Stories That Shaped Us: Listening, Leadership, and the Moments We Carry Forward

What happens when leaders step away from presentations and share the stories that shaped who they are?

In Stories That Shaped Us LIVE, a special edition of Leadership Story Talks, hosts Jerome Deroy and Julienne Ryan invited three past podcast guests to share six-minute personal stories about pivotal moments in their lives. These were not speeches, scripts, or polished presentations. They were stories told from the heart: real people, real moments, and real experiences that shaped how each storyteller lives, works, and leads.

At the beginning of the event, Julienne framed the gathering as an opportunity to pause, listen, and reflect together. The goal was not simply to hear stories about vulnerability, resilience, and transformation, but to witness the humanity behind the leaders telling them. Jerome also reminded the audience that storytelling begins with listening. Even in a virtual room, the quality of attention matters. The way we listen shapes how someone speaks, and the way someone speaks can deepen how we listen.

That relationship between telling and listening became the foundation of the event.

Ordinary People Prepared on Purpose

The first storyteller, George Pesansky, began his story on July 4, 1993, inside the commander’s hatch of a 68-ton M1 Abrams tank at Fort Stewart, Georgia.

George was not the obvious person to be leading a tank platoon. He was a chemical officer, placed in a role that many in the unit regarded as unlikely, even ridiculous. When he first arrived, he joked that he did not know which end of the tank went forward. By association, his crew became something of a joke as well.

But the crew did something different. While others completed the minimum requirements and went home, George and his team signed up for every available hour in the simulator. They knew their strengths, they knew their weaknesses, and they knew that one of the biggest gaps was George himself. So they practiced. Again and again, they worked on the shot that would require him, as tank commander, to take command from the gunner and fire from his own station.

On competition day, their crew went last. At first, that seemed like the worst possible position. But it also meant they knew the score they had to beat. The pressure was immense because they knew they could win, which also meant they knew they could lose something that was within reach.

George described the work inside the tank as a choreographed ballet. Each person had a role. Each movement mattered. The main gun recoiled with thousands of pounds of force, and a mistake in communication or timing could have catastrophic consequences. This was not simply a test of skill. It was a test of trust, precision, preparation, and collective performance under pressure.

When the moment came, George took the shot. For a brief second, he did not know whether he had hit the target. Then the score came through. They had done it. The “joke crew,” led by the chemical officer no one expected to succeed, had outperformed far more conventional competitors.

For George, the lesson was not about bravery in combat or overcoming extraordinary hardship. It was about discovering that his potential was greater than his own belief. His squadron commander had believed in him before he fully believed in himself, and that experience became the foundation for the work George has done ever since. Today, when he works with teams on shop floors, he carries that lesson with him: ordinary people, prepared on purpose, can do extraordinary things.

The People Who See Possibility

Katherine Carol’s story began in a car, driving away from the Grand Tetons after a gathering of rehabilitation professionals. She had been at a rendezvous that was more than a conference. It was, in her words, a regathering — a place where people came together to rebuild courage, hope, and energy for difficult work.

Her story moved through Yellowstone National Park, black bears, bison, rivers, wildflowers, and the memory of a past gathering at a rustic lodge where wildfires burned close enough that everyone quietly packed their bags by the cabin door in case they had to evacuate. When they returned to the forest later, they saw what the fire had left behind: burned trees, untouched trees, and fallen dead trees giving life to new growth.

Those fallen trees are called nurse trees. They use what remains of their own lives to nourish the next generation.

That image led Katherine back to Cary, a mentor who shaped her career and her understanding of what it means to believe in people. Cary was the kind of person you heard before you saw. His laughter echoed through hallways, and his curiosity ranged from fly fishing and restoring cars to economics and the development of new ideas. He did not simply see problems. He saw possibility.

Katherine first met Cary in 1986, and she admitted that she did not care for him at first. But the second time she encountered him, she needed him. She had just become a single mother of two children, one with a disability, and had been placed in a job she was not expected to succeed in. Several men had wanted the position, and she felt she was being set up to fail. She had been put in charge of an employment program without experience in contracts, employer relationships, or the mechanics of the work she now had to lead.

Desperate to keep the job, she called Cary and asked him how to do it. Then she followed his guidance exactly. With his humor and support, she built the program from two job coaches to eleven and from ten people employed to one hundred people earning minimum wage and benefits.

Later, when she had to leave that job to care for her daughter after surgery, Cary called her at a part-time job and told her he had a position for her at the university. When she explained that she did not have the master’s degree required, Cary did what he often did: he worked around the obstacle. He persuaded the university to hire her.

From Cary, Katherine learned to doubt limits and look for possibility. She carried that lesson into her advocacy work and into her life with her daughter, who has become a powerful advocate in her own right. The metaphor of the nurse tree became more than an image from the forest. It became a way of understanding legacy. The people who have nourished us become part of how we nourish others.

When Adversity Becomes a Blueprint

Jennifer Langton’s story began on her second day at the NFL.

She had joined the organization in finance and business ventures, tasked with restructuring the apparel strategy. Because it was the kickoff of the season, she found herself in Pittsburgh, where the Steelers were