In this ongoing A Favorite Leader Story series, we share compelling experiences & examples, from leaders or everyday life, that you can use to inspire your team, clarify what matters most, or spark action worth taking.

Each piece includes the story itself, insights on why it matters, and practical ways to apply it, because the best leadership stories don’t just resonate, they help us live & lead even better.

The most powerful leadership tool you have is a story worth telling.

One night in 1934, a man stood on a bare stage and performed a movie, every character, every scene, for hours. The movie didn’t exist. It couldn’t exist, not yet. Then he told the people in that room they were going to make it, and he was about to bet everything he had on them.

Once Upon a Where

We’ll come back to that night. First, a question every leader eventually has to answer: Where should we go?

Everyday leaders answer it well. They set goals, define milestones, benchmark the competition, and build a plan to get there. That’s real work, and it matters.

But it skips something. When direction fixes on targets, it usually ends up borrowed: from last year’s numbers, from whatever a rival just announced, from what the market rewards this quarter. The result is ambition with no fingerprint on it. “Be the leader in our category.” Or, “Grow 20% this year.” Either could belong to anyone, which means neither is truly yours.

Storytelling leaders start somewhere else. They ask: Given who we truly are at our best, where are we uniquely meant to go?

Then they reach for a tool most plans leave out: imagination. Not daydreaming, but the disciplined work of picturing a future so unmistakably true to who we are that once you see it, you can’t unsee it, or un-want it.

And when that future is truly new, the road to it doesn’t exist yet either. The tools haven’t been built. The skills haven’t been learned. The people who’ll make it happen don’t yet know they can. So imagination keeps going, inventing the road as it goes.

Everyday leaders plan a familiar route. Storytelling leaders invent a new road.

The One-Man Show

Back to that bare stage in 1934.

The man performing was Walt Disney, and everyone knew exactly where his career should go. He was the king of cartoons, the eight-minute films that played before the real movie. Mickey Mouse was a star. Three Little Pigs had been a sensation. The next steps were clear: make more cartoons, and keep making them better.

That was the familiar route. But Walt had just spent an evening on that stage taking his animators the first few steps down an entirely new road.

A Picture Before the Picture

The new road led to a full-length feature: more than 80 minutes of animation. Cartoons at the time ran on stunts: quick gags, funny tricks, fast and shallow fun. That could fill eight minutes. It could never carry a whole film.

If Walt had written his direction only as a goal, it might have read: Produce the first full-length animated feature. Clear and measurable, but lifeless and uninspiring.

It needed something else, something the best leaders add: what he saw. He saw a theater full of grown-ups who came expecting a quick cartoon and found themselves immersed and caring: laughing with seven little men, holding their breath for a girl in danger, wiping tears from their eyes.

That’s the first element of a storytelling leader’s answer to where. Call it the Picture: a vivid scene of life for the people you serve once you’ve succeeded. Not a target, a scene. A target tells people where to go. A Picture makes them want to go there.

Ask: If we get this right, what will be true of their life that isn’t today?

Disney’s Folly

Not everyone could see it.

His wife, Lillian, told him no one would come. His brother and business partner, Roy, tried to talk him out of it. Around Hollywood, people gave the project a nickname: Disney’s Folly.

The warnings came from every direction. Audiences need a laugh a minute, and you’ll run out of jokes. The bright colors will hurt their eyes. And in the middle of the Great Depression, who’s going to pay for that?

Disney’s doubters weren’t foolish. They were looking only at the cartoons that existed, and judging from there.

A picture only one person can see looks like folly to everyone else.

The Road That Wasn’t There

Nothing Walt needed existed yet, so his people invented it.

The tools hadn’t been built. To give 80 minutes of animation real depth, Walt’s engineers built a camera that shot up to seven layers of art painted on glass. Even the right paint didn’t exist, so they mixed 1,500 custom shades.

The skills hadn’t been learned. Walt didn’t send his artists away to study anatomy, movement, and acting. He built the school inside the studio, and filmed a young dancer as a live model for every turn and gesture of Snow White.

Even the characters had to be discovered. Walt listened to around 150 voice auditions for Snow White over a loudspeaker, so looks couldn’t sway him. The seven dwarfs went through dozens of names, including Burpy, Awful, and Biggo-Ego, before they became the ones we know.

And the people didn’t yet know they could do it. A studio that had only ever made eight-minute cartoons grew to some 750 artists, who hand-painted around two million images. Only 250,000 made it to the screen. Seven out of every eight were left behind.

That’s the second element. Call it the Path: the road you’ll have to invent to reach the Picture.

Ask: What will we have to create that doesn’t exist yet?

The Unfinished Picture

Partway through, the money ran out. Walt had already mortgaged his house. Now the studio needed another $250,000, well over $5 million in today’s dollars, and the bank wanted to see what it was paying for.

Walt hated the idea. Unfinished work is dangerous to show, he believed, because people can’t picture what it will become.

So he did what he’d done on that bare stage. As the half-finished film played, much of it still rough pencil sketches, Walt sat beside bank vice president Joseph Rosenberg and brought those sketches to life, describing each scene as it would look and feel on the screen.

Afterward, Rosenberg walked out of the projection room, remarked what a nice day it was, and yawned. Walt was sure it was over. Then, just before he drove away, the banker turned back: “Walt, that picture will make a pot full of money!”

Walt had to show Rosenberg an unfinished movie. But he’d made sure he saw the Picture.

Seeing from the Inside Out

On December 21, 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, before an audience filled with Hollywood stars.

One of Walt’s animators, Ward Kimball, found himself sitting behind Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, two of the biggest stars in the room. They were laughing like kids. Then came the scene where the dwarfs gathered around Snow White, believing she was gone. Kimball began to hear something he’d never heard at a cartoon: people around him crying.

When it ended, the audience stood and cheered.

The movie Walt had seen in his mind years before, the one he’d acted out for his animators and described for Rosenberg, was finally on the screen for everyone to see.

But the movie was never the whole Picture. A goal would have described a movie. The Picture also described what would happen inside the people watching it: a room full of grown-ups who came for a quick cartoon and left having laughed, worried, and cried with it. That night, it happened in one theater in Los Angeles.

It wouldn’t be the last. Snow White became the highest-grossing talking picture ever made up to that time.

One More First

People loved the film so much they wanted to take it home. In 1938, there was no way to watch a movie at home. So Snow White gave the world something new: the first soundtrack album, the film’s actual voices and songs on a set of records. For the first time, audiences could carry a movie out of the theater and keep living inside its story.

One of a Kind + Seven

Then the Academy faced a problem. It had no category for what Walt had made.

So in 1939, it honored him in a way it never had before: one full-size Oscar, standing beside seven miniature ones. Ten-year-old Shirley Temple handed it to him. “Don’t be nervous, Mr. Disney,” she said. The citation credited Snow White with pioneering “a great new entertainment field.”

The official Oscar category for animated features? It wouldn’t exist for more than 60 years. The map hadn’t caught up to where Walt had gone.

Meanwhile, the Picture kept coming true, in theaters, then living rooms, then screens of every kind, for generation after generation.

The Plot Thickens: A Leader’s “Storyline”

Seeing the Picture was the first step. Getting there meant building a road that didn’t exist.

Put those two together and you have a storytelling leader’s answer to where to go. Call it a leader’s Storyline: the Picture + the Path.

Each one alone falls short. A Picture without a Path is a daydream: inspiring, maybe, but going nowhere. A Path without a Picture is just activity: busy, clever, even innovative, but directionless and meandering, because no one can say where it leads.

Together, they do something neither can do alone. The Picture gives the Path its reason. The Path gives the Picture its proof.

THE LEADER’S STORYLINE

The Picture + The Path

The two-part answer that makes people want to go there.

The Picture: a vivid scene of life for the people you serve once you’ve succeeded.

Ask: If we get this right, what will be true of their life that isn’t today?

The Path: the road you’ll have to invent to reach the Picture.

Ask: What will we have to create that doesn’t exist yet?

The test: When your Storyline grows out of who you are, people say, “Of course! Where else would we go?”

WALT’S STORYLINE STATEMENT

If people will laugh for eight minutes, they’ll care for eighty, and we’ll invent whatever it takes to earn it.

Favorite Takeaways for Leaders

Put the insights into action….

1️⃣ Folly Is in the Eye of the Beholder

Disney’s doubters judged Snow White by the only cartoons that existed, and the Academy didn’t even have a category for it. New work always gets measured by old frames. Expect it, and help people see the Picture instead of arguing with them.

Warning sign: If the first question about a new direction is what it does to this quarter’s numbers, they’re still measuring it with the old frame.

🎯 Use it: When someone pushes back on a new direction, don’t defend it; ask what they’re comparing it to. Then say: “You’re right that it doesn’t look like anything we’ve done. Let me show you another way to look at it. I think you’ll see it opens up some new possibilities.” Which is exactly why the usual metrics won’t be enough: before launch, decide with your team how you’ll know this is working.

2️⃣ Give Repeat Performances

Walt performed the Picture on a bare stage, then again in a screening room for a banker. Most leaders see the Picture clearly, then assume everyone else does too. Every new audience needs its own performance.

🎯 Use it: Before your next update to a boss, board, or new team member, ask: “What does this person need to see, not just know?” Then open with the Picture, not the progress report: “Here’s what this will look like for the people we serve when it’s done.” Name specific ways their lives will be better, and how they’ll feel about it. Only then: “Here’s where we are so far.”

For premium subscribers there are several more takeaways, each with detailed action steps, and a final, overall applicable insight.

Upgrade to see all this & for much more exclusive content!

Read more

In this ongoing A Favorite Leader Story series, we share compelling experiences & examples, from leaders or everyday life, that you can use to inspire your team, clarify what matters most, or spark action worth taking.

Each piece includes the story itself, insights on why it matters, and practical ways to apply it, because the best leadership stories don’t just resonate, they help us live & lead even better.

The most powerful leadership tool you have is a story worth telling.

Somewhere above a New York dining room, off the clock, a restaurant staff was throwing a wedding reception nobody had asked for and no one on the guest list even knew was coming.

We’ll come back to why.

Mise en Place (”Everything in Its Place”)…

Leaders might know how to set direction, make plans, and adjust when things change. But that’s dangerous, because most skip a question they assume they’ve already answered:

Who am I, really, at my best?

Storytelling leaders don’t skip. They ask and keep sharpening the answer. They know the difference between leading from what’s genuinely, sustainably, unmistakably yours, compared to leading from what’s borrowed, generic, or draining.

Without that clarity, difficulty doesn’t just feel hard — it creates a vacuum. And a vacuum always gets filled. If it isn’t filled from inside, by conviction and strength you can actually name, it gets filled from outside: by whatever’s trending, whatever a competitor just tried, whatever the market is rewarding this quarter.

One way or another, you end up running someone else’s algorithm, and the moment you most need to lead is exactly the moment you’re most likely, without realizing it, to follow.

It doesn’t even buy the safety it promises. The crowd is frequently wrong at exactly the moments it feels most certain, and a leader with no conviction of their own has no basis for making the harder, better call when that happens.

