CEO Storytelling Insights: How You Can Become a Chief Storytelling Officer

Mastering the art of storytelling and strategic narrative is essential to effective leadership—in sales, marketing, culture, product, business transformation and beyond.

Jordan Bower has trained nearly 200 companies in the art of business storytelling. Learn more here


What unites people? Armies? Gold? Flags? Stories. There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it.

Tyrion Lannister, Game of Thrones


I remember when I first started telling people that I wanted to be a Chief Storytelling Officer. Everyone I knew thought I was nuts.

“What are you going to do? Read bedtime stories to executives?” That, by the way, is a direct quote from my mother.

This was in the early 2010s. Way back then, there was little appetite for the role of storytelling in business. Back then, we thought about executives as iconic leaders. They sent messages, and people listened.

(Or, at least, that’s what they liked to tell themselves.)

But around that time, something significant was starting to change. We were all moving online—and, in particular, we began spending more time on social media. Suddenly, marketers began discovering the power of strategic narrative. They started to learn that their audiences didn’t just want to hear the same tagline again and again. They wanted a story they could follow.

Since then, we have all experienced radical changes in the communications landscape. New platforms. Pervasive connections. (Don’t even get me started about generative AI!) Today, leadership storytelling is no longer about uni-directional messages. Our customers, our stakeholders, and our audiences want to understand the story of what we do—not just what we sell, but why we sell it; not just where we’re going, but how we’re going to get there; not just who we are, but how we can help them become something more.

These are more than stories. These are strategic narratives. And at the center of this radical transformation between storytelling and business stands a new role called Chief Storytelling Officer.

The Chief Storytelling Officer has responsibilites that go far beyond brand marketing, touching upon a new way of leading in the Future of Work, as business everywhere responds to innovation, change and volatility.

In this article, I'm going to outline what being a Chief Storyteller means, what exactly a Chief Storytelling Officer does and why this emerging role has become so important to the reality of today’s businesses.

Strap in—let’s start the journey!


Jordan Bower is a leadership storytelling consultant for corporate and business clients.

Learn more about his workshops, trainings, and advisory practice here.


A Short History of the Chief Storytelling Officer

Where did the idea of leadership storytelling come from? It’s in our DNA. Humans have always used stories to make sense of the dynamic and changing world.

As Yuval Noah Harari describes in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, stories have played a vital role as a foundation for the birth of civilizations. As a result, storytelling has always been essential to leadership.

Storytelling is a powerful rhetorical tool not because people want to be entertained, although that’s important to keep the audience’s attention. Storytelling’s power lies in what it allows people to do: cooperate.

Unfortunately, throughout business, many people continue to think about storytelling as a one-dimensional tool. The pervasive idea is that business storytelling is about educating people about a product—or using fancy tactics or structural tricks, like plots, characters, and Hero’s Journey to persuade them and change their mind. The truth is that the application of leadership storytelling is much more expansive than just sales and marketing.

I like the way that this article puts it. In the eyes of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, storytelling helps achieve three essential functions of leadership:

  1. Stories Shine the Light. They create connections between the past, present & future, thus guiding us on our way and lighting up paths for change.

  2. Stories Make The Glue. Stories help people understand one another across significant differences, enabling a sense of alignment that is felt deeply.

  3. Stories Strengthen the Web. Stories use data and feeling to help us author — and re-author — how we orient ourselves in our relationships with ourselves, others inside and outside our communities, and with the wider world.

We need to develop new processes of collective storytelling across sectors to navigate turbulent times and foster systems change.
— Ella Saltmarshe

Strategic Storytelling Began As Branding and Sales

The first people to recognize the power of storytelling in business were likely salespeople. In a previous era, we used to lionize the traveling salesmen who would demonstrate the power of their vacuum by scattering a little dirt when the customer was looking the other way. Storytelling became embraced by all manner of sales people across industries. (I love this memorable scene from The Big Short where Ryan Gosling uses effective storytelling to win over his audience.)

