On Narrative Intelligence – Stories are Our Truths, So Tell Them Well

When I was a kid, you went to school to learn from the teacher and the books in the library. And although our world brings us a vast amount of information into the palm of our hands, school has not changed that much. The theory goes that the more information we process, the more intelligent we get. However, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and the Internet of Things, etc., promise to automate away a widening swath of jobs that simply process data.[1] Given that, I would argue that we should shift our educational focus away from memorizing facts to understanding what makes us uniquely human. Levering our unique value proposition as a species will help us stay employed! After all, if we have learned anything from popular culture it is not to trust robots, from HAL 9000 to Ultron.[2]

My core belief is that learning to become fully human makes us better employees and collaborators and leaders. Memorizing facts and theories? Not so much. In addition, to abstract ideas, we need to understand what makes us – and others – tick. So, study those ideas, but also study our emotional and social intelligence,[3] and how that drives the way the world really works. It comes down to understanding how our stories drive our behaviors, as individuals and in the organizations in which we work, or we create. I am using the term Narrative Intelligence hoping that you will learn how stories combine our thoughts and feeling and actions to make meaning for ourselves and others.

In business, storytelling has long been taught as a leadership communication skill. But stories are much more important than that. They tell us who we are. They tell us what our lives mean. And, if we share them well, they can help us belong to the communities we seek. But they can also blind us. Of course, our habitual self-narratives just feel right to us. After all, those feelings come from a lifetime of experience. But despite how comforting those lived narratives may feel, they can be wrong. As such, we see what we want to see. Sometimes, we see what we are afraid to see. What we miss is the truth. And that can isolate us and prevent us from reaching our potential. The theory and practice of Narrative Intelligence is designed to:

• Help our stories flourish,

• Overcome self-narratives that can hold us back, and,

• Embrace new stories – co-authored with others – that can drive the change a changing world needs.

[1] https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/47-of-jobs-in-the-next-25-years-will-disappear-according-to-oxford-university [2] https://www.looper.com/312810/sci-fis-most-evil-robots-from-androids-to-computers/ [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2021/02/16/why-emotional-and-social-intelligence-are-must-have-leadership-traits/?sh=2a00e1d35a6e