Worse, doing only what’s already prescribed makes your contribution indistinguishable from anyone else’s. You become replaceable.

Two Ingredients

The truest, most effective version of you comes down to what you believe matters most, and what you’re truly best at. We’ll call the first your Core Convictions, the second your Standout Strengths.

Core Convictions

Core Convictions are the few beliefs and commitments you’d defend even when it costs you: not the values on the wall, but the ones you actually organize decisions around. Ask: What do I believe deeply enough to act on, even if no one told me to?

Take Will Guidara, the restaurateur who led Eleven Madison Park to become the #1 restaurant in the world. His conviction runs through nearly everything he's ever done: every person deserves to be treated as one of one, not one of thousands.

He has a phrase for it: “Genuine hospitality is one-size-fits-one.”

It’s why, mid-shift, he once sprinted out for a street hot dog because he overheard a departing table of European foodies say the one thing they’d missed on their trip was a real New York hot dog. Minutes later, he was back with one, plated properly, served at their table like it belonged on the menu.

For Guidara, Michelin stars aren’t enough. He knows people will remember that simple surprise hot dog even more than the gourmet meal that came before.

It wasn’t a private belief he kept to himself. He built it into the culture of the restaurant, until his staff carried it as naturally as he did.

Standout Strengths

Standout Strengths are the two or three things you do better, or more naturally, than almost anyone around you: not everything you’re good at, but where you’re genuinely, distinctively excellent. Ask: What do I do that others can’t quite replicate, even when they try?

Guidara has a gift for creative generosity: he doesn’t just notice an opening, he builds something real out of it, right then, before the moment passes.

A family from Spain, parents and their two children, was dining with him one night when it started to snow, and he overheard that the kids had never seen real snow before. Within the hour, an Uber SUV was parked out front, sleds in the trunk and a thermos of hot chocolate up front. When the family walked out, it was already waiting for them.

A sled ride and a thermos of hot chocolate cost less than the family’s dessert did. It’s probably what they remember most about their trip. This wasn’t a talent Guidara kept to himself either. He trained his staff to notice and act the same way, until creative generosity wasn’t just his signature, it was theirs.

The Pairing

Naming these separately isn’t the finish line. It sets the table.

A conviction without a strength to carry it is sincere, but thin: the impact never quite matches the intent. A strength without a conviction behind it is impressive, but hollow: competence with no reason underneath it frustrates and burns people out, including you.

At your best, you lead from your highest convictions, through your most distinctive strengths.

Everyday leaders may have both, sitting right there, unrealized and unconnected. But storytelling leaders combine them in a way that makes both even better. They’re no longer just a list. They’re a signature.

Every serious kitchen works from the same ingredients: butter, salt, fire, time. What makes a dish a signature isn’t a secret ingredient. It’s the combination only that kitchen knows how to make.

That’s the one thing a competitor can’t copy. They’d have to become you, and they can’t. A conviction fused with a strength is the part of your work that stays yours.

Fusion: A Leader’s “Signature”

Guidara believes no one is one of thousands. He has the gift to prove it on the spot, before the moment passes, and make it an experience people remember forever. And he taught his staff to do it too.

Put those two things together and you get what this article has been building toward. Not two lists sitting side by side. One statement, where a conviction and a strength stop being separate things and fuse into something new and better.

That’s what a menu can’t do. A menu is a list, and anyone can read it. What it can’t give you is the signature at the bottom, the chef signing off on the whole of it: this is who I am, this is what I make, this is what I’m for.

Your signature statement does the same thing in a sentence. It says, at my best, I lead from this conviction, through this strength. Not two separate things. Two distinctive parts of you at your best, joined with far greater force.

Now you’ll see that signature on the night we opened with: upstairs, off the clock, an event nobody asked for.

Lovely Night

The best leader in this story never appears in it.

A couple came in that night, freshly married at City Hall. They’d had a real wedding planned, but the families fell apart over something neither side would let go of, and the big day got canceled. So this was it: dinner, just the two of them, elated and a bit heartbroken at once.

Their server learned all this, and without telling the couple, she slowed their meal down, course by course, until they were the last table left.

When the couple finished dessert, the server walked them upstairs, to a private room where the staff had gathered. The moment they stepped through the door, music started. “Lovely Day,” by Bill Withers. Their wedding song, somehow, playing in a room they didn’t even know existed an hour earlier. What had been a staff party was now, impossibly, a wedding reception. And two people who’d walked in that night expecting nothing but a quiet dinner got their first dance after all.

Nobody wrote that server a script. But she didn't invent what she did out of nowhere, either. It was Guidara's conviction, passed down until it became hers: that this couple deserved to be truly seen, especially now. And it was his creative generosity, taught until it became her instinct too: the impulse to notice, to ask, to build a reception out of nothing. Guidara is famous for exactly this kind of moment. And she surely did as well as he would have, or even better.

That’s what a leader’s signature looks like at scale, not one leader’s talent, but a whole staff acting on a belief and a capability they’d absorbed as their own.

Favorite Takeaways for Leaders

Put the insights into action….

1️⃣ Answer It Yourself, or Someone Else Will.

Guidara’s answer was clear enough that he could act on it mid-service. He heard a table mention a hot dog, and moments later he was out the door. Most leaders have no answer that fast, because they’ve never checked. And nothing forces them to, until difficulty hits and the gap gets exposed at the worst possible moment.

Whatever isn’t filled from inside gets filled from outside: a trend, a competitor, whatever the market is rewarding this quarter. Answer the question yourself, on your own terms, before you’re forced to answer it on someone else’s.

🎯 Use it: Before your next hard decision, pause and ask yourself honestly: is this coming from something I sincerely believe, or from what’s trending, what a competitor just did, or what feels safest to copy right now?

Then block twenty minutes this week. Write one sentence each: what you believe most deeply as a leader, and what you’re distinctively best at. Don’t polish it. Then share it with two people you trust and see what they push back on.

2️⃣ Find the Belief Beneath Your Decisions.

Most leaders can name a value in five seconds. Far fewer can say, specifically, what belief actually drives the calls they make when it costs them something. That’s the belief worth finding, not the one on the wall, but the one underneath your very best decisions.

Guidara’s was simple and specific enough to act on: everyone deserves to be treated as one of one, not one of thousands.

🎯 Use it: Think back to a few of your best decisions as a leader, the ones you’re proudest of, especially if they were costly or unpopular at the time. Ask: what did I actually believe that made that the right call? Not the value on your company’s website, the real belief underneath it.

Write it down in a single sentence, specific enough that it could guide a decision, not just describe a nice quality.

Then test it: would you still defend it if it cost you something tomorrow? If yes, you might have found it. Keep testing it.

In your next team meeting, consider asking your team the same question: “What are the beliefs underneath our best decisions and actions as a team, the ones we’d defend even if it cost us?” Get a full list first, then narrow it down together: which one is the most essential?

For premium subscribers there are several more takeaways, each with detailed action steps, and a final, overall applicable insight.

Upgrade to see all this & for much more exclusive content!

Read more

In this ongoing A Favorite Leader Story series, we share compelling experiences & examples, from leaders or everyday life, that you can use to inspire your team, clarify what matters most, or spark action worth taking.

Each piece includes the story itself, insights on why it matters, and practical ways to apply it, because the best leadership stories don’t just resonate, they help us live & lead even better.

The most powerful leadership tool you have is a story worth telling.

John Mackey wanted to build a new kind of supermarket. Filled with natural and organic food. Making healthier eating accessible to everyone.

But his vision didn’t include a thick layer of raw sewage in the store...

More to come on that, but first…

Leaders everywhere face the same challenge: to find our way in a chaotic, changeful world.

Everyday leaders often answer that challenge well. They set direction. They build plans. They adapt those plans as the world refuses to hold still.

Storytelling leaders do that too. But they do something more, right from the start, that elevates how we think and feel before we act.

They remind us who we are at our best and why what we’re doing matters, in a way that lights something up inside us: new creativity, energy, resilience, optimism, right when we need it most.

They help us know clearly and feel viscerally that we’re living in a great story worth finishing, even through its hardest chapters.

Someone else’s storm

Storytelling leaders learn from leaders who’ve gone before: inspiring stories of how other people, teams, and organizations found their way through their own chaos. Then they share the one that’s right for their team’s time and place, a mirror that gives courage and confidence to move forward.

The message is simple: it’s our turn now.

Let’s create our version of what they proved was possible. Let’s start living a story we’ll want to keep telling long after this chapter closes.

A Story on Loan

I know a leader who does this well. Here’s what happened when his team faced a setback that felt bigger than they could handle.

He didn’t just delegate tasks. He told a story about someone else’s flood.

The 100-Year Flood

A 27-year-old Mackey had just opened his first Whole Foods store in Austin, Texas, when Austin got hit with epic downpours, the kind that lead people to call it a 100-year flood. Water broke through the windows and didn’t stop rising. Four feet of water filled the store. Every piece of equipment, every ounce of inventory, destroyed. Worse yet, everything was financed, and he had no flood insurance.

When the water receded, Mackey discovered the city sewers had overflowed too. “I started to feel much older than my 27 years,” he says.

The Stranger Down the Aisle

So he grabs a mop and a bucket, and starts cleaning. A while later, he notices someone he doesn’t recognize, working another aisle with a mop of his own.

“I’m John,” Mackey says. “I don’t think I know you.”

“I’m Larry. I live down the street, had the day off, and heard what happened. I shop here all the time. I love this store, and I wanted to make sure you make it through this.”

Then more Larrys show up. All of them, uninvited and unpaid. They came because they believed in and were energized by Mackey’s vision, too. They didn’t want that story to end.

Two Things He Learned Later

Mackey gets a $100,000 loan and reopens a month later. Years afterward, he learns the bank had actually turned him down. He got the money because a bank officer named Mark Monroe personally guaranteed it. As Mackey has shared in interviews and in his memoir, The Whole Story, Monroe never even mentioned the risk he’d taken, not for years, not even as Mackey opened dozens of stores, then hundreds. It was far beyond anything a 27-year-old mopping sewage could have expected.

By any measure, what came after is a spectacular success. And yet, looking back across all of it, here’s what Mackey says about that waterlogged, everything-on-the-line era:

“I look back on those days as some of the happiest of my life. I was in love with our store. There was a palpable sense we were doing something new, something important.”

The Story’s Current

Mackey didn’t just sell groceries. He sold a story people were willing to fight a flood to protect.

A good story is always current. Underneath the mops and the loan and the sewage, Mackey had built clear, resonant answers to who we are at our best and why what we’re doing matters.

Those answers were strong enough that people with nothing to gain showed up anyway, a banker staked his own name on it, and decades and hundreds of stores later, those were still his happiest days. Not because they were easy, but because he was never more certain of who he was and why he was doing it.

You can be your own version of John Mackey in your own story. Or, like the leader who tells this one to his team, you can borrow someone else’s, and hand it to the people trying, right now, to find their way through their own flood.

