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JMD
30,3 INTRODUCTION
The use and abuse of storytelling
236
in organizations
Adrian N. Carr
University of Western Sydney, Australia, and
Cheryl Ann (formerly Lapp)
Labyrinth Consulting, Nanoose Bay, Canada

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce the manner in which storytelling has become an
increasingly common part of management development, and to highlight some of the use and abuse of
storytelling as a management development tool.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts an initial warning about the way storytelling
is being used, particularly by management and leadership coaches, questioning whether the term
“storytelling” is an appropriate term to use for what is occurring. The notion of “storyselling” is
introduced in such a context and, in so doing, stimulates critical reflection about storytelling. A
summary of key ideas of other papers is also presented to assist the reader in better understanding the
broader trajectories contained in the papers as a whole.
Findings – Many are now starting to question practical guidance that is emerging from organization
and management literature. Multiple paradigms have yielded not complementary perspectives on
management problems, but less than unambiguous voices and guidance. Storytelling has become
increasingly popular because it fills a void left by the current state of the organization and
management literature. The practical guidance that “preaches” how an approach worked for others in
similar situations makes storytelling a big business. Often wrapped up in the rhetoric of management
and leadership coaching, storytelling becomes a core educative tool – a tool that this paper, and
volume, suggests needs to be carefully examined.
Originality/value – The paper, and the volume as a whole, represents an opportunity for readers to
join with the authors in a reflexive consideration of storytelling. The paper and volume also represent
a cautionary note to those who rely upon what is dubbed “storytelling” as a core educative tool.
Keywords Storytelling, Coaching, Management development
Paper type General review

Journal of Management Development
Vol. 30 No. 3, 2011
pp. 236-246
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0262-1711
DOI 10.1108/02621711111116162
Introduction
In the call for papers for this special issue, it was noted that in 2003, it had been
estimated there were some 15,000 full-time and part-time management or leadership
coaches worldwide; and that this number was growing at a rate of about 40 percent per
year (Arnaud, 2003, p. 1133). As a process of adult education in the workplace, the mere
need for coaching could be taken to imply that the learner or protégé is somehow
deficient: “Subordinates must be advised on how to do their jobs better and to be
coached to better performance. Coaching problems are usually caused by lack of
ability, insufficient information or understanding, or incompetence on the part of the
subordinates” (Whetton and Cameron, 2002, p. 222). More and more we can note that
workplace adult educators such as coaches use storytelling as a learning and
development tool to identify these deficiencies that we contend also apply to the coach.
 Whilst some are very skeptical about the idea that individual and group performance The use and
can be improved through coaching, others have viewed coaching as a panacea for much abuse of
that causes organizations to fail. Some have even suggested that coaching is a pragmatic
way of filling the void that has been created by the failure of management and storytelling
organization theory to provide managers with unambiguous advice about how to
manage. This advice also applies to storytelling: “‘The shortest route between two people
is a story’, says Dianna Carr, a senior storyteller at Envisioning þ Storytelling, one of the 237
world’s most successful story management consultancies” (Taylor, 2006, p. 2). The
stories that coaches draw upon to assist leaders and managers to improve their
performance, in our view, is not really storytelling as such, but “storyselling” (Carr and
Lapp, 2005a, b, 2007; Lapp and Carr, 2007, 2008, 2010). Much of the management
literature about stories and storytelling treat stories as though they are simply “neutral”
objects rather than exploring the manner in which the story and dialogue is constructed
to convince the “listener” to accept the story. The crisis of confidence that may be
generated by the perceived need to engage a coach, in our view, creates part of the
psychological conditions for stories to be effectively “sold” to the listener.
Others have carried cautionary notes and pleas to understand the motivation and
psychodynamic processes that are engaged in the telling of stories, in the literature on
storytelling. Gabriel (2004), for example, suggests:
Instead of accepting all voices of experience as equally valid and equally worthy of attention,
I would argue that it is the job of researchers to interrogate experiences, seeking to examine
not only their origins, but also those blind spots, illusions, and self-deceptions that crucially
and legitimately make them up. Far from being an unqualified source of knowledge,
experience must be treated with the same skepticism and suspicion with which we approach
all other sources of authoritative knowledge (p. 29).
We would suggest that at the present time what eludes us is a breadth and depth of
analysis of how coaches use stories and for what reasons – hence the need for this
Special Issue. Before providing an overview of the papers in this Special Issue, we
think it useful to provide the reader with a little more insight into the term
“storyselling”.

