Narrative as a leadership tool
When Jayson Zoller was a student at the University of Central Florida studying communications, one of his favourite
professors there often conducted research projects with his students and then shared the results in future class lectures. In
one such class, the professor described an unusual project working for a district judge. The assignment: investigate the jury
deliberation process and determine how to improve it. The young, idealistic college students were excited to tackle such a
noble mission.
The team interviewed dozens of judges, attorneys, former jurors, and other court officials around the district. They asked all
the questions you would think a smart group of would-be consultants should ask. How many men were in the jury versus
women? What was the mix of ethnic backgrounds? How many older jurors were there versus younger ones? Were there
differences in the instructions given to the jurors, or what kind of information they were allowed to have in the jury room? Did
the trials last days, weeks, or months? They even asked how late the jurors were made to work into the evening and what
kind of food they were fed.
To their surprise, none of those things seemed to matter much. What did matter, it turned out, was the shape of the table in
the jury room! In courtrooms where there was a rectangular table, the juror sitting at the head of the table (even if they
weren’t the jury foreman) tended to dominate the conversation. This kept some jurors from sharing their points of view as
openly. But in jury rooms that had a round or oval table, the jurors tended to be more egalitarian and their debate of the facts
was more thorough and robust. The team concluded it was those juries with round tables that came to the most accurate and
just verdicts.
The students were excited about this finding for two reasons. First, they felt like they had really nailed the key to improving
the jury deliberation process. And second, it was such an easy thing to change.
They were proud of their success as they presented the results to the chief judge. He was just as excited as they were, and for
exactly the same two reasons. The judge immediately issued a decree to all the courthouses in his jurisdiction. Effective
immediately, “all jury rooms that have round or oval tables are to have the tables removed. Replace them with rectangular
tables.”
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In direct contradiction to their recommendation, the judge removed all the round tables and put in rectangular tables. Why?
Because the judge’s objective in improving the jury deliberation process wasn’t to make it more robust, fair, or even accurate:
it was to make it faster. He wanted to reduce the backlog of cases clogging up his court docket.
The students were mortified. They thought they were single-handedly fixing the sometimes brutal consequences of an
imperfect judicial system. Instead, they were unwittingly responsible for making it, in their eyes, a little bit less perfect. They
may have finished the year with an ‘A’ on their report card, but they felt completely defeated. However, they had all learned
an important lesson, namely to be clear on the research objectives before you start a research project.
Twenty years later, Jayson Zoller, now a professional market researcher, frequently tells this story to his researchers to remind
them of the importance of clear objectives.
Adapted from Lead with a Story: A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives that
Captivate, Convince, and Inspire by Paul Smith
Why stories work
Our consciousness, the manifestation of that consciousness in language and narrative, and the ability to think across time
(before, now, later) gave us our evolutionary advantage. Narrative, or storytelling, is the thing that gave us cohesion - tribal
identity - and the means by which to plot and plan how best to outwit wild animals, threatening strangers, crop spoiling
climates, and those intent on making life that bit harder for us and our kinfolk. But it is a capability we all already have; we all
can and do tell stories. Yet there’s a sense out there that storytelling is somehow a new-fangled management tool that has
come of age. Not so. Long before Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and other social networking came into play, we were quite
capable of creating our own social cohesion and we did it through narrative or storytelling, at the warm end of the cave,
around the camp fire, or in the front parlour; the word parlour incidentally derives from the old French word parloir, or parler
(‘to speak’) and denotes a place set aside for speaking, a gathering chamber or one intended for audiences.
But just because we can tell stories, doesn’t always mean we tell good stories or that we tell them as effectively as we might.
The scientific evidence for the positive impact of storytelling in organizational settings and elsewhere comes to us through
two channels. Firstly, the work done over many years by psychologists who have focused on our cognitive functioning (our
ability and sometimes inability to undertake simple tasks associated with memory,
language or decision-making) as well as the observed behaviors of individuals and groups
Well told stories
in reaction to storytelling. The second channel is the more recent work done by
neuroscientists examining the 1.4kg of primarily grey matter that is the human brain
register with us in a
(actually the brain is pink, not grey, at least until deoxygenation or death occurs) using
way that unconnected
technology such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission
or disjointed data
tomography (PET scans).
simply don’t.