Give them a story worth living all the way through. Give them a current strong enough to carry them forward, a story worth remembering and retelling, like Mackey’s is, even now.

Put the insights into action….

1️⃣ Borrow a Flood for Free.

The leader who used this story didn’t survive an actual flood of his own. He simply told one, borrowed from someone else’s hardest days, and it worked anyway.

That’s the real gift of a story like Mackey’s: you get the wisdom without the wound, the insight without having lived the crisis yourself.

And this tool isn’t limited to floods or disasters. A resonant story about creativity, collaboration, or developing people works exactly the same way, borrowed and put to use without anyone having experienced it firsthand.

🎯 Use it: Before your next tough moment, spend fifteen minutes searching for a story instead of a solution. Think of the quality you actually need your team to feel right now, resilience, creativity, trust, and ask: who has lived through a vivid, specific version of this?

It doesn’t have to be a famous founder. It could be a coach, a nurse, a small business owner, someone from your own life.

When you share it, say so plainly: “This isn’t our story, but I think it’s ours to learn from.” That framing invites people into the story rather than making them wonder why you’re talking about someone else’s flood.

2️⃣ The Story Says What the Strategy Can't.

When his team faced a major setback, the leader who retold Mackey’s story in this piece reached for a story instead of simply laying out a plan. He knew the story wouldn’t replace the plan. It would make the plan itself more meaningful, more unifying, more energizing.

A set of guidelines or tasks can tell people what to do next, but it can’t tell them who they are or why any of it matters, and that’s precisely the gap Mackey’s story fills.

Storytelling leaders know that direction alone rarely produces the deepest kind of commitment; a story that makes identity and purpose vivid doesn’t just sit alongside the plan, it makes the plan work better.

🎯 Use it: The next time you’re about to roll out a plan, pause before the slide deck. Ask yourself: what story would help my team feel why this plan matters, not just what it asks of them?

Open the meeting with that story first, even briefly, then move into the plan itself. You might say: “Before we get into the details, I want to tell you about someone who faced something like this.” Remember that the story comes before the plan, not the other way around. The story brings the plan to life even more.

For premium subscribers there are several more takeaways, each with detailed action steps, and a final, overall applicable insight.

Upgrade to see all this & for much more exclusive content!

Read more

In this ongoing A Favorite Leader Story series, we share compelling experiences & examples, from leaders or everyday life, that you can use to inspire your team, clarify what matters most, or spark action worth taking.

Each piece includes the story itself, insights on why it matters, and practical ways to apply it, because the best leadership stories don’t just resonate, they help us live & lead even better.

The most powerful leadership tool you have is a story worth telling.

Every leader faces the same question: where to begin?

Let’s begin with a story about starting.

You’re starting a new job. It’s Day One.

Maybe you’ve had a few of those. Were they memorable? Were they good?

They would’ve been, if you were a new hire at Pixar when Ed Catmull ran the place.

No matter your role — director, technician, cafe barista — the same thing happens first.

You’re brought into a meeting. But what’s this? The meeting’s in a movie theater. They usher you down the aisle, past the back rows and the front seats, and settle you in a spot they’ve chosen on purpose. Row Five.

Why Row Five? Because that’s where they’ve learned a movie plays best in that theater.

The meeting begins. Catmull welcomes you and says:

And he means it. The lights go down. The screen flickers on. Right then and there, they put a real movie up on the screen. It’s not a demo reel. It’s rough, unfinished. It’s mid-production. They’re still working on it — and now, so are you.

Everyone gets a chance to add to it. They have a name for it: “plussing.” It’s not just a word for them. It’s a specific practice, built on offering something concrete and constructive, not tearing something down. Anyone in the room might have the idea that unlocks something, so everyone’s invited to try.

And it works. Some ideas spark others. Some go straight into the movie.

Daniel Coyle writes about plussing in The Culture Code. He heard someone from the tech team — not a writer, not a director — had an idea that made it into the movie “Up.” Russell, the film’s Boy Scout character, wound up with a sash full of joke merit badges. They’re hilarious. One shows a hand making shadow puppets. Another is for karate-chopping a watermelon.

So there you are… Day One, and already, you’re part of it. Not just hearing about plussing, but doing it.

An unforgettable Day One, as it should be! Why? Because you’re not just a new worker in a role at a company. You’re a movie maker at Pixar.

You’re not just starting a job. You’re part of a story.

The best seat in any building

This isn’t just a story about starting a new job. It’s about how storytelling leaders think about starting anything — a meeting, a project, a conversation.

They don’t treat people like devices, or interchangeable parts. They make them part of a story that matters, right from the start.

That’s a different kind of plussing, one all leaders should practice.

We remember we’re not only here to do jobs; we’re here to make movies!

The deeper “why” is found in the reason the whole organization exists, not just the task in front of you. We might not see it every day from our desk, but it’s crystal clear from Row Five.

That’s why storytelling leaders always start in Row Five, and they make sure we do too.

They lift us every day, from task doers to movie makers.

Put the insights into action….

1️⃣ Find Row Five.

Row Five isn’t really about a seat!

It’s about what that seat says: “We’ve thought about exactly what you need to bring your best self here, and we built it on purpose.”

That’s a form of respect most leaders never think to offer: not “we value you” as a slogan, but actual conditions, actual thought, actual proof that someone considered what would let this person contribute something real.

Do that, and people don’t just perform. They see more that can be done.

They see more they can contribute, because they can feel they’re part of something larger than the task in front of them.

🎯 Use it: Pick one person on your team and ask, honestly: what conditions would let them do their best work, not generically, but specifically for who they are?

Then build one of those conditions this week, on purpose, the way Pixar built Row Five.

Let them feel the difference between being accommodated and being understood.

If you lead a whole team, ask the same question at that level: what would it look like to build your team’s “Row Five”: the condition that lets the group, as a whole, do its best work and feel part of something bigger than any single task?

2️⃣ Make Day One (of Anything) Impossible to Forget.

Day One doesn’t have to mean a literal first day. It’s the first few minutes of a meeting. The opening of a presentation. The start of a hard conversation, a new project, a new partnership.

Every beginning is a chance to signal, immediately, what this is actually going to be like, and most leaders let that moment pass by on autopilot instead of designing it.

Of course, this applies to new hires too, but even a perfect first day for a new hire is just the beginning. It’s Day One again tomorrow, and the day after that, every time something new starts.

🎯 Use it: Choose one upcoming beginning — a meeting, a new hire’s first week, the launch of a project — and build in one memorable moment, one distinctive experience, something specific to your personality, your culture, or what’s genuinely great about your team.

This isn’t filler! Pick something they’ll still be describing to someone else a year from now.

For premium subscribers there are several more takeaways, each with detailed action steps, and a final, overall applicable insight.

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This weekend I watched something fascinating unfold between two sisters.

One of them just got into the middle school she wanted. And it wasn’t luck.

For a year she worked harder than most kids her age even realize is possible.

– Studying for the ERB’s.
– Taking the ISEE twice.
– School visits.
– Essays.
– Interviews with rooms full of adults.

The kind of effort most of us didn’t really discover until college… if we’re being honest. And she did it.

But what fascinated me wasn’t just her result. It was her younger sister watching the whole thing. Because now the bar has moved. Not because anyone gave a speech. But because she saw what it actually takes.

Which made me think about something we say all the time in leadership: “Set the example.”

You hear it everywhere.
- Parents say it.
- Coaches say it.
- Managers say it.

But if you’re honest… it usually means something vague like “be a good role model.” That’s not what actually changes expectations.

Expectations change when someone sees effort up close. Not the result. The work. The studying. The practice. The preparation nobody applauds.

That’s the moment the brain recalibrates.

“Oh… that’s what it takes.”

And once someone sees that, the impossible becomes normal.

Hollywood actually understands this better than most leadership books. Because great stories are built on the same mechanism.

Take Walter White in “Breaking Bad.” A quiet high school chemistry teacher who gets made fun of in the pilot by his students both in and out of class. Probably the least likely person you could imagine becoming a meth kingpin.

Which is exactly why the story works. Hollywood knows the trick: “The most powerful stories start with the lowest expectations.”

Then they show the work, the decisions, and the pressure that slowly transform someone into the person capable of doing the impossible.

By the time Walter White becomes Heisenberg, the audience believes it. Not because it was likely. But because they saw every step that made it inevitable.

Because once people see what something truly requires… they start believing they can do it too.

And that’s what I realized watching those two sisters this weekend. One of them changed schools. But both of them changed their expectations.

And once someone learns what excellence actually looks like. Once they see that up close… Their expectations change forever. Not because of what was said. Because of what was seen.

This isn’t just about role modeling.
It’s about making effort observable.
And that’s where storytelling leaders change everything.

Here are five ways storytelling leaders raise expectations:

1. Start with the unlikely beginning

Hollywood knows the most powerful transformation always starts with the least likely person.

Walter White is a high school chemistry teacher.
Rocky is a small-time club fighter.
Erin Brockovich is an unemployed single mom.

The smaller the beginning, the bigger the transformation feels.

Most leaders do the opposite.
They start stories in the middle.
“Sarah closed a $5M deal.”

But storytelling leaders rewind the tape.

“Six months ago Sarah had never run a sales call by herself.”
“Her first pitch was rough.”
“She rewrote her opening four times.”

Now the story becomes usable. Because people can see themselves in the beginning.

You can apply this today.

Next time you tell a success story inside your team, start earlier than feels necessary.

Start with the awkward version.
The rough draft.
The first attempt.

The earlier the starting point, the more powerful the transformation. And the more people believe they can follow the same path.

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If I had it my way, I would have gone home mad.
Real mad.

Let me explain…
I had spent all day with my daughter at her middle school debate tournament. After each round, I found myself doing something I almost never do with my kids in sports.
Pulling her aside to coach:
– “Use your data more effectively.”
– “You’re rushing your impacts.”
– “Open with something relatable.”

I wasn’t harsh. I was detailed.
Because I know her patterns.
I know the mistakes she always makes.

To my absolute surprise…
In the last round, they pulled off an amazing win…
She was good – not great – but they won – that’s all that matters.

So when it was time for the awards ceremony – that was running late… very-very late…
I leaned over and said to her,
“Let’s head out. They’ll post the results.”

She looked at me and said,
“I want to stay. You never know.”

You never know?
Oh, I knew.
She was not going to win.

But it mattered to her.
So we stayed.

They finally started announcing:
Top 25.
I was chatting with a few other parents.

Top 20.
I was checking restaurants for us to stop at.

Then I heard it.
“In 17th place…”
Stern-berg…
She placed seventeen out of one-hundred-and-forty-five?!?!?!

That’s when it hit me.
She was right…
And I was wrong. Dead wrong.
But how?

I started to realize something important: The judges didn’t know her history. They didn’t know the flaws I’ve memorized. They didn’t know the habits that drive me crazy.

They only saw what happened in that room.
And because of that, they saw more clearly than I did.

I was trapped in minutia.
They were evaluating impact.

Because in the end:
Closeness magnifies imperfection.
Distance clarifies significance.

