Hedy Bryant
hbryant@csu.edu.au

Dr Hedy Bryant has worked in organisational change and leadership development at Charles Stuart University for the past 14 years. In 2016 she completed a Doctor of Communication, an autoethnography of practice stories of facilitating change. Hedy is currently coordinating the Leadership for Women Programme, lecturing and supervising masters students in leadership.

Abstract

Storytelling is foundational to my practice as a change facilitator in a regional Australian University. The focus of this paper is on how writing and performing poetry and stories has enhanced my practice. This work stemmed from my doctoral studies in which I interviewed other internal change practitioners to find out more about and to improve our practice. Practice stories emerged from these interviews. I used fragments of these stories, of my experiences and those of a change agent in another Australian University (Sommerville & Vella 2015) to produce poetry. I have performed one poem titled The Shapeshifter in a number of forums where the meaning of the poem in relation to change practice has been explored. My poems throw light on the political and personal lives of internal change practitioners. My performative poetry is written based on the performative autoethnographic methodology of Tami Spry (Spry 2011a). This offers practitioners a method for writing and performing poetry to sustain practice.

Keywords

Change management, internal change practitioners, change agent, storytelling, poetry, performative autoethnography

To View Full Article, Please Login

Username:

Password: