Description
Every Leader a Storyteller is aimed at practitioners in the field, be they business leaders and managers, change agents, facilitators, sales professionals, accountants, trainers, clerks, members of the clergy, doctors, dentists or drivers. There is no occupation that I can think of, nor organisational application for that matter, that cannot in some significant way be enriched by the use of stories and storytelling. Whilst I would hope that this book contributes in some small way to the development of knowledge in the currently growing and seemingly ever more popular academic study of storytelling in organisations, this is not a textbook.
Given that storytellers are a colourful cast of characters, most often quite rightly doing things their own way, Every Leader a Storyteller does not address creative-communication conventions, useful in writing compelling stories, for there are great books already available to African authors that do just that, such as Dorian Harhoff’s The writer’s voice: a handbook for writers in Africa. On the contrary, the main objective of Every Leader a Storyteller is to encourage the unconventional, the ‘getting-up-to-nonsense’ aspect of storytelling, which is more attuned to the creative side of living in wonderland. A lesser aim is to conceptualise the most powerful, influential manifestation of human communication and attempt to illustrate that storytelling shares similar attributes to the physical, rational, emotional and spiritual dimensions that comprise the human being. The core belief underlying this orientation is that stories are healthy management medicines which can remedy the most pervasive personal and organisational maladies. Storytelling is, for me, therefore, the most influential skill in powerful personal leadership, irrespective of the position one holds in or out of organisations.
About the Author
Peter Christie was born in Johannesburg in 1959, matriculated from Hyde Park High School in 1976, and graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1987 with a BA in Social Anthropology and a BA (Hons) and MA in Industrial Psychology. For the past 20 years Peter has worked as an independent consultant, Big Chief Talking Bull – Strategic Storyteller, specialising in storytelling in organisations for creative corporate communications, change and transformation, and leadership development purposes. Prior to adopting his Big Chief Talking Bull persona, he worked for five years in the corporate sector, occupying human resources positions with Ford Motor Company, the Chamber of Mines and Liberty Life.
Peter edited, with Ronnie Lessem and Lovemore Mbigi, the best-selling African Management: Philosophies, Concepts and Applications (1993, reprinted 1994 and 1995), and is the author of Stories from An Afman! (1996) and Animal Firm (2000) with Craig Gordon. His latest book, Every Leader A Storyteller – Breathing Brightness into Business, is in pre-publication with New Africa Books. He has also published articles in a wide variety of local and international journals, in both the academic and popular press.
Peter has lead facilitated five international Storytelling in Organisations workshops, at Emerson College and Hawkwood College in England, and at Wits Business School in South Africa, and the Leadership and Storytelling module for MBA students at City University, London. As a part-time lecturer at Wits Business School for the past twenty years, he developed and still facilitates the highly-rated and popular Storytelling Skills for Personal Leadership MBA elective, after having co-ordinated the South African Management Project at WBS in the early 1990s, a project investigating indigenous approaches to leadership and management in the African context. In 2003 Peter was contracted as a Professor of Management and Director of the Leadership Development Centre at DCDM Business School, Quartre Bornes, Mauritius.
A consummate communicator, passionate about the role of storytelling in helping to humanise the world of work, Peter Christie’s charismatic character continues to keep him out of mischief with a wide variety of consulting, facilitation, teaching and writing assignments.
Peter has three fabulous children, a gorgeous girlfriend, and lives in Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa, the African continent’s economic powerhouse.
