The Leader's Guide to Storytelling

what you stand for, others come to know you and respect you for that.

everything is transformed in performance.

Storytelling is fundamental to the human search for meaning.”
—Mary Catherine Bateson1

Leadership is essentially a task of persuasion—of winning people’s minds and hearts. Typically it proceeds inductively by argument from one or more examples toward a more general conclusion about the goals and assumptions we should adopt toward the matter in question. Story-telling is thus inherently suited to the task of leadership.

And that is one of the points of this book: to point out matters of profound interest to both the world of storytelling and the world of leadership.

Storytelling and leadership are both performance arts, and like all performance arts, they involve at least as much doing as thinking

The effective use of storytelling in organizations involves crafting and performing a well-made story with a hero or heroine, a plot, a turning point, and a resolution.

A compellingly told well-made story is effective regardless of the purpose for which the story is being told

A storyteller catches and holds the attention of an audience by evoking the sights and sounds and smells of the context in which the story took place

Storytelling is a rare skill in which relatively few human beings excel