That’s the parenting lesson.
When you’re closest, you carry the archive.
And the archive can distort the present.

But that’s also leadership.

Leaders sit closest to the work and thus we too often only remember:
– The last bad presentation.
– The missed deadline from Q2.
– The pattern we’re worried about.

So when someone performs, we don’t see only the moment.
We see the history.
And history makes us harsher than the standard in the room.

Hollywood taught me this lesson years ago.

Writers telling their own story fight for every detail.
– “It’s true.”
– “It happened.”
– “It matters.”

But audiences don’t reward accuracy.
They reward clarity.
Great storytellers learn to cut what’s true but irrelevant.

They zoom out and ask:
“What actually matters to the audience right now?”

Leadership is the same.
Standard leaders focus on completeness.
Storytelling leaders focus on consequence.

Standard leaders say:
“Here’s everything that’s wrong.”

Not softer.
Not lower standards.
Clearer standards – the same standard the audience uses: what actually matters right now.

And that’s what’s so crazy about all of this…
If I had had it my way… we would have left early…
And I would have missed the truth.
Not about her.
About me.

Because clearly being closest doesn’t make you right.
It makes you biased.

Here are five ways to practice this type of storytelling leadership starting today:

1. Borrow the judge’s seat

When you’re closest to the work, you’re carrying the archive - every missed deadline, every rough presentation, every pattern you’ve memorized.

Judges don’t have that archive.

They only see what happens in the room.

So borrow their seat.

Example:
Before giving feedback, ask yourself one simple question:
“If this were the first time I’d ever seen this person present, how would I score it?”

You’ll be surprised how often the answer changes.

Because the audience doesn’t grade the past.
They grade the moment.

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Welcome to our ongoing A Favorite Leader Question series, where we offer responses to your questions about being an even better Storytelling Leader.

We explore questions that don’t have easy answers, and that’s exactly why they matter!

Leadership questions aren’t math problems with single solutions, but doors that open possibilities to explore.

Each time we’ll offer a quick response from an uncommon angle. No generic rehashes, or word-marathons, just fresh perspective to expand your options. And we’ll have some fun along the way.

Let’s make a difference, one question at a time!

The Question:

What quietly destroys team culture?

Our Response:

In a word…

Politeness.

Why? Because we’ve confused “politeness” with “comfort.” We think being polite means softening critique, avoiding tension, letting small misalignments slide. We equate “no awkwardness” with “good culture.”

Because of this…

We don’t interrupt the ramble. We don’t challenge the weak idea. We don’t name the behavior that’s costing the team. And we call that kindness.

But what we’re actually protecting isn’t the person. It’s ourselves. We’re protecting our image, our comfort, our own nervousness.

And that’s why…

Small issues don’t disappear. They compound. Feedback goes underground & standards quietly erode. Not because no one noticed, but because everyone was too polite to say so.

A common mistake is to think the fix is simply to be less polite.

Polite vs. impolite? That’s the wrong question entirely.

The right question is this: Are we building a culture of high standards & high support, at the same time?

High standards: challenge each other’s ideas & hold each other to their best abilities.

High support: coach each other through failure & celebrate each other’s growth.

Not one or the other, but both, simultaneously.

Don’t be too polite about what’s wrong. Be passionate about helping each other do what’s right.

Cultures don’t collapse from too much honesty. They decay from denying reality.

You don’t make people feel respected by sparing them the truth. You make them feel respected by trusting them to handle it.

So give it a try!

This week, find the one thing your team has been circling but not landing on. Say it, clearly, and without cruelty. Then follow it with genuine support: Here’s how we get better, and I’m with you to do it.

What are your thoughts about the question? We’d love to hear them!

My wife and I snuck away for one night.
Literally 24 hours away from the kids.
An hour drive from our house.
And let’s be honest, we were already in bed when the kids called to say good night.

Still, it was nice.
Time alone.
Time to connect.
To talk without a kid asking for water, snacks, or help finding a shoe.

But being away isn’t the point of this post.
The point is what happened before we left.
My daughter got really upset and asked,
“Why do you need to go?”

It’s the age-old question kids ask.
And the equally familiar answer parents give.
So without thinking, I started explaining.
- How important time together is.
- How parents need space too.
- How this helps us show up better.

All true.

But something about it didn’t land.
I had told her the truth…
And yet the truth hadn’t helped… at all.

Suddenly on the drive home it hit me:
She wasn’t really asking “why we were leaving.”
She was asking “what the leaving meant… for her.”

And that’s a different kind of question.
That needs a different kind of answer.
One where truth alone simply isn’t enough.

Because truth alone doesn’t tell someone what a moment means about them.
About love. About whether anything between us has changed.

That’s what we’re really searching for when someone we love walks out the door.

It’s why the line: “It’s not you, it’s me” feels so empty.
It can be completely true…
And often time really is…
Yet it still leaves someone with more questions than answers.

And then somewhere in that quiet drive, another realization slowly followed:

“Leaving isn’t always the opposite of love. Instead actually it’s part of it.”

That’s because many time love and leaving exist at the same time. Not because we care less. Because we care enough to become more.

And because of that…

Love - real love - isn’t just presence.
It’s responsibility.
Growth.
The quiet promise to build a future worthy of the people waiting behind.

And that tension doesn’t end in parenting.
It follows us straight into leadership.

Leaders leave too.
- Certainty to try something new.
- Comfort to build something bigger.
- Safety of being liked to make the hard call.

And often times, before we leave, someone is quietly asking:

“Why do you need to go?”

Which really means:
“Why this change?”
“Why this risk?”
“Why this path that feels uncertain?”

I’ve seen this question sitting silently in conference rooms before a reorg. In teams asked to work nights toward a launch that might fail. In founders walking away from what works to chase what could matter more.

It might not be said out loud.
But you can feel it.
“Why are we leaving what feels safe?”

Most leaders try to answer this the same way parents answer why you leaving. With logic. Timelines. Slides.

But none of those answer the real question.
The harder question.
The question most can’t put their finger on.

Because the real question isn’t logistical.
It’s emotional.
It’s not just “where are we going.”
It’s “what does leaving mean for me.”

This is the moment where leadership splits in two.

Some leaders manage the move…
Yet storytelling leaders carry the meaning.

This is because they know something that all writers know instinctively: “No one follows a character who leaves home for no reason.”

The audience has to feel:
- The pull.
- The risk.
- The why.

Without that, the journey is just motion.

Leadership works the same way.
Explaining change moves people’s minds.
Honoring what’s being left moves their hearts.
And that’s the key to answering what it means for them.

That’s why storytelling leaders don’t just announce change.
They give people a reason to go.
Not with perfect certainty. With honest truth.

And maybe that’s what my daughter was really asking.
Not why we had to leave.
But whether she would still feel safe once we did.

Because for a child, leaving can feel like disappearing. And for a team, change can feel the same way.

Not just uncertainty.
Exposure.
Loss of ground beneath their feet.

And that’s where storytelling leaders really shine.
They don’t remove uncertainty.
They carry safety into it.

They give people:
A reason to move.
A reason to trust.
A reason to take the step.

Because leadership isn’t about never leaving.
Instead, it’s really all about making people feel safe enough to step into the uncertainty with you!

Here are five ways to practice this type of storytelling leadership starting today:

1. Start with meaning before mechanics.

Most leaders begin with the plan.
Storytelling leaders begin with the person.
Because in moments of change, people aren’t first asking, “What’s happening?”
They’re asking,
“What does this mean for me?”

I once watched a leader walk a team through a perfect reorg deck. Clear structure. Smart logic. Zero confusion. And absolutely no trust in the room.

Two weeks later, she tried again.
This time she didn’t open the laptop.

She said one sentence first:
“Before we talk about roles, I want to be clear about something. Nothing about this change erases what this team built. This company stands on your work.”

Same strategy.
Completely different emotional outcome.

Because truth explains the move.
Meaning tells people who they still are inside it.
And trust begins there.

A simple move you can try today:
Before any update, answer this first —
“What does this moment mean for them?”

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In this ongoing A Favorite Leader Story series, we share compelling experiences & examples, from leaders or everyday life, that you can use to inspire your team, clarify what matters most, or spark action worth taking.

Each piece includes the story itself, insights on why it matters, and practical ways to apply it, because the best leadership stories don’t just resonate, they help us live & lead even better.

The most powerful leadership tool you have is a story worth telling.

A Broadway voice teacher sits across from a young singer training for the stage. The conversation turns to a challenge every performer eventually faces.

Eight shows a week. Same songs. Same lines. Same choreography. Same stage lights heating your face. Same dressing room mirror. Same vocal warm-ups in the same key.

Your voice gets tired. Your body gets tired. The real danger is that your spirit gets tired too.

How do you stay present when you’ve sung the same song 200 times? How do you make the 201st performance come fully alive? Not just for the audience, for you?

The vocal teacher leans forward. What she’s about to share isn’t just technique. It’s a way of seeing.

Two People in the Dark

“Every night when you perform,” the teacher says, “look out into that audience and imagine two people.”

She pauses.

“Someone out there is seeing their first Broadway show. Think about that. Their very first show. The lights dim, the curtain rises. The rush of wonder, the fresh excitement. That will happen for someone tonight. What an amazing gift you can give them!”

Another pause.

“And for someone else, this is the last show they’ll ever see. You don’t know who. They might not even know it yet. But it’s true. This is it for them. What would make it extraordinary?”

She looks at her student directly.

“Perform for those two people.”

Not the Audience. Two People.

Two specific individuals. First and last. Those two contain every experience in between: every ticket holder, every perspective, every hope for the evening. Focus on those two, and everyone else is included in between.

Then the performance isn’t about your 201st time. It’s about their first, or last. That instant shift makes everything better, for you and everyone there.

Double the Advice

The singer told her father, and he lit up when he heard it. Not only for his daughter, but for himself as a leader.

His name is Pat Battle, Executive Chairman of Diamond Baseball Holdings. He runs dozens of minor league baseball teams across the United States, and he recognized the same challenge in his own world immediately.

The Real Business We’re In

With around 75 home games a season, the work his people do can get monotonous: prepare the field, run concessions, manage tickets, clean up after, then do it all again & again. Same routines, same responsibilities. Even when you love the game, supporting it can be exhausting.

So Pat Battle gathered his 1,300 employees for a town hall. He wanted to talk about what they’re really doing.

“We’re in the business of making memories,” he told them. Not ticket sales, hot dogs, and bobbleheads. Memories. “How do we make memories for the fans that attend these games? That’s what it’s all about.”

Then he shared what his daughter’s teacher taught her.

Two Faces in the Crowd

“Focus on two people in every game,” Battle told his team.

“Somewhere in that crowd is someone for whom this is their very first baseball game. Remember what that was like for you, or imagine someone you love experiencing it for the first time. A child, maybe. How would you want it to be for them?”

“And somewhere out there is someone for whom this will be their very last game. Maybe they’re moving away. Maybe their health is failing. What would make this final experience something they’ll carry with them?”

Everyone in the room could see it. The little kid with the oversized cap. The elderly couple holding hands.

“If we can serve those two people exceptionally well, we’re going to make great memories for everybody in the park.”

First experience & last experience. Both made so much better, not by trying harder, but seeing better.

1️⃣ Stop trying to bring energy. Create the conditions for it instead.

Many leaders, when they feel themselves going through the motions, respond with willpower. They try harder. They tell themselves to be more present, more enthusiastic, more engaged. It works for a little while and then it doesn’t, because manufactured enthusiasm has a shelf life. Your people can feel the difference between a leader who is pretending to care and one who actually does.

But with Battle’s approach you don’t have to manufacture anything. Genuine empathy produces genuine energy. It’s renewable because it’s real.

The vocal teacher didn’t tell her student to try harder. She gave her something specific & true to care about. Two real people, even seen through the mind’s eye, whose experience actually mattered. That care generated everything else naturally.

🎯 Use it: Before your next recurring responsibility, ask three questions.

1. Who exactly am I serving right now?

2. What do they actually need or hope for?

3. What is genuinely at stake for them?

Don’t answer these in the abstract. Put a face to each answer. A name if you can.

The energy & attention you might try to force will follow on their own, because they were never the problem. How to connect with them was.

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Welcome to our ongoing A Favorite Leader Question series, where we offer responses to your questions about being an even better Storytelling Leader.

We explore questions that don’t have easy answers, and that’s exactly why they matter!

Leadership questions aren’t math problems with single solutions, but doors that open possibilities to explore.

Each time we’ll offer a quick response from an uncommon angle. No generic rehashes, or word-marathons, just fresh perspective to expand your options. And we’ll have some fun along the way.

Let’s make a difference, one question at a time!

The Question:

What separates leaders who grow from leaders who stall?

Our Response:

In a word…

Failure.

Real failure. The honest kind. Fully experienced, reflected on, and learned from.

Because of this…

Most people spend their lives avoiding it. They treat failure like a verdict, like the story’s over.

But failure isn’t an ending. It’s an opening.

It’s not a life sentence, but an invitation to continue the story.

And that’s why…

The only real failure is not trying.

The failure-fearing math is simple & stark: zero attempts = zero wins = zero learned.

• That email you don’t send because it might be ignored? Already ignored.

• That idea you don’t share because it might not land? Already grounded.

• That story you don’t tell because it might sound weak? Already silent.

We often call this “playing it safe,” but there’s nothing safe about surrender.

Failure isn’t falling short. It’s staying still. It’s choosing comfort over growth, silence over vulnerability & watching over doing.

The leaders we admire didn’t avoid failure. They moved through it, and so can we.

Your team doesn’t need perfection. They need permission. Permission to try boldly, fail forward, and to acknowledge their loss or pain.

Then they need support to find the lesson, release the disappointment, and reach for what’s next.

So give it a try!

This week, redefine what “trying” means.

Pick one thing you’ve been postponing until “the timing is right” or “you’re more prepared.” Write it down, along with actions to try, and ask yourself:

What if readiness isn’t a feeling I wait for, but a decision I make?

Then take a shot & keep in mind:

• Action ≠ Outcome.
  Trying isn’t succeeding at the thing. It’s doing the thing. The moment you send the note, speak up, or take the step -- you’ve scored!

• Change your scoreboard.
  Stop counting only wins & losses. Count attempts. Whatever the result, find the learning. How many times did you step into the arena this week? That’s the growth-predicting metric.

Failure isn’t the problem. Fearing it is.

Leaders who stall wait for certainty that never arrives. Growing leaders try, learn, adjust & try again.

What are your thoughts about the question? We’d love to hear them!

My daughter is a great soccer player.
Confident. Fast. Fearless with the ball.
Yet this year… she decided to try something new.
Softball

We signed her up.
Reworked schedules.
Found a way to make it all fit.

Yet when I pulled into the parking lot for her first practice.
I turned off the car… looked back… only to find her…
Crying

“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I can’t do this.”
“Can’t do what?”
She looked at me like I should already know.
“Everyone is going to be better than me.”

In that moment… something inside me cracked.
– She wasn’t afraid of striking out.
– She wasn’t afraid of missing the ball.
– She wasn’t afraid of losing.

She was afraid of not being the best.
And that fear feels heavier.
More permanent.
Harder to recover from.

We tell kids to try new things.
We tell them they can be anything they want to be.
We tell them growth matters more than winning.

But the world we’re raising them in whispers something else:
Be the best.
Or don’t start.

Scroll any parent’s social feed and you’ll see it –
Not the trying… only the crushing.
And when that becomes the rule… trying starts to feel dangerous.

Because if you try and you’re not great, everyone can see it.

So the safest move becomes not trying at all.
Not failure.
Avoidance.

Eventually, I got her out of the car.
I told her I didn’t care if she was the best softball player.
That’s not the goal.
I told her, the moment she was brave enough to try something new… she had already won!

She walked onto the field unsure…
Holding a glove that felt unfamiliar…
And made me promise to sit in one exact spot on the bleachers the entire time.

About 40 minutes into practice, something simple happened.
She was smiling. Really smiling.
It didn’t matter that she struck out twice (in her defense, the pitcher was incredible).

She laughed.
Ran.
Learned.
And most importantly… tried.

On the drive home, she wasn’t talking about being the best.
She was talking about going back.
And that shift – from outcome to effort – felt like the real win.

It also made something painfully clear:
Adults aren’t that different from kids in a parking lot.
We just hide it better.

This really got me thinking…

Ideas stay quiet because we might sound stupid.
Risks stay untaken because success isn’t guaranteed.
Teams stop growing not from failure… but from fear of looking foolish.

Because trying is where stories begin.
Trying is where growth hides.
Trying is where trust is built.

That’s why great writers’ rooms really have only one rule: “there are no bad ideas”

Not because every idea is good (most are terrible)...
But because one imperfect idea often unlocks the brilliant one behind it.

Safety creates motion.
Motion creates discovery.
Discovery creates results.

This reframes leadership completely.
Our job isn’t pushing people to win.
It’s building an environment where they’re not afraid to swing and miss.

Because this isn’t just about confidence.
It’s about trust.
– Trust that effort matters.
– Trust that growth takes time.
– Trust that you don’t have to be the best to begin.

And leaders who build that kind of trust don’t just get performance.

They get courage.
People willing to try.
Speak.
Risk.
Grow.

That’s not just leadership.

That’s storytelling leadership - creating the conditions where new stories can actually happen.

Here are five ways to make this real today:

1. Catch courage in the moment it appears.

Not after it succeeds. Right when it’s still shaky.

I remember one meeting in particular.
Big room. Senior people. Tight timeline.
The kind of meeting where everyone is careful not to sound wrong.

About halfway through, someone junior spoke up.
You could hear the hesitation in their voice before the words even came out.
The idea wasn’t polished.
Honestly… it wasn’t even fully clear yet.

And you could feel the room do what rooms usually do.
That subtle shift. People preparing to fix it. Refine it. Or quietly move past it.

For a split second, I almost did the same thing. Because that’s the instinct, right?
Be efficient. Get to the better idea faster.

But something about the way they said it – the risk it took just to speak…
Made me stop.

Instead of evaluating the idea…
I said something simple:

“Hey, before we react to the idea, I just want to acknowledge how much courage it took to say that out loud in this room.”

The energy changed immediately. You could actually see shoulders drop. See people lean back in. See the person who spoke breathe again. And then something even more interesting happened.

Other people started talking.
– Not perfectly.
– Not brilliantly.
– Just… honestly.

The meeting got messier.
Slower.
Less efficient.
… and infinitely better.

Because the real breakthrough that day wasn’t the idea that was shared.
It was the permission that followed it. That’s the difference most leaders miss.

When you rush to improve the idea, you might get a smarter answer.
But when you protect the courage first, you get a braver room.

And brave rooms are where the best ideas actually live.
Because courage, once seen, multiplies.

For premium subscribers there are several more takeaways, each with detailed action steps. Upgrade to see them all, and for much more exclusive content!

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In this ongoing A Favorite Leader Story series, we share compelling experiences & examples, from leaders or everyday life, that you can use to inspire your team, clarify what matters most, or spark action worth taking.

Each piece includes the story itself, insights on why it matters, and practical ways to apply it, because the best leadership stories don’t just resonate, they help us live & lead even better.

The most powerful leadership tool you have is a story worth telling.

Speaking to a room full of McKinsey consultants, some of the sharpest change agents in business, John Gardner opened with something unexpected: “I recently read a splendid article on barnacles.”

The barnacle, he explained, faces an existential decision about where to live. “Once it decides... it spends the rest of its life with its head cemented to a rock.”

Then he paused & added: “For a good many of us, it comes to that.”

Keep in mind Gardner was talking to top-tier professionals who advised C-suite executives on transformation.

Gardner was telling them that they probably have their heads cemented to rocks.

Not their clients, them!

Why? Because it happens to all of us.

The Curiosity That Counts

Not all curiosity prevents calcification. Scanning industry newsletters doesn’t do it. Neither does asking “What’s new?” in your weekly one-on-ones while mentally reviewing your to-do list.

The kind of curiosity he meant, the kind Storytelling Leaders cultivate, is more energized & adaptive. It asks questions even when you think you know the answers.

Here’s what it looks like in practice.

Outward Curiosity: About Others

Curiosity about others isn’t the same as “knowing your people” in the usual sense. It’s remaining endlessly fascinated by human potential, treating each person as an ongoing mystery rather than a known quantity.

Storytelling Leaders apply relentless curiosity to the people around them:

• What specifically brings out this person’s best?

• What do they need right now, not in general, but today?

• What’s possible in them that they don’t yet see in themselves?

When you approach people this way, something shifts for them. They feel it. They start to trust you differently, not because you have all the answers, but because you’re genuinely interested in discovering theirs.

When Satya Nadella took over Microsoft, he didn’t just talk about growth mindset as corporate jargon. He asked his leaders questions like: “What would you do if you weren’t afraid of failing?” That question, genuinely asked & patiently answered, helped transform Microsoft’s culture from know-it-all to learn-it-all.

But outward curiosity is only half the equation. Curiosity about yourself goes deeper and broader too.

Inward Curiosity: About Yourself

The question goes beyond “Am I meeting my goals?” It challenges you to evolve intentionally and energetically:

• “Who am I becoming?”

• “Am I growing toward the fullest expression of my potential?”

• “Or have I unknowingly cemented my head to a limited notion of success?”

For Storytelling Leaders, this inward curiosity powers development that goes far beyond metrics & achievements. Paradoxically, it’s this deeper work that generates the trust and loyalty that actually helps you achieve those goals, and much more.

Gardner put it this way: “Life isn’t a mountain that has a summit, nor a riddle that has an answer, nor a game that has a final score. Life is an endless unfolding, and if we wish it to be, an endless process of self-discovery.”

That trust and loyalty people give to exceptional leaders doesn’t come from industry knowledge and technical mastery alone. It comes from being around someone who’s still becoming, someone whose curiosity about their own potential excites others to explore theirs.

