Storytelling

How to communicate with maximum impact?

Andy Weeger

Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences

May 18, 2026

Learning objectives

After completing this unit, you will be able to:

1. Explain why storytelling is a leadership necessity and identify the four truths of effective stories.
2. Apply Aristotle’s persuasion model (ethos, pathos, logos) to structure compelling narratives.
3. Adapt stories for different stakeholder audiences using the stakeholder engagement spectrum.
4. Create a narrative using story elements and a narrative map structure.

Agenda

• Warm-up 15 min
• Storytelling × leadership 25 min
• Story structure & persuasion 25 min
• Break
• Storytelling practice 25 min
• Adapting to audiences 20 min
• Delivering 15 min
• Wrap-up 5 min

Warm-up

Story check-in

Share the leadership story you reflected on for homework.

Form groups of 4–5. Each student tells their leadership story to the group in 60 seconds.

Important: Don’t explain the moment where someone’s communication made a real difference, tell the story they told.

Vote for the story you liked best.

05:00

Emphasize: this is storytelling, not summarizing. Use first person, set the scene, create tension, land the message. After all members have told their stories, the group votes: which story was most compelling? The winner will represent the group in the plenary.

Story sharing

Perform the story for the plenary.

Listeners: What did you feel?

05:00

Story elements

What elements did the most compelling stories have in common?

05:00

After all performances, ask: “What patterns do you see in the words on the board?”

Expected patterns: personal connection, emotional resonance, concrete details, clear message, authenticity.

Storytelling is the skill that makes all other leadership skills communicable.

Storytelling x leadership

The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.

The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come. Steve Jobs

Leadership is fundamentally about communication. A leader with the right analysis but the wrong story will fail to mobilize action. Storytelling is not optional — it is a core leadership competency.

Recap: Leadership

A leader is one or more people who selects, equips, trains, and influences one or more follower(s) who have diverse gifts, abilities, and skills and focuses the follower(s) to the organization’s mission and objectives, causing the follower(s) to willingly and enthusiastically expend spiritual, emotional, and physical energy in a concerted coordinated effort to achieve the organizational mission and objectives. Winston & Patterson (2006, p. 8)

This integrative definition by Winston & Patterson (2006) captures several key aspects:

• leadership is a relational process (it requires followers),
• it is purposeful (directed toward organizational objectives),
• and it is voluntary (followers expend energy willingly).

Storytelling

How will you inspire others to be part of your vision/mission if you can’t communicate it?

Storytelling is a necessity of leadership.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Maya Angelou (American writer, poet, and civil rights activist)

The power of good stories

I’ve learned that the ability to articulate your story or that of your company is crucial in almost every phase of enterprise management. Guber (2007)

Examples:

• A great salesperson knows how to tell a story in which the product is the hero.
• A successful line manager can rally the team to extraordinary efforts through a story that shows how short-term sacrifice leads to long-term success.
• An effective CEO uses an emotional narrative about the company’s mission to attract investors and partners, to set lofty goals, and to inspire employees.

The leader as storyteller

For the leader, storytelling is action oriented—a force for turning dreams into goals and then into results. Guber (2007)

Great storytelling does not conflict with truth. In the business world and elsewhere, it is always built on the integrity of the story and its teller.

• Storytelling has always been also about instructing and leading
• Great storytelling does not conflict with truth

Key insight from Guber (2007):

• Storytelling has always been about instructing and leading.
• At the tribal fire, the storyteller encoded the community’s beliefs, values, and survival lessons into tales.
• The same function exists in organizations today.

The critical point:

• Storytelling is NOT manipulation.
• Effective leadership storytelling is built on authenticity and integrity: connecting to authentic leadership.

Truth found in an effective story

Guber (2007) distilled four kinds of truth found in an effective story:

• Truth to the teller: what a storyteller says must be consistent in their heart and mind
• Truth to the audience: the storyteller has to understand and recognize what the audience wants and needs and address those wants and needs
• Truth to the moment: a storyteller adapts a story to the context in which the story is told
• Truth to the mission: a storyteller is “devoted to a cause beyond self.”

• Truth to the teller connects to authentic leadership: if you don’t believe your own story, no one else will.
• Truth to the audience connects to stakeholder analysis (Unit 7): different audiences need different stories. The story you tell investors is not the story you tell engineers — not because you’re dishonest, but because their concerns differ.
• Truth to the moment connects to behavioral complexity (Unit 3): a story that inspires during a product launch may fall flat during a crisis.
• Truth to the mission connects to engaging leadership (Unit 4): the inspiring behavior is about enthusing people about a vision beyond themselves.

The four truths together form a complete framework: the teller must be authentic, the audience must be understood, the moment must be read, and the mission must transcend self-interest. When all four align, the story becomes a force multiplier for leadership.

Structure

Layers of conviction

Aristotle argued that a good speech contains three types of persuasion

Ethos, pathos, logos

• Logos appeals to the audience’s reason, building up logical arguments.
• Ethos appeals to the status or authority so that listeners are more likely to trust the speaker.
• Pathos appeals to the emotions, e.g., trying to make the audience feel angry or sympathetic.