One fundamental piece of evidence has emerged from the first channel over the years
with some significant evidence now emerging from the second to substantiate one very
simple fact - well told stories register with us in a way that unconnected or disjointed data simply don’t.
For example, if you read all of the ‘efficient juries’ story on the previous page you will be able to recount the ‘gist’ of it several
hours, days, months or sometimes even years later. Precisely how long will be decided by the degree to which your brain
determines it to be relevant or pertinent to you, your current and past experiences. What we also know is that if instead of
that story we had simply listed a series of words or even random sentences, your ability to absorb let alone retain those
words or sentences over any period of time would, unless they had a very particular and personal resonance, be close to
zero. It is for that reason that Jayson Zoller chooses to tell the jury research story to his new researchers rather than simply
issuing an edict to them that they must ‘always be clear about research objectives’.
So when we say that ‘well told stories register’, we mean that they resonate, emotionally engage, and are remembered, often
for considerable periods of time, and as such are more likely to guide an individual or group’s future behavior and thinking.
The social psychological and behavioral evidence
But let’s examine the research evidence and indeed purpose of storytelling a little further. Storytelling is a universal trait that
has been used to pass on knowledge and rituals from generation to generation (Hsu, 2008). Stories and narratives refined
over generations serve to capture our imagination and insert meaning into our memory (Adamson et al., 2006), allowing
information to be sorted into patterns (Boal & Schultz, 2007). Fairy tales, although not called such until the 17th century,
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myths, folk tales, legends and other forms of storytelling have existed for thousands of years, but all are propagated for a
reason; they teach us from an early age about societal norms - how to behave, who and what to trust or fear - instilling rules for
safe and acceptable engagement with our communities. It’s why most of us read the kinds of stories we read to our children,
and why the dictionary or bullet point filled PowerPoint presentations haven’t gained much of a following at bedtime!
Indeed, the historical use of storytelling to connect members of a community or bind a team together is key to its use in an
organizational setting (Bird, 2007). Stories allow relationships to develop by encouraging individuals to recognize and utilize
aspects of the story that they have in common with other team members (Adamson et al., 2006) in a way that simple edicts,
routines or rules do not (Boal & Schultz, 2007). Stories have also been shown to aid employees’ engagement with their
employer by creating a context for their personal work aspirations and promoting a feeling of personal value within the
company (Adamson et al., 2006).
In these organizational settings, stories usually tell of management’s past actions, employee interactions and organizational
events that are then communicated, usually informally, around the organization (Swap et al., 2001). These stories typically
exemplify company values and beliefs (Deal & Kennedy, 2000) and capture the actions of employees who personify these
principles. In that manner stories enable employees to learn what is expected of them, and to better understand what the
company stands for. Of course, such stories can be ‘good’ or ‘bad’, reflecting the good or bad values of the leadership. In one
highly dysfunctional company we worked with, all the stories told by employees kept alive tales of former company
mavericks, hustlers and bullies - the old culture. It wasn’t until we helped the recently appointed new leadership to tell new
stories recognizing company ‘heroes’ and ‘recent successes’ that these damaging stories went away and a new, more
effective, culture started to emerge.
Stories can also be a powerful tool for making actual and perceived ‘outsiders’
feel like insiders, helping them to link the past, present and future, and to
Total Reportable Accident
more successfully see continuity in the face of seemingly overwhelming
Frequency Rate (per 200,000
change (Boal & Schultze, 2007). In other words, they help employees make
man hours) fell from 0.91 to
more sense of the changes going on around them and reduce the resistance to
that change. In fact stories heard are often judged as more likely to occur in
0.65 over just two years, an
real life than are the companies’ simple declarations of intent (Swap et al.,
improvement of nearly 30%.
