Stop Telling People the Future. Give Them a Story They Can Help Write.

Storytelling can help people make sense of change. Imagination helps them see what could be different. Leadership has to make room for both

Written by: Adelee Penner

Abstract

Leaders are regularly told to become better storytellers.

Craft the narrative.

Communicate the vision.

Create a compelling case for change.

Tell people where the organization is going.

There is good reason for that advice. Current research suggests that stories and future-oriented vision can influence how people interpret change, what outcomes they believe are possible, and whether they choose to support what happens next.

But there is a danger in thinking that the leadership task is simply to write a better story and persuade everyone else to believe it.

Organizations are already full of stories.

Stories about who we are.

What has happened before.

Why previous changes failed.

Who really has influence.

What leadership actually values.

What is possible here.

And what is not.

Current narrative research suggests that those fragments, counter-stories, contradictions, and emerging interpretations are not noise to be eliminated. They are part of how people make sense of organizational life.

At the same time, contemporary creativity research reminds us that imagination cannot simply be demanded. Leaders shape whether people have the permission, psychological space, tools, relationships, and opportunities required to generate possibilities that do not yet exist.

Perhaps the leadership challenge is therefore not:

How do I tell a more compelling story about the future?

It may be:

How do we create a story strong enough to give us direction and open enough that people can imagine themselves helping to write what happens next?

We love a good story.

Especially in leadership.

We are told that people will not remember the spreadsheet, but they will remember the story.

That leaders need to communicate a compelling vision.

That change requires a narrative.

That people need to understand the why.

I agree with much of that.

Stories matter.

They help people connect events.

Interpret uncertainty.

Understand where they have been.

Imagine where they might be going.

They can take something abstract—a strategy, an organizational transformation, a desired future—and give it shape.

But I think there is a leadership hazard hidden inside our enthusiasm for storytelling.

We can begin to believe that the leader's job is to write the organizational story—and everybody else's job is to believe it.

That is where storytelling can quietly become scripting.

Organizations Are Already Full of Stories

Long before the CEO steps onto the stage to present the new strategy, people are telling stories.

Remember the last time we tried this.

Leadership says that now, but wait six months.

This organization used to be the kind of place where...

You know who really gets listened to around here.

That project changed everything for us.

We don't do things like that here.

Nobody thought it could work until...

That's when I knew things were actually changing.

These stories matter because people use them to interpret what happens next.

A new organizational narrative does not arrive on an empty page.

It enters a landscape already populated by memories, assumptions, identities, relationships, disappointments, accomplishments, and explanations.

Which means leaders cannot simply ask:

What story do we want to tell?

They also need to ask:

What stories are already shaping what people believe is possible?

RESEARCH DEEP DIVE

The Story Does Not Need to Be as Neat as We Think

Sonya Sandham's 2025 research on organizational storytelling offers a particularly useful challenge.

She questions two assumptions that often sit underneath organizational communication.

The first is that the purpose of storytelling is to create clarity, and therefore, good organizational stories should be linear, coherent, and designed to reduce complexity.

The second is that the organization's official stories constitute the narrative, while multiple interpretations, fragments, and mixed messages are essentially noise.

Sandham suggests otherwise.

Drawing on the idea of antenarrative, she asks us to pay attention to narrative fragments—the unfinished pieces of stories through which people are beginning to make sense of events before one coherent account has fully emerged.

Those fragments can tell leaders something important.

What are people noticing?

What are they wondering about?

Which version of events is gaining traction?

Where are contradictions appearing?

What possibilities are people beginning to imagine?

Her argument places listening beside storytelling as an essential organizational practice. (Sage Journals)

I think that is important.

Perhaps the strongest storyteller in the organization is not necessarily the person who produces the most compelling narrative.

Perhaps it is the leader who knows how to hear the stories forming around them.

A Change Story Has to Make the Future Plausible

There is still an important role for vision.

Zhang and colleagues' 2025 research examined 279 employees in organizations undergoing digital transformation.

