Telling Our Story: From Change Resistance to Readiness

Stories, transformational leadership, and change in the workplace intersect in this leadership success project presentation! Many people resist change as it often creates an uneasy or uncomfortable feeling. Change is often difficult for employees to process in a positive way. Transformational nurse leaders can use stories or narratives to augment the change process.

The praxis of storytelling (same thing as narrative) is a powerful aspect of applying change theory. Humans are storytellers. Decision-making using narrative paradigm is based on reasons and connections that are communicated in narratives.

Stories or narratives are a way of communicating a series of happenings or events (Welch, 2014). The use of narratives is an effective intervention to promote change (Bess, 2015). Meaning making, developing a vision, and creating a climate for change are powerful purposes of narratives. Storytellers can spark attention to needs and create intrigue. Using stories to promote change readiness is a powerful intervention for transformational leaders to use!

Telling “Our Stories” is very empowering. The case of a surgical nursing department complete remodel is an example in which the use of narratives promoted change readiness. Surgical nursing staff created their remodel story that included the vision for the surgical nursing department and a drawing of their vision for the remodel. The staff drew their own pictures of their proposed remodel, met with the architects, and met with the designers to plan the design. The staff were actively involved in the entire process. The creation of their story is told during unfreezing, change, and refreezing of the change as related to Lewin’s Change Theory (Marquis & Huston, 2017).

In this session, the focus is on storytelling as a nurse leader’s intervention to evoke change. First, evidence, theories, and the art of the narrative paradigm are shared. Types of stories and various mediums are described. The art of crafting an unforgettable story that grabs the listener is reviewed. The key elements of a story are explained and demonstrated. The power of meaning making, creating need, and painting a vision by transformational leaders as the building blocks of change application is stressed. Bess (2015) studied the use of narratives in the change process and found that people use stories to make meaning of life and engage in the change process. Telling narratives is a strategy that transformational leaders can use in the decision-making and change process.