Strategic Storytelling: Why Some Stories Drive Your Success at Work but Others Don’t

In this ho-hum debut, Sharma, founder of the management consulting firm Narrative, details how corporate professionals can use storytelling to craft successful pitches to their superiors and coworkers. Identifying five types of “storytellers,” Sharma suggests “reflective storytellers” draw on personal experiences to make their case, while “marketer storytellers” aim to connect with their audience by demonstrating vulnerability. Sharma describes how to draw on the strengths of all five to create “maximal and minimal narratives,” the former of which explains “where we have come from, what is causing the pressure to change, [and] where are we headed,” whereas the latter sticks to “where we are now and where we can be.” Steps for telling maximal narratives include recounting a story of someone negatively impacted by a problem and describing how one’s proposed solution would solve it. The advice is solid if unsurprising, but it’s hampered by confusing terminology that asks readers to distinguish between “maximal and minimal stories” and “maximal and minimal narratives” (the latter of which are apparently more “forward-looking”), as well as “journalist” and “reporter” storyteller types. (The former finds stories while the latter communicates them, raising the question of whether the former should count as a “storyteller.”) Readers will have to sort through confusing jargon to reach the straightforward guidance buried underneath. (Dec.)