Their findings suggest that leaders' vision communication influenced employees' willingness to support change partly by shaping their expectations about the outcomes of that change.

And interestingly, the relationship became stronger when employees experienced greater work uncertainty. (ScienceDirect)

That makes sense to me.

When the future is uncertain, people are trying to construct an answer to some fairly basic questions:

Where is this taking us?

Why are we doing it?

Is there something on the other side worth working toward?

What happens to me?

What happens to us?

A narrative can help people connect today's disruption to tomorrow's possibility.

But there is an important distinction between saying:

"Here is exactly what the future will look like."

and:

"Here is the future we believe is worth working toward."

One is prediction.

The other is orientation.

Strong leadership narratives may need to provide direction without pretending that the destination has already been completely designed.

Stories Can Change What People Believe Is Possible

Solomon and Jones' 2025 research on community leadership found that storytelling could contribute to shifts in mental models, hope, relational action, community innovation, and people's willingness to act.

Their context was community and public-sector leadership rather than corporate organizations, so we should be careful about assuming direct transfer to every workplace.

But the underlying idea is worth attention.

Stories do not only describe reality.

They can influence what people think reality could become. (Wiley Online Library)

That is where storytelling and imagination begin to intersect.

If the only story an organization tells is:

Here is what is wrong.

People learn the problem.

If the story is:

Here is what leadership has decided.

People learn the plan.

But if the narrative becomes:

Here is what we are seeing. Here is why it matters. Here is what we believe could become possible. And here are the questions we still need to answer together.

something else happens.

The narrative creates a possibility space.

Imagination Begins Where Inevitability Ends

This may be one of the reasons creativity is so difficult inside established organizations.

Organizations develop strong stories about themselves.

We're a traditional organization.

Our clients wouldn't accept that.

That might work somewhere else.

We tried it already.

Our systems can't do that.

People here don't like change.

Some of those statements may contain important institutional knowledge.

But repeated often enough, a story about what has been can quietly become a story about what must always be.

And imagination closes.

Narrative reflexivity offers a useful response.

Chung and Norvell (2025) describe it as the practice of interrogating the stories we tell ourselves and one another. Their work emphasizes noticing dominant—or hegemonic—stories alongside marginalized stories and introducing doubt, curiosity, pause, and co-creative tension into collective narratives.

The purpose is not simply to destroy the old story.

It is to make room for examining it and potentially co-producing a different one. (Taylor & Francis Online)

That is a leadership practice I find compelling.

Ask:

What story are we treating as fact?

Then:

Who experiences this story differently?

And finally:

What becomes possible if this is not the only story available to us?

That is where imagination can enter.

Canadian Research: Be Careful What You Believe About Creativity

Current Canadian research gives us a particularly interesting caution.

Marine Agogué and colleagues at HEC Montréal examined people's implicit beliefs about what drives creativity.

In an experiment involving 69 participants, everyone drank the same fruit juice before completing a creative task. Some participants were simply told it was juice; others were told it contained Red Bull.

Among participants with particularly strong beliefs about factors that stimulate creativity, performance was actually lower when they thought the creativity-enhancing condition had been activated.

The researchers suggest that strong beliefs about creativity drivers may produce complacency and reduce the effort invested in generating creative ideas. (Wiley Online Library)

There is something wonderfully disruptive about that finding.

Organizations also hold implicit theories of creativity.

Creative people need beanbag chairs.

We need a brainstorming session.

Innovation needs an innovation lab.

Put the right people in a room and creativity will happen.

Perhaps.

But creativity does not arrive simply because we have created something that looks creative.

And people may become less imaginative when they believe the "creativity conditions" are doing the thinking for them.

We Can Support Creativity. We Cannot Simply Announce It.

A 2024 meta-analysis by McKay and colleagues gives us another useful qualification.

They found that organizational creativity training had a meaningful positive overall effect and produced positive learning outcomes.

