Storytelling and Presidential Leadership at a Regional Public University

Abstract

This chapter describes the evolution of a regional public university president's communication strategy from being a fact‐driven presenter to becoming the university's principal storyteller by integrating institutional data and metrics with meaningful stories from students, faculty, staff, and alumni. The case describes a crisis of agreement where university's constituencies appear seriously divided, yet through a structured process based on their shared experiences and stories about the impact of the university on their lives reveals that significant agreement exists. The crisis is the lack of awareness such agreement exists, and storytelling becomes one method to recognize it. Presidential storytelling becomes the means to link these important constituencies together, as well as to illustrate the university's positive impact on its people and region. Storytelling becomes the university president's principal means of communicating the value and purpose of the regional public university's mission, while different from a large land‐grant or research university, remains vital and important to its students, the business community, public officials, the region, as well as the university itself.