Introduction to The Story Arc Collective

Hello Leaders,

It’s a play on how I typically greet my reader club subscribers. If you are one, I’ve included you in this as well. If you’re uninterested in leadership, you can always unsubscribe from this section, but I hope you stick around.

I am introducing this new section, The Story Arc Collective, to gauge what my readers/leaders want to hear and see. I’ve got my ideas, which I will share, but I also wanted to listen to yours. Why? Well, because your voice is important to me. I mean, my voice only goes so far on its own. Your voice continues to lend to the story we are creating together.

I’ve read quite a few leadership books in my time. And last semester, I went back and read the history of leadership studies. There are some outstanding books there that I’d love to dive into and maybe will in the future. But putting pen to ink (or finger to keystrokes), I wanted to put this idea in the substackverse that’s been rattling my brain for some time. It’s an idea I’m most curious about when it comes to other leaders, whether that’s in the workplace, thoughtscape, or across the many existing interdisciplinary iterations of leadership.

Many of my posts now revolve around this idea, and because it fascinates me immensely, I would like to bring it to this dive into leadership as well. This is an exploratory subject I will examine academically throughout my PhD, but I also want to examine it in a more creative landscape.

What’s the grandiose idea? Stories.

What? Mind blown, odd explosion noises.

Yes, stories. Some blend of storytelling and leadership, mainly focusing on the effectiveness of storytelling in leadership. This has been called a Narrative Leadership approach. Using stories to motivate and inspire followers. What an intriguing concept, right? We probably all tell stories more than we recognize it. But what would happen if we were purposefully, cognizantly telling stories in order to create better, more productive workplaces that had high morale? Isn’t that fascinating?

So, how does this work? I’m not quite sure yet. This is a fascination I’ve discovered in my studies of leadership. Looking at the many theories of leadership that exist, I see this thread of storytelling lying between them all. But it’s not just the storytelling that compels people. It’s the invisible story we live out as leaders that also draws followers and inspires them toward mutual goals. At least, that’s what I’ve begun to see and wish to explore.

There is some tie between the stories a leader tells and the story the leader has lived out. This is easily seen in such leaders as politicians or religious leaders. They wear their beliefs on their sleeves more than most of us. Likewise, their very public lives are evidence of their convictions. However, these are just observations and opinions, as I’ve yet to do any actual study on the topic. But I’ve got plenty of questions about it.

Some questions I wish to explore:

What is the relationship between storytelling and effective leadership?

There is a book by Stephen Denning that may help answer this question. I’ve bought it, and once I read it, maybe I’ll do a bit of a book review on it discussing this question. I also need to study many, many journals on this subject.

Does an individual’s worldview affect the impact of their storytelling ability?

I define worldview as the meta-narrative by which the individual’s life is directed, how they see it, and how they choose to operate through it. This isn’t necessarily the things that define your identity, but the operations we take. Maybe because of that identity, or maybe in spite of it. For example, Christians are marked by an identity in Christ; however, individually, their worldviews (how they live out their faith) may look entirely different because they have different perspectives on the operations of faith and different emphases. The real effort here would be to understand the individual’s worldview, find similarities between individual’s worldviews, and then compare those similarities to the impact of their storytelling ability and see if there’s a correlation. I have another book, Organizational Leadership: Foundations & Practices for Christians, with a chapter dedicated to this with questions to ascertain one’s worldview so a portion of the work is done (possibly). However, I’ll still have to couple their worldview with their lived and told story. What an endeavor!

Can becoming a better storyteller improve an individual’s leadership quality?

This is the meat of the questions I want to explore. I mean, come on. Finding the relationship between storytelling and leadership will be easy enough. The worldview question, however, will be far more difficult simply because I’ll have to find people to study and see what the impact of worldview might have on storytelling. But this question…I mean, basically, I’d have to take all the previous information and find the best storytelling worldview (if there is one, it could be that different worldviews just tell certain stories better. I’ll probably have to focus on one certain story type (inspirational, motivational, informational…etc) for an application (Change, fiduciary growth among team members, fulfilling a particular task)), and see if the adoption of a new worldview or maybe just the story from that worldview affects the quality of their leadership.

Are there any volunteers as test subjects??

I believe it will show a positive response, but who knows? And if it doesn’t, perhaps practical approaches to storytelling might be found in Denning’s work. Then I could study this question, which will be very interesting. If no practical approaches can be found, I may also have to do a study on what elements of story arcs might improve one’s storytelling and implement them. So many studies…what an exciting prospect. I mean, none of this has been approved as a research proposal, but we’ll get there when we get there, right?

In any case, The Story Arc Collective will feature present leaders, or maybe books on leaders, or stories about leaders, and somehow, we’ll tie it all up with the few questions I have now and probably with the myriad of questions sure to come later. The last remaining question is, are you going to join along for the ride?…

Yes! At least, I hope so!