But transfer into actual on-the-job creative behaviour was not statistically significant, and training effects were smaller when outcomes were measured later rather than immediately after the intervention. (DOI)

That should matter to every organization that has run an innovation workshop.

People can learn creativity techniques.

They can leave a session energized.

They can generate interesting ideas.

And then Monday happens.

The approvals return.

The workload returns.

The hierarchy returns.

The fear of failure returns.

The established meeting structure returns.

The implicit message becomes:

That was the creativity workshop. Now we are back at work.

Perhaps the problem was never a creativity deficit.

Perhaps the workplace simply did not allow creative behaviour to survive.

Leadership Shapes the Creative Environment

The newest large-scale evidence is remarkably clear on this.

Lu and Kong's 2026 meta-analysis synthesized 232 papers, 246 independent samples, 282 effect sizes, and 98,769 participants.

Strategic, shared, charismatic, transformational, empowering, inclusive, transactional, ethical, and participative leadership were all positively associated with team creativity.

Abusive leadership was negatively associated with it.

Strategic leadership showed the strongest relationship among the approaches examined. (Emerald)

The lesson should not be that leaders simply need to choose the correct style from a list.

I think it is broader:

Creativity is relationally and organizationally conditioned.

People notice whether ideas are welcomed.

Whether curiosity is rewarded.

Whether questioning is interpreted as a contribution or resistance.

Whether a half-formed idea is allowed to remain half-formed long enough to become better.

Whether somebody can propose something unusual without immediately having to defend the business case.

Whether leaders ask questions they genuinely do not already know the answer to.

The leader does not produce everyone's creativity.

But leadership can certainly determine whether much of it ever becomes visible.

Sometimes We Need Something to Think With

Another Canadian study gives us an unusually practical insight.

Lesage and colleagues at ÉTS and HEC Montréal examined divergent thinking among non-designers using either conventional pen-and-paper approaches or tangible figurative objects.

Pen and paper generated a larger quantity of ideas.

But tangible objects generated more elaborated proposals and appeared to provide stronger affordances for divergent thinking, although they also required greater cognitive effort. (PubMed)

I like this finding because it challenges another workplace habit.

Most organizational thinking happens through:

• words,

• PowerPoint,

• documents,

• spreadsheets,

• and meetings.

Then we wonder why everyone keeps producing variations of the ideas we already have.

Sometimes imagination needs another medium.

Draw it.

Build it.

Map it.

Move it.

Role-play it.

Prototype it.

Create a collage.

Use cards.

Build a future newspaper.

Construct a scenario.

Represent the problem physically.

Ask people to make something before asking them to explain it.

The point is not to make work juvenile.

The point is to give the brain different material with which to think.

Different People Need to Bring Different Knowledge Into the Story

Canadian-led research from HEC Montréal gives us another useful piece.

Dionne and Carlile studied Hacking Health's open-innovation environments, where clinicians, researchers, programmers, designers, entrepreneurs, and others worked together on digital health challenges.

These participants initially shared relatively little professional language or knowledge.

The researchers identified four interconnected forms of knowledge work:

1. exploring different perspectives,

2. complementing knowledge with new language and methods,

3. mapping possible combinations of knowledge,

4. and modeling how different elements could work together in a sustained solution.

Importantly, different kinds of temporary spaces—cafés, workshops, hackathons, and bootcamps—supported different parts of that progression. (Sage Journals)

In other words:

People did not simply get more creative because the organization told them to collaborate.

The space and sequence of the work helped different knowledge collide productively.

That has direct leadership implications.

If you want more imagination, do not only invite different people.

Design what they will do together.

Creativity Needs Divergence Before Convergence

This is one of the organizational patterns I would watch closely.

Leaders are trained to converge.

Choose.

Prioritize.

Decide.

Allocate.

Execute.

Those are essential leadership capacities.

But imagination begins somewhere else.

It asks:

What else?

What if?

Who sees this differently?

What are we assuming?

What if that constraint disappeared?

What would a student design?

What would the client do if they designed this themselves?