Storyselling
While this special issue is about storytelling, as we alluded to in our opening
paragraphs, when “storytelling” is in the hands of management and leadership
coaches, it may become an activity of selling a story. We would not suggest for a
minute that management and leadership coaches are the only group to engage in what
we describe as “storyselling”. For the activity of assembling or constructing stories to
convince the listener of the “pearls” of wisdom that are contained therein is an activity
quite common to workplace adult educators and indeed to many situations where
stories are told.
The motivation for presenting the object, called a story, is not only self-evident in
the choice of the object – the theme of the story – but, also has a presence in which
fragments are chosen to comprise “the story” and in how the story is communicated.
Indeed, having used the term in a number of publications, we became aware that the
term had in fact been used before: “Storyselling for financial advisors: how top
producers sell” (West and Anthony, 2000). The motivation of these authors is quite
clear, as they argue that “if you rely on facts, statistics, and charts to sell, you’re
JMD putting your clients to sleep [. . .] with the right stories and metaphors, you’ll see better
results” (p. 3). In analyzing why better results are achieved, West and Anthony (2000)
30,3 suggest that the psychological selling of a story creates a trance-like state in the
listener and, in so doing, makes them more receptive to suggestion.
The idea that there is a connection between the telling (selling) of a story and the
psychological state of the listener is one with which we would agree. In the case of
238 management development and management coaching in particular, there are added
ingredients between the parties involved – ingredients that make the listener more
vulnerable and receptive to being sold a story. While hearing or reading a story that is
framed by the author as a matter of entertainment or while being present at a movie
where a story unfolds – these may induce a trance-like state that makes one more
accepting of the integrity or coherence of what is being told. However, a more
vulnerable state may exist for those who seek management coaching and management
development with a longer-lasting residual effect.
In the situation of management coaching and management development one would
expect that those seeking the help wish to be able to trust the story as a means to
improve their present management skills and performance. It is in such a psychological
context that those being coached tend to over-trust the story as by doing so it will
result in emotional and self-esteem rewards. The psychodynamic theories of Sigmund
Freud and Melanie Klein and the notion of dialectics are instructive in explaining why
this over-trust of the story occurs.

Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein

Sigmund Freud’s discovery of the realm of the mind called the “unconscious” as a
source of motivation and a “place” where certain thoughts and desires are hidden from
the individual’s awareness, was a discovery very much in contrast to the view of his
contemporaries. To that point, it had been widely assumed that the unconscious was a
messy collection of ideas, desires, mental residue and or impulses that were beyond
analysis and largely inconsequential to “normal” human behavior (see, for example,
Hewett, 1889, pp. 32-3). Some of his contemporaries also thought the unconscious
might be some kind of paranormal or spiritual repository or entity. In an early work,
Freud (1991) wrote:
“Unconscious” is no longer the name of what is latent at the moment; the unconscious is a
particular realm of the mind with its own wishful impulses, its own mode of expression and
its peculiar mental mechanisms which are not in force elsewhere (p. 249).
Freud was to maintain that, like the proverbial iceberg, much of the mental activity
responsible for human interaction lay below the “surface”, away from our conscious
awareness. Most of us would now be familiar with the general typography of the mind
that was suggested by Freud (1984; 1988a, b), namely that it consisted of three
hypothetical mental provinces:
(1) the id – various biological urges, drives or instincts;
(2) the ego – the part of the mind that uses logic, memory and judgment in its
endeavor to satisfy the demands of the id; and
(3) the super-ego – the province of the mind whose concern is for obeying society’s
“rules of conduct”, (i.e. morality and social norms) and reminds the ego of these
social realities.
Freud argued that the id operated entirely hidden from our conscious awareness and The use and
that also, in the realm of the unconscious, were aspects of the ego and super-ego (see abuse of
Carr and Lapp, 2006, p. 28). Freud called particular attention to the manner in which
certain ideas, feelings, desires and urges emanating from the id were held back by the storytelling
ego and repressed from conscious thought. In processes that operate at an unconscious
level, the ego employs a variety of defense mechanisms, including the repression, in an
effort to protect the integrity of the psyche from what the ego recognizes as potentially, 239
of a reoccurrence of aspects of previous painful experiences or negative
anxiety-producing situations. These defenses are also used by the ego, often in
response to reminders from the super-ego about social realities and constraints, to
delay or postpone desires of the id to a time and location that is deemed more
appropriate.
An important matter for us in this paper is that the super-ego, with its prohibitive
(i.e. how one should not behave) and ideal aspects (i.e. ideally, how one should behave),
was established, according to Freud (1985), through three different forms of
identification:
First, identification [. . .] in the original form of [an] emotional tie with an object; second, in a
regressive way [. . .] [as] a substitute for a libidinal object-tie, as it were by means of
introjection of the object into the ego; and thirdly [. . .] [as] a new perception of a common
quality shared with some other person who is not an object of the sexual instinct (p. 137,
italics added).
Laplanche and Pontalis (1973) captured the importance of the notion of identification
when they defined it as a:
[. . .] psychological process whereby the subject assimilates an aspect, property or attribute of
the other and is transformed, wholly or partially, after the model the other provides. It is by
means of a series of identifications that the personality is constituted and specified (p. 205,
italics added).
Thus, for example, in identifying with the male parent (Oedipus complex) in the
original form of an emotional tie, the super-ego’s:
[. . .] relation to the ego is not exhausted by the precept: ‘You ought to be like this (like your
father)’. It also comprises the prohibition: ‘You may not be like this (like your father) – that is,
you may not do all that he does; some things are his prerogative’ (Freud, 1984, p. 374, original
emphasis; see also Freud, 1988a, p. 98).
Prohibition and ideal – such is the double aspect of the super-ego.
The importance of Freud’s originating work on identification, projection, introjection,
splitting and transference was to form the basis for the works of Melanie Klein. As one
commentator observes, “The Kleinian Technique is psychoanalytical and strictly based
on Freudian psychoanalytic concepts” (Segal, 1990, p. 3).
The aforementioned quote from Freud (1985, p. 137) where he notes that
“identification [. . .] in the original form of [an] emotional tie with an object” is one of the
foundation concepts in the work of Klein. For Klein, the relationship with objects is one
that is part of the human psyche from the cradle to the grave. Indeed, the earlier in life
experiences are embedded in the psychodynamics that can be observed throughout life.
The first object that an infant experiences is, of course, the mother. The manner in
