Behind the Conversation: The Politics of Storytelling in a Polarized Nation

For as long as I've been leading storytelling workshops, I've talked about eight roles that stories play in the life of an institution. They preserve the past. Build community. Create empathy. Teach. Heal. Inspire action. And among my favorites: they help us define ourselves — for ourselves and for others.

Eight roles. I've built whole workshop days around them.

Then I sat across from Jack Martin for Higher Ed Icons, and he handed Mallory Willsea and me a ninth.

What defining does

When a story defines, the institution is the source. You go looking for what's already true — the people, the impact, the mission — and you find language for it. The story flows outward from reality. The storyteller is a translator, faithful to what exists.

This is where most institutions live. And it's meaningful work. I've spent 30 years doing it.

What redefining does

Redefining reverses the arrow.

Instead of starting with what is and finding the words for it, you start with what the audience actually believes — what they need, what they fear, what they value — and you build toward a story the institution then has to grow into.

The story doesn't follow reality. It shapes it.

Jack's team spent years focused on moving public perception of a UW degree's value. They tested tuition numbers. Nothing moved. Then President Jones walked in and said he thought "debt-free" was a powerful notion. Jack's team tested it — told a sample of respondents that 70% of UW undergrads already graduate debt-free.

Twenty-point gain in perceived value. Just from the words.

Then they tested the hypothetical: what if UW committed to getting all Washington students there? Another 18 points. You can essentially double the percentage of people who believe a UW degree is worth the cost — if the institution is willing to make the story true.

That's not translation. That's navigation.

The thing I hadn't named

"Debt-free" didn't appear out of nowhere. The 70% number had always been there. Jack's team just called it "no known debt" — because in academia, you hedge. You caveat. You have a footnote ready. And so a fact that could have moved perception by 20 points was sitting in a drawer, dressed in disclaimers.

The research didn't find a new truth. It found the language that unlocked a truth already there. And then it handed that language back to the institution and said “Now decide if you're willing to build a strategy around it.”

That's a different job than storytelling as most of us practice it. It's intelligence work. The function that tells an institution what it doesn't yet know about itself, and hands it a direction.

What I'm taking into my next workshop

I've always taught that stories help us define ourselves. I'll add a beat now.

Stories can also help us redefine ourselves. Defining is retrospective. Redefining is prospective. Defining describes what the institution is. Redefining commits it to what it needs to become.

When Jack said on tape that every diploma the University of Washington issues is a story, I felt that. But what stayed with me is the other end of the sentence: every story an institution tells is also a promise. And the question is whether the institution is willing to keep it.

That's not a communications question.

That's something bigger. Check out the episode:

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