2001) found in mission and vision statements. In one global precious metal
mining company with which we worked, its mission statement declaring itself
intent on being a leader in safety, leading and lag indicators of safety had plateaued. Following the instilling of effective
storytelling capabilities in a group of one hundred of its executive leaders, Total Reportable Accident Frequency Rate (per
200,000 man hours) fell from 0.91 to 0.65 over a period of just two years, an improvement of nearly 30%.
Over the years we have also learned a great deal about brain function from unfortunate instances of brain damage or
disablement and it’s worth mentioning just a couple of the pieces of the research here from the vast literature on language
processing and cognitive skills.
Renowned researchers in the field of language processing capability, Romani and Martin (1999) make the case for separate
brain capacities for maintaining individual words versus narrative. Their patient AB illustrates the point well. AB had
developed difficulties in short term memory retention. He could perform well on narrative based tasks but demonstrated
poor performance with single words and unrelated sentences. In other words, AB’s brain, in fact everyone’s brain, seems to
deal with narrative in a different way to other forms of language, as we shall see.
The work of Michael Gazzaniga, professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara further supports this
separate brain capacities model. Indeed his research leads him to assert that there is no head office or central command post
in the brain, but simply millions and millions of specialized processors - for vision, motor co-ordination, specific emotions,
and all manner of sensory data; he suggests that we actually tell ourselves stories to make sense of it all, or to fill in the gaps.
In one vivid demonstration of this, with no possible transfer of information between the two hemispheres, and unbeknown
to the split brain patients in question (a procedure first undertaken by a surgeon Joe Bogen in the 1960s in an attempt to
eliminate patients’ massive epileptic seizures) Gazzaniga sneakily stimulates an area of their motor cortex in the right
hemisphere in such a manner as to cause them to raise their left hand. Although they can’t possibly know why they are
raising their left hand, patients still offer up a story to explain why their left hand moved. In other words, the patient offers
up a self-believed story to fill the evidentiary gaps and to make sense of it all.
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The areas of the human brain and their primary functions
Neural architecture and memory retention
Scientists have increasingly drawn on fMRI to better understand what’s happening inside our brains when stimuli like
pictures and sounds are presented to us. That technology has allowed us to examine, amongst other things, our brain
workings in reaction to single words, whole sentences and even full narrative.
The findings of Romani and Martin, Gazzaniga, and many others is supported by research done using technologies like fMRI. But
before we consider that work, it’s worth taking a moment to understand why fMRI research in this area has proven so contentious.
It all started with what has become known as the dead salmon experiment. The fMRI process is fairly straightforward. Slide
your subject into the large white donut-like machine, then present them with the chosen stimuli, for example a succession of
different pictures, sounds, narratives, or words. As you do so the fMRI will assess the oxygenation levels in the brain, blood
oxygenation being used as an indicator of brain activity. On one particular occasion, researchers Craig Bennett, a
neuroscientist and Abigail Baird, a psychologist selected as their subject a dead salmon. Following conventional
methodologies, analysis of the fMRI data produced evidence of brain activity in the salmon; it was almost as if the salmon
appeared to be thinking. It obviously wasn’t; firstly because salmon aren’t usually credited with being great thinkers, and
secondly this particular salmon was dead. In fact, Bennett took it home for dinner that evening.
How could an fMRI scan possibly show brain responses to stimulus in a dead salmon? Well it’s complicated, but the essence
of their argument, correctly made, in their catchily entitled paper “Neural Correlates of Interspecies Perspective Taking in the
Post-Mortem Atlantic Salmon: An Argument For Proper Multiple Comparisons Correction” (2010) is that some of the early
scientific papers based on fMRI fail to make the statistical corrections necessary to appropriately minimize the incidence of
false positives. The dead salmon wasn’t thinking; the statistical analysis methodology commonly applied was simply using too
low a significance threshold in its analysis.
