Keir Starmer’s resignation this week, less than two years into a historic mandate, offers a useful lesson about storytelling skills for leaders.
Starmer wasn’t brought down by a scandal or a catastrophic decision; he was gradually undone by something harder to define – a growing sense, even among his own MPs, that nobody could quite say what his government was for or where it was taking the country. In other words, he lacked a compelling story.
Most pundits agree that his greatest challenge (and a significant reason his leadership failed) was communication. Not so much a lack of vision, as an inability to communicate that vision in a way that rallied the country around it. In other words, he lacked a compelling story.
Why Storytelling Skills Matter for Leaders
Of course, a core responsibility of any leader is communication. Being able to communicate the company’s vision and strategy, in a way that resonates with employees, is central to effective leadership. It becomes even more important in times of uncertainty.
This has been on my mind a lot lately because so much of my leadership coaching this year has focused on coaching strategic storytelling skills.
Over the past six months, as I’ve been helping leaders to communicate changes to company direction and organisational structure, I’ve seen many change communication presentations. Most have been clearly structured, many professionally designed but few have had that vital element that makes a change presentation meaningful and memorable – a sense of story.
Storytelling Offers Hope, Strategy Offers Direction
A change story should communicate the what, the why and the how as concisely and as vividly as possible. It should draw a picture of where the company is going, show what’s at stake, outline the path ahead and show the audience where they fit into the story. Without all these elements, the story will fail to generate buy in, let alone ignite action.
Kier Starmer talked a lot about the difficult road ahead without first drawing a picture of the bright future it was taking us to. Perspiration without inspiration. Boris Johnson was the opposite – all “sunlit uplands” without acknowledging the tough journey required to reach them.
How To Improve Your Storytelling Skills
In my sessions with leaders, we focus on four key questions to create a simple narrative that can be delivered without slides, at any moment:
- Where are we going?
- Why does this matter now?
- How do we get there?
- What do I need from people?
The first question is about painting a picture of the future – what I like to call “the bright, new day.” It involves showing people where the organisation is heading and what success will look like in one, three, or five years’ time. Whether a leader uses a metaphor, an analogy, or simply paints a picture of the future through vivid language, people need to “see” where they’re headed and convinced it’s a place they want to get to.
The second question is about giving people a compelling reason for change and showing them what’s at stake. That doesn’t always mean appealing to fear (although the “burning platform” still has its place). But it can also mean appealing to people’s values and aspirations, creating a desire to be part of something bigger than themselves.
The third question is about how we’ll get to the future. The key here is to convey enough specifics about the plan – including key initiatives, timelines and success measures – without overloading the audience with detail. Less is more in this section unless you’re delivering an in-depth strategic presentation to senior managers.
The final question is often overlooked. Leaders describe the destination and the organisational steps to get there but forget to give their people a role in the journey. Most people don’t resist change because they’re cynical; they resist because no one has connected the organisational shift to their role or team.
Turn the Answers into an Elevator Pitch
The answers to these questions can then be distilled into a few vivid, emotive, and memorable sentences – a high-level story that functions like an elevator pitch; something that can be easily remembered and accurately repeated. This is the heart of good storytelling coaching: if your people can tell that story to a new hire, a customer, even a friend, then you’ve created a story with real traction.
It’s also where presentation skills coaching earns its keep. A leader can have the right words on paper, but it’s the delivery – tone, pacing, presence – that makes a story land in the room rather than just on the slide.
Think About How the Story Travels Cross Culturally
There’s a further wrinkle for leaders operating across languages and cultures: even when the story exists, it often doesn’t travel. The same narrative lands differently in different rooms, and what feels like alignment at the top can quietly fragment by the time it reaches teams working in a second language or a different cultural context. The story needs to be translatable, not just clear. This means being intentional about the choice of metaphor or anecdote, as well as ensuring your
A Question More Than a Lesson
None of this is to suggest that Keir Starmer’s downfall is simply a cautionary tale about messaging. Leadership is vastly more complex than communication alone and reducing any premiership to “he wasn’t a good storyteller” would be reductive. But there’s something in his experience that is worth considering, particularly for anyone leading through change.
Perhaps the most useful takeaway isn’t a framework or a five-step model. It’s a question worth returning to, whatever kind of organisation you lead:
If someone asked your team what you’re all working towards this year, would their answers tell the same story?
If not, that gap is probably worth exploring. Because, as this week has reminded us, the absence of a shared story has a way of becoming the story itself.
For more information on coaching storytelling skills for leaders, contact louise@bespoke-coaching.com,
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