Your Story Isn’t Boring But Your Take Might Be

Some people can kill a good story and others can have you enthralled what could look like the most mundane narrative – if you isolated the events from the telling of it. You’ll find exactly how to kill a story here.

Leadership training often includes storytelling because it’s key to influence — especially in tech, where logic often overshadows emotion. I was facilitating a communication session for engineering managers, and part of the experience included a fireside chat with a senior tech leader.

The topic? Incident response and system resilience.

Killing the story

Now, these managers oversee teams that handle high-stakes infrastructure – think critical systems with zero tolerance for downtime.

The leader could have rattled off uptime stats and postmortem metrics. Instead, he chose to share a personal story: the time his team faced a cascading failure during a major product launch. The system went down, alerts were firing, and the team was scrambling. Only because they’d run chaos engineering drills the month before were they able to recover in under 30 minutes.

A potentially gripping story about preparation, systems thinking, and the human side of high-pressure problem-solving.

Except… it wasn’t gripping.

As he described the moment the pager went off and the dashboard lit up red, his delivery was flat. No shift in tone, no reflection on what it felt like to be in the war room, no insight into the decisions made under pressure. It was like listening to someone explain how to reset a router.

What was missing?

Perspective. And because he didn’t include his point of view, it was wrung of feeling, reflecting in inexpressive delivery: flat voice, limited body language.

Why Perspective Beats Plot Alone

Think of it this way: the Pixar story spine (“Once upon a time… Every day… Until one day…”) is a brilliant skeleton. It can be used to fill a complete presentation find it here. But bones don’t dance. What animates them is voice, vulnerability, and interpretation. That’s where perspective comes in.

When someone shares their subjective lens – their confusion, their flawed logic, their emotional stakes – we lean in. It’s more than listening to a list of interlinked events.

We’re watching how it mattered. That’s the difference between:

• “I missed my train and had to wait an hour.”
• vs. “I missed my train, and in that hour, I realized I was more afraid of arriving than being late.”

In the second version you have a plot point along with a window into a worldview.

An Example – With and Without Perspectives

In the narrative below, you wouldn’t use the Pixar prompts such as ‘Once upon a time’, ‘Every day’. They’re there to help you see the structure more clearly.

In this story from a CIO, he thankfully opted for the second version which drew gasps of horror from an audience of other CIO – and his perspective that enriched the telling.

Version 1: The Pixar Story Spine (Plot-Only)

Once upon a time, I was demonstrating a new digital alert system for lifeboat deployment at a maritime rescue organization.

Every day, the team worked on improving their digital infrastructure, balancing innovation with safety.

Until one day, during a late-night demo, I was asked to show how the alert system worked – just one more time. Because of that, I pressed the button… but accidentally triggered a live alert instead of the test system.

Because of that, 44 lifeboat stations were mobilized in real time, with crews scrambling into action, thinking there was a real emergency.

Until finally, the mistake was discovered, and I had to explain the false alarm and manage the fallout.

And ever since that day, the team has been crystal clear about test vs. live environments – and I double-check every button before pressing it.

Version 2: With Perspective (Plot + Subjective Lens)

Once upon a time, I was the CIO at a maritime rescue organization, proud of the new digital alert system we’d built – a tool that could instantly mobilise lifeboats in a crisis.

Every day, I toggled between test and live systems, confident in my setup. I had two screens: one for staging, one for production. I knew which was which. Or so I thought.

Until one day, during a late-night demo, someone asked, “Can you show us how it works one more time?” I was tired, but proud. I said, “Absolutely.”

Because of that, I hit the button — and within seconds, pagers went off across the country. I’d triggered a real alert. Forty-four lifeboat stations were mobilised. Crews were suiting up. Boats were being readied.

Because of that, my stomach dropped. I stared at the screen, willing it to be a simulation. It wasn’t. I’d just caused a nationwide scramble.

Until finally, we got the message out that it was a false alarm. No one was hurt. But I was mortified. I’d built the system. But the system couldn’t override human error.

And ever since that day, I’ve never assumed I’m on the right screen. I double-check. I ask someone else to confirm. Because when lives are on the line, knowing which button you’re pressing is everything. 

How He Showed His Perspective