into life-giving connections. The following material illustrates how organizational members can change the way they relate to each other and their stakeholders by changing the way they communicate.
. Families throughout the world may register with The Adoption Exchange through its Family Connections program, whereby children are identified and suggested to these families for adoption.
. The organization publishes and distributes monthly throughout the country a Picture Book of photographs and profiles of waiting children and families.
. Two or more times each year "get-acquainted" adoption parties are held for families interested in adoption and for children who are waiting.
. The Media Features program uses television, radio, and short newspaper and magazine articles to regularly feature waiting children across the Rocky Mountain region.
. The Child Advocacy program develops public relations campaigns to promote adoption opportunities for children in foster care.
. Four times each yearthe Continuing Education program sponsors seminars for adoption professionals. These seminars provide updated information about adoption and foster care practices as well as resources for placement of special-needs children.
At every possible opportunity, this PVO tells the story of healing that comes to families and children through adoption and permanency. If it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, the halls and of floes of The Adoption Exchange, which are filled with the photographs of children who have been or are waiting to be adopted, speak volumes to everyone who enters.
It is through the stories of these children that the people of The Adoption Exchange have built permanent relationships between children and families. Now they are using stories to transform their relationships to all their stakeholders.
After two weeks went by and no interviews were done, the leaders were concerned that they had been unable to get the message across. So they dedicated the entire next staff meeting to retelling the story of their training in more depth. They even re-enacted some of the training sessions with the original flip charts developed at the training. Yet they still felt they had failed to connect with the rest of the staff.
This led the leaders to call one ofthe consultants they had worked with at the oEP. During a half-hour conference call they realized that the week-long training had created a space for them to do two things. First, it had provided them time to tell each other stories about their most exciting and touching experiences at The Adoption Exchange. They had shared why they were drawn to work at The Exchange in the first place and what they found most life-giving in their work there. Also, in the process of sharing their stories they developed the skill of drawing out positive stories from one another.
In this conference call they came to see that it was through the cycle of telling, drawing out, and listening to stories that the leaders transformed their relationships. one ofthe leaders described it as "a stronger ability to stick with one another...we will back one another up whether it be with work or whether it is something that's emotional throughout the office that somebody needs." They realized that, without this complete cycle, the rest of the staff could not reach the same level of relationship; for that patience and time, would be required.
To accelerate the process, the five women integrated what they had learned into the language oftheir daily routine-asking the staff for more of their stories and starting staff meetings with a story about something positive that has happened in the organization. They now frame things in a positive way, viewing circumstances as possibilities instead of obstacles.
An example of this was seen when they responded to a request from a board member who is also the treasurer. After reviewingthe annual budget, he called and requested that changes be made to the report. Even though the report had been quite acceptable for previous boards, the staff recognized that the treasurer was trying to tell his story through the revised version. They made the requested changes so he could become part ofthe storytelling cycle.
Another example ofthis amplifying, positive dialogue concerns The Adoption Exchange newsletter: as part oftheir Appreciative Inquiry process, staff asked funders what they liked best about the newsletter. Hearing the answer- stories about the children-the staff added more stories not only about children and their successful adoptions but also about the people who donate time and money to help find children a permanent home.
one such story comes from the mother of a sever-year-old boy adopted in 1992. Whilecalling four years later to make arrangements to adopt another child, the mother told a staffmember that when she met her new son for the first time, he said to her, "Where have you been? I've been looking for you and waiting for you." Four years later ,when that same family came to pick up a 26-month-old crack baby whom they were adopting, the same little boy turned to his mother and said, "We aren't going to let anybody hurt this baby; nobody is going to hit it and nobody is going to burn it."
At the same time the staff transformed their relationships to their boards of directors (one for The Adoption Exchange and another for the Wednesday's Child Foundation). Like most organizations, The Exchange has a speakers bureau. Board members who are part of the speakers bureau have been asked to tell the story of what drew them to The Adoption Exchange. What about this work inspires and excites them? As the staffteaches board members the power ofthe positive storytelling cycle, the board members relationship both to the staffand to potential funders is changed.
For example, this process led one board member, when approached to be a caddie in a golf tournament, to ask who was benefiting from the tournament. When told that no organization had been selected, he told about his involvement with The Adoption Exchange and secured the opportunity for a staffmember to tell the story of The Exchange. After hearing the story the tournament sponsors donated their proceeds to The Exchange without considering any other proposals. Because the staff member went back to the of rice and told the story of telling the story, a new story cycle was started.
The Adoption Exchange does a major part of its work by partnering with placement agencies. Like all partnerships, the relationships can sometimes become difficult.. To transform their relationships with those agencies, staff from The Adoption Exchange decided to share what they knew about Appreciative Inquiry with the representatives ofthese organizations at their annual meeting.
In a two-hour training session, they led participants through an Appreciative Inquiry that included questions about what they valued most in themselves, in the others in the room, and in the children they serve, and about what are the most-positive trends in the adoption process. Participants interviewed each other to get their stories. When the group came back together, participants talked about how much they valued their ability to care and the commitment of others in the room. As wel I, they valued children as the future ofthe world.
The most positive trend was the ability of people like those in the room to form partnerships that speed up the adoption process. one participant suggested that children should be seen as possibilities instead of problems. This exchange of stories completed the storytelling cycle with one more stakeholder group.
In conclusion, the five staff members that attended the organizational Excellence Program recognized that relationships are the foundation of work. They also recognized that relationships are constructed through language; therefore, the kind of language and the way language is used to build relationships affects the kind of relationship that is created and ultimately the kind of work that gets done. In the three parts ofthe storytelling cycle, each individual has a chance to be heard, to inquire, and to listen. As people go through the cycle, they create the possibility for new and richer relationships by sharing their ultimate concerns and by showing an interest in the ultimate concerns of others. This process facilitates the transformation of relationships from affiliations, through which information gets exchanged, into deep life-giving connections.
Organizations indeed have the opportunity to change the way they relate to each other by changing the way they communicate. The story of The Adoption Exchange and its use ofthe story cycle is one example. Focusing on the positive helps people open up and see what is good, life giving, and exciting in each other and their work. It helps them make a connection at the deepest human level.
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