From stories to skills: an experiential framework for leadership education

One effective – yet, often overlooked – technique in leadership education is engaging students with real-world leadership lessons shared through the life stories of local and global leadership practitioners. Using this storytelling approach, instructors can invite a range of guest leaders and compile their stories into a “living textbook” that serves as the primary course content – shifting guest speakers from their traditional supplementary role to the central driver of learning in undergraduate or graduate leadership courses. This storytelling approach rests on a simple idea, namely: students may remember leadership lessons more vividly when they are embedded in the life stories of real-world leaders rather than presented as abstract concepts from an instructor.

Although the experiences of an immigrant restaurant owner, a nun or an ambassador may differ widely, the leadership lessons emerging from their stories tend to be strikingly consistent. Each set of speakers brings fascinating stories of perseverance, trauma, failure and success, while collectively reinforcing many foundational elements of effective leadership. In other words, the stories shared by experienced leaders – who were physically or virtually present in class – made the leadership lessons more powerful, relatable and applicable to students.

While there is significant research on the use of storytelling as a leadership development pedagogy (Aidman & Long, 2017; Armstrong & McCain, 2021; Cleverley-Thompson, 2018; Ganz, Lee Cunningham, Ben Ezer, & Segura, 2023; GuramatunhuCooper & Headrick, 2022; Mahoney, 2017; Priest & Seemiller, 2018; Schedlitzki, Jarvis, & MacInnes, 2015), how those stories are woven into the curriculum – especially through the use of guest speakers – can impact student engagement and learning. Rather than treating guest speakers as supplementary “add-ons” so typical of many traditional higher education courses, which can reduce a speaker's impact to a novelty or gap-filler (Pepple, Akaighe, Sambo, George-Aremu, Bosah & Trollman, 2025), research indicates that grounding leadership pedagogy on live practitioner narratives/stories can enhance student engagement and learning (Jablon-Roberts & McCracken, 2022).

Storytelling is a form of narrative pedagogy that involves instructors and students sharing and interpreting their lived experiences (Armstrong & McCain, 2021). These stories support a process known as sense-making – an ongoing reflection that helps individuals interpret past events during their leadership development (McCaulty-Smith, Williams, Gillon, & Braganza, 2015). Specifically, stories from invited guest leaders can gain power through the novelty of an unfamiliar, yet, credible voice (Jablon-Roberts & McCracken, 2022). Such leaders hold expert power – the ability to influence based on perceived expertise (Tedeschi, 2017) – which strengthens the effect of their narratives. In leadership education, this matters because expert power can increase students' self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy refers to a person's belief in their ability to successfully perform a task (Bandura, 1977; Williams, Dunsiger, Emerson, Dionne, Rhodes & Beauchamp, 2020) and a higher self-efficacy supports stronger performance (Bandura, 1995; Schunk & DiBenedetto, 2020). Furthermore, leadership efficacy – the belief in one's capacity to successfully lead others (Hannah, Avolio, Luthans, & Harms, 2008) – significantly impacts leadership outcomes (Siangchokyoo, Klinger, & Campion, 2020). Thus, leadership efficacy is crucial to the leadership influence process.

Moreover, leadership storytelling enhances students' leadership self-efficacy through two mechanisms identified by social psychologists: vicarious experiences and social persuasion. Vicarious experiences involve learning by observing others. Just as watching a piano teacher demonstrate a song can build a student's confidence, seeing someone succeed through persistent effort can increase belief in one's abilities. Social persuasion increases self-efficacy when individuals receive verbal encouragement, prompting greater and more sustained effort. Furthermore, positive messages such as “You can do it” raise confidence, while negative persuasion can diminish it, leading people to avoid challenges and give up more quickly (Bandura, 1995; Schunk & DiBenedetto, 2020).

