100 Quotes on Storytelling and Leadership

Quinn McDowell

12 min readAug 16, 2020

Story calibrates a moral compass in our brains: its from story we learn what to value in life, what’s beautiful and what’s banal, what to lie for and what to die for. (Donald Miller)
Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? What greater purpose does this serve? What does it teach? (Pixar)
One overarching observation was a game changer: No conflict. No story. We accept that fact when it comes to movies. Epic movies demand epic conflict. That’s what makes them epic! (Mark Batterson)
A good story well told helps you to create what could be. (Bernadette Jiwa)
As leaders who live with intention, we want to become clear with the type of story our lives communicate to the world. (PDL)
Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here. (Sue Monk Kidd)
Here’s the thing, you don’t need a captive audience to be heard. You need better true stories, well told. You don’t have to rely on luck to tell better stories, you can do it with intention and practice — by design. You don’t need permission to take the stage. You need to find and practice telling stories that matter. (Bernadette Jiwa)
Words put pictures in our minds, pictures in our mind impact our feelings, how we feel impacts our habits and performance, which affects our destiny. (Joshua Medcalf)
STORY is a SENSE-MAKING device: human brain is drawn towards clarity and away from clutter.
We must become the architects of our own story, the writers of our own narrative. We must do the hard work to carve out a life of meaning and intentionality. (PDL)
The point of any story is character transformation.
Simple structure of a story is: a character has a problem, then meets a guide who gives them a plan and calls them to action. That action either results in a comedy or tragedy. (Donald Miller)
As spring-loaded stories, effective analogies work in much the same way by offering an incomplete but coherent narrative that bolsters an emotionally satisfying conclusion. (John Pollack)
There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. (Flannery O’Conner)
This capacity to evoke comparison, assert equivalency, reveal potential, and make implicit arguments makes analogy (stories) an exceptionally powerful tool. (John Pollack)
When given a choice, I choose adventure! It’s more than a narrative; it’s a metanarrative. It’s more than a story; it’s a storyline. Are you living your life in a way that is worth telling stories about? (Mark Batterson)
Sadly, instead of being intentional about crafting a story that aligns with their core values, many leaders let external forces shape the narrative that defines how they lead others. The story of purpose must be intentionally crafted, it must to be built. (PDL)
Purpose isn’t about tapping into some mystical internal drive but rather about creating simple beacons that focus attention and engagement on the shared goal. Successfully cultures do this by relentlessly seeking ways to tell and retell their story. They build high-purpose environments. (Dan Coyle)
Storytelling is an act, something you practice — a skill you can learn and get better at. (Bernadette Jiwa)
The greatest thing by far, is to have command of metaphor. (Aristotle)
The world without metaphor is a world without purpose. (Unknown)
Stories magnify the need to have something remarkable (and honest) to say. (Seth Godin)
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. (Hannah Arendt)
High-purpose environments are filled with small, vivid signals designed to create a link between the present moment and a future ideal. They provide two simple locators that every navigation process requires: here is where we are and here is where we want to go. What matters is establishing this link and consistently creating engagement around it. What matters is telling the story. (Dan Coyle)
The purposeful leader understands the important role that their story contributes to the clarity and direction of their leadership. (PDL)
Much as computers use algorithms to compress digital data, people’s minds seek efficient ways to compress mental data. One tactic we use is to record information outside our brains in numbers, written words, images, and recorded sound. Another tactic, this one internal, is remembering stories. And many analogies are just that — compressed stories. (John Pollack)
There are genesis moments in every dream journey that radically change the plot line of our lives. It’s impossible to predict when or where or how they will occur. But once the door to the future opens, the door to the past slams shut. There is no turning back. It’s a new day, a new normal. (Mark Batterson)
The deeper neurological truth is that stories do not cloak reality but create it, triggering cascades of perception and motivation. When we hear a fact, a few isolated areas of our brain light up, translating words and meanings. When we hear a story however, our brain lights up tracing the chains of cause, effect, and meaning. (Dan Coyle)
People do not buy goods and services. They buy relationships, stories and magic. (Seth Godin)
Every decision you’ve ever made was influenced by a story — every single one. From the decision about whether to wear a mask during a pandemic, to the charities you choose to support. A story you heard, the story you believed or that story you told yourself, had an impact on those choices. (Bernadette Jiwa)
Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form. (Jean Luc Godard)
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught — in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too — in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. (John Steinbeck)
This metaphorical nature of mind is essential to understand what drives human action. It is precisely through metaphor that our perspectives, or analogical extensions, are made. (Kenneth Burke)
