5 motivating story plots every leader needs to know

Learn about the five archetypal motivating story plots and the leaders who used them — Jobs, Chanel, Gebbia, and more.

A Black woman leads a presentation.

Change is hard. You’ve heard it before, and you know it’s only a cliché because it’s true. This is especially the case in organizations where you need to convince groups of people to embrace new ideas or initiatives. But leaders can learn to have a magic touch, helping move people towards a goal using the right stories at the right time.

Leaders typically turn to two types of stories to guide their teams: warning and motivating stories. They choose which ones to use by carefully gauging where their audience is during a transformation.

These stories will teach you:

  • How you can speak differently to energized versus struggling teams
  • How to diagnose what communication type will help you achieve your goal
  • Why you don’t always need to tell a story with a happy ending
  • How a live demo that nearly went awry became company lore for Qualcomm
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