April 21, 2025
Put yourselves in the shoes of the average employee today. Chances are, they’ve seen their share of company PowerPoints, heard the “talking heads” with leaders at town halls, and read lots of executive emails detailing company strategies.
It’s no wonder that employees are tuned out or disengaged, as many polls indicate. Much of what’s communicated to employees is dry, procedural, and seemingly unconnected to the work they do every day. External stakeholders – namely, customers or business partners – crave stories as well to feel connected to a brand.
While there’s no panacea for employee disengagement, there is one clear remedy for getting employees more tuned in: corporate storytelling. When done well, storytelling is not simply a gimmick to gain employees’ attention but a genuine, strategic effort to inspire employees, making their work meaningful and tied to the company’s vision and mission.
What Is Corporate Storytelling, Exactly?
Corporate storytelling is the art of telling compelling stories that make your company history, strategy, or anything else that’s happening come to life. Corporate storytelling can also be used by top leaders and managers to make their message more meaningful and relatable to employees, customers, and other stakeholders.
Simon Sinek, the leadership expert famous for his business book, “Start with Why,” emphasizes that the best stories get at the heart of what leaders are passionate about and what their goals are for the company.
One often-cited example is Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, who regularly shared his inspiration for founding the company. Schultz described a trip to Milan and his passion for the fresh, richly brewed espresso he discovered there and brought home with him. He told the story to let employees know that their job goes well beyond selling coffee; it’s about the experience employees create for their customers.
Bill Gates similarly shared his early dream to put a personal computer on every desktop and in every home – long before the power and potential of computers were widely unknown. Gates’ storytelling skills inspired many highly talented people to join Microsoft in the early days, including former Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer, who dropped out of business school to join the company while it was still an unknown start-up searching for a future path.
Why Is Corporate Storytelling So Important?
1. Stories are memorable.
The renowned cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner’s research finds that a fact wrapped in a story is 22 times more memorable. From our experience working with hundreds of top executives, we find this plays out regularly. One small example comes from a top leader we worked with. He shared with us his experience as an immigrant from Egypt who came to America as a child with very little to call his own.
“To survive, we had to earn our meals every day, literally struggle for every penny. I watched my parents work tirelessly to ensure their kids could survive, and they are shining examples of the value of hard work and what it takes to achieve your goals and dreams.” This kind of story shares a vulnerability and honesty that’s bound to help the leader’s employees get to know him better and want to hear more about where he plans to take the company.
2. Stories are an ideal tool for connecting employees to the vision, mission, and strategy.
Following one town hall we held for a top leader, a communications survey issued to employees had a striking number of comments about the leader’s personal stories that connected to the company’s goals. Employees used words like “refreshing” and commented that what the leader shared was “very different than what I thought I knew about her.” Another said, “How refreshing to have some human element tossed in with the business-speak.”
3. Every company needs a story.
No matter the type of business, there is a reason your company exists, and that story needs to be told to fully connect with your audience – whether they be employees or customers. It may feel easier to tell a compelling story when it’s about a relatable and widespread product such as Apple’s iPhone. Yet no matter what the company does, it’s the leader’s job to tell the origin story in an engaging and relatable way.
Often, that means telling the story of the founders, or the company’s early or ongoing challenges, as well as its triumphs. When you can share your company’s reason for being, you’re on your way to building engagement and buy-in from your team.
Types of Corporate Storytelling
The most prominent kind of corporate storytelling is the basic company narrative detailing what the company is all about, the kinds of material often found on an “About Us” page on the company website. That story is often expanded and made more specific and relatable when it’s presented by leaders to a group of employees. Yet, there are scores of other kinds of stories that fall under the corporate storytelling umbrella.
Here’s a snapshot of some of the many ways storytelling in leadership can be effective:
1. Stories about a major company initiative or project.
Companies often craft a narrative that describes the case for change for a specific company initiative, such as a reorganization of teams inside the company. Leaders share what brought them to initiate the change, their specific plans and goals in detail, and the impact of the decision on the team. Leaders can include what new actions employees are expected to take and the commitments leaders plan on to make the transition successful.
