Hello!
It’s National Storytelling Week and I’ve been thinking about what stories actually do to our systems - both our organisational ones and our physical bodies.
We are wired for story because story helps us make sense of uncertainty. It creates coherence. It helps the nervous system answer a very old question: what’s going on, and am I safe enough to stay present here?
When information arrives without story, we generate our own narratives. shaped by our experiences, our fears and our biases.
When leaders don’t tell a story, people don’t sit in a vacuum but create their own, often personal and often threatening. That’s why storytelling isn’t just about meaning-making. It plays a powerful role in regulation.
So, what can we learn from this for leadership?
Stories that reduce bias and help us stay grounded
When stories are missing or incomplete, people fill the gaps with assumptions. Those assumptions are rarely neutral - they’re shaped by fear, experience, and bias. For example, when organisations talk about AI only in terms of speed and efficiency, people start quietly judging who is “future-fit” and who is holding things back.
A fuller story changes that. When leaders name uncertainty, acknowledge uneven starting points, and surface the ethical and emotional impacts of change, the focus shifts from individuals to systems. People stop personalising uncertainty and can see patterns, context, and constraint.
That clarity also helps us stay oriented in change. When leaders explain what’s happening and why, people stop scanning for threat and can bring their attention back to the work. In this way, storytelling both loosens bias and helps people carry uncertainty with more capacity and calm.
Storytelling as branding
Inside organisations, storytelling is often used as a branding tool. Brand stories help people understand who you are, what you stand for, and what makes you different. When done well, they create identity, pride and a shared language.
We’ve certainly tried to do this at THC. Naming Leading with Heart and being explicit about our values has helped us attract the right clients, collaborators and conversations. Brand storytelling acts as a signal.
But organisations don’t just tell stories to the outside world, they also have to live inside them. Balancing the external story with the internal experience is ongoing, imperfect work. Externally, stories are often confident and aspirational. Internally, people are navigating real constraints, pressure and uncertainty. Holding both without drifting into spin or silence takes care.
We’ve spent much of today in conversations about holding both accountability and empathy (mainly where we’re getting it wrong). It’s been hard, hard work and the only ‘win’ I can share at the moment from the messy middle is gratitude that we are going there and talking.
Stories that reduce shame and stigma
In the absence of shared stories, people tend to internalise their problems. They assume fault. They question their competence, their judgement, or their belonging. Silence rarely creates neutrality, instead it gets filled with shame.
Stories that reduce shame and stigma do something different. They locate difficulty in the system rather than the individual. They make it clear that struggle isn’t the same as failure.
We’ve seen the power of this recently in the public response to Gisèle Pelicot. Her decision to speak openly reframed the narrative entirely. By telling the truth of what happened, the shame was relocated away from the victim and back onto the system, the perpetrators, and the structures that enabled harm. Many people described feeling a collective exhale that was the relief that comes when something unspoken is finally named.
We see a similar dynamic inside organisations when neurodivergent colleagues are invited to share their lived experience. When neurodiversity panels move beyond awareness into honest storytelling about exhaustion, masking, misunderstanding, and systemic barriers something important happens. People stop personalising difficulty. What once felt like individual inadequacy is recognised as a mismatch between people and systems. We reduce shame and increase understanding and the will to change the system.
So what… I’m struck all over again by the power of story. I’ve always known its value as a memory tool and how it helps us remember, learn and connect. What I’ve been less conscious of until recently is its power as a regulatory mechanism. Stories shape not just understanding, but capacity.
For leaders, that feels like an important responsibility. To understand the full impact of the stories we tell, and to use them deliberately, in ways that help people stay present, capable and human. To tell stories that expand what’s possible, rather than quietly narrowing it.
How are you using storytelling within your organisations?
Rox x