Lead the Narrative

Or it will lead you...

It started with a 9:07am Slack message. A C-suite leader posted an announcement about a major policy change without context — just a directive to stop work on one product line and shift focus to another. The message was abrupt and lacked any explanation of why the decision was made nor how the transition would unfold. This wasn’t a minor adjustment either; about 20% of the engineering team was affected, and an existing contract would face significant impacts.

For the team of engineers and designerswho had invested months into the product, the sudden announcement felt like a gut punch. There was no recognition of their efforts or the emotional toll of abandoning a product they had devoted themselves to building. The abruptness of the news left them reeling, sparking confusion, frustration, and a profound sense of betrayal. Without a clear explanation for the shift, the team began to form their own interpretations of what was really happening.

In the absence of context, new stories emerged to fill the void: rumors of upcoming layoffs, whispers that the new CTO was trying to make a name for themselves, that the CEO’s pet project was consuming all the resources, that leadership had it out for the tech lead, that management was out of touch and didn’t care about their people. None of the explanations were flattering.

Leaders, meanwhile, were equally frustrated. They couldn’t understand why the team was resisting a decision that was clearly in response to changing market conditions and recent customer discovery. They responded with a “shut up and color” attitude that only amplified the tension.

The leader had lost control of the narrative.

By failing to provide context for the decision, leadership had effectively outsourced the explanation for a major strategic decision to the team. Predictably, the team — lacking the C-suite’s context — wrote a much darker version of the story. This wasn’t an issue of ethos or ethics — it was a communication breakdown.

As a leader, you have to lead the narrative — or you’ll find it leading you.

Narratives are Stories, and Stories Matter

When I think of narratives, I think of stories. Humans learn through stories; we teach through stories. Stories give context and meaning to events; they tell us who the players are, what the conflict is, the journey the hero must go on, how the challenge was overcome, and what ‘happily ever after’ looks like. Stories make us feel part of something greater. We love stories thus need narratives.

One of my favorite examples of the power of narrative is the 1962 visit of JFK to NASA. During his tour, Kennedy met a janitor who, when asked what he did, famously replied, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.” This simple yet powerful response highlights how a shared narrative can unite an entire organization. NASA’s narratives didn’t just talk about technical requirements—they told a story of a nation reaching for the stars, with every engineer, scientist, administrator, and custodian playing a vital role. This narrative gave meaning to the work and inspired people to push through incredible challenges.

In the same way, leaders who craft compelling stories can connect day-to-day tasks to a greater mission. While not every team is shooting for the moon, a shared narrative can transform a collection of tasks into a mission. On a team, a shared narrative creates a tribe, a sense that “people like us do things like this.” The narrative a team uses to describe its purpose, progress, and problems defines your tribe. Your tribe is your culture.

Yet, I often see leaders choose to expedite communication at the expense of providing the very contextual details that can reinforce their team’s purpose. They justify not investing time and effort into narrative by arguing that moving fast is what matters or that sharing all the details will only slow the team down. But when leaders skip the story, they leave it to the team to fill in the blanks, often to their own dismay. This is especially common among command-and-control leaders accustomed to giving orders rather than building community.

Here’s the problem: when leaders don’t tell the story, teams write their own—often based on conjecture, frustration, or worst-case assumptions. That’s how you end up with team productivity grinding to a halt while knowledge workers try to make sense of office politics. It’s also why you have to spend weeks trying to get everyone back on the same page. Put simply, when leaders fail to lead the narrative, they end up outsourcing their culture. As a leader, do you really want the fabric of your organization’s culture to be woven by stories you didn’t craft?

The Four P’s of a Compelling Narrative

Leaders often neglect essential context in their communications, assuming that teams only need to know what happened and what comes next. In their rush to move fast, they focus solely on progress, believing that results will speak for themselves. However, without the context of who is affected, why a change is necessary, and what the future holds, teams are left to fill in the gaps on their own, often with less charitable explanations.

A great company story evokes pride in the organization’s mission and vision. Maybe it’s because I’m a product guy, but I’ve come to see the four P’s of product management—persona, problem, promise, and product—as the essential elements of an effective shared narrative. This framework can effectively communicate company initiatives, provide meaningful status updates, and even address newly discovered risks. Just as a product manager must address the four P’s to achieve product-market fit, leaders must address the four P’s of storytelling to create cultural alignment:

• Persona: Who is involved in this situation? This includes the ‘heroes,’ ‘villains,’ and everyone impacted by the decision.
• Problem: What needs to change for the company or team to achieve its purpose?
• Promise: What will be the impact of achieving these outcomes on the company’s mission?
• Product: What has been built, what work has been done, and what progress has been made toward that mission?