Because leadership often involves uncertainty and anxiety (Black & Morrison, 2014), stories from guest leaders can raise students' leadership self-efficacy by providing information, confirmatory evidence and emotional support, making leadership seem more predictable (Bandura, 1995; Schunk & DiBenedetto, 2020). This aligns with research showing that advance information helps individuals anticipate and prepare, improving task performance (Ewolds, Broeker, de Oliveira, Raab, & Künzell, 2021).

Thus, storytelling supports leadership self-efficacy by:

1. Providing vicarious experiences – real examples of leaders overcoming challenges – that strengthen belief in one's own capacity to handle similar leadership situations.

2. Conveying social persuasion through the implicit message: “If I can do it, so can you.”

Given that leaders' self-efficacy influences leadership outcomes, and storytelling – through guest leaders' vicarious experiences and social persuasion – can enhance students' leadership self-efficacy, storytelling stands out as a powerful pedagogical tool for leadership development.

This leadership course fulfills an upper-level elective core requirement in a Bachelor of Arts leadership program at a regional, public US university. The instructor has taught the course nine times since 2011 to 242 students – primarily to undergraduates, and most recently to graduate students as a US Fulbright Scholar in Europe. The course starts by providing students with an overview of some basic foundations of leadership (i.e. influence, power, relationships, communication, group dynamics, psychological safety, conflict management, teamwork, etc.), while some core leadership research and approaches (i.e. situational leadership, Path-Goal Theory, behavioral theories, servant leadership, etc.) are discussed throughout the course. This foundational knowledge is then applied to the “living textbook” of unique life stories from 4–6 invited leaders whose experiences are compared and contrasted with one another. While traditional leadership courses have treated guest speakers as supplements to dense textbook-based lectures, this course uniquely flips the traditional paradigm on its head. In this framework, guest speaker narratives serve as the primary textual content of the course. These live narratives are then paired with a concise, non-traditional collection of leader biographies (Snapshots of Great Leadership by Howell, Wanasika, & Mendez, 2024) that help students analyze commonalities and differences across the stories to inform their reflective assignments.

To practice this model, instructors can follow a structured sequence: advance speaker outreach (4–6 months prior), foundational theory instruction (Weeks 1–2), moderated live interviews and group journal entries (Weeks 3–6) and culminating experiential reflection (Weeks 6–7). The course can be taught in both 7-week and full-semester formats (on-campus, online synchronous, online asynchronous and hybrid).

To guide student learning and assess the effectiveness of this pedagogical approach, the course was structured around three primary learning outcomes – linked directly to course components/deliverables. Upon completion of the course, students will be able to:

1. Compare foundational leadership concepts, power dynamics and communication models with the lived experiences and narratives shared by diverse guest leaders. (Linked: Group Journal Entries)

2. Identify critical leadership obstacles, ethical dilemmas and formative career events within guest narratives to evaluate strategies for navigating complex organizational challenges. (Linked: Moderated Guest Leader Interviews & Group Journal Entries)

3. Reflect on personal experiences, peer insights and guest speaker narratives to articulate actionable career goals and strategies for enhancing leadership self-efficacy. (Linked: Lessons in Leadership Experiential Reflection Paper)

While guest leaders and course activities have evolved, experiential learning – particularly through guest leaders' stories, but also from students' own experiences – remains central to the approach. Experiential learning is defined as “the process of making meaning from direct experience; namely, learning through reflection on doing” (Felicia, 2011, p. 1003). In this course, it is a reflection primarily on what other leaders – the storytellers – have done. Reflection is crucial to experiential learning because it helps students make sense of their experiences and those of others.

The course's “storytelling” approach to build student leadership self-efficacy is uniquely shaped by three key components: (1) moderated guest leader interviews, (2) Group Journal Entries on guest leaders and (3) the Lessons in Leadership experiential reflection paper.