Purpose is a story we tell with our lives. (PDL)
Storytelling helps leaders connect their people’s personal meaning to their vision of the future. (James Kerr)
I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice. (Ann Lamott)
The stories we tell literally make the world. If you want to change the world, you need to change your story. (Michael Margolis)
To come to terms with our beginning requires a truthful story to acquire the skills to live in gratitude rather than resentment for the gift of life. (Stanley Hauerwas)
Story draws us toward clarity and away from clutter.
Stories use the familiar to explain something less familiar. Highlight similarities and obscure differences. Identify useful abstractions. Tell a coherent story. Resonate emotionally. (John Pollack)
Make no mistake, we are all storytellers. We tell stories in many different ways (some obvious and some non-obvious). First and foremost, we are the storytellers of our own lives. We all have an internal dialogue running 24/7/365 inside our own heads that tells us who we are, why we exist, what we should do, and how we should do it. (PDL)
The bottom line is we build more resilient families, companies and communities when we know who we are. We get stronger together when we prioritise finding, owning and sharing our stories. (Bernadette Jiwa)
A good analogy serves as an intellectual springboard that helps us jump to conclusions. (John Pollack)
Metaphors are where we recognize ourselves in stories, the way we attach personal meaning to a more public narrative. They create a visceral response, and force us to rethink meaning. We, literally re-cognize. (Dan Coyle)
And what’s true of great movies is true of great lives. Great conflict cultivates great character. Of course, it’s easier to watch on the screen than it is to walk through it. If you want to live an epic life, you have to overcome some epic challenges. You have to take some epic risks, make some epic sacrifices. (Mark Batterson)
Purpose is the story you tell yourself over and over and over again. It is a story that is written down in our own thoughts, but is confirmed through our daily habits and decisions. (PDL)
Stories are memory aids, instruction manuals and moral compasses. (Aleks Krotowski)
We become the story we tell ourselves, because we always live according to the script in our heads. (PDL)
Stories are not just stories; they are the best invention ever created for delivering mental models that drive behavior. (Dan Coyle)
“Life isn’t about finding the answers,” Brian said. “It’s about asking the questions.”8 Like Brian, I love questioning people about their dream journeys. And my favorite question is what I call “the genesis question.” Even more than stories, I love backstories. So I ask this question: What was the genesis of your dream? (Mark Batterson)
Edison was correct in linking persistence, imagination, invention, and analogy (story). (John Pollack)
Whether it is to be the best team that ever played, putting a dent in the universe, the best lives, and stories, are expressed in language and imagined as a future memory. (Victor Frankl)
Stories (not ideas, not features, not benefits) are what spread from person to person. (Seth Godin)
Plot grows out of character. If you focus on who the people in your story are, if you sit and write about two people you know and are getting to know better day by day, something is bound to happen. (Ann Lamott)
If you want to build a hundred-story skyscraper, you need a ten-story foundation. In much the same way, big dreams require deep convictions. The heights of your accomplishments will never exceed the depth of your convictions. (Mark Batterson)
If someone isn’t changed, then what is the point of your story? For the climax, there must be a killing or a healing or a domination. (Ann Lamott)
Storytelling is more than clever copy. It’s the act of showing up, with intention.
Your story is more than a tagline or a positioning statement — it’s not only what you say — it’s what you do.The best stories are not just told, they are lived. (Bernadette Jiwa)
If an idea grows, it expands far beyond the confines of any one person’s control. By limiting it to a single story told by a single voice, we strip it of its true potential. The role of the founder should eventually be to listen to the echoes of his or her initial words, and then encourage and amplify the most genuine among those you hear. (Adam Braun)
For a story to create change it must: be credible and relevant (have ethos and logos, an authority and understanding and rationality) it must be visceral and visual (must have pathos) it must be flexible and scaleable (easily told in the boardroom and around a campfire), and it must be useful (turn vision into action and purpose into practice). (Dan Coyle)
Stories are how we think. They are how we make meaning of life. Call them schemas, scripts, cognitive maps, mental models, metaphors, or narratives. (Pamela Rutledge)
No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story. (Daniel Kahneman)
Mantras and anchors are the way in which we can tell our story to ourselves and bring us back to the present moment. A mental roadmap in times of pressure. (James Kerr)
Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories. (Roger Schank)
We need to align ourselves with the river of the story, the river of the unconscious, of memory and sensibility, of our characters’ lives, which can then pour through us, the straw. (Ann Lamott)
Analogy appeals to the everyday knowledge of the hearer and invites him to decide the problems that have baffled his powers of reason. (Churchill)
In every storyline there are defining moments. The technical term, in terms of plot structure, is “inciting incident.” It’s a turning point, a tipping point. It’s a point of no return. Inciting incidents come in two basic varieties: things that happen to you that you cannot control and things you make happen that you can control. (Mark Batterson)
