Introduction

This Public Narrative Training Coaching Guide is built on the accumulated work of organizers and coaches over the years, so welcome!
Are you already Coaching Public Narrative? This is so cool! Just before you read this manual make sure you are familiar with the concepts related to the public narrative here
Coaching is yet another muscle you need to train! It will also support you learning the craft of public narrative.

About the Public Narrative Coaching guide

This guide is meant to support you in coaching Public Narrative in many contexts. It gathers wisdom from coaches and maintains a body of knowledge for current and future practitioners. We invite your knowledge and learning as well.
It includes overviews of Leadership, Organizing and Public Narrative as appendices, and focuses primarily on Public Narrative Coaching. It includes worksheets and exercises for use in the Public Narrative Coaching Training, detailed guides to support coaching a Public Narrative Workshop, and helpful resources for further learning. It is long, and we do not recommend printing the entire document.

Public Narrative Coaching takes the Public Narrative and the Leadership of the learner as its primary content.

Framing Public Narrative

Public Narrative is the craft of harnessing the power of story to the work of leadership through stories of self, us and now, all based in values. As a leadership practice, it is about discovering and articulating our own moral resources, enabling a constituency to experience its shared values as a source of solidarity when responding mindfully to urgent challenges. Public Narrative is the first of the five practices of community organizing, which, when used together, can create powerful change that is so needed in our world. Stories are used to build relationships, which are structured into teams, who develop a shared purpose and strategy, as well as tactics campaign timelines, leading towards their strategic goals. The five Organizing practices –built on Marshall Ganz’s work– are thus Story, Relationships, Structure, Strategy, and Action. Coaching runs throughout to enable each of these.
If you are reading this, you are already involved in building community resources to respond to crisis in new ways, and now more than ever we need public storytelling through which people can learn to exercise leadership.

Public Narrative, and Public Narrative Coaching, is a powerful tool for enabling people to invite their communities to take collective action on behalf of shared purposes.

As you develop your capacities as a Public Narrative coach, you are taking a step forward on a leadership development pathway. As stated above, we define Leadership as accepting responsibility for enabling others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty. You are accepting responsibility for deepening your own learning of the narrative craft. You are committing to exploring and learning to articulate the moments in your life in which you learned the values that have called you to action. You are committing to enabling communities to recognize the values they share, and finding the courage to confront the need for urgent action. You are accepting responsibility for enabling others to continue on their journey of narrating their own values and callings through story moments, and supporting their work calling communities together into shared action. As you take this on, the invitation and expectation is that you will find ways to pass this craft on through your coaching and your work…

Download Guide

Download Guide Here

Contents

Section I: Introduction to Coaching Public Narrative
Coaching Overview
Rubric For Coaching Competencies
Section II: Coaching Story of Self
Micro-skill Practice: Open-ended Questions
Story of Self Concept Overview
Story of Self Fishbowl
Story of Self Practice: Coaching Notes
Section III: Coaching Story of Us
Micro-Skill Practice: Coaching to Moments
Story of Us Concept Overview
Story of Us Fishbowl
Story of Us Practice: Coaching Notes
Section IV: Coaching Story of Now
Micro-Skill Practice: Interrupting
Story of Now Concept Overview
Story of Now Fishbowl
Story of Now Practice: Coaching Notes
Section V: Coaching
Linked Narratives Coaching
Linked Narratives Concept Overview
Linked Narratives Fishbowl
Linked Narratives Practice: Coaching Notes
Section VI: Coaching in a Workshop
Setting Small Group Setup
Story Recaps
Appreciations Nominating
Stories for Debrief
Dealing with Pushback
Appendix A: Refresher on Organizing: Understanding the Context and Origins of Public Narrative
Appendix B: Refresher on Public Narrative

Guide Sneak Peek