2. Stories about the everyday expectations set for employees.
Companies that do a good job of setting expectations for employees ensure they communicate with vivid stories and through multiple channels. The channels might include face-to-face meetings, corporate town halls and conference calls, and written materials, such as emails or social media posts to employees. For manufacturing employees or other teams where there’s limited desk time, managers might communicate daily or weekly expectations through a team huddle just as the workday kicks off.
Leaders can share stories of personal concerns or needs. For example, a leader at a pharmaceutical company manufacturing a life-saving drug might tell a story about how extra efforts to ensure an efficient, safe manufacturing process make a huge difference for the patients they serve. Maybe the leader highlights a case when employees went above and beyond to beat deadlines, thus saving the life of a vulnerable child in crisis.
3. Stories from the field.
These are typically shared by leaders reflecting on their encounters with the team or with customers in the marketplace. Leaders visiting plants, restaurants, hospitals, retail sites, or other venues have an opportunity to share inspiring stories about what they saw and what moved them. For instance, after a visit to China, a leader could share how customers responded positively to a new retail location, or how the market demand for a certain product is soaring.
4. Case-for-change stories.
This type of story addresses the company’s biggest challenge that needs to be tackled by employees during a difficult time. Leader stories can help make the company’s challenges all the more relatable and real. For instance, during COVID-19, manufacturing supply chain leaders shared stories of how they were battling against product shortages to help deliver life-saving medicines around the world. By helping employees see what was needed during a very stressful time, leaders inspired employees to think innovatively to solve problems, knowing how much was at stake.
5. Success stories told by leaders.
These stories share how employees are excelling in their work, setting a positive example for their colleagues. One of the best tactics is to tell more employee success stories. This is a great way to publicly acknowledge a hard-working employee while also giving the wider team a sense of what it looks like to exceed expectations.
6. Merger and acquisition stories.
Often shared by leaders, these stories explain how two companies came together and how they will work as a team to bring the newly merged company success. When employees can see the synergies between the two companies and a sincere connection between the newly merged leadership teams, they are more likely to feel excited and motivated about the M&A.
7. Stories about company progress against yearly goals.
These stories are often presented in fiscal year-end town halls and are the best way to summarize a company’s progress over the course of the year. What were the highlights? Which employees stood out and why? What challenges were overcome? How have employees forged new partnerships, exceeded sales or productivity goals, or come up with innovative ideas? All of the highlights of the year should be told through stories, not simply charts and graphs.
8. Stories about a new leader who has just come into the business.
A new company leader needs to share a personal and authentic side, so the team can begin to get to know him or her. The early days are a great time for leaders to share stories of what drew them to the industry, what motivates them, the leaders who inspire them, and the potential they see for the business ahead. After all, employees only trust leaders who they feel are genuine, ethical, and worthy of following. Storytelling is an important way for leaders to reveal more of themselves and get off on the right foot from the start.
9. Stories generated by a storytelling “collective.”
A best practice that we’ve seen is establishing a process for a representative group of employees across the organization to meet monthly or quarterly to discuss interesting stories. Serving as an extended set of eyes and ears to the communications team, the group can be an excellent resource for sharing a pulse for what’s going on behind the scenes within organizations. For example, a storytelling collective might know of a special recognition an employee earned, or about the extra efforts employees take to support the organization outside of work hours. These employee-suggested stories are often some of the most compelling stories organizations tell.
10. Stories uncovered through the process of a leader platform.
One of the best tools we’ve used over the years for collecting stories is our leader platform. This is a strategic process we go through, often with new leaders, by which we conduct interviews to learn about the leader’s vision, goals, and personal approach to leadership. Through this process, we gather interesting personal stories that are then used by the communications team to shape the leader’s communication throughout the year. Different stories might be chosen to share with different teams, and at key strategic moments for the business. In this way, no one is scrambling at the last minute for a leader story to share at a special employee meeting.
What Makes for Great Corporate Storytelling
When creating a story, you want it to inspire and engage audiences, helping employees gain new perspectives or assign meaning to emerging situations. Whatever your end goal, an effective story should have five essential traits:
- The story should be simple, easy to tell, and easy to remember: Leaders should engage quickly and break through the noise.
