Storytelling as a Leadership Superpower

In partnership with

At a Glance

• Storytelling is how you move people without authority

• The bar for good storytelling is incredibly low

• Effort and humility beat charisma every time

• A story’s job: make people care enough to follow

• Great leaders don’t just tell stories — they design them

Hey folks,

Most teams treat storytelling like a soft skill, something nice to have once the “real work” is done.

But the truth is, almost everything you want to achieve at work depends on it. Because in product and even in leadership, you rarely lead with authority. You lead with influence.

And influence lives or dies on your ability to make people care about your story.

Let’s separate two kinds of storytelling: Product storytelling and leadership storytelling.

If you’re a product manager, in most cases you don’t get to hire, fire, or order anyone around. You guide through influence — convincing teammates, stakeholders, and execs to take the right bets in uncertain territory.

That means good storytelling is your job. You can’t fake alignment or force belief — you have to earn it by making people see why this path matters right now.

Leaders, on the other hand, could just tell people what to do. But the great ones don’t. They take the time to connect every action to meaning — the “why” behind the work — so their teams can repeat it, believe it, and act on it even when they’re two layers down.

And when they do it well, they add something rare: humility.

Humility doesn’t mean lack of direction. It means saying,

“Here’s what I believe based on what we know. But if new evidence proves me wrong, I’ll change my mind.”

That sentence alone builds more trust than a dozen vision decks.

A quick story

I once had a boss who singlehandedly caused our project to go a million dollars over budget. By all accounts, he should’ve been fired.

But he wasn’t — he was promoted.

Not because he was a great manager. He clearly wasn’t. But he could tell a story.

He was articulate, compelling, confident — and that skill alone bought him credibility others didn’t have.

Now, I’m not suggesting you storytell your way out of failure.
I’m saying: storytelling is power. And if you don’t use it, someone else will.

The story I always like to tell

Years ago, I spent a summer in the circus, yes, a real one. Among elephants, tents, and questionable hot dogs, there was a man whose job was to get shot out of a cannon twice a day- – the Human Cannonball.

One afternoon, he told me how he got the job: the previous Human Cannonball had overshot the net after the crew tested the cannon with a rain-soaked dummy that was twice as heavy. He survived, went home to recover, and promptly offered his pool boy the role.

It’s a story I’ve told on stage for years, not because it’s wild (though it is), but because it perfectly shows what makes any story stick.

Every compelling story has three parts:
a setup, a complication, and a resolution.
It paints the scene, raises the stakes, and lands with meaning.

That’s true whether you’re writing a pitch deck, explaining a roadmap, or trying to get buy-in for a new process. Without that arc, you’re just firing ideas into the air and hoping they don’t miss the net.

How to get better at storytelling

You don’t need to be poetic. You just need to try. Most people never do.

Start here:

• Find the theme. Before listing accomplishments, ask: what’s this really about? 

• Add humility. Be confident in your path, but open to being wrong. 

• Tell practical stories. Real events. Real work. Things you lived. 

• Keep it human. The audience should see themselves in it, not you. 

• Design it. Every good story has a setup, a complication, and a resolution.

It’s structure + intent.

The bottom Line

In a world flooded with AI content, dashboards, and buzzwords, compelling stories still make people care.

And the good news?
The bar is low.
All you have to do is try.

People don’t follow roadmaps. They follow meaning.
And meaning lives inside stories that make them care.

As we head into the slower weeks of the year, it’s a good time to look back on the stories you’ve told—and the ones still waiting to be shared.

Upcoming Workshops from Sense & Respond Learning

Objectives & Key Results — “Who Does What by How Much?”

• December 10–12 & 29-30, 2025 — with Rich Visotcky

• January 12–13 & 29th 2026 — with Rich Visotcky

• January 20–22, 2026 — with Martha Malloy & Randy Silver

📍Live online (Zoom) | 💬 English

Lean Product Management — Live Online Workshop

• January 6, 13, 20 & 27, 2026 — with Rich Visotcky

• January 17–18, 2026 — with Daksh Gupta

📍Live online (Zoom) | 💬 English

Product Discovery for Agile Teams

• January 19–28, 2026 — with Rich Visotcky

📍Live online (Zoom) | 💬 English

Register here: https://ti.to/sense-respond-learning/

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