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The Importance of Shared Narrative (Ed Batista)

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Warren Bennis, the great leadership scholar and a World War II combat veteran, noted that of a leader's essential skills, "the first is the ability to engage others in shared meaning." [1] This process, which we might simply call storytelling, entails distilling a complex set of circumstances into a readily understandable narrative, providing distinct but mutually compatible versions of that narrative to different audiences, and repeating this process until the narrative is shared by the entire community. Why is this such an important aspect of leadership? Because reality is socially constructed, and the vehicle for that process is narrative. [2] There are few ground truths in social structures, organizational life, or interpersonal experience. Once we get beyond the realm of physics, the "truth" is what we believe to be true, and when enough people, or the right people, profess their belief in a given narrative its influence is as irresistible as gravity. The converse also holds, of c

The Importance of Shared Narrative - Ed Batista Skip to content The Importance of Shared Narrative August 8, 2022 Warren Bennis, the great leadership scholar and a World War II combat veteran, noted that of a leader's essential skills, "the first is the ability to engage others in shared meaning." [1] This process, which we might simply call storytelling, entails distilling a complex set of circumstances into a readily understandable narrative, providing distinct but mutually compatible versions of that narrative to different audiences, and repeating this process until the narrative is shared

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