Fortunately, in the early 1990s, fMRI scientists had developed techniques for dealing with this problem, the preferred
solution usually being the Gaussian Random Field Theory which calculates and then discounts the probability of falsely
finding an activated area of the brain purely by chance. But some 25 - 40% of papers from the early 1990s reviewed by
Bennett and Baird had failed to make this crucial statistical correction, and even to this day some still fall foul of this basic
error. It’s chiefly for that reason that there’s a lot of contention out there about claims made on the basis of fMRI research.
However, the more robust evidence emerging from fMRI studies does seem to align with psychologists’ own observations of
individual and group behaviors in the storytelling context.
Yarkoni et al.’s (2008) study bridges the gap between neuroscientific and psychological models of story comprehension well.
They compared neural differences using fMRI between sentence-level comprehension, or to the casual observer ‘a bunch of
unrelated sentences’, and narrative-level comprehension, or to that same casual observer ‘stories’. In a number of brain
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regions, similar neural activation was found between the two conditions - stories vs. sentences - although usually to a lesser
extent for the ‘sentences’ condition. There was however evidence of specific activation for narrative-level comprehension in
the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex - that’s the top, front bit of the brain. Their finding points towards a second ‘deep’
mechanism or mechanisms in the brain associated only with story comprehension. The study shows that the memory boost
associated with stories (an increase of 30%) was at least partly accounted for by this mechanism or mechanisms. Yarkoni
goes on to suggest that when comprehending stories individuals construct mental representations. These representations, or
as he terms them situational models, integrate the reader’s prior knowledge about the event, characters, goals etc. with
explicitly stated information described in the story to construct a more detailed representation in the brain.
Other research also demonstrates that stories involve the participation of multiple memory networks, the stories being
linked through time, space, causation, goals/ intentions and actions/ objects (Brownstein & Read, 2007; Swap et al., 2001). As
the number of dimensions connecting events within a story increases, the
strength of their association in memory also increases (Brownstein & Read,
Gasbarri et al. (2005) found
2007). These common reinforcing links are made stronger through
that individuals listening to
associations to our general knowledge, which also serves to enhance our
emotionally arousing stories
memories for stories when compared to the unrelated sentences scenario
recalled a significantly higher
(Romani & Martin, 1999).
As it happens, areas of the brain involved in recalling unrelated sentences,
list learning and individual words have also been shown to be more
vulnerable to the effects of aging, medication and head trauma (Cozolino &
Sprokay, 2006) compared to those associated with story comprehension.
number of elements about the
story than those listening to
non-emotionally arousing.
As stories are so diverse in their subject range, the neural activation observed can vary greatly within and between stories.
Research has indicated that different brain regions become active depending on the themes within the stories (Ferstl et al.,
2008). Examples of these themes include emotion, passage of time, spatial locations, interactions with objects, characters and
goals (Ferstl et al., 2008; Speer et al., 2009). The emotional content that is frequently a key component to stories is thought to
be crucial to enhancing their long term recollection. Gasbarri et al. (2005) found that individuals listening to emotionally
arousing stories recalled a significantly higher number of elements about the story than those listening to non-emotionally
arousing ones. Those stories that contain some relevance or meaningfulness to us spontaneously elicit elaborations that help to
promote later and greater recall than ordinary ‘fact based’ teaching methods (Swap et al., 2001).
If we return to the topic of brain damage and specifically the work at the University of Southern California of Antonio
Damasio from the 1990s onwards, further evidence emerges of the importance of the prefrontal cortex to storytelling; the
prefrontal cortex is an area of the frontal lobe just below our forehead,.
Damasio studies people who through tumour, stroke, or a blow to the head have lost various parts of their prefrontal cortex.
