The Organizational Storytelling Workbook

Book excerpt: This workbook is an interactive guide for leaders and managers to help you tell compelling stories at work. The Organizational Storytelling Workbook offers: a critical engagement with academic debates on organizational storytelling; and a series of exercises designed to allow users to improve their capability as organizational storytellers. The text begins with a chapter which locates organizational storytelling within a critical account of organizational cultures. This book argues that managerial accounts of organizational culture offer a limited appreciation of the ways in which people think, feel and act and suggests storytelling as a means of redeeming our understanding of all matters cultural. Having secured this new appreciation of culture and storytelling the workbook develops a series of maxims and exercises designed to allow users: (a) to improve their storytelling practice; and (b) to reassess the cultural assumptions and priorities revealed through their practice. Enriched with interactive features to walk managers practically through the process of improving their storytelling skills, including practical exercises, contemplative questions, and space to respond creatively to the ideas in the book, this workbook is the perfect companion to any executive or postgraduate course in storytelling as well as a useful and enjoyable companion to any individual manager that wishes to improve their skills.