132 Strategic Leadership
its members. A narrative of identity involves the communication of beliefs to
believers and of responsibilities to those who hold them. Although leaders must
not ignore the facts or evade cogent arguments, their task is to go beyond exter-
nal explanations to create interior meanings that address persons, including
themselves, as participants in a community of commitment. In doing so, they
seek to tell the story in language and embody it in actions that engage the lives
of those they lead. Leaders relate stories that will give life to shared beliefs and
release the power of values held in common. Stories, as we have seen, involve
the inspiration of a vision and a summons to responsibility. So, first to know
and then to tell the story are foundational aspects of an integrative discipline
of leadership.
Normative Criteria for Stories
The place of narratives in leadership also has deep moral ambiguities and chal-
lenges that must be confronted, for history bears ample witness to the way that
leaders manipulate and distort stories for their own purposes. Countless narratives
of identity are exclusive and repressive. They can capture the imagination and
draw humans into perpetual cycles of war, domination, and suffering. Stories can
be products of an evil imagination and unleash ugly passions.
As we have learned in reviewing several examples of controversies over mis-
sion, the story has to be interrogated and evaluated by criteria and standards of
evidence, as is the case with any cognitive inquiry or discipline. Not every story is
good or true, and they must be tested in appropriate ways. The modern imagina-
tion has not found it easy to find tests for matters that have to do with values; yet
it would be foolhardy to leave the most important commitments that humans ever
make simply to the play of passion, preference, or circumstance. Whatever dif-
fidence we entertain intellectually about the worth and objectivity of our master
values and stories, we inescapably shape the actual content of our lives around
values we take to be indubitable. We should be able to do more than just stam-
mer or shrug our shoulders when it comes to giving an account of the stories and
convictions by which we live.
These reflections may seem far from the narratives of colleges and universities,
but they are connected to them in important ways if some of the tasks of lead-
ership are to follow the methods of an applied discipline. As Howard Gardner
(1995) indicates, every story encounters counter-stories that offer an alternative
account of an organization’s history, values, and purposes, so the credibility of
collegiate stories depends on criteria and evidence. If a story is to be persuasive
against its contenders, it must have support for its claims. If college leaders try
to treat the story as a plaything of their egos by distorting the facts, erasing the
legacy, or proclaiming an empty vision, the story will not be effective or credible
as a vehicle for leadership.
This is not the place to develop a full analysis of the normative dimensions of
stories of identity. Collegiate storytelling does not require as much, but it does