I was recently coaching an executive in the US—let’s call him Peter. He was widely regarded as the smartest person in the room and seen as a future CEO. His challenge, however, was relatability. He struggled to connect with his senior team because he rarely took the time to explain his thinking. To him, the right path was obvious—after all, he had already spent hours working it through. Why bore everyone with the details? Surely, they understood first time, didn’t they?
Peter also kept a strict boundary between work and home. His colleagues knew nothing about his personal life. This became a problem when he introduced bold new initiatives. His presentations were polished, logical, and supported by detailed plans. Yet something was missing. His people couldn’t see him in the vision. Why did it matter to Peter? Why should it matter to them? Without that human connection, his 1,500-strong division lacked energy and urgency. They weren’t inspired to rally behind his goals.
When I asked if he ever used storytelling at work, he immediately said no—it felt irrelevant. So I asked what he’d done over the weekend. I expected a routine answer. Instead, what he shared will stay with me forever.
He told me about coaching his nine-year-old daughter’s little league baseball team. With a smile, he explained how important it was to him to pass on his love of sport and help young girls build confidence. Already, I was hooked. Here was Peter the father, the coach, the mentor—someone with humour, purpose, and warmth.
He then shared a story about a player on his team, Stacey. After 15 minutes of play, she asked, “Coach, what’s the score?” Peter replied, “What do you mean, what’s the score? No one’s made it back to home base yet. How can you not know that after three months of coming here every Saturday morning?” To which Stacey replied: “Oh, right. I don’t think you ever told us. We just thought we were running around!”
I asked Peter what the story meant to him. He grew quiet for a minute, then said: “That’s my team at work. They’re running around, but they don’t know why.”
At his next team meeting, Peter retold the baseball story. He admitted he needed to slow down and share his reasoning, so people could understand not just what he wanted to achieve, but why. The impact was immediate—his team was more engaged in that meeting than they had been in the past three years. From then on, Peter began to think differently about leadership: bringing more of himself—his humour, his purpose, and his humanity—into the workplace.