But perhaps the most familiar format of business storytelling related to branding. Think about life pre-Internet. If you were a big brand -- a Coca Cola or a Procter & Gamble -- you had basically three media choices for telling your product's story: television, radio or billboards.

Because of the media bandwidth and other limitations of the time, brands focused on developing one message (a "campaign") which they basically played again and again and again—whether people loved it or hated it.

You probably remember some of those campaigns. “Just Do It”. “I’m Lovin’ It.” "Some things in life are priceless. For everything else, there's Mastercard."

This line was invented in 1997 and reinforced in our minds hundreds and thousands of times. Mastercard is still using it today.

Early Innovators in Strategic Storytelling

Beyond the mainstream application of leadership storytelling, there were the mavericks.

Steve Jobs is often the first name that jumps to mind when people think about a Chief Storytelling Officer.

In my opinion, Steve Jobs was unique because of how he revolutionized the application of storytelling in business. Think about the iconic Apple ad, 1984, which sent shockwaves through Corporate America. Apple wasn’t just creating a brand campaign—they were telling a different kind of story.

In other words, Apple wasn’t just trying to entertain or build brand awareness. They weren’t just trying to advertise the basic features and benefits of their products, or compare them to their competitors. Apple went much deeper to explore the value and meaning that their products represented for their customers.

This was a radical jumping off point into the realm of strategic narrative which prefigured the landscape that we, as leaders, we are all in today.

Other storytelling innovators followed. Some of them will jump easily to your mind, like Phil Knight at Nike. Others are obscured behind the stories they created.

One famed corporate storyteller, Steve Clayton, worked at Apple’s chief competitor, Microsoft. Steve’s job was to take the company’s overall mission and bring it to life—in other words, to go deeply into the core of the company story.

When we launched Windows 10, which traditionally are these moments where you go and have a big celebration, we wanted to use the day to bring our mission to life instead, which is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We went to a village in the middle of Kenya and celebrated a group of local entrepreneurs who brought Wi-Fi connectivity to a community that never had that before.

It's very easy to slip into celebrating yourself and celebrating your product, but it's a lot more rewarding to go and find stories of where those products actually have an impact."

Messaging and Strategic Narrative: What’s the Difference?

Steve Clayton’s quote above exemplifies the difference between two similar-sounding concepts. In my corporate storytelling workshops for leaders, I like to call two concepts small-s storytelling and Big-S Storytelling.

Small-s stories are what most of us think about when we hear the word “storytelling”. Think a speech, a presentation, a social media post, a leadership keynote, sales pitches, etc. These are examples of tactical storytelling, where the goal is to get the message across. Most of us in business tell these kinds of stories regularly. The messaging is defined, and the goal is tangible.

An elevator pitch is the perfect example of a small-s story: perfectly polished, with a beginning, middle and an end.

Big-S Stories, on the other hand, are narratives. They deal not just with the topic at hand, but with the larger message they want their audiences to receive. In Steve Clayton’s quote above, the larger message was about Microsoft’s mission—and how the launch of one product fit into this bigger picture.

Big-S Stories are also pervasive in business, though many of us don’t think about them that often. They can be represented in terms of missions, purposes, core values and words. Importantly, though, they are intangible—meaning that they are more than just the words.

For example, on their own, an organization's core values are not normally a particularly engaging example of storytelling. (They wouldn't get a ton of likes on Instagram, and they are unlikely to go viral.) But if the core values are genuine and integrated into the business, they can have a profound guiding effect on the way the organization works.

They move from being a small story into a narrative—and those strategic narratives can change the way that small-s stories get executed.

What is changing in Strategic Storytelling today?