Stories are how we explain how things work, how we make decisions, how we just fire decisions, how we persuade others, how we understand our place in the world, create our identities, and define each social values. (Pamela Rutledge)
Good stories always beat good spreadsheets. (Chris Sacca)
We don’t so much tell our stories, as stories tell us. Our narratives frame and structure our lives, becoming the prism through which we perceive and live. Great stories happen to those who tell them. (James Kerr)
Stories constitute the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal. (Dr. Howard Gardner)
Leaders are storytellers. All great organizations are born from a compelling story. This central organizing Thought helps people understand what they stand for and why. (James Kerr)
Storyline, and I love its mission: to help people tell better stories with their lives. Are you living your life in a way that is worth telling stories about? (Mark Batterson)
Your story is a symphony not a note. (Seth Godin)
Stories do more than help us to tell and sell. Shared narratives are powerful catalysts for change and the building blocks of our culture. (Bernadette Jiwa)
True or not, stories are the way we understand life and our place in it. We are meaning making machines, interpreting and reinterpreting a sequence of events into a narrative form and reassembling it well. (Unknown)
The greatest thing by far said Aristotle, is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imported by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblance. So then, a story. (Dan Coyle)
Our brains are constantly looking for ways to increase efficiency and cut out clutter. Habits and stories are a great way to do that. (Unknown)
Leadership is the generous act of helping others become who they seek to become. It involves creating honest stories — stories that resonate and spread. (Seth Godin)
The notion of “chunking” has become a predominant theory for many psychologists in understanding how our brains organize large amounts of information. Chunking is our brain’s attempt to organize large amounts of information into “chunks” of related material that we can make sense of. (Unknown)
We are all storytellers. We all live in a network of stories. There isn’t a stronger connection between people than storytelling. (Jimmy Nell Smith)
Telling a better story with your life begins with identifying the inciting incidents in your past. That’s your backstory. Then you start creating incidents with intentionality. That’s the rest of the story. (Mark Batteson)
As we look for patterns to emerge from the vast amounts of seemingly unrelated pieces of information that our brain receives every day, our ability to group this data is what allows up to increase our memories capacity. (Unknown)
“I want you to experience this with me” this is how great stories are woven. (Bernadette Jiwa)
Our words shape our story and our story becomes the framework for our behaviors. (James Kerr)
Evolution has wired our brains for storytelling — how to make use of it. We know that we can activate our brains better if we listen to stories. (Leo Widrich)
In the plot line of our lives, dream markers are defining decisions. They aren’t just part of the narrative; they become metanarratives. (Mark Batterson)
A story, if broken down into the simplest form, is a connection of cause and effect. And that is exactly how we think. We think in narratives all day long, no matter if it is about buying groceries, whether we think about work or our spouse at home. (Leo Widrich)
Narrative is a key tool for leadership, because it helps us deal with organizations as living organisms that need to be tended, nurtured and encouraged to grow. It thrives on inspiration rather than administration, fostering change rather than stasis. (Steve Denning)
Cortisol (produced in our brains when there is conflict) allows us to focus: this is the purpose of conflict in the story.
Good marketing tells the story, great marketing is the story. (Bernadette Jiwa)
What if we had done this instead of that? What if we had gone here instead of there? And what if we had done it sooner instead of later? But I see a common thread in our storyline: one move set up the next move, which set up the move after that. In chess it’s called a premove — it’s the move before the move before the move. (Mark Batterson)
Oxytocin is released when we emotionally relate to a story. This is the chemical that builds human connection and trust.
One of the brain’s unique design features is its ability to recognize patterns so that we can quickly predict what is most likely to happen next. Over the centuries we have used narrative story structure as the most elegant way to communicate our messages, passions, vision and who we are. (Mark Minelli)
Happy is your narrative meeting your expectation.
Some of the recent discoveries in neuroscience are proving that even when we think we are making decisions based on ‘logic’, we are often unconsciously being driven by our emotions. And if emotion rather than logic is really the driving force of so many of our decisions, then stories are the most effective structure to share information, connect people emotionally to a cause and build commitment. (Unknown)
Storytelling evokes a strong neurological response. A happy ending to a story triggers the limbic system, our brain’s reward center, to release dopamine which makes us feel more hopeful and optimistic. (Unknown)
Persistent, consistent, and frequent stories, delivered to an aligned audience, will earn attention, trust, and action. (Seth Godin)
It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story. (Patrick Rothfuss)
There is no greater power on this earth than story. (Libba Bray)

100 Quotes on Storytelling and Leadership

Written by Quinn McDowell