Storytelling: A Leadership Competency for Safety

In this 12-minute podcast, Dr. Lennox Huang, the Chief Medical Officer and Vice President for Medical and Academic Affairs at The Hospital for Sick Children, shares how storytelling is a leadership competency—a way of sharing knowledge, moving people, and moving culture. He emphasizes, “Storytelling is so much more than conveying information and facts; it’s also about conveying emotion and showing people how much you care about things.”

Dr. Huang shares the importance of having a bit of structure for a story to resonate with an audience. He encourages the storyteller to give the audience a sense of who the story is about, the emotion around the story, the impact that story had on the characters, and to conclude with a lesson or reason for telling the story. He concludes the podcast by encouraging listeners to “use your stories to help improve safety at your institution and at others as well.”