Beyond the Accomplishment Rock

You can have all the industry knowledge and organizational skills in the world. Then an unexpected challenge hits, and you discover you’ve been stuck to an accomplishment rock all along.

You can be smart, skilled, and successful, and still be calcified.

That’s Gardner’s warning.

Storytelling Leaders think about potential more expansively. Gardner challenges us to consider “the full range of one’s capacities for learning, sensing, wondering, understanding, loving and aspiring.”

Notice what’s included: sensing, wondering, loving. These aren’t typically found in leadership competency models, yet they’re essential to the kind of leader people gravitate toward in uncertain times.

This fuller view emerges from “an endless and unpredictable interplay between you and life’s challenges, and the challenges keep changing.”

Your potential isn’t fixed. It’s dynamic. And it only reveals itself through engagement with new challenges. And you owe it to yourself and the people you lead to reach for it.

The Timeline Myth (It’s never too early or too late)

When you embrace this view, something liberating happens: timeline pressure dissolves. Leadership development becomes exploration, not a race.

Consider a few of countless “late bloomers” who remind us how it works:

• Vera Wang opened her bridal boutique at 40, after careers in figure skating and fashion journalism, and went on to dominate high-fashion wedding gowns.

• Colonel Sanders franchised KFC at 65, turning decades of failures into a global empire.

• Julia Child was a government worker until her late 30s, published her breakthrough cookbook at 50, and became America’s culinary teacher.

• Ray Kroc sold milkshake machines until 52, then bought McDonald’s and built it into a fast-food giant.

What united them? They refused to treat any previous identity as final. They kept asking: What else might I become?

Gardner himself exemplified this pattern: war hero, philanthropy president, presidential cabinet member, anti-war rebel, citizen crusader, nonprofit pioneer well into his 80s. Each identity grew from curiosity about what might come next.

The Question That Launches You Off the Rock

Your identity five years ago was real, but incomplete. Life has pulled things out of you since then that weren’t visible before. New challenges. New people. New failures and unexpected successes.

So here’s the question: Are you growing with this energized, adaptive curiosity, or without even realizing it, have you cemented your head to an accomplishment rock?

Not growing your resume, growing your capacity for the full range of what Gardner described. Growing your ability to sense what others need, to wonder about possibilities, to love the work & the people enough to stay curious about both.

Gardner says you build your life “out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something.”

That’s more than a standard development plan. It’s a lifelong adventure, renewed every time you choose between the easy answer and the curious question.

The barnacle decides once, but you’re not a barnacle.

You get to decide every day.

1️⃣ Schedule Your Own “Obsolescence Day”: Plan When You’ll Make Yourself Irrelevant

Here’s the move that separates truly curious leaders from everyone else: they actively work to make their current role obsolete, including making themselves replaceable in it.

Many leaders do the opposite. They become indispensable, the only person who knows how the system works, the linchpin everyone depends on. It feels like success, but it’s actually calcification in disguise.

Think about it: if you’re irreplaceable in your current role, you can’t grow into your next one. If your team can’t function without you, you’ve trained them to stop being curious and just wait for your answers. If you’re still doing at 45 what made you successful at 35, you’ve cemented your head to an expertise rock.

The most curious leaders do something counterintuitive: they systematically work to make everything they currently do learnable, transferable, and eventually unnecessary. Not because they’re planning to leave, but because making yourself obsolete is the only way to propel yourself toward what you might become next. It’s Gardner’s principle in action: “Life is an endless unfolding.” But you can’t unfold if you’re clinging to what you already know.

Gardner himself exemplified this. He didn’t cling to being a war hero, or a foundation president, or a cabinet secretary. He made each identity so complete that he could walk away from it and become something new. That’s not quitting, that’s refusing to let any single identity become your rock.

🎯 Use it: Pick a date 18 months from now and call it your “Obsolescence Day.” Between now & then, your task is to make yourself unnecessary in your current role. Document every process only you know. Train someone else to do your “signature” work. Build systems that don’t require your constant input. Transfer your special relationships so others can maintain them.

But, please know, this isn’t about leaving! It’s about creating space for whatever you’re becoming next. Once a month, ask yourself: “If I wasn’t spending time on these tasks, what would I be curious about? What challenge would I take on? What capacity would I develop?”

Start dedicating 10% of your time to that answer, and increase it as you make yourself more replaceable.

By month 12, you can schedule a meeting with your boss or board and say something like this, which will definitely grab their attention:

“I’ve spent the past year making myself less necessary to our daily operations. Here’s what I’ve transferred and to whom. I’d like to spend the next phase exploring [whatever your curiosity has revealed].” Enable them to recognize exactly what you’re doing: refusing to cement your head to a rock, even a successful one. Track what happens. The pattern you establish in this 18-month experiment might become the most important leadership practice of your career.

For premium subscribers there are several more takeaways, each with detailed action steps. Upgrade to see them all & for much more exclusive content!

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I almost had a heart attack on a Tuesday.

Middle of the day.

In a meeting.

Nothing dramatic happening.

And then I heard it.

That text sound.

Not the normal one.

The one assigned to my daughter.

My heart sank.

Because here’s the thing…

She didn’t have a device.

She was away at sleepaway camp – for four weeks.

No screens. No phones. No contact.

So why… was I getting a text from her?

I grabbed my phone so fast I barely remember standing up.

And there it was.

“Hi. Right now you’re probably wondering how I’m doing and I just wanted to tell you that I am doing great. I’m at camp with my friends having the best time. I love you all and can’t wait to see you when I get home.”

My heart was racing.

Because I wasn’t just surprised…

I was confused.

How is this possible?

And then it hit me… she scheduled it.

Before she left.

She knew what this would feel like for us.

She knew the first few days would be quiet.

She knew our minds would start filling in the blanks.

She knew our hearts would be aching.

So she did something unbelievably creative.

She solved for the story we would be telling ourselves…

Before we even told it.

And here’s the part I can’t stop thinking about:

My daughter didn’t comfort us after we worried.

She prevented the worry from taking over.

That’s a completely different level of empathy.

Most of us lead like firefighters.

We wait for the alarm.

Then we rush in with reassurance.

She led like a writer.

She anticipated the scene before it happened.

Because she understood something our brains do automatically:

In silence, we don’t stay neutral. We fill the blank.

Our minds don’t treat uncertainty as “nothing.”

They treat it as threat.

That’s biology.

The brain hates open loops.

It hates not knowing.

So it starts writing.

– Is she okay?

– Is she lonely?

– Did something happen?

– Why haven’t we heard?

And once that story starts…

It’s hard to stop.

Which is why what she did was so powerful.

One small text didn’t just share information.

It changed the narrative.

It closed the loop.

It replaced fear with ease.

That’s storytelling.

And as I sit here remembering that moment… I realize…

It’s also leadership – leadership at its finest.

Because the best leaders don’t just solve problems.

They solve the stories people are about to tell themselves.

That’s what writers do too.

The difference between a scene that makes you cry…

And one that just sits on the page…

Isn’t the plot.

It’s anticipation.

It’s emotional precision.

A great filmmaker knows exactly when the audience is about to brace…

And gives them release.

A great storyteller understands the chemistry of tension:

– Uncertainty creates stress.

– Stress creates emotion.

– Emotion creates meaning.

And the best stories don’t just describe feelings.

They engineer them.

That’s why we cry watching a scene sometimes.

Because we’re not just reading the moment.

We’re living inside it.

Our bodies react before our brains explain.

Storytelling leaders do the same thing in real life.

They don’t wait for the team to spiral.

They don’t wait for confusion to calcify.

They step in early – with context, clarity, reassurance.

Not because they’re controlling.

Because they’re considerate.

Because leadership isn’t just direction.

It’s nervous system management.

It’s removing the boulder before someone ever has to carry it.

Which brings me back to that Tuesday.

That’s not just a good daughter.

That’s a storytelling leader.

Here are several things you can start implementing today:

1. Don’t just fix boulders. Remove them.

The best writers create obstacles for their characters to overcome.

The best leaders do the opposite.

They remove the boulder before their team ever trips on it.

Because the goal isn’t to solve problems faster.

It’s to make fewer problems exist in the first place.

So, this week:

Ask one person on your team:

“What’s one thing coming up that you’re quietly worried about?”

Then remove one friction point before it becomes a fire.

That’s leadership as prevention… not response.

For premium subscribers there are several more takeaways, each with detailed action steps. Upgrade to see them all, and for much more exclusive content!

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Welcome to our ongoing A Favorite Leader Question series, where we offer responses to your questions about being an even better Storytelling Leader.

We explore questions that don’t have easy answers, and that’s exactly why they matter!

Leadership questions aren’t math problems with single solutions, but doors that open possibilities to explore.

Each time we’ll offer a quick response from an uncommon angle. No generic rehashes, or word-marathons, just fresh perspective to expand your options. And we’ll have some fun along the way.

Let’s make a difference, one question at a time!

The Question:

What’s the most underrated leadership quality?

Our Response:

In a word…

Absence.

If things fall apart when you’re gone, that isn’t leadership. That’s dependence.

The most effective leaders practice more “absence” than others, not because they neglect their people, but because they’ve equipped them.

They set direction, build capability, then step back far enough for others to step up.

They don’t think, “I feel better because they need me.”

They ask, “What could they do if I weren’t here?”

Because of this…

These leaders reclaim time & attention for what only they can do: shaping strategy, influencing across boundaries, and preparing for what’s next.

They don’t micromanage down. They lead up and across.

And that’s why…

Their teams don’t stall when they leave the room, they accelerate.

Top talent doesn’t want a hero boss. They want a leader who knows when to get out of the way.

“Absence” creates space for growth, visibility, higher contribution. People get to use more of their capability and prove more of their potential.

So give it a try!

This week, choose one initiative or decision that someone on your team could own, or even improve.

Then:

1. Tell the person why you chose them.

2. Define the “what” and the “why,” but not the “how.”

3. Ask them to surprise you with an even better approach.

4. Promise a debrief afterward, not to judge, but to help them extract every lesson.

Great teams build great things. Give them the chance to do it without you.

What are your thoughts about the question? We’d love to hear them!

Last night, the same moment happened in my house…

Three different times.

Let me be clear about this.

It was one specific incident…

But three kids meant three completely different responses.

Everyone told me the same thing about parenting multiple kids:

“You have to parent them differently.”

That part isn’t new.

What’s new for me is the harder question: How?

They don’t come with instructions.

They don’t sit you down and explain what works on them.

So most days you’re left with trial and error.

And if I’m being honest…lately it feels like mostly error.

Especially because I feel like I keep telling them the “right” thing…

Yet frustratingly I keep getting the wrong reaction.

And so here I was this weekend – failing once again.

Trying to make my kids do something that they just weren’t going to.

In that moment it hit me:

I wouldn’t talk to my team like this – why am I doing it with my kids?

Because in that moment I started to understand:

The answer isn’t actually in the “Action” I take.

It’s in the “Why” I explain underneath it.

