When the Storyteller Becomes the Problem

In the last edition, I argued that the most powerful stories in a company are the ones nobody wrote, the internal narratives that emerge from decisions, promotions, and everyday behavior. That piece was about companies accidentally telling the wrong story. This one is about something harder: companies and storytellers deliberately telling a convenient one.

I need to be upfront about why I’m writing this, because it’s a strange move. I’ve spent four editions arguing that storytelling is a legitimate function, that companies should invest in it, and that the good examples are genuinely good.

Now I want to argue the opposite case: that storytelling, when done well, is also a tool of manipulation, and that the better the storyteller, the more dangerous it becomes. This is the newsletter where I argue against my own product, and I think I owe it to you precisely because of the previous four editions.

The same techniques, opposite intentions

Here’s the uncomfortable version: every technique I’ve praised in this series works just as well in service of something you shouldn’t believe.

The Patagonia ad I held up as a gold standard? That structure, a company appearing to sacrifice something to earn your trust, is also the exact playbook for a company that wants to manufacture the appearance of sacrifice without the substance.

Announce a policy that sounds costly. Make sure the announcement is louder than the policy’s actual impact. Reap the trust without paying the full price. I’m not saying Patagonia did this. I’m saying the technique is available to anyone, and the better you are at narrative, the harder it is for the audience to tell the difference.

A skilled storyteller inside a company can take a layoff and frame it as “focusing on what matters.” They can take a price increase and frame it as “investing in the product you rely on.” They can take a broken promise and frame it as “evolving our approach.” Every single one of those framings might be true. Or it might be spin. And the storyteller’s craft is exactly what makes it difficult to tell which one you’re looking at.

That’s the problem I want to sit with, because I don’t think our industry talks about it enough.

When does storytelling become manipulation?

There’s a question buried in the themes for The Subtext, a roundtable series we have started running at Story It, that I keep coming back to: when does storytelling become manipulation? I put it in the list under leadership storytelling, but it deserves more than a discussion prompt. It deserves a serious answer, or at least a serious attempt at one.

Here’s where I’ve landed, and I’ll admit it’s not a clean line: the difference between storytelling and manipulation is whether the story would survive contact with the full truth. Not the curated version. Not the “key messages” version. The actual, complete version that includes the parts the company would rather you didn’t focus on.

A good story and a manipulative story can look identical on the surface. Both have structure, emotional weight, a clear point of view, and a reason to care. The difference is what happens when you ask follow-up questions. A real story gets more interesting when you dig into it. A manipulative story starts to fall apart, or the person telling it starts getting defensive, or you discover that a crucial piece of context was left out on purpose.

The danger of access

I think about this in the context of the “access” argument I made two editions ago. I said a storyteller needs to be in the room when the hard decisions are made. I still believe that. But I want to add something I didn’t say then: being in the room also means you now know things that would undermine the story you’re telling, and you have to decide what to do with that knowledge.

That’s the moment where this function either earns its integrity or loses it. A storyteller who knows the full context and uses it to tell a more honest story, one that acknowledges trade-offs instead of hiding them, is doing something valuable. A storyteller who knows the full context and uses it to craft a more convincing version of a half-truth is doing something corrosive. Same skills, same access, opposite outcomes.

The corporate tell

The corporate examples are everywhere once you start looking. Every “we’re making this change because we listened to you” announcement that was actually driven by cost-cutting. Every “we’ve always been committed to X” statement from a company that only discovered its commitment when the PR crisis hit. Every carefully produced video of a CEO being “transparent” that somehow never includes the information that would actually be uncomfortable.

I don’t want to pretend this is always clear-cut. Sometimes the framing genuinely changes how people understand a decision, and that’s valuable. A pricing change that’s positioned as “here’s what you’re getting for the new price, and here’s why” isn’t manipulation; it’s context. But a pricing change that buries the actual numbers while leading with an emotional story about the company’s mission? That’s borrowing goodwill to avoid accountability.

The email chain test

The test I keep coming back to is this: would the storyteller be comfortable if the audience saw the full internal email chain, the board presentation, the unedited version of what was discussed before the public narrative was crafted? If yes, you’re looking at storytelling. If the answer is “God, no,” you’re looking at spin, and the only difference between you and bad PR is that you’re better at it.

Why this matters more now

This matters more now than it used to, and it’s going to keep mattering more, for the structural reasons I laid out in the earlier edition. As the old media system shrinks and companies become their own storytellers, there are fewer independent filters between a company’s narrative and the audience. When a journalist covered your company, they asked the uncomfortable follow-up questions. They called the former employee. They checked the claim against the data. That filter is disappearing. Which means the integrity has to come from inside the function now, from the storytellers themselves, or it doesn’t come at all.

That’s a heavier responsibility than most job descriptions acknowledge. And it’s why I think the single most important quality in a storytelling hire isn’t writing ability or strategic thinking. It’s the willingness to tell your own leadership, clearly, that the story they want to tell isn’t the one they should tell.

Full circle

If that sentence makes you uneasy, good. It should. Because if you’re building a storytelling function and you haven’t grappled with the question of when your own people should refuse to tell a story they’ve been asked to tell, you haven’t actually thought through what you’re building. You’ve built a very articulate machine for saying whatever’s convenient, and you’ve hired someone talented enough to make it sound like conviction.

The series started by asking whether storytelling is real or a fad. Four editions in, I think the answer is that it’s real, it works, and that’s exactly why it’s worth being cautious about. Powerful tools require more judgment, not less. The companies that will be worth watching over the next few years aren’t the ones that tell the best stories. They’re the ones who tell the truest ones, especially when a better-sounding version was available, and they chose not to use it.