From inspiration to ownership: why storytelling alone won’t deliver breakthroughs

In leadership circles, a great deal is made about the importance of storytelling. And it’s fair to say, inspiring your organisation to achieve a goal is a giant leap forward from the control paradigm of leadership, in which mandates are given and expected to be followed without reason. But as we’re going to explore, it’s not quite enough.

If you want to achieve the impossible, you’ll need to do more than paint an enticing vision of the future. You’re going to have to let your people see your half-finished sketches and take up the brushes themselves.

Storytelling isn’t just about selling the dream

Martin Luther King Jr. gave one of the most iconic speeches in history with “I Have a Dream.” His words helped to change the course of history. But what made his speech and the wider civil rights movement powerful wasn’t just his oratory. It was the way people took that dream as their own. They organised and protested not because they were told to, but because they saw themselves in the vision.

Even the most inspiring message can only carry you so far. Today, teams don’t just want to be moved. They want to be invited in.

When it comes to employees, storytelling isn’t about “selling” people a dream, it’s about helping them see themselves inside it. Once people understand what’s at stake and what it could mean for them, they’ll make their own choice. And unless they choose it, you don’t have enrolment. You just have temporary compliance.

Why inspiration alone falls short

Mandates can drive action, but they rarely drive innovation. They can get things done, but not things we previously thought impossible. In the same way, inspiration is a step forward, but it’s not the breakthrough.

When people are merely inspired, they might move faster or try harder. But they’re still spectators to a story that belongs to someone else. The real shift happens when people feel part of the idea. When they start shaping it, challenging it, and bringing their own ambition to it. Storytelling can spark something. But it can’t hack enrolment.

The power of true enrolment

Enrolment is what happens when people take on a goal as if it were their own. This is not just in words, but in action. When a team is truly enrolled, you won’t hear “that’s not my department.” People start spotting opportunities, owning problems, and taking on a sense of leadership, ownership and accountability for things that go beyond their remit. Essentially, it’s the opposite of blame mentality. 

True enrolment creates a culture where accountability and creativity can co-exist. It’s not about replicating the chaos of a start-up where everyone wears five different hats. It’s about expanding the sense of responsibility people feel for the collective outcome, without erasing clarity of role. It’s possible to have high levels of organisation and process while still going beyond your bullet point list of duties and KPIs in who you’re being.

In this culture, people may delegate, but they don’t disengage. They stay connected to the outcome. Because the outcome matters to them personally.

So how do you shift from inspiration to ownership?

Start by asking a difficult question: is your team aligned with the need you’re trying to meet? Whether that’s going global, doubling revenue, achieving net-zero, or becoming the most sought-after team in the region, this is the question to ask yourself.

Here transparency is a lifesaver. If your team isn’t aligned, it’s better to find that out now. You can always coach people through it. Or, for example, start with a smaller team that is aligned, and let the results speak for themselves.

It’s also important to begin enrolling early. Don’t wait until your vision is fully formed and ready for the slide deck. Instead, test your thinking before it’s polished. Let people see the gaps. Let them ask hard questions. Forget the strategy and the plan to begin with, focus on figuring out where people’s priorities conflict with your own impossible ideas. 

This allows you to crowdsource concerns and means your leadership team can begin coaching people through them. You move people from generalist concerns (often laden with bias and judgement) to specific concerns with facts, so they can be addressed, and you can move forward. 

You might still be quite the storyteller. But your story will no longer be a one-way narrative. You’ll be talking about a vision that no longer belongs to you alone, but to everyone who hears it.