JMD which the infant is engaged with the mother forms the basis, or “template”, for one’s
30,3 psychodynamic reaction when one is “reminded” of these earlier in life experiences.
One of the more significant psychodynamic reactions is that called “splitting”. This
psychodynamic is a defensive (i.e. regressive or “primitive”) reaction commonly
observed when one experiences some form of anxiety, feels threatened or is frustrated
at not being able to get what one wants. When the infant engages with the mother, it
240 does so by comprehending the mother (an object) in terms of her functions – these
functions being “part objects”. At this early stage in life, the infant does not
comprehend the mother as a “whole object”. Feeding from the breast or bottle is an
experience that gives rise to ambiguity. On the one hand, the infant experiences the
breast or bottle as a source of pleasure as providing sustenance and reassurance in its
warmth, yet on the other hand this part object if it does not appear when the
sustenance is required and reassurance is needed, the infant has destructive fantasies
toward the “bad” breast and may cry and bite the mother (Suttie, 1935). Because the
child cannot yet understand ambiguity and mutual causation of the object being both a
source of pleasure and unpleasure, the child changes its mind about the object
depending upon whether the object provides pleasure or unpleasure. Such decisive
splits are also derisive: to eliminate ambiguity, the infant uses the process of splitting
to exaggerate differences between “good” and “bad” aspects of the object. It is the
“bad” part of the object that is projected into an other or, as Alford (1994) would say,
projected into another psychic container.
Projection works when the other introjects (i.e. absorbs) the “bad”, feels badly, and
in turn changes her or his behavior into what she or he perceives will be all “good” for
the projector, the infant. “[T]he persecutory character of the anxiety and [. . .] the
schizoid nature of the mechanisms at work” (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1973, p. 298) is
what Klein termed the paranoid-schizoid position. The infant projects love and
idealizes the good object but goes beyond mere projection in trying to induce in the
mother the feelings towards the bad object for which she must take responsibility. This
is the process of projective indentification.
Klein (1975a-d) argues that what has just been described occurs in the oral sadistic
stage of an infant’s development and that as the child matures, it transitions to what
she labels the depressive position, where there is an understanding that it both hates
and loves the same breast. Klein believed in the mutual causation of feeling love and
hate at the same time. The infant feels shame for hating a loved object “toward whom
the child feels deep gratitude and concern” (Mitchell and Black, 1995, p. 95). In another
defensive effort, the child may seek to deny or disavow (Freud, 1986) the reality of the
persecutory object. This process emphasizes the “good breast” as the core around
which the ego can sustain itself or develop “as if it were the grain of sand that yields
the pearl” (Klein, 1975c, pp. 178-80) while simultaneously allowing the repression of
“bad breast” memories. The experience of envy of the good breast is, however, a
potential source of interference in that process. While in normal development we pass
through this phase, this primitive defense against anxiety (i.e. the paranoid-schizoid
position) is a regressive reaction that, in the sense of always being available to us, is
never transcended.
The paranoid-schizoid position that involves the psychodynamic processes of
projection and introjective identification and splitting, has been noted by many writers
as significant, not only at the level of the individual, but also at the level of social
movements and that of broader group dynamics. In one of our earlier papers (Carr, The use and
1997), for example, these dynamics were noted in a “reading” of the aftermath of the abuse of
Oklahoma bombing. Swogger (1994) noted the same psychodynamics in an appraisal
of the environmental movement and argued: storytelling
As pointed out by Horowitz (1983) and others, projective identification involves another step
beyond blaming: inducing the target of the projection to experience the projected feelings. In
face-to-face situations this may involve subtle nonverbal communication or various 241
interpersonal ploys. In public situations, projective identification may involve forms of attack
or accusation; legal, financial, or regulatory threats; or manipulation and exaggeration of
guilt. [. . .] Wholesale processes of projection and projective identification lead to “splitting” at
the social level: whole classes of people, groups, or organizations are condemned while others
may be idealized. The world is composed of “us” and “them” (p. 71).
In such social movements we may find that the leader/authority figure becomes
idealized as, through the process of splitting, the group members collude in their
fantasies and simultaneously individually and collectively deny “bad” parts in
themselves and their leader.

