The 5 basic school plots
Stories drive school culture and it is a reasonable to suggest that story telling is a core leadership competency that can be learned. What do we know about stories and story tellers? Well firstly, great story tellers write and talk about what they intimately know. Our schools are full of stories unfolding every day; hundreds of children and colleagues experience highs and lows that shape who they are becoming, build core memories and develop relationships that last a lifetime. We just need to go looking for them and amplify the stories that bring us closer to our educational goals. Secondly, great story tellers draw on common story structures. Christopher Booker argues that there seven basic plots, archetypes that virtually every story is built upon:
Overcoming the monster
The protagonist sets out to defeat an antagonistic, often evil force.
Rags to riches
The poor protagonist acquires power, wealth, and/or a partner.
The quest
The protagonist and companions set out to acquire an important object or to get to a location, facing obstacles along the way.
Voyage and return
The protagonist goes to a strange land and returns with experience.
Comedy
A community divided by confusion, miscommunication or misaligned assumptions is reunited once that confusion is cleared up.
Tragedy
The protagonist is a hero with a major character flaw or great mistake which is ultimately their undoing.
Rebirth
An event forces the protagonist to change their ways and often become a better person
You’ll recognise your favourite stories in these plots. But are there archetypal plots at the heart of the stories in our schools? I suggest that there are five.
The origin story
Everyone in our school is the protagonist in their own story and all stories must begin somewhere. Sometimes the sequence of events that lead to students or colleagues joining the school is unspectacular: students live close by, colleagues saw one of many adverts and applied. But sometimes origin stories can be more serendipitous. The child who joins the school that her mother and her grandmother went to. The childhood friends whose children are now friends trusting each the other’s school experiences. The alumnus who returns as a teacher. The chance meeting of a teacher looking for a workplace more aligned to their values with a senior leader in a social setting results in them being colleagues.
Then there is the school’s origin story. Most schools were around long before current leaders were in post and will be around long after. All of us are just passing through but nonetheless part of a longer story that must be remembered and retold. Some school origin stories might be unspectacular on the surface but dig a little deeper and we can unearth motivations, situations and intentions that can speak to the current student and staff body.
From a cultural point of view, telling origin stories can reinforce beliefs and values and a suggested structure for individuals includes: how I arrived and why I stay. For the school, a suggested structure might be the idea, the start up and why the idea still matters today. The idea is a where we tell the part of the story of inception of the school; the values intended to bring to life; the dissatisfaction with schooling at the time, the gap in the market the school intended to fill. The start up can be used a bonding experience for the founding team - complications in the build up to opening, early success stories etc. Why the idea still matters today is the connection with the current team.
Overcoming the challenge
This is probably the most recognisable archetype. Schools are full of success stories where students or colleagues overcome adversity. I’d suggest a structure of the starting point, the shift and the outcome. The starting point gives the opportunity to tell the story of the initial state; maybe a problem with attainment profile, a specific academic difficulty or a pastoral challenge. The shift captures recognition of what needed to change and the new mindsets or behaviours adopted. And the outcome gives the chance to attribute causation to those desirable mindsets and behaviours.
Lost and found
The lost and found archetype is a version of Booker’s comedy. At the heart of comedy is confusion or misunderstanding that is eventually cleared up. That confusion is often funny but not always and for schools, the transition from lack of clarity to more clarity and a desired outcome is a powerful one. I’d suggest a metaphor that leans into direction or clarity, perhaps the fog and the clearing. The fog help us name and describe where clarity was lost and the clearing gives us a chance to name and describe the new direction. Many school colleagues may experience this during a transition from one headteacher to another because of the inevitable questioning of approaches and the imperative of a new leader to understand and reflect back the organisation.
The blind spot
The blind spot archetype has some similarities with Booker’s tragedy, where a protagonist’s strength contains something that leads to an undoing. My suggested school version is based around the sigmoid curve of inevitable growth and decline. In complex systems, we have to expect these waves and having a story to make sense of it can be powerful. We may have certain strategies or approaches that are working well for a given moment in time; the cohort of students that we have, the stage of development the school or individual departments are at or the staff profile that we have. But these are never static and what has previously worked can easily be insufficient when context changes. I’d suggest a structure of what was working, what we missed and what we know now. This acknowledges strengths, shows the expectation of flux and encourages group sense making.
The pleasant surprise
Booker’s quest archetype is probably closest to this school archetype. We’re all enacting school improvement plans with identified goals but sometimes we have unexpected successes, not just the ones that we hoped for. This is an important archetype for schools that are complex systems because of emergence. We can create favourable conditions for improvement but not directly control the outcomes so having a story type to acknowledge and encourage condition nurturing can be a powerful leadership move. I’d suggest a structure of what we wanted and what we got. What we wanted shows the importance of clear educational goals, rooted in evidence and gives the opportunity to outline the conditions that we created. What we got gives us the chance to attribute some level of causation but also celebrate emergence or innovation, the unexpected outcomes. This archetype can do a lot of heavy lifting if we want to emphasise relational leadership approaches that involve high trust and high capacity building, as well as moving away from heroic paradigms of leadership with only a few capable of diagnosing and intervening to influence improvement.
The power of school stories
So, five school story archetypes: the origin story, overcoming the challenge, lost and found, the blind spot and the pleasant surprise. The first use of this connection with Booker’s basic plots is recognition. If we are better able to recognise the stories unfolding around us, we’re more likely to be able to make sense of the complexity of school life. The second use is in the retelling. We can deliberately draw on different structures to suit different purposes for intentional sense giving, rather than leaving it to chance. Nobody is a born story teller or leader. This competency can be learned and building some cognitive structure can support this development.
Next month’s #LeadershipHandbook post delves deeper into story telling and sense giving, with downloadable slides, tools and templates to support leaders to develop this competency. Subscribe to receive it in your inbox on the first Saturday in August.