Storytelling as a primary leadership tool

Storytelling is a foundational activity in every human culture, and the stories humans tell emanate from and result in each culture's unique history and mythology. Storytelling can also be an effective business tool for the creation of workplace culture. In the hands of capable leaders, storytelling can build strong culture, resulting in high employee engagement, which leads to high performance organizations. In this paper, we establish that there are three fundamental types of internal business communications, which address the questions of “what do we do,” “how do we do it,” and “why do we do it.” We next establish that storytelling is well-suited to motivate and inspire employees. We briefly summarize the five different types of stories, and establish that, while several types of stories are routinely told in the business environment, mythologies are well suited to motivate and inspire employees by answering the deeper, more meaningful questions around why our business exists. Next, we present an integrated view of storytelling from three perspectives: Jungian Depth Psychology, Mythology, and Neuroscience. We establish that Jungian Depth Psychology describes all humans as having common, universal mysteries to explain, and that they use common symbols to represent their understanding of these mysteries. Mythological stories and culture then emerge as a result of these common mysteries, coupled with unique group history and environment. We next establish that emerging neuroscience shows that storytelling is powerfully received in the human brain, and engages our brains more profoundly than other methods of communication. Finally we present a simple framework for leaders to use storytelling within their organizations. This framework includes practical thought models to use when driving cultural change or amplification via storytelling.