ABSTRACT
Stories and fables have long been used as a vehicle for communication in many popular business publications aimed at managers and leaders. Academic writers also find storytelling to be a relevant organizational research technique as exemplified by ‘Telling Fairy Tales in the Boardroom’. Weick, one of the key writers on sensemaking, argues that it is essentially about story construction. Storytelling is an integral aspect of sensemaking but is only one element of it and does not have to be empirically accurate for it to be real for leaders. In storytelling, the tropes are used to support and justify an interpretation already made of events. However, they are used selectively and are seldom stated explicitly. One has to listen carefully to understand how the story we are being told has been, or is being, crafted.
