We are not “consuming” stories.
We are organising ourselves around them.
From fiction to podcasts to pop culture, our appetite for story is often described as escapism or entertainment. But that framing misses something more fundamental. Stories are how human beings make sense of complexity. They are how we decide who is right, who is wrong, who belongs and what matters, even when we know things are not that binary.
And that does not switch off when we walk into work.
The same neurological wiring that pulls us into a novel or a true crime podcast is shaping how we interpret a board update, a leadership announcement or a company crisis. We are constantly constructing meaning. We are constantly filling gaps. We are constantly asking: what is really going on here?
This is why Story-Centred Leadership is not a communications technique. It is a recognition of reality. Organisations are narrative systems. Culture is a story people are living inside. Strategy is a story about the future that we are asking others to believe.
If leaders do not consciously work with story, story will still work on them. It will harden into rumour, mythology or mistrust.
I explore this more broadly in my recent piece for the Belfast Telegraph: Here
Because the real question is not why we love stories. It is whether we understand the power they already have over us.