Chapter Six
Application
Telling, replotting, reading — and the ethics of each
Overview
The practical chapter, and the one this site is built around. It asks what changes for someone who accepts the argument, and answers from three positions: the person constructing a transformational narrative, the coach helping someone see and replot the story they are inside, and the follower, board member, investor or citizen reading a narrative critically.
Part One covers diagnosis, mapping the landscape, naming the void, pre-scripting the emotional sequence, giving people characters, aphorisms as infrastructure and the markers by which a story can be recognised as having stabilised. Part Two gives coaches a more precise vocabulary than most coaching methodologies supply. Part Three is addressed to everyone, and is the position most leadership writing neglects.
Each position carries its own ethical obligations, set out explicitly rather than appended.
Key questions
- What is the dominant story circulating right now, and who narrates it informally?
- What does the gossip reveal about where the anxiety actually sits?
- Am I revising the content of this story, or replotting it?
- Whose resistance is narrative critique rather than inertia?
- What part have I been cast in, and do I accept it?
Central concepts
Cases in this chapter
Work with it
Related lens: Application
Related tools: All four tools
Status: paraphrased from the manuscript · author review required