What would this look like if we were starting today?

What future are we unintentionally designing by continuing exactly as we are?

Those questions expand the field.

Eventually, we have to converge.

But if leadership begins convergence too early, the organization becomes extraordinarily efficient at choosing among options that were never particularly imaginative to begin with.

Leaders Need to Resist Finishing the Story Too Soon

I think this may be the hardest leadership practice in this entire conversation.

Leaders are rewarded for answers.

Employees look to them for direction.

Boards expect clarity.

Stakeholders want reassurance.

Ambiguity is uncomfortable.

So when fragments begin appearing, leaders often want to connect them immediately.

Here is what this means.

Here is the strategy.

Here is our answer.

But sometimes the organization is still thinking.

Sandham's work on emerging narrative fragments and Chung and Norvell's narrative reflexivity both suggest a different possibility:

Listen longer.

Not indefinitely.

Not as an excuse for indecision.

But long enough to hear what the dominant story might be excluding.

Long enough for a different interpretation to surface.

Long enough to recognize that what initially sounded like resistance may contain important information.

Long enough to let people imagine something leadership had not already designed.

Because once the leader finishes the story, everybody else begins editing themselves to fit it.

TRY THIS IN PRACTICE

Build the Narrative With Three Horizons

Take one significant change, challenge, or opportunity your organization is currently facing.

Do not begin by writing the communication.

Bring together a group with different roles, experiences, and perspectives.

Create three spaces.

1. The story we have inherited

Ask:

What stories do we currently tell about this issue?

What happened before?

What assumptions have become normalized?

What are people afraid of losing?

Which story dominates?

Which stories are rarely heard?

Do not correct them yet.

Listen.

2. The story that is emerging

Ask:

What are we noticing now that no longer fits the old story?

What surprises us?

Where are contradictions appearing?

What are clients, students, employees, partners, data, or the environment telling us?

What is becoming possible—or necessary—that was not visible before?

3. The story we might help create

Now ask:

What could be different?

Not:

What will the future be?

But:

What futures would be worth working toward?

What would people experience differently?

What would we have to learn?

What could we test now?

Who needs to help write this story?

Then create something.

A sketch.

A prototype.

A headline from three years in the future.

A customer journey.

A scenario.

A model.

A storyboard.

A conversation between your current organization and its future self.

Make the possibility visible enough that people can interact with it.

Then ask:

What would have to become true for this story to be possible?

Now storytelling has moved from communication into strategy.

A Story Needs Enough Structure to Matter

Co-creation does not mean leaders abandon direction.

There are things leaders know.

There are commitments that should not be endlessly reopened.

There are values that matter.

There are regulatory requirements.

There are strategic choices.

There are ethical boundaries.

A useful narrative needs a spine.

Perhaps that spine contains:

What we care about.

What we are noticing.

What cannot continue unchanged.

What future we believe is worth moving toward.

What we do not yet know.

What we will learn together.

That gives people something substantial enough to respond to—without pretending leadership has already written the final chapter.

Be Careful With the Hero

There is another storytelling habit leaders should watch.

Every story needs a hero, we are told.

And in organizational storytelling, the leader can accidentally become it.

The leader saw the future.

The leader made the difficult decision.

The leader rallied the organization.

The organization changed.

That story may be flattering.

It may also be largely fictional.

Change usually happens through distributed acts:

• someone questions an assumption,

• someone translates an idea,

• someone experiments quietly,

• someone connects two people,

• someone sees an unintended consequence,

• someone persuades a skeptical colleague,

• someone adapts implementation,

• someone tells the truth when the original plan is not working.

Perhaps the protagonist of a good change story should not be the leader.

Perhaps it should be the organization learning.

That changes the leadership role from hero to host.

The Story Is Not Finished When the Communication Goes Out

This is where storytelling and organizational learning finally meet.

A narrative should change when reality teaches us something.

If the story says:

"This transformation will create a more responsive organization,"

then people's experiences should matter.