Good storytelling includes all three, but the balance depends on the audience and moment:

• A board presentation is logos-heavy (data, projections) with ethos (your credibility) supporting it
• A team rally is pathos-heavy (shared purpose, emotional connection) with logos providing grounding
• A client pitch balances all three: ethos (why trust us), logos (how it works), pathos (imagine the impact)

Story structure

Behind really good stories is a well thought-out structure that forms the backbone of the story. This backbone, called the story elements, help writers develop great stories. The essential elements of a story are:

Characters
Setup or conflict
Sequence of events (plot)
Resolution

Every effective leadership story has these elements, even when told briefly:

• Character: Who is the story about? (Often the audience themselves)
• Conflict: What challenge or tension drives the story forward?
• Plot: What happens? How does the tension build?
• Resolution: How is the conflict resolved? What’s the takeaway?

When you strip away the theory, every great leadership story is:

1. Here was the challenge
2. Here’s what we did
3. Here’s what we learned/achieved.

Narrative map

General structure of a good story

 

 

 

 

Walk through the narrative map structure:

• Focus: The central theme — what is this story fundamentally about?
• Conflict/challenge: What is the problem? Why does it matter?
• Opportunity: The “aha moment” — what insight or possibility changes the game?
• Approach: How does the story unfold? What are the key elements?
• Resolution: How does it end? Who benefits?

Example

Ric Elias had a front-row seat on Flight 1549, the plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. What went through his mind as the doomed plane went down?

• What are the four truths in this story?
• Where are the story elements?
• Where does ethos, pathos, logos appear?

Expected:

• Truth to the teller (deeply personal),
• truth to the audience (universal human themes),
• truth to the moment (TED talk format),
• truth to the mission (living fully).

Heavy on pathos, with logos emerging from the specific experience.

Narrative map

Figure 1: The structure of the “3 things I learned while my plane crashed” story

Storytelling practice

Exercise

Create and perform a story.

Imagine you are a tech lead at a mid-sized software company. You are convinced the company must invest seriously in AI tools for coding and design: not as a side experiment, but as a strategic commitment that reshapes how the teams work.

You have the opportunity to pitch this to the CEO and the board.
You want to convince them to take a leap of faith.

Form teams of max. 3 students. Write your story using the narrative map structure. Be ready to perform it.

12:00

Pitch tournament with peer scoring (20 min total: 12 min writing, 8 min tournament).

Writing phase (12 min): groups write their pitch using the narrative map. Walk around coaching: “What’s your conflict? Where’s the pathos? How does your resolution connect to the company’s mission?”

Tournament phase (8 min): Each pair performs (90 sec max, strictly timed). After each pitch, the audience scores on a simple rubric (hand signals 1 to 5):

• Truth to the teller: Did you believe them?
• Story structure: Was there a clear conflict, opportunity, resolution?
• Emotional impact: Did you feel something?

The scoring creates metacognition: students must evaluate storytelling quality in real time, which deepens their understanding of the framework. Announce the highest-scoring pitch at the end and celebrate it briefly.

Narrative map (example)

Figure 2: The structure of an AI investment story

Audiences

Adapting your story

The interest/influence matrix (Unit 7) tells you how much engagement each quadrant needs; storytelling theory tells you what kind of narrative fits.

Matrix quadrant	Engagement	Story emphasis
Manage closely (high interest, high influence)	Active engagement, involve in decisions	Co-created narrative. Ethos, pathos & logos: “Let’s shape this together.” At the far end, the story is no longer yours to tell: the stakeholder becomes its author.
Keep satisfied (low interest, high influence)	Address concerns, don’t overwhelm	Concise strategic narrative. Logos-heavy: the decision, the rationale, the numbers, nothing more.
Keep informed (high interest, low influence)	Regular, transparent updates	Narrative of shared purpose. Pathos & ethos: “This is our challenge, here is where we stand.”
Monitor (low interest, low influence)	Minimal effort, watch for changes	Clear factual updates only when relevant. Logos, low-touch.

Table 1: Communication strategy by stakeholder quadrant

Exercise

Same story, three audiences.

Return to your AI investment pitch. Imagine you now deliver it to different stakeholders:

1. The engineering team, in a town hall.
2. A junior developer, one to one, worried about their job.
3. A senior developer, one to one, worried about their job.

What changes across versions? What stays the same?

08:00

Which truth stayed constant? Which shifted?

Truth to the teller and truth to the mission stay constant. Only truth to the audience and truth to the moment change. This is ethical adaptability, not manipulation.

Delivering

Some advice on public speaking from David JP Phillips, who has spent 7 years studying 5000 speakers, amateurs and professionals.

This provides practical delivery tips after students have already practiced content creation. Brief debrief: “What resonated most? What will you try next time you present?”

Wrap-up

Mental model

Mental models help you think clearly.
Storytelling is how you move others to act.

Storytelling rests on one mental model: humans think, remember, and decide in stories.

A latticework of mental models sharpens your judgement. It helps you read a situation clearly and decide which way to go. But judgement alone moves no one, and leadership is about followers. Storytelling is the other half of the work: it brings people toward the direction your analysis identified and gives them the conviction to act on it.

My suggestions for your latticework are now complete. Building it further, by learning, applying, and reflecting, is a lifelong project. Storytelling is how you turn what you learn into something others can follow.

Closing quote

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou

Q&A

Literature

Guber, P. (2007). The four truths of the storyteller. Harvard Business Review, 85(12), 52.

Winston, B. E., & Patterson, K. (2006). An integrative definition of leadership. International Journal of Leadership Studies, 1(2), 6–66.