In a typical 7-week on-campus course, the 45-min, moderated, instructor-led interview with guest leaders usually occurs once per week between Weeks 3 and 6. Each guest is asked the same core questions to ensure thematic consistency across guest speaker stories. The questions focus on specific leadership themes, but remain broad enough for speakers to respond in their own way. Leaders represent diverse industries such as healthcare, public service, banking, technology, education, the arts, etc. Common questions include:

1. What is your current role and 1–2 challenges you face?

2. Can you share your background, including where you grew up and childhood activities?

3. What has been your general career path and reasons for job choices?

4. What was your biggest leadership failure and what did you learn?

5. Did you have mentors or role models who influenced your leadership?

6. What do you know now about leadership that you would tell your younger self?

These questions are designed to elicit responses highlighting meaningful experiences within a guest leader's broader story. Secondly, their personal relevance makes preparation easier, as leaders are already intimately familiar with their own experiences. Lastly, many guest leaders in the course are eager to share their leadership experiences with students.

The two reflective Group Journal Entry Reports give students an opportunity to summarize and analyze guest leaders' stories for leadership issues and themes covered in the course. These activities help connect each leader's unique experiences with the research and best practices discussed in class. A central component is asking students to identify obstacles the guest leader faced and how they addressed or overcame them, reflecting research showing that effective leaders support their teams by recognizing and removing barriers or helping others navigate them (House, 1996; Eva, Robin, Sendjaya, van Dierendonck, & Liden, 2019). Students also examine significant early leadership experiences that may have shaped the guest leader's current style, aligning with evidence that formative life and career experiences can strongly influence later leadership efficacy (George, Sims, McLean, & Mayer, 2011).

The final paper, titled Lessons in Leadership, is an experiential-reflection project completed at the end of the course. It draws on guest speaker stories, course themes and individual student reflection and experiences. The paper has three parts:

1. Part A asks students to compare “good” and “toxic” leadership using course materials and guest leaders' experiences. Students then share personal examples of both types of leaders they have encountered and reflect on how these experiences influence their current leadership style.

2. Part B examines leadership research and course themes, emphasizing how leadership, power, influence, relationships and communication intersect. Students then apply these insights to Part A by analyzing how these elements appeared in the “good” and “toxic” leaders discussed in the course.

3. Part C asks students to outline their career goals and identify three ways the course – especially insights from guest leaders' stories – can support their leadership development. Unlike typical experiential learning focused only on students' own experiences, this paper blends lessons from guest leaders with students' personal experiences and career aspirations.

The course's uniqueness stems largely from guest leaders' stories and students' reflections on them. Unlike traditional courses where guest speakers serve a supplementary role, here their narratives function as the primary course content. Even without formal measurement, many students identified concrete examples of effective leadership in their Group Journal Entries and Lessons in Leadership papers. For example, multiple students noted how a law professor built relationships even with political opponents, which ultimately helped free an innocent prisoner. Other students noted a formative story from a U.S. Federal Judge's early career where – as a young lawyer – they sought advice on how to lead a difficult case from a more experienced lawyer. This unexpectedly began a lifelong mentoring relationship between the two lawyers.

These examples illustrate how vicarious experiences build leadership self-efficacy by validating the real-world leadership behaviors of the storytellers. As students see such behaviors modeled, they more readily apply the lessons to their own leadership development. Indeed, reflection assignments further this learning by helping students connect the stories to their own leadership thoughts and actions. The strongest course outcomes appeared in these reflective activities (Group Journal Entries and the Lessons in Leadership paper), where students most often emphasized two themes: (1) the value of building strong relationships with followers and (2) the importance of leading with integrity.

For example, several students emphasized that effective leaders strengthen relationships by practicing empathy, understanding and support. In one course, over half the students (10/19) highlighted empathy as essential for building leader–follower trust. Their insights centered on two guest speakers: a compassionate medical doctor and an empathetic law professor working with death-row inmates.

The doctor explained that listening closely to terminally ill patients – inviting stories about loved ones, achievements and regrets – created trust even in the face of impending death. This empathetic presence allowed both doctor and patient to share personal stories without judgment.

