The Leader's Guide to Storytelling

In his best-selling book, Squirrel, Inc., former World Bank executive Stephen Denning used a tale to show why storytelling is a critical skill for leaders. Now, in this hands-on guide, Denning explains how you can learn to tell the right story at the right time.

Whoever you are in the organization — CEO, middle management, or someone on the front lines — you can lead by using stories to effect change. Filled with myriad examples, The Leader's Guide to Storytelling shows how storytelling is one of the few available ways to handle the principal — and most difficult — challenges of leadership: sparking action, getting people to work together, and leading people into the future. The right kind of story at the right time can make an organization "stunningly vulnerable" to a new idea.

• Part One: The Role of Story in Organizations
1. Telling the Right Story: Choosing the Right Story for the Leadership Challenge at Hand
2. Telling the Story Right: Four Key Elements of Storytelling Performance
• Part Two: Narrative Patterns
3. Motivate Others to Action: Using Narrative to Ignite Action and Implement New Ideas
4. Build Trust in You; Using Narrative to Communicate Who You Are
5. Build Trust in Your Company: Using Narrative to Build Your Brand
6. Transmit Your Values: Using Narrative to Instill Organizational Values
7. Get Others Working Together: Using Narrative to Get Things Done Collaboratively
8. Share Knowledge; Using Narrative to Transmit Knowledge and Understanding
9. Tame the Grapevine: Using Narrative to Neutralize Gossip and Rumor
10. Create and Share Your Vision: Using Narrative to Lead People Into the Future
• Part Three: Putting It All Together
11. Solve the Paradox of Innovation: Using Narrative to Transform Your Organization
12. A Different Kind of Leader: Using Narrative to Become an Interactive Leader

Self-congratulatory bull-shitting that had the potential to be good, but failed.

A failed executive, suddenly manages to re-create (or rather prolong) his career by discovering the power of storytelling and that a good pitch has some effect. All good speakers, since at least Platon has known this, as do all speechwriters (but not all authors, unfortunately) as well as all corporate bullshitters that sprout good stories without substance, and usually extend their corporate survival a long time (some even make a career on it).

What the author has done is take this simple concept and tried to expand it into stuff he has no idea on, like innovation, and shows how badly he has researched what he writes, as he seems to rely on that we should believe his story and not bother about facts. It could have been an interesting book about the power of storytelling, but it went overboard, and is even boringly written as well as self-effacing bullshit.