090: The Storytelling Leader A Conversation with David Hutchens

On this episode of Making Elephants Fly, Terry sits down with David Hutchens. Join David and Terry as they talk about discuss the power of storytelling in leadership and its ability to create emotional connections with an audience. They delve into various techniques used by successful storytellers like using all five senses or leaving breadcrumbs to get back to a story. David Hutchens has been exploring the intersection of story and leadership for more than 20 years. A former advertising copywriter, today Hutchens helps to create change and develop leadership capability in organizations like IBM, WalMart, The Coca-Cola Company, and many more. He is the creator of The Learning Fables -- a series of books that use cartoon animals and snarky humor to introduce urgent topics of "organizational learning theory." His latest book, "Story Dash," brings together a lifetime of work and transforms them into actionable processes that any leader can put to work in their team. We unpack the importance of origin stories or "why I'm here" stories for leaders is highlighted. The episode explores how stories are stored in the brain, making it difficult to differentiate between a story heard and something that actually happened. David shares practical tips for developing the skill of storytelling and organizing a "story bank" for future use. Overall, the listener will walk away from this episode with a deeper understanding of how storytelling can transform leadership and inspire action. Find out more at and join Terry at the Thing at and use the code PODCAST for a discount.

You can listen to 090: The Storytelling Leader A Conversation with David Hutchens online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

090: The Storytelling Leader A Conversation with David Hutchens is an episode from Making Elephants Fly | Conversations with High Octane Leaders, Dreamers, & Creatives by Terry Weaver.

This episode is 01:04:47 long.

This episode was published on Jun 12, 2023.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Making Elephants Fly | Conversations with High Octane Leaders, Dreamers, & Creatives when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.