Storytelling, coaching and psychodynamics

The psychodynamics that we have just described can be noted in the manner in which
coaches deploy their stories.
At the heart of these dynamics are the feelings of shame, guilt or inadequacy that
are implied in the individual requiring the new or improved skills that the coach may
be able to impart. The would-be protégé of the coach seeks to identify with the stories
that are being told (sold) in the process of coaching. To identify with the stories is the
pathway to improved skill development. The protégé is the “target” of the projective
identification – while loving and idealizing the good object, the good story, but at the
same time the coach will seek to simultaneously induce in the protégé feelings towards
the bad object, the bad stories about their less skilful state, for which the protégé must
take responsibility.
In the paranoid-schizoid position from which splitting is characteristic, the coaching
involves a degree of guilt being projected onto the other, and the other or introjector
consciously or unconsciously allows guilt to penetrate. The introjector feels shame for
not “believing”, for not demonstrating the same feelings as the projector. Moreover, one
must trust the good stories, and even over-trust them, if one is not to be left without a
good object.

Splitting, binary opposites and dialectics: storytelling and storyselling

The psychodynamics we have described in this paper are evident in many ways in our
everyday language. We commonly hear people dividing the world into right and
wrong, good and bad, self and other, etc., as though these terms help us to eliminate
any ambiguity and as though the terms themselves self-declare mutually exclusive
descriptions of the manner in which we experience our world. Moreover, as we have
noted in the previous section of this paper, when we feel threatened or anxious, the
characteristic splitting dynamic involving projective and introjective identification
may become evident – idealisation of self and the “like” minded while condemnation
and rejection of those “foreigners” that threaten. The language of binary opposites is
one that may belie the characteristics of splitting and invoke part objects as was
JMD previously described without a realization that they are not mutually exclusive. When
30,3 we invoke the term storyselling we do so as a dialectic opposite of storytelling. Thus,
we do not comprehend these activities as “entirely” mutually exclusive, but as
connected.
Whenever someone tells a story, whatever the motive, we would suggest that there
is at least an element of storyselling involved. Storytelling and storyselling are not
242 good or bad objects that are mutually exclusive – one is inferred in the other.
Storyselling is necessary to stimulate employee engagement. That said, the more
storyselling is used or the higher quantity of it, the lower the individual and social
reflexivity or quality of the storytelling and vice versa. The lower the reflexivity, the
more storyselling is tolerated and abused at the expense of storytelling (Ann and Carr,
2010).
We opened this paper with a “story” about how the rise of coaching can in large part
be attributed the growing disenchantment with management and organization theory.
Robert Brunner (1998), in noting what he detected as a turning away from current
fashion, faddism and paradigm wars that were and continue to be characteristic of the
field, made the following observation:
Many of those who are in positions of responsibility within firms have become tired of
management textbooks and fashionable trends, and turn instead to a “supposed subject of
knowing”: the coach.
The manager and her coach: what a strange couple! Is the coach the Mephistopheles to the
manager’s Faust, the Sganarelle of Don Juan, the Sancho Panza of Don Quixote, the man
Matti of Herr Puntila, or Friday to the manager’s Robinson? Is the coach a jester, an eminence
grise, a scapegoat, a confessor, a confident, an intellectual guide, a mentor, a maternal figure,
a severe father, a therapist? The avatars of the transference are manifold. It is necessary for
the subject to pass via the other in order to have access to his or her truth: and the manager
does not escape this law. Would coaching thus be the modern version of the Socratic
dialogue? Yet, coaching takes many forms, from technical counseling to the psychological
domination that flirts with suggestion, for this is a domain devoid of any fixed deontology
(pp. 515-6).
The notion of “the coach”, and “coaching”, would appear to be a possible avenue of
escape and a more “down-to-earth” approach to providing guidance to those who
organize and manage. Yet, as Brunner (1998) stated above, the notion of coaching is
one that has been “borrowed” from other discourses and practices. If storytelling is on
the rise as the preferred “instrument” of coaching, it will be somewhat ironic that as it
is transformed into storyselling the less reflexivity is psychologically permissible. In
this way, we lose storyselling’s value as a trigger for both transactional and
transformational development. We continue to argue that one cannot understand “both
sides of the story” on coaching until one understands storyselling.

About the papers in this special issue

The concept of storyselling is at the heart of the next paper by Stefanie C. Reissner and
Angélique Du Toit. The paper is entitled “Power and the tale: coaching as storytelling”
and takes a social constructivist view of coaching in exploring the power dynamics
that are at play amongst the various “stakeholders” involved. Reissner and Du Toit
argue that coaching is fundamentally an activity that involves the use and abuse of
power, and one of the calls they make in this paper is for all parties involved to be more
reflexive as to these power dynamics. It is through such reflexivity that the morphing The use and
of storytelling into storyselling is better understood within the coaching process. This abuse of
argument has resonance with the conceptualization of storytelling and storyselling as
dialectic opposites, noted earlier in this introduction. storytelling
To understand the power dynamics in which storytelling and storyselling occur in
the coaching process, the authors put forward what they call a “four-stage model” of
storyselling – a model that is a dynamic process involving the organization, the coach 243
and the “coachee” as principal parties. These four stages are:
(1) the contracting stage (the coach selling their services to the organization; the
organization selling their need for coaching);
(2) the selection stage (the organization selling the merits of coaching to potential
coachees);
(3) the coaching stage (coach and coachee become involved in selling stories to each
other); and
(4) the dissemination stage (new stories being sold to other stakeholders with a
motivation for change).