Are we becoming more responsive?

If not, the narrative cannot simply become louder.

It needs to become more honest.

If the future we imagined encounters something unexpected, revise.

If another group experiences the change differently, listen.

If the prototype teaches us that an assumption was wrong, learn.

A living narrative tells people:

This is where we are going. And we are still paying attention.

That may generate more trust than pretending the original story was perfect.

A Final Provocation

What if the leader's most important storytelling skill is not knowing how to tell the story—but knowing when to stop talking long enough for another story to become possible?

Stories can orient us.

They can connect the past to the present.

They can give meaning to uncertainty.

They can make futures imaginable.

But imagination requires openings.

Questions.

Difference.

Unfinished ideas.

Permission to challenge what has become inevitable.

Ways to make possibilities visible.

And the experience that something I contribute might actually change what happens next.

So perhaps the leadership task is not to tell people the future.

It is to provide enough purpose and direction that people understand why the future matters—

and enough space that they can help create one none of us could have written alone.

A narrative can give us direction without becoming a script.

And perhaps that is exactly what change needs.

Reflective Questions

What story does your organization currently tell about itself so often that it may have become unquestionable?

Whose version of that story is least likely to be heard?

When communicating change, do leaders describe a future people can help create—or a future that has already been decided for them?

Where in your organization do people have permission to generate possibilities before being required to defend them?

Are creativity initiatives changing day-to-day working conditions, or mostly teaching people techniques?

What media do people use to think together beyond words and PowerPoint?

Where could temporary spaces, prototypes, scenarios, models, or tangible tools help people imagine differently?

When someone offers a counter-story, is it treated as useful information or resistance?

Who gets to be the protagonist in your organization's change stories?

And perhaps the question worth carrying forward:

What part of the future are we asking people merely to accept—and what part are we genuinely inviting them to help write?

Let's talk again soon. Take good care of yourself.

Adelee

References

Agogué, M., Parguel, B., & Bendas, A. (2024). Do you believe Red Bull gives wings? When implicit theories of creativity impair creative performance. Creativity and Innovation Management, 33(3), 461–475. https://doi.org/10.1111/caim.12597 (Wiley Online Library)

Chung, H. H., & Norvell, N. C. (2025). Narrative reflexivity as leaderful practice. Journal of Change Management, 25(1), 41–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2025.2453132 (Taylor & Francis Online)

Dionne, K.-E., & Carlile, P. R. (2025). The pragmatic cycle of knowledge work: Unlocking cross-domain collaboration in open innovation spaces. Human Relations, 78(2), 187–222. https://doi.org/10.1177/00187267241234003 (Sage Journals)

Lesage, A., Bourdeau, S., Caron, B. C., & Léger, P.-M. (2026). Empowering non-designers with tangible tools for divergent thinking. Ergonomics, 69(1), 60–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2025.2511869 (PubMed)

Lu, Y., & Kong, M. (2026). The relationship between leadership and team creativity: A meta-analysis. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 47(4), 803–832. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-09-2024-0574 (Emerald)

McKay, A. S., Reiter-Palmon, R., Coombes, S. M. T., & Coombs, J. E. (2024). A meta-analysis of creativity training in organizational settings. Creativity and Innovation Management, 33(4), 587–602. https://doi.org/10.1111/caim.12605 (DOI)

Sandham, S. (2025). Sensemaking in organizational storytelling: From linear storytelling to antenarrative. Public Relations Inquiry, 14(1), 69–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147X241301438 (Sage Journals)

Solomon, V., & Jones, A. (2025). The power of storytelling in creating pivotal community leadership. Journal of Leadership Studies, 19, e70008. https://doi.org/10.1002/jls.70008 (Wiley Online Library)

Zhang, Y., Zhou, X., Zhang, H., & Khanagha, S. (2025). Mechanisms of vision communication and employees' change-supportive behavior from the perspective of expectancy theory. Journal of Business Research, 188, 115116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2024.115116 (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)