Leadership storytelling

Purpose - The purpose of this viewpoint piece is to focus on sharing a set of best practices with senior and emerging leaders.Design methodology approach - The paper demonstrates the relevance of the skills of storytelling to the practice of leadership and provides a set of suggestions and recommendations for effective use of stories, based on the authors' personal experience and observations.Findings - Leaders who tell stories compellingly communicate important messages in a memorable way, offer a pathway to leadership for others, develop more effective relationships with those they lead, and can create an inspirational culture in their organizations.Practical implications - Leaders can search their own history and experience for important lessons learned that can be communicated in the form of a narrative and learn to tell them with grace, humor, and or incisiveness at appropriate times in the life of their organization or key people.Originality value - Those who are leaders or who work to develop leaders can benefit from this alternative approach to leadership communication.