Robin Dunbar's "Grooming and Gossip: The Evolution of Language" is an informative read about the dynamics of social interaction. It's helpful for the narrative leader by providing insight into language and its power to form social networks - issues that are key to Narrative Leadership.

Narrative and Implicit Leadership Theory

People are narrative beings. We express this in a number of ways but one that is poignant is how we make sense of activity and thought. The human way, our way, is to do so by the story line of past and immediate experience and the greater story of permissions and identity that culture provides. This makes the derivation of meaning and the experience that grounds it contextual. The necessity then is that if we are to derive meaning from stimuli it must have some comparable in experience.

This makes it essential that the leader have understanding of the stories that give shape to the lives of those s/he purports to lead. It also requires that the narrative undertaking be entered into aware that leadership will mean something different to each member. There is acknowledgement of this possibility in Implicit Leadership Theory where members determine the effectiveness of leadership by comparing the leader’s effort against their own internal model of what an effective leader is. Keller (1999) held that such models of leadership likely arise in the family unit where as a child we observe the first instances of leading and following.

The stories of our life do produce memories but also templates by which we know and understand. Learning them before attempting change, while slowing our effort to “get there,” helps make the transition a more humane affair.
William Salyards Copyright 2009 All Rights Reserved.

Keller, T. (1999). Images of the familiar: Individual differences and implicit leadership theories. Leadership Quarterly, 10(4), 590-607.

Paul Cobley gives an excellent survey of narrative and provides a basis for understanding why narrative is critical for leadership. For the person interested in narrative and its integration with sociality this is the place to start.

Storytelling in Organizations

In the debate between organizations as rational or relational, Yiannis Gabriel shows the role of stories in organizational culture. His work is helpful for those who seek to lead while sensitive to the influence of story in and upon our everyday life and living.

Making Decisions

While leading change I have found that having guidelines for the decision process to be helpful. Among them is that the effects of a decision can last much longer than the time it takes to make it. This is especially true when the decision involves people as opposed to things simply because people are connected to other people. So a first good rule is to “slow up” the decision process by the number of relationships the decision is likely to affect. It is key that you not see this as an inability at or hindrance to being decisive but the opportunity to bring more people into your way of thinking about the proposed decision.

I have had moments when, on the spot, I’ve made the decision to terminate the role a person is fulfilling knowing that my action would affect the individual and that their friends and co-workers would question my judgment. However, advance work in listening and discussion, while not removing every obstacle, at least gave others the rationale behind what I was doing. So again, a first good guideline for decision making during change: the more relationships that are involved the greater that deliberation is in order.

Discourse and Identity

Bethan Benwell and Elizabeth Stokoe give an excellent overview and discussion of the formation of human identity in their book, "Discourse and Identity." Beginning with understandings prevalent in the Enlightenment to the social constructivist approach of Post-modern thought, their work is a necessary read for those who seek to lead narratively.

Leading and Leadership

I have been intrigued to discover what I call the difference between leading and leadership. In the first are the practices that build up a people and in the second the environment of mutual trust and respect that makes it possible. I point this out because I suspect that in human sociality the majority of people aren’t as interested in having a leader as in having leadership. Of course one cannot occur without the other but I think it serves to locate the primary task of leaders as “environmentalists” while reminding us that our role cannot be fulfilled in a vacuum: we need people. It’s oxymoronic yet so fitting in the grander scheme of life that what we need to accomplish our mission is also that which defeats it. Leaders and perhaps particularly narrative leaders then dance the perpetual steps of the unconvinced but always moving toward a destination, taking people with us.