- Make the story relatively short and to the point: With so much information bombarding employees at any given time, the average person’s attention span is only about eight seconds. This doesn’t mean your stories need to be told in under 10 seconds, but instead, it is a good reminder to keep your stories succinct to hold your listeners’ attention.
- Stories should be purposeful and honest: Tie the story to the end result you want to achieve by positioning problems in the foreground and showing how they were overcome.
- Repeat your stories: To broaden the audience and the reach of the message, you often need to repeat your stories in different contexts, so it sticks and is repeatable.
- Rely on a yearly leader platform or other organizational structure to tell your stories: As described above, a leader platform, complete with a full library of stories shared by the leader in the leader’s voice, is a terrific tool that allows leaders to plan ahead for storytelling and be more intentional and strategic in their storytelling.
How are the stories we use in the workplace different from those we tell at a backyard BBQ? The main distinction is that the workplace story has a moral or a purpose. It has a punch line that helps an employee know what’s important and links the story to a desired behavior or outcome.
Examples of Great Corporate Stories
Here are some examples of the kinds of leader stories we’ve seen inspire and engage teams:
- Solving the Puzzle – A CEO with a lifelong love of doing puzzles talks about how that passion translates to the new business he’s leading now. The job of transforming this Fortune 100 company requires everyone to be problem-solvers, analytical thinkers, and completely focused on helping consumers with a complex set of needs.
- Navigating the Track – A former track star is leading an organization through some tough challenges. He shares that he wants to be like his sprinting coach, pushing the team to new lengths that they might feel are impossible to reach. At the same time, this leader wants to understand when he can push and when he needs to back off a little and let his team breathe and grow.
- A Rough Road Leads to Insight – A leader who grew up in extreme poverty – surrounded by drugs and gangs – now pulls from that tough early experience to understand the challenges faced by clients in the social service industry he works in.
- The Power of House Calls – An executive describes how his father was a family doctor who regularly made house calls. He shares about the fond memories he has of watching his father respond to patients’ needs. Those memories keep him focused on what his healthcare organization should be all about: solving patient problems with sensitivity and selflessness.
- Championing Diversity – A former immigrant on the executive team of a Fortune 500 company explains how his background and exposure to diverse cultures have taught him the importance of listening. He invites employees to listen more closely to one another to build a stronger employee culture.
How The Grossman Group Can Help
At The Grossman Group, we help leaders turn strategy into stories that connect, inspire, and drive results.
Whether you're onboarding a new executive, navigating transformation, launching a major initiative, or revitalizing your culture, we help you communicate in a way that gets people to listen – and act.
We partner with leaders and communications teams to:
- Clarify the story behind strategy, change, and vision
- Craft a compelling narrative that resonates with employees, customers, and stakeholders
- Build leadership story platforms that equip executives to communicate consistently and authentically throughout the year
- Train leaders and communicators to use storytelling as a core leadership competency
We’ve supported hundreds of organizations in shaping the messages that matter most – when clarity is critical, and engagement is essential.
Let’s talk about how we can help you unlock the power of storytelling in your organization. Contact us today.
The Bottom Line
Among all the tools leaders use to communicate with employees and customers, stories are the most powerful. Stories, not PowerPoints and strategy decks, are what people remember at the end of the day.
While most leaders understand this, they often resort to corporate-speak at town halls and on conference calls because there’s no structure in place to integrate stories into their communication.
For this reason, it’s critical to plan ahead and build an infrastructure into your communication that allows for leaders to be exceptional storytellers more often. That infrastructure can come in many forms. As we’ve mentioned, often it’s a leader platform or story library for the leader, a storytelling collective of employees looking out for great stories, or regular check-ins with leaders and communicators to collect stories from the field.
What’s important is committing to the value of stories and making it part of your core leadership strategy. That’s the best way to make storytelling come alive in your organization and fully engage your team!
Is your organization telling the kind of stories employees and stakeholders remember – and act on? If not, we can help.
—David Grossman
If your organization is navigating change, launching something big, or looking to bring strategy to life, now is the time to sharpen your story. Let’s make sure your leaders are equipped to engage hearts and minds – when it matters most.
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