Circles & Lines

The power of stories and narratives in leadership.

What’s the difference between stories and narratives? I get this question a lot and understand why. In everyday vernacular, they’re often interchanged, but they’re not the same.

Think of a story as a circle. It has a starting point, travels a path, and concludes.

Think of a narrative as a line. It unfolds and doesn’t necessarily conclude. Offshoots can spur new narratives. It can also curl into a circle and form a story but doesn’t have to.

Another way to look at it is narrative comes first, then influences and shapes the story.

As a leader, why should you care? Because your business is completely built on narratives, many of which get shaped into stories.

There’s the narrative that underlies your entire business—the thread that runs through it. Off of that shoots other narratives about how you treat employees and customers, the products you make, the services you offer, the solutions you provide, etc. Those narratives are your guiding principles, and the stories they form are how you show up in the world.

Here’s an example…

Narrative: Speed is incredibly important in business and those who can deliver the best possible products and services the fastest will win.

Story: ABC Co. had an urgent request from a client to solve problem XYZ. While others took hours and even days to respond, we got back to them in minutes and won the work. Were we the best or cheapest? Who knows. Others didn’t get the chance to compete with us because they slept on the request. We won a great project and our client was grateful and happy.

Do you see the difference? The narrative is the line — the thread. The story is the circle that’s shaped by the narrative.

As leaders, you can think of your narratives as your guiding principles. Your stories are how you communicate those narratives to others and show up in the world. Both are extremely important, but it’s not a chicken and egg scenario. Narratives always come first.

Thanks so much for reading. This article is based on my
Behavioral Storytelling® framework of:

Insight-driven communication
based on how people
process information
and make decisions
to satisfy their motivations.

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Give me a shout if you’d like to explore how this might help your business or to have me speak at one of your events.

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Cheers.