And while it might seem obvious…

It doesn’t make it any easier…

In the moment…

in the kitchen, trying to force a response over an iPad that doesn’t fit.

Later that night, as I sat with all this a bit longer, it all started to really click.

As a writer, I couldn’t just make a character go somewhere.

First I had to understand what would made them move… and “why”

The Why was always key – because without it…

The audience saw right through it.

And in the end it simply just felt forced, predictable and untrue.

Great characters don’t act because the plot needs them to.

They act because something inside them does.

The same is true for kids.

And employees.

And teams.

Because movement that lasts – only happens when it makes sense internally.

You can’t demand belief.

You can’t retrofit motivation.

You can’t force movement without meaning.

Therefore, the fastest way to get kids, characters, or teams where you want them to go–

Is to actually stop trying to move them at all.

Instead, understand what already moves them.

They don’t ask:

“How do I get them there?”

“What would make them want to go?”

Or

“How do I meet that honestly?”

Because storytelling leaders understand something most people miss:

You only get one real shot at this.

No matter if it’s a script, parenting or leadership.

After that, you’re just managing momentum you created… or momentum you never did.

Seeing the person.

Understanding their internal engine.

And creating the conditions where their best behavior makes sense.

Which brings me back to my kids.

Same house.

Same rules.

Same parents.

But three different engines.

My job isn’t to push them harder.

It’s to understand what already moves them.

Because the best leaders – just like the best parents and writers – don’t pull people forward.

They give people a reason… and the ability… to move themselves.

In this ongoing A Favorite Leader Story series, we share compelling experiences & examples, from leaders or everyday life, that you can use to inspire your team, clarify what matters most, or spark action worth taking.

Each piece includes the story itself, insights on why it matters, and practical ways to apply it, because the best leadership stories don’t just resonate, they help us live & lead even better.

The most powerful leadership tool you have is a story worth telling.

Most 49-year-olds who get fired start polishing their resume. Bernie Marcus ignited a revolution….

The Belief Before the Balance Sheet

After losing his job at Handy Dan, a home improvement chain where he’d worked for years, Bernie still carried an idea, a vision of a warehouse-style store where everyday people could get contractor prices and expert help.

He called it Home Depot.

There was just one problem. No one would fund it.

But Bernie kept going. He believed something most people didn’t: that if you take care of people, really take care of them, they’ll take care of you back: Your people, your customers, their community.

It wasn’t a marketing slogan. It was a way of life and a way of business, worth starting & doing at any age.

Eventually some investors took a chance on Bernie and his cofounder Arthur Blank.

That’s when the real work began, because it was hard in the early days to get customers. People didn’t know what to make of this colossal structure that seemed to be more for construction companies than individual consumers.

The Maniac in the Parking Lot

It’s Saturday afternoon. One of the few people who actually came to the store walks out empty-handed.

Bernie runs out into the parking lot, calling after the customer. “Sir! Excuse me! Sir!”

The customer is concerned. Who is this, running & yelling?

Bernie catches up, out of breath: “I saw you leave without buying anything. Can I ask why?”

The customer came in looking for a specific part, maybe a particular fitting or valve for a plumbing project. Home Depot didn’t carry it.

Most business owners would apologize, promise to look into stocking it, and move on.

Bernie says, “I’ll deliver it to you.”

He drives to a competitor, buys the part, peels off the price sticker, and brings it to the customer’s front door.

No one had ever heard of such a thing. Soon, everyone had. Because in the early days, Bernie did it over and over, running through parking lots, showing up at doorsteps.

Terrible Math, Great Path

Can you build a business model around the CEO chasing customers through parking lots and playing delivery driver on weekends? No. On paper, it was financial lunacy.

But here’s what Bernie understood that the banks and investors who’d turned him down didn’t:

That customer never forgot.

That customer told everyone he knew. That customer came back. That customer became a Home Depot evangelist, the kind of person who, when a neighbor asks where to buy supplies, doesn’t just recommend Home Depot, he tells the story of the time the founder delivered a part to his house.

And Bernie?

• He learned exactly which products customers were asking for that Home Depot didn’t carry yet.

• He learned what the competition was doing right.

• He learned what real customer service looked like when nobody was keeping score.

• He was building something that couldn’t be measured in a single sale.

He was building a culture. A reputation. A business that would grow into one of the most successful retailers in history, with thousands of stores and billions in annual revenue, and a brand that changed how the entire country thought about home improvement.

All because disappointed customers didn’t discourage him, they energized him. He refused to let a lost sale become a lost customer.

As he says in his book Built from Scratch, “The key is not to make the sale. The key is to cultivate the customer.”

And that’s exactly what he did. He turned rejections into relationships.

He chased the opportunity for a lifetime loyal relationship with anyone who walked in, and especially with those who walked out.

1️⃣ Culture is Caught, Not Just Taught: Leading from the Asphalt Up.

Bernie Marcus wasn’t just a founder; he was the living embodiment of Home Depot’s customer-centric culture. By literally chasing customers and delivering solutions himself, he didn’t just articulate values; he demonstrated them with every out-of-breath sprint and doorstep delivery.

His actions became legendary tales that permeated the organization. He set an undeniable standard for customer service that became central to the company’s identity.

🎯 Use it: Reflect on the core values you want to instill in your team. What is one tangible, unforgettable action you can take this week that visibly demonstrates one of those values, even if it feels unconventional or “below your pay grade”?

Don’t just talk about the value; live it in a way that creates a memorable story your team will share.

2️⃣ Rejection is a Roadmap: Learning from the Walk-Outs.

Many leaders dread customer rejections or unmet needs. Bernie saw them as invaluable data points. The customers who left empty-handed weren’t just missed sales; they were providing real-time market research, highlighting product gaps and competitive strengths. He transformed potential failures into learning opportunities, to refine his offerings and build a stronger, more responsive business.

🎯 Use it: Instead of simply tracking “lost opportunities” or “customer churn,” implement a practice of deeply understanding why these events occur. Schedule dedicated “discovery calls” or feedback sessions with customers who didn’t choose you or stopped using your service.

Frame it not as an attempt to win them back, but as an opportunity to genuinely learn and improve, just as Bernie used those parking lot conversations.

3️⃣ Do Things That Don’t Scale (On Purpose).

Could Bernie build a Fortune 500 company by personally delivering competitor products to customers’ homes? Obviously not.

But he wasn’t building a business model in that moment. He was building a reputation, learning what customers needed, and creating evangelists who would tell that story for decades.

The most valuable things you do as a leader might not show up in this quarter’s metrics, but they establish what you stand for, and build even more potential value.

🎯 Use it: Identify one thing you could do this month that’s “unscalable” but unforgettable. Personally call the client who left. Hand-deliver a solution. Do something that makes people say, “I’ve never seen a leader do that before.”

4️⃣ Your People Know What’s Missing (If You Actually Ask).

Bernie didn’t learn what products to stock from market research reports. He learned by running into parking lots and asking customers why they left disappointed.

Most leaders wait for information to flow up through formal channels, e.g., monthly reports & quarterly surveys. By the time the data reaches you, the moment has passed.

Your frontline people know what’s broken, what’s missing, and what customers are asking for. But they’ll only tell you if they believe you’ll actually do something about it.

🎯 Use it: This week, go to where the work actually happens. Ask the people who interact with customers every day: “What are we missing? What do customers ask for that we don’t have?” Write down every answer. Then within 48 hours, act on at least one thing and report back. Show your team their voice matters.

5️⃣ Let Disappointment Energize You, Not Defeat You.

Bernie heard “no” from every bank. Customers walked out of his stores. Most signals said “this isn’t working.”

Most people would’ve been discouraged. Bernie was energized.

The difference between leaders who break through and leaders who burn out often comes down to this: how do you interpret setbacks? Bernie reframed rejection as information, not indictment.

🎯 Use it: The next time something fails or someone walks away disappointed, pause. Ask yourself: “What is this teaching me?” Write down three insights from the failure. Then take one action based on what you learned. Train yourself to get curious, not defensive.

Bernie Marcus didn’t build Home Depot by having the perfect plan, the biggest budget, or the most investor confidence. He built it by refusing to let people leave disappointed.

You can’t fix every problem. But you can notice. You can care. You can ask why. And you can show people that when they trust you with their disappointment, you won’t ignore it, you’ll do something about it.

That’s not just good customer service. That’s leadership worth following.

What other insights or applications do you have? We’d love to hear them!

Welcome to our ongoing A Favorite Leader Question series, where we offer responses to your questions about being an even better Storytelling Leader.

We explore questions that don’t have easy answers, and that’s exactly why they matter!

Leadership questions aren’t math problems with single solutions, but doors that open possibilities to explore.

Each time we’ll offer a quick response from an uncommon angle. No generic rehashes, or word-marathons, just fresh perspective to expand your options. And we’ll have some fun along the way.

Let’s make a difference, one question at a time!

The Question:

What makes a leader inspiring?

Our Response:

In a word…

Boredom.

Inspiring leaders are especially “boring” about two things: their values & their focus. They don’t repackage their principles every quarter or seek dopamine hits disguised as strategy. They don’t chase what’s “new,” they focus on what’s true. They are relentlessly consistent about what matters most.

Because of this…

They become a fixed point in a chaotic world. Staying “bored” by the 90% noise, they center the 10% that makes a compounding difference. Their disciplined attention builds bedrock trust & confidence.

And that’s why…

This “boring” stability is actually rebellious. It frees the team from performative urgency and constant guessing. People stop scanning for the next pivot and start doing work that is deeply meaningful & truly exciting, not just flashy.

So give it a try!

This week, pick one core priority you’ve been neglecting because it felt repetitive, unglamorous, or “already handled.”

Pick something to “bore” into that you know is deeply true, about the value of the mission, the people, or the work you do.

Then:

1. Recommit to it.

2. Share an example of someone who exemplifies it.

3. Say why it matters, out loud. No hype needed, no theatrics, just assert it, calmly. Even boringly :)

What are your thoughts about the question? We’d love to hear them!

I had a great conversation with a friend today.
The kind where you pick right back up.
No friction.
No catching up needed.
Just warmth, laughter, and that familiar feeling of being known.

We hadn’t talked in a while, but it didn’t matter.

It was easy.

It was good.

It felt right.

So much so that, after hanging up, I was reminded there are three kinds of friends in the world.

One, you see and talk to often. It’s easy. It’s fun. And many times, it’s a friendship built on proximity—same college, same job, kids at the same school.

Another is just as real, but life has pulled you into different places. You don’t talk often, but when you do, you’re immediately reminded why you’re close.

And then there’s the third. You almost never talk, but somehow they always text on the anniversaries you don’t put on a calendar—the ones that really matter to you, like:

— The day you got air-lifted out of Cabo.

— The day your grandmother passed away.

— The promotion at work that you truly don’t know how they even knew about.

This isn’t about who’s a better friend.
It’s about how some people are tuned in a little differently.

Especially when it’s not easy to be.

And how that matters.
– In friendship.
– In family.
– And leadership.

Because leadership isn’t just about making decisions.
It’s about knowing how to connect – intentionally, personally, and when it matters most.

