Nineteenth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

Those in strategic leadership positions often have years of experience in the workforce and have honed effective storytelling. These leaders know their stories, how to shape and move their followers, and have had the opportunity to develop them over time. However, aspiring leaders with less experience due to being younger, newer to leadership roles, those from diverse backgrounds with less mentoring time, or with those reentering the workforce after a hiatus such as childrearing, need to develop storytelling skills with the intention to impact organizational culture and followership. This session primes participants to maximize their strategic leadership abilities through storytelling in order to enhance their organization’s culture. At the conclusion, participants should become more aware of the underlying currents created by storytelling, and how it can be recognized, mobilized, and executed at strategic levels. This hands-on and interactive experiential learning module will have participants creating their own stories based on design thinking and model driven best practices. Participants will learn about storytelling, brainstorm current areas of opportunities for development and organizational culture change, use structures to create concise elevator pitches as well as a more formal storytelling to support the changes, and, discuss the benefits of storytelling techniques to maximize their individual leadership needs. At the conclusion of the workshop, participants will own examples of storytelling best practices that will be replicable in the workplace to help facilitate organizational culture change at the strategic leadership level.