Story

Every group has a story it wants to be true. These stories explain identity — who we are, what makes us different, why we matter in the world. They define heroes and villains, victories and losses, values and aspirations. For individuals, the story offers connection, belonging, and purpose. For the group, it offers coherence and strength. A shared narrative is a kind of glue — it binds people together and motivates them to act in common cause.

But story has a dark side. Narratives flatten and over-simplify complex reality. The story often evokes a convenient scapegoat for the group’s problems. It treats some people as heroes, and others, or even worse groups, as villains or enemies, justifying oppression and inhumanity.

Still, people crave stories, especially one that helps them understand their group, its place in the world, and their place in it. Groups that lack a compelling, widely accepted story may drift or fracture. They struggle to define their purpose, and in the absence of meaning, individuals withdraw or turn elsewhere.

The stories that groups tell shape the leadership they expect, and the leadership they get. And leaders themselves have an important role as story-keepers, tellers, and even the makers or revisers of stories. Leaders work within the group’s story, but they may also interpret, challenge, and sometimes rewrite them. They can ask: Whose story is this? Who is left out? What version of the truth are we telling — and why?

The best leaders don’t cling blindly to the old story, nor do they discard it without care. They understand that stories are living things. They can be sharpened, expanded, corrected, and renewed. And when done with integrity, this process deepens the group’s strength rather than weakening it.

In a time of fractured identities and contested truths, leadership demands more than clever memes, however viral they may become. It calls for the wisdom to hold story and truth in honest tension — for the sake of the group as it may be, if not yet as it is.