This shift towards strategic narrative is what has changed in business today. Think of some of the shifts happening in the backdrop of business:

  • Brands suddenly have access to many more channels for engaging their customers. The age of the 30-second TV spot died, being replaced by a company website… and a LinkedIn… and an Instagram… and a TikTok… and…

  • Other organizational functions suddenly have access to their own communications channel. Now, everyone in an organization, from CEO to the customer success person, can speak directly to the marketplace—for better or for worse—not to mention, each other.

  • Customers suddenly had a voice to talk about their experiences with a company's products and services. Think review sites, Twitter storms and the other impacts that have become a normal part of our existence.

The nature of the organizational story changed. Suddenly, the organizational story has become some combination of the story that the organization puts out through its channels and the story as key audiences and customers perceive it.

Moreover, business storytelling has acquired a new dimension. Whereas traditional brand marketing was one-directional, from the brand to the customers, today, effective communication needs to be two-way. No longer can a brand or an executive simply speak to a receptive and attentive audience. There needs to be a reciprocal element of call and response, where business people are actively engaging their stakeholders and audiences—and then replying to what they hear in real time.

More stories beget more stories. Slowly, almost without noticing, traditional leaders lost control of the narrative. Now, in a generative AI world, everything is up for grabs. The cat is out of the bag. Within organizations, new storytelling responsibilities have exploded overnight:

  • Engaging distracted audiences who are overwhelmed by noise

  • Explaining and contextualizing all that data

  • Bringing authenticity to their mission and vision

  • Getting buy-in for transformation and change projects

  • Communicating goals internally, across, organizations and divisions

  • Creating alignment among leaders

  • Connecting an individual’s daily tasks to the bigger vision

  • Creating excitement, motivation and attracting talent

  • Expressing your impact to customers

Each of these—and many more—are storytelling functions. Many of these are cross-functional responsibilities that transcend business siloes.

As a result, these narratives represent much more than a brand or a mission or a purpose or a culture—they are all of these things, together.

Against this backdrop comes the rise of the Chief Storytelling Officer.



Today’s Challenges in Corporate Communications

To belabor the point, let’s consider some of the challenges that companies face today that were completely unfamiliar only a few years ago.

Here’s a couple examples. (They’re a little dated, because I first wrote this article in 2018):

  • Uber: When Uber employee Susan Fowler published a memo about harassment in the workplace, the company ousted a CEO and became the subject of a federal inquiry into the workplace culture;

  • United: After a passenger was dragged off one of their planes, United lost $1B in shareholder value, which led to internal trainings and a restructuring;

These two examples exemplify how what’s happening inside the organization affects the way that it is perceived externally. And it shines a light on how the nature of leadership storytelling has changed.

A NYTimes editorial explained it like this:

Corporate America thrives by selling us what we want, and they do that by appealing to our identities. In 2018, for many Americans, our political identity seems to define us more than ever. It already influences whom we socialize with on Facebook, whom we marry, what news we read and where we live. It was only a matter of time before this big sort started to shape our consumer behavior, too.

In other words, today’s corporate communicators aren’t just responsible for telling us why their company is cool. They aren’t just responsible for contextualizing their mission, vision, and values. Today, businesses are like our lighthouse helping us determine what is good and moral.

Recent reports have reinforced this idea. The Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual survey of global sentiment towards institutions, suggests that companies who establish trust and guidance for their customers (and employees) are much more successful in achieving the acceptance of innovation.

Deloitte, in its annual Global HR Trends report, explains that corporations are facing an “imagination deficit”. Overcoming this deficit has become essential to organizational success.

Traditionally, organizations have focused on developing specific, easily replicable functional or technical skills. Not only were these skills easier to teach but organizations were also operating in a more stable, predictable environment at the time.

As the world becomes more interconnected, scaling the efficient execution of processes is becoming less important than the ability to adapt to changing market conditions and drive new value. This ability, which is closely tied to entrepreneurship and innovation, depends less on training workers in specific technical skills than on cultivating curiosity and other human capabilities that allow people to respond to changing conditions and imagine different futures.