The manner in which the stakeholders interact in the coaching process is clearly
identified in this paper, and this four-stage model aids in the conceptualization of both
this process and the place of storytelling and storyselling within the various dynamics
in coaching.
The next paper is by Florence Maria Rudolf Céline Basten, who raises a number of
issues that resonate with a number of other papers in this special issue. The
fundamental issue that is explored in this paper is making explicit the “conventions”
and interpretative procedures in storying. In pursuing such an aim, Basten introduces
a body of work that may be less familiar to readers of JMD. Basten turns to the work of
George Roth and Art Kleiner (1997) on learning history and also to the notion of “saga”
in order, as she puts it, “not to just look at stories people tell, but also examine how
people create their organisational reality as discursive practice with these stories, and
reveal patterns as emerging from a dynamic multitude of stories”.
The aim of learning history is claimed to be emancipation and, as a narrative
method, this emancipation comes from revealing the larger organization story (the
saga) into which smaller, individual stories have been incorporated and, as such,
acknowledged. It is argued by Basten that the understanding of the manner in which
these stories emerge should not be based upon assumptions of rationality, order and
intentionality, but should admit other possibilities that relate to “un-order”,
spontaneity and paradox. In examining the “un-order”, the nefarious ways in which
these stories become manifest in discursive practices becomes clearer and capable of
reform. Case examples are used to illustrate these arguments.
The next paper in this special issue, by Mervyn Conroy, also brings forth a case
study to illustrate what he argues is, “a recurring theme of virtue conflict and
disjuncture in managers’ enacted stories of policy to practice translation”. Reform in
the UK National Health Service, specifically mental health service redesign, is critically
examined and it is argued that what emerges from the managers’ stories of reform in
practice is an unraveling of what Conroy dubs “sutured policies”.
JMD Drawing upon the work of MacIntyre (1985), and in particular that part of his work
30,3 that argues that stories can be shown to carry a set of moral virtues, Conroy suggests
that the reality of implementing policies reveals the disjunctures of the virtues, which
undermines the integrity of any reform process. The analyses that are performed to
interrogate the stories provide a rich source of material for coaches to draw upon in
management development. Readers of both the papers by Basten and Conroy will note
244 a number of parallel themes in their work, albeit expressed in different language.
“Interactive media: Image story telling” is the title of the next paper in this special
issue, and its author, Robert van Boeschoten, describes the way in which digital images
and visual media are part of storytelling. The paper commences with a consideration of
storytelling in an office of a media organization where the story is very much about the
digital images being produced and the circumstances that have led to their production.
The paper then considers the matter of image production and imagination more
broadly in terms of a number of links with how they help create and sustain meaning.
Michel Serres’ (1980, 1995) notion of “quasi-objects” is introduced to highlight another
way in which the visual, as an object, potentially creates relationships between people,
and in so doing is an “instrument” of storying.
The work of Serres is also employed in the last paper in this special issue. Cheryl
Ann and Adrian N. Carr, in their paper entitled “Inside outside leadership
development: coaching and storytelling potential”, note how conversations and
relationships may be started and shaped as a result of an object being present. Ann and
Carr use a case example to illustrate how stories not only pass through groups in an
organization, but can also be studied in the manner in which a pattern occurs in their
circulation. While the work of Serres is employed to explore the way in which stories as
objects pass through groups of people, Ann and Carr also engage the work of
Winnicott (1971) and his notion of transitional objects to reflect upon the way in which
stories as objects are specifically related to individuals. The work of Winnicott is
instructive as to how we might better understand the reactions of individuals to stories
and the opportunities that might arise for management and leadership development.
The paper concludes on the same cautionary note that inspired the call for papers for
this special issue: when it comes to the use of stories in coaching for management and
leadership development, we need some self-reflection as to how storytelling is not only
used but also abused to create and further the process of storyselling.

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Adrian N. Carr can be contacted at: a.carr@uws.edu.au

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