Coaching can be storyselling: creating change through crises of confidence

Abstract

Purpose

To show the reader that storytelling can be seen as a form of seduction based on emotional response and thereby preventing a change process within the organisation.

Design/methodology/approach

Case study in relation to a psychoanalytic approach to text as a place for emotional control.

Findings

Storytelling without psychodynamic analysis becomes easily storyselling.

Research limitations/implications

Text is seen as carrier of emotions that can be corrected through psychodynamics which implies that there remains hope for enlightment by the text.

Practical implications

Every form of storytelling is a form of addressing an audience that needs to be made aware of the psychodynamics of the text as part of the author.

Originality/value

The worst stories that are sold are those we sell best to ourselves.

Citation

Lapp, C.A. and Carr, A.N. (2008), "Coaching can be storyselling: creating change through crises of confidence", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 21 No. 5, pp. 532-559. https://doi.org/10.1108/09534810810903207