Suddenly, we are asking the communications functions within companies to achieve goals that have traditionally been out of scope. Brand connects to action. Companies sell products that build identities. Workers need to learn curiosity, not skills. And, again, I haven’t even touched on the rapid pace of change. (This is me writing, not ChatGPT—but it might not be me for much longer.)

This is the backdrop giving rise to the Chief Storytelling Officer.

So, what does a Chief Storyteller do?

The best way to think of the Chief Storyteller is as the center of a vast, interconnected web of story.

Part of the Chief Storyteller's role is telling stories, of course. A more profound part of their role is listening to stories, and unearthing unexpected connections that have not yet been articulated.

The most essential role of the Chief Storytelling Officer is strategic. Which stories should be told where? How should these stories be developed? How to bring together multi divisions and functions, so that leadership, marketing, sales, culture, product, operations, and more can all be unified to create new and innovative value.

That’s a big mouthful. It’s a big responsibility.

A Sample Chief Storytelling Officer Job Posting

Listed out in terms of job responsibilities, a job posting for this role might look something like this:

Culture Crafting

  • Translates leadership visions into easily consumable employee messages

  • Increases and sustain employee engagement and participation

  • Stewards collaborative dialogue across cross-functional groups

  • Trains internal leaders and teams in the key organizational narratives

Story Crafting

  • Uncovering, capturing and building storytelling assets for each organizational function (case studies, social marketing, leadership keynotes, etc.)

  • Supporting leadership in using narrative to connect the organization’s past, present and future

  • Overseeing and designing consistent messaging across all brand channels

  • Tailoring messaging for different audiences and strategic goals

Story Measuring

  • Optimizing key engagement metrics, such as views, clicks, shares, likes, etc.

  • Conducting qualitative testing with various internal and external audiences

  • Reporting on results to leadership, managers, board of directors, etc.

With these key responsibilities:

  • In-depth understanding of

    • Digital and mobile marketing practices

    • Sales, pitches, presentations, persuasion

    • Modern media, including social, key content distribution channels and SEO/SEM

    • Modern metrics across owned, earned and paid: Conversion, amplification, ROI/economic value of investments, etc

    • Advertising

    • Branding

    • Traditional media, including radio, TV, print, packaging, OOH

    • A great eye for design

    • A passion for story, narrative structure and the creative arts

    • A skillful understanding of data reporting and analytics

    • A proven ability to translate business requirements across divisions, languages and cultures

    • The courage to try things that have never been tried before

    • The salesmanship to sell things that have never been tried before, to internal and external audiences

    • A deeply authentic approach to linking the personal and the professional

So, are you ready for the job?


How You Can Become a Chief Storytelling Officer

Now, at the climax of my article, I could list a few trite suggestions. I could tell you to design impactful stories! Develop a narrative roadmap! Put your case studies in storytelling format!

I could say something empty like: now is the time to put your stories to work!

But what I really want to say is this: it’s time to value storytelling differently. What I mean by that is: how you tell the story matters.

Beyond storytelling tactics, beyond being customer centric or constructing a Hero’s Journey, today, good leadership storytelling is about caring. It’s about caring about what you’re trying to say, it’s about saying it like a real human, and it’s about finding something within yourself that is going to connect with someone else and resonate, so that they act.

Connecting with this thing within yourself is how we become Chief Storytellers.

I would be remiss, at this moment, to not mention that I help company leaders make this transition yourself. As a storytelling consultant, I help my clients become more effective, compelling and creative. I help you take storytelling from what you do into who you are.

The impacts are pervasive: more connection, more inspiration, more motivation, more creativity.

For all of us, it’s time for a new vision of how a storytelling leader operates. Contact me here


Further Reading About the Chief Storytelling Officer

Jordan Bower

Jordan Bower is a consultant, coach and facilitator. He advises on Transformational Leadership and has taught Business Storytelling Trainings to nearly 200 for-profit and non-profit organizations based all over the world.

https://jordanbower.com
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