Too often, leaders provide updates focused only on progress—what happened and what’s next—without addressing the persona, problem, or promise. That’s like building a product without defining the user, their pain points, or the benefits they will gain. Without context, it’s just code. In the same way, without context, your narrative is just noise.

Transparent Storytelling

By now, I hope we’ve debunked the myth that leaders don’t have time to prioritize narrative. We’ve established the importance of narrative in providing teams with a consistent story to focus their ambition and clarified the minimum context teams need to align their efforts. From a leadership perspective, I call this practical combination of context and content Transparent Storytelling. Transparent Storytelling means being honest about the challenges the organization faces and equally honest about the potential rewards of overcoming them.

Let’s go back to our Slack announcement scenario. Transparent storytelling might have sounded something like this:

Team, as I mentioned during our recent All-Team meeting, our customer interviews related to [Product X] have shown that the solution we’re building doesn’t address the most urgent problems our customers face. Market analysis also revealed that our solution wasn’t differentiated enough to justify the investment required to make it competitive. Rather than having our talented engineers, designers, and product managers working on opportunities with limited potential, we’re redirecting efforts to products that align more directly with our mission and our market opportunities. As an immediate result, [team X] will start working on [Product Y]. This wasn’t an easy decision, and we know there will be more questions, but it is the right choice to achieve our vision of [company vision] and to support our customers in delivering [company mission].I’m genuinely grateful for the dedication and hard work each of you brings to our team. While these changes are significant, they reflect our commitment to delivering real value to our customers. We will keep pushing forward, together.

Setting aside for a moment that Slack is a terrible vehicle for announcements of this magnitude and that major changes should be communicated live with ample opportunities for discussion—this version of the story would have provided the team with clarity, honesty, and a sense of purpose. This approach to Transparent Storytelling incorporates all four P’s while acknowledging the difficulty of the decision, respecting the team’s contributions, and tying the change back to the company’s mission. In short, it leads with narrative.

Talking Tactics: Leading Your Narrative

Here are three immediate steps you can take to lead the narrative more effectively in your workplace. These tactics don’t require a spot in the C-suite — or even a management role. They are practical tips to help you communicate more clearly and intentionally with your team, no matter your position:

1. Own the Story: No matter where you sit in the organization, you have both the opportunity to lead and the responsibility to provide a narrative for your team. Let them know the journey you’re on, the challenges you face, and the promise you hope to unlock. By communicating the persona, problem, promise, and product, you make it easier for your team to align with your efforts.
2. Recognize the Limits of Leadership: Not every leader is a natural storyteller. A leader’s failure to communicate context doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care — it might just mean they lack the skill. Avoid filling in the gaps with assumptions or conjecture and instead, do what you can to ask questions and uncover the meaning yourself. If you still can’t square the circle, follow up with leadership privately to understand the context and respectfully share your perspective on the narrative. Once you’ve aligned on the facts, share your more informed version broadly with your team.
3. Manage Risk Through Transparent Storytelling: A mentor of mine used to say that ‘the best way to talk about risk is to explain what you’re doing about it’. This means not just clearly describing the progress and actions you’re taking (product) but also providing vivid context — explaining who is affected (persona), the challenges you’re overcoming (problem), and the outcomes that mitigating the risk will unlock (promise). Regardless of your role, everyone manages risk, which means everyone can practice controlling the risk narrative through Transparrent Storytelling.

Lead the Narrative, or it Will Lead You

In a world where information is immediate and interpretation is subjective, leading the narrative is not just a leadership advantage — it’s a necessity. By providing context, leaders can prevent misinformation and build a unified direction for their teams. Leaders must embrace transparent storytelling as a core practice, communicating not only what decisions are made but also why they were necessary to achieve the organization’s mission.

The narratives leaders craft today become the foundation of their organization’s culture tomorrow. If you do not take ownership of your stories by being more transparent about their context, someone else will do it for you. If you don’t lead the narrative, you’ll find the narrative leading you.

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