Similarly, the law professor described how presuming innocence when meeting death-row prisoners reduced stigma and encouraged honest conversation. This trust enabled the professor, working pro bono, to gather the information needed to seek case reviews – leading in some instances to reduced or overturned sentences.

These examples illustrate the power of supportive empathy to nurture leader–follower relationships, reflecting research that shows empathic leaders tend to build stronger relationships that enhance the leadership process (Kock, Mayfield, Mayfield, Sexton, & De La Garza, 2019).

The course also helped students recognize the importance of integrity and ethical behavior in the leadership process. In the same course noted earlier, over one-third of students (7/19) emphasized in their Lessons in Leadership papers that effective leaders are trustworthy, honest and guided by strong moral principles. Students frequently connected this lesson to the idea that leaders should act in the best interest of their followers and the organization, rather than for personal gain.

Student reflections centered on the same two guest leaders: the medical doctor and the law professor. The doctor repeatedly chose to listen carefully to patients and protect their personal stories, even though dismissing them would have saved time and allowed for seeing more patients. This consistent commitment to confidentiality made the doctor a model of trustworthiness. Likewise, the law professor worked pro bono with death-row inmates, seeking due process for individuals who claimed wrongful conviction. The law professor's strict adherence to ethical procedures highlighted a deep commitment to integrity. These observations align with research showing that leaders who display integrity and ethical behavior positively influence the leadership process because high integrity increases a leader's influence (Lemoine, Hartnell, & Leroy, 2019).

The central takeaway is not only what students learned from guest speakers' leadership stories, but how they applied those lessons to their own past experiences and future development. In their Lessons in Leadership papers, students emphasized that core skills – such as leveraging early life experiences, using transparent communication and seeking mentors – can strengthen a leader's influence (George et al., 2011). For example, students connected a speaker's account of learning to “read a room” to the executive's earlier failed job interview, noting how mistakes can shape leadership growth. Furthermore, other students began to seek out mentors in their own working roles after noting the mentoring relationship between the Director of a local ballet and a former colleague who was the Director of another ballet.

These reflections show that students value the speakers' leadership insights and – as a result – feel more confident in their own leadership self-efficacy. The vicarious experiences in the leaders' stories, paired with the implied social persuasion of “if I can do it, so can you,” contributed to this increased confidence. Finally, while it may seem unconventional to impart leadership lessons through the real-world stories of seasoned guest leaders, it offers a fresh and valuable perspective on how we teach leadership.

A core element of the course is early outreach to speakers – ideally 4–6 months before the class begins – with follow-ups closer to their visit. Including the core interview questions in the initial invitation increases the persuasiveness of the request by giving speakers a clear sense of what to expect and allowing them to draw on life experiences they already know well. Furthermore, when identifying potential speakers, keep an open mind because high rank or title does not guarantee effectiveness. Some of the speakers with the most effective leadership lessons were those most passionate about their work or calling. And while in-person visits can be highly engaging, virtual guest speakers can be equally effective.

As students were not part of an IRB-approved study – the course was never designed as one – the effect of storytelling on leadership self-efficacy has not been formally measured. Therefore, future courses can adopt stronger empirical methods to evaluate student outcomes. For example, instructors can work closely with their Institutional Review Board to gain approval using anonymized course evaluation feedback and assignment comments. Additionally, future courses should incorporate pre-and post-course surveys to directly measure changes in students' leadership self-efficacy. This combination of quantitative survey data with qualitative feedback analysis will offer a clearer, more comprehensive picture of how guest speaker narratives impact learning. Ultimately, collecting this systematic data in future research will provide stronger empirical support to validate the overall effectiveness of this storytelling approach. Aside from evaluating student feedback, future research could also examine whether outcomes differ based on how stories are delivered (in-person vs live online), the gender of guest speakers, their industry backgrounds, nationality and other speaker characteristics.