Arete Volume One Fall 2022

Αρετή (Arete) Journal of Excellence in Global Leadership | Vol. 1 No. 1 | 2022

Introduction In two recent study abroad trips in Greece and Ireland, this author observed that speakers in nearly every visit to a location, utilized storytelling to describe historical accounts, relate cultural legends and myths, or explain the origin story of key organizations, initiatives, projects, or people. These speakers connected with audience members by discussing stories of accomplishment, hardship, and perseverance. The author, who grew up on a United States consumption of history, fiction, comic books, and vintage pop culture, marveled at the pervasiveness of storytelling in these cultures. As observed, these stories extended deeply into a multitude of subjects using some of the same adventure, amusement, legend, myth, and love of the protagonist as their fictional counterparts. These observations encouraged the author to follow-up with further study in Greece, Ireland, and the United States to begin to understand global leadership storytelling across organizations and learn even more about its effect on self-efficacy and wellbeing on the part of members. Since committing to the project, research and lay colleagues began to flood this author with the ways that storytelling was emerging in their work, occurrence in the organization, and observations of other cultural moments where the story was key to the interaction. These observations on global leadership storytelling are supported by its common use across cultures. Each day, a global plethora of organizational members go about their days submerged in storytelling from the moment they wake until that moment their day ends with slumber. These same leaders, may then, in turn, use storytelling to connect with organizational members, inspire teammates, and navigate demanding situations. There is little known about global leadership storytelling at a worldwide scale and the extent that it connects organizational members. It is not known if leaders perceive utilizing the functions of such storytelling as helpful or if they even admit that it is occurring. More specifically, it is not fully understood whether perceptions of self efficacy or organizational fulfilment towards a sense of wellbeing increase from such efforts. This essay offers that more should be learned about global leadership storytelling. At its root, this essay contends that storytelling, as that strong communicative device helping create identification between speaker and audience, deserves greater study and consideration beginning in follow-up studies in Greece, Ireland, and the United States and with a series of key inquiry that can be continued across organizations. This work uses Narrative Paradigm Theory to offer that these stories exist in numerous forms and can be evaluated and utilized robustly to the betterment of organization and audience, alike (Fisher, 1985). The essay contends that understanding such storytelling may begin to inform of its effects on feelings of self-efficacy and wellbeing among organizational members while offering a model and series of questions to evaluate these processes.

A Framework for Examining Global Leadership Storytelling: Narrative Paradigm Theory

Storytelling is intrinsic in the cultures of the world and has been present since the dawn of civilization reaching every facet of individuals, as they combine and organize, and the shared meaning they make while informing experiences (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Josselson et al., 2002; Lieblich et al., 1998). Organizational communicators and

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