He found that when certain parts of the prefrontal cortex are damaged (specifically the orbitoprefrontal cortex or the area
immediately above our eye sockets), patients lose most of their emotional lives. They report that when they ought to feel
something, they feel nothing, and indeed studies of their autonomic reactions (the kind relied upon in lie detectors) such as
those normally elicited by fear or beauty, simply don’t register. One might think that would free up the individuals concerned
to make highly rational, logical decisions unhampered by emotion. The truth is that while they retain logical reasoning
capabilities, they are unable to make many decisions at all because so much of our decision making abilities are ‘controlled’
by the emotional determination of our orbitoprefrontal cortex which gives us an almost instant sense of like or dislike in
reaction to any set of choices. In the absence of that function, our lives fall apart; ask someone unfortunate enough to have
lost the functioning of this part of their brain which restaurant they would like to go to that evening and they will list several,
and the pros and cons of going to each on that particular evening, but no preference or decision will emerge.
That ability to emotionally engage and make decisions is doubtless one key reason why Mr. Spock lost out to James T. Kirk
when the selection panel met to discuss candidates at the Starship Enterprise Leadership Assessment Centre.
What’s all this got to do with storytelling? Simply this - a well told story from a leader evokes an emotional reaction,
demands a decision, or provides guidance to us that we must emotionally accept or reject, and which will then influence how
we behave or interact in the future. The more a story engages on an emotional level the more certain we can be that the
intended response and behaviors will follow.
And that’s why posters on the wall showing the company values do little to directly impact our behavior however much we
or others might like to kid ourselves that they do. It is only when we have heard or experienced something which truly, for
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which read emotionally, engages us that those values come alive. Only then may the posters serve as timely reminders of, or
further triggers for the actioning and internalization of those values.
Which takes us to one final emerging and rather interesting element of the neuroscience. It seems that the experience of
stories, whether delivering them or on the receiving end, can seem almost as real to the brain as if the story is actually
happening. Words used in stories that are commonly associated with smell, for example perfume or coffee, have in recent
experiments been shown to light up the primary olfactory cortex, the areas of the brain responsible for our sense of smell,
but remain dark when words like chair or table are used. Similarly rich metaphors like ‘the tenor had a velvety voice’ or ‘the
funeral director had a waxy complexion’, can evoke reactions in the sensory cortex, the area of the brain responsible for our
sense of touch. And work by cognitive scientist Veronique Boulenger at the French National Centre for Scientific Research
shows that a statement as innocuous as ‘Freddie kicked the ball’ (although we understand the statement was in French when
the research was undertaken!) can evoke reactions in the motor cortex, the area responsible for our movement sense
(Boulenger et al., 2012)
The stories typically told successfully in organizations
In a series of culture change off-site workshops for an IT function at one of the world’s largest banks spread across 23 sites
UK wide, the Head of IT (who had already established a healthy track record by firing all four of his widely despised direct
reports during his first few months of tenure) used to tell this story whenever asked why he had taken up the post or indeed
what was his vision for the business:
“I was working at UBS Warburg in New York when I was approached to apply for this role. The package wasn’t
particularly attractive in comparison to what I was getting but having made a few enquiries, I was intrigued
enough and fancied the challenge. So I was asked to attend an interview. It was a panel interview with various
Executive Board members from retail, corporate and business banking and at one stage I was asked about my
vision for the IT function.
So I said to them, ‘Can I answer that by first asking you a question?’
They all looked a bit non-plussed but nodded. So I said, ‘Would you ever consider asking someone from IT to run
one of your own business units?’ They laughed and guffawed, then remembered themselves, and finally replied
with a unanimous ‘no’.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘my vision is a simple one. I want to create an IT function that not only delivers great customer
service but one that also develops true business leaders in my function, not just IT experts; business leaders that
you would readily consider appointing as heads of units in your own parts of the business.’
I was offered the job the next day.”
We love the above story, although as we were working with him on the cultural transformation of the bank’s IT function we
admit we may be a bit biased. But the story works on many levels - it tells us something about the protagonist, about the
obstacles ahead in the rest of the bank, and it evokes a future state that rewards both customers and hard-working,
aspirational employees. Short, sweet and highly illustrative. Told to a group of salespeople in the drinks sector, or even to a
group of oil executives in BP the story might not resonate, but to that demoralized IT function to whom the story was
certainly pertinent it galvanized them like nothing before - backed up by his previous staff firings, here was a leader with both
vision and intent. He went on to become the longest serving Head of IT of any British bank at the time of writing and by most
metrics one of its most successful.