It’s why we like to say:

The best storytelling leaders aren’t the most obvious.
They’re the most attuned.

It’s the same with writers.

The best writers in the world aren’t always the ones getting paid to write. The ones who are paid are often the luckiest – the ones who got their shot and made the most of it. But to earn that chance, and to do something meaningful with it, they almost always had to write something that resonated.

And I found those writers almost always shared two oddly paired qualities:
– They were empathetic.
– And slightly nervous.

This is because:

Empathy tunes you outward.
Nervousness tunes you forward.

Writers are constantly running quiet simulations in the most mundane situations.

– What if I accidentally stuck my leg out and tripped this older man walking past me?

– What if my partner randomly called and broke up with me?
– What if this small moment turns into something bigger?

That inability to silence the what if isn’t anxiety – it’s awareness.

It’s a mind trained to scan for emotional consequence.

To notice how a moment might land.

To feel the ripple before it spreads.

You can’t turn that instinct off.
And you wouldn’t want to.

Because that same instinct:

That makes writers attuned to people they’ve never met…

And even moments they’ve never encountered…

Is the same instinct that makes great leaders.

Storytelling leaders don’t just communicate well.
They reduce friction before it forms.

They can sense what might happen – and act on it when others don’t.

Like texting a friend you rarely speak to, remembering something obscure, and choosing to reach out anyway.

But here’s the part we don’t talk about enough.

Attention alone isn’t the rare skill.
Anyone can notice.
Anyone can remember.
Anyone can think of something.

What separates storytelling leaders is what happens next.

They actually act on it.

Being attuned isn’t just about awareness.
It’s about adding one more step: completion.

That’s the difference between noticing a story…and leading one.

Lots of people have a great idea for a screenplay.
Very few ever write both FADE IN and FADE OUT.

Because leadership isn’t just vision.
It’s follow-through on human moments.

This matters more than ever in a world obsessed with certainty.

The people who move others most aren’t louder.
They’re not flashier.
They’re not more obvious.

They’re just the ones willing to act on what they feel.
To close the loop.
To show up when they don’t have to.

That’s not just good storytelling.
That’s great leadership from a storytelling leader.

In this ongoing A Favorite Leader Story series, we share compelling experiences & examples, from leaders or everyday life, that you can use to inspire your team, clarify what matters most, or spark action worth taking.

Each piece includes the story itself, insights on why it matters, and practical ways to apply it, because the best leadership stories don’t just resonate, they help us live & lead even better.

The most powerful leadership tool you have is a story worth telling.

This story is based on an experience from the great writer Mitch Albom.

You know Albom, the bestselling author of Tuesdays with Morrie and a dozen other books that make people cry on airplanes:)

But this story comes from much earlier in his career, when he was a sportswriter covering the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.

Waiting for Greatness

Albom is there on assignment, sitting in the stands, notebook ready, waiting to watch the legendary Carl Lewis compete for gold. That’s the story he plans to write.

But while he waits, the track fills with quieter moments. Athletes warming up, officials moving about, preliminary heats most people barely notice.

One of them is a qualifying heat for the 400 meters.

The gun fires & the runners explode out of the blocks.

The Fall

But halfway around the track, one runner suddenly grabs his leg, and collapses on the track, his face twisted in agony. It’s a torn hamstring.

The rest of the field finishes the race.

The injured runner tries to continue, but he can’t get up.

The Unexpected Leader

Suddenly, a middle-aged man comes out of the stands and heads toward the fallen runner. He’s not an athlete, not a manager, just a regular person.

He tries to help the runner up, but that doesn’t work.

So the runner’s father, because that’s who the older man is, does something no one had ever seen before in a race.

He steps behind the runner, slides his own feet underneath the runner’s feet, and begins to move, slowly & deliberately, one step at a time.

Their legs stay aligned & their bodies move together, slowly, deliberately, one small step at a time, around the curve of the track.

Wonder & Roar

Nobody stops them. Officials keep the track clear.

The people in the stadium begin to notice. They look on in wonder. Some start clapping, and then more, and still more. Huge cheers when they finally cross the finish line.

The Ad-Hoc Interview

Albom hurries down to the track. He asks the older man, “Who are you? Why did you do that?”

“I’m his father. I knew what this meant to him. He trained his whole life for this. His heart was broken.”

He pauses.

“And if he didn’t finish the race, he wouldn’t be recorded as officially competing in the Olympics.”

“Why did you put him on your feet?”

“Because he had to stay in his lane. Step outside it, and you’re disqualified.”

Then he adds something Albom never forgot.

“When he was a little boy, that’s how I taught him to run. I put his feet on my feet, and we moved together. So we did it again.”

A Different Greatness

The runner’s name was Derek Redmond. He wasn’t famous. Albom had never heard of him before that day.

Albom calls his newspaper. “I’m not doing the Carl Lewis story.”

“Why not? Did someone else win?”

“I’m writing about a guy I don’t know who came in last.”

“What???”

“Trust me,” Albom says, and could add: “Everyone wins in this one.”

1️⃣ Don’t just cover “winners.” Study what makes people worth following.

Traditional track & field greatness is measured in metrics. Redmond’s father shows greatness in a moment of truth. Leaders who only chase “gold medal stories” miss what actually sustains performance: loyalty, dignity, courage, and follow-through.

The most powerful stories in your organization aren’t always happening in the spotlight. They happen with the team member who’s quietly rebuilding after a failure, the employee who stayed late to help a colleague, or the person who chose integrity when no one was watching.

🎯 Use it: In your next team meeting, ask: "What's a quiet act of greatness we saw this week?" Show your team what you actually value by what you choose to notice.

2️⃣ Public moments create private standards.

A stadium watched a father model devotion and discipline. Your team watches you the same way, especially in small moments. Culture isn’t what you announce. It’s what people see you do when it’s inconvenient.

🎯 Use it: Identify one "watched moment" coming up (e.g., a tough conversation, debriefing something that failed). Decide in advance what you want it to teach.

3️⃣ Presence is leadership when problem-solving isn’t possible.

Derek’s father couldn’t heal the hamstring. He couldn’t reverse time. He couldn’t make the pain go away. But he could make sure his son didn’t face that moment alone.

You’re not always going to have the answer. You won’t always be able to fix it. But you can always show up. Your people don’t need you to be all-knowing. They need to know you won’t abandon them when the plan falls apart.

🎯 Use it: The next time someone on your team fails publicly, don't lead with solutions. Lead with presence. Be there. Then figure out what's next, together.

4️⃣ The lane matters as much as the finish line.

Derek’s father didn’t just drag his son across the track. He kept him in the lane. Because stepping outside it, even in agony, would mean disqualification.

Even when you’re helping someone through their worst moment, how you do it matters. There are boundaries, standards, rules that exist for good reasons.

Compassion doesn’t mean abandoning accountability, it means upholding it with grace.

🎯 Use it: When you're tempted to make an exception "just this once" for someone struggling, ask: Am I helping them finish, or am I taking them out of their lane? One honors them. The other disqualifies them.

5️⃣ Know what “finishing” means to each person.

For most runners, finishing meant qualifying for the next round. For Derek, finishing meant his Olympic dream wouldn’t be erased. His father understood the difference.

Your definition of success might not be theirs. Before you push someone toward your finish line, understand what theirs looks like. The struggling performer might just need to cross it with dignity. The burned-out star might need permission to stop running entirely.

🎯 Use it: In your next one-on-one, ask: "What does success look like for you right now, not six months from now, but today?" Then listen.

6️⃣ 70,000 people were there; 1 made a difference.

That stadium didn’t roar because of athletic excellence. It roared because a father loved his son enough to carry him. Because someone showed up when it would have been easier to stay in the stands.

The best leader stories aren’t about heroes. They’re about choices.

Your team is watching for the same thing. Not just your strategy slides, or your KPIs. They’re watching to see if you really care, if you’re a difference-maker on a human level, if you’ll show up no matter what.

🎯 Use it: Tell your people about someone who made a huge difference in your life, who shaped who you are as a person and a leader. Learn the same about them.

Some of the most powerful leadership moments don’t happen on podiums.

They happen when someone steps into the lane, aligns their steps with yours, and helps you finish what matters, especially when the finish line feels impossibly far away.

What other insights or applications do you have? We’d love to hear them!

I’m not alone. Not even close.

If you’re the parent of a middle-schooler, you’re probably watching the same thigh I am. Your kid quietly trying to figure out where they belong.

As the father of a 12-year-old-old, I see it every day.

Not in a dramatic way. In the quiet, confusing way that doesn’t come with clean edges.

Who to sit with.
Who to text back.
Who you can be yourself around.
Who you just don’t want to be around.

As a parent, every instinct in me wants to jump ahead. Name the right people for her. Warn her about the wrong ones. Speed up the learning. Help her!

But that instinct comes from a misunderstanding of how identity actually forms.

Belonging isn’t something you choose once.

It’s something you test.

You try people on.
You stay too long.
You misread signals.
You confuse familiarity with safety.
You get hurt.

That’s not failure.
That’s the work.

What I’m learning — slowly — is that my job isn’t to point her toward the “right” friends. It’s to help her stay connected to herself while she figures that out.

That requires a different kind of leadership.
Not answers.

Questions.

Why does this friendship feel heavy?
Why does that one make you quieter?
Why do you feel more like yourself around certain people?

Those aren’t social skills.
They’re storytelling skills.

In writers’ rooms, we’re trained to chase the truth of a character, not the likability of a scene. You keep asking “why” until you understand what the character is protecting… and what they’re afraid to lose.

Watching my daughter navigate friendships, I see the same pattern.

She isn’t looking for popularity.

She’s looking for permission.

Permission to be herself without performing. Permission to grow without being locked into a role. Permission to walk away without feeling like she failed.

And beneath all of that…

Permission to wonder.

To wonder who she might be in a different room.

To wonder what feels possible when she isn’t trying to fit.

To wonder without needing to decide yet.

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

The hard part is…

She doesn’t know what that permission feels like yet.

That’s the work.

That’s what people really mean when they say “be yourself.”

Permission to feel like you can.

And we don’t outgrow this.

Leaders do this in offices and boardrooms every day. They stay in rooms that don’t fit.
They chase approval that costs them clarity.
They mistake being included for being seen.

A storytelling leader notices this pattern early.

They don’t force belonging.

They don’t prescribe relationships.

They create space.

Space to wonder.

To think.

To struggle.

To question.

To grow.

Space to dig deeper instead of accepting the first answer.

To be analytical and emotional at the same time.

To follow a gut instinct that doesn’t make sense on paper.

Because if writing taught me anything, it’s this:

The first idea is usually the worst.

The next few are better.

The middle is where the truth shows up.

And the last ones… are just tired.

But you don’t get to the good part without time.

Or without safety. Without the freedom to be wrong long enough to eventually be right.

That’s what I want for my daughter.

Not answers.

Wonder.

And it’s what the best leaders create too.

Not certainty.

But space.

In a world obsessed with instant answers…

Wonder is the advantage.