And it’s a great example of at least two of the eight narrative patterns below that Denning (2006) identifies as useful when
constructing organizational stories.

Sparking action - Describes how a successful change was implemented in the past, but allows listeners to
imagine how it might work in their situation. Necessarily the teller should avoid excessive detail.
“Just imagine”, “What if”

Communicating who you are - Provides audience‐engaging drama and reveals some strength or vulnerability
from your past. Provide some details but ensure the audience has time and inclination to hear your story.
“I didn’t know that about him!”, “Now I see what she’s driving at.”
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
Transmitting values - Feels familiar to the audience and will prompt discussion about the issues raised by the
value being promoted. Use believable characters and situations and ensure the story is consistent with your
own actions and those of your leadership team.
“That’s so right!”, “Why don’t we do that all the time?”

Communicating your brand - Is usually told by the product or service itself, or the customer word of mouth or
by a credible third party. Be sure the brand delivers on the promise.
“Wow! I’ve got to tell someone about that.”

Fostering collaboration - Recounts a situation that listeners have also experienced and prompts them to share
their own stories about the topic. Ensure that a set agenda doesn’t squelch this swapping of stories - and that
you have an action plan ready to tap the energy unleashed by this narrative chain reaction.
“That reminds me of the time…”, “I’ve got a story like that.’

Taming the grapevine ‐ Highlights through gentle humor some aspect of a rumor that reveals it to be untrue or
unreasonable. Avoids the temptation to be mean‐spirited.
“No kidding!”, “I’d never thought about it like that before.”

Sharing knowledge - Focuses on problems and shows, in some detail, how they were corrected, with an
explanation of why the solution worked. Solicit alternative - and possibly better - solutions.
“Gosh! We’d better watch out for that in the future.”

Leading people into the future - Evokes the future you want to create without providing excessive detail that
will prove to be wrong.
“Where do we start?”, “Let’s do it!”
Adapted From The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art
and Discipline of Business Narrative by Stephen Denning
As with the moral of our first story about the jury research, being clear about the purpose of the story and what you hope to
achieve by telling it will help make it that much more successful.
In the mid-1990s Denning, then a Program Director at the World Bank, was struggling to convince his colleagues of the merits
of knowledge management as a strategically important organizational learning tool, despite the wealth of data analysis and
research shared to back up his claims. Then he started telling this simple story.
“In June of last year, a health worker in a tiny town in Zambia went to the website of the Centers for Disease
Control and got an answer to a question about the treatment of malaria. Remember that this was in Zambia,
one of the poorest countries in the world, and it was in a tiny place six hundred kilometers from the capitol city.
But the most striking thing about this picture, at least for us, is that the World Bank isn’t in it. Despite our knowhow on all kinds of poverty-related issues, that knowledge isn’t available to the millions of people who could use
it. Imagine if it were. Think what an organization we could become.”
By the year 2000 the World Bank was recognized as a world leader in knowledge management and Denning has continued to
promote the use of stories in organizational settings ever since.
A final thought
There’s considerably more research available on narrative and storytelling and its efficacy and we have only touched the
surface here, but nevertheless we should be cautious about claims made. After all, social psychologists will always struggle to
isolate narrative as the causal variable in any piece of research, while the neuroscientists wandering through those foothills
will sometimes imply causality where only correlation exists between storytelling and a bundle of firing synapses.
Instinctively though we all know that storytelling done well can unite a divided group, fire ambition and guide future
decisions in a way that few PowerPoint presentations or bullet points ever will. If you’d like to test that assertion once more,
without looking back try to list the eight narrative patterns identified by Denning, and then try to recount the story of the
Head of IT’s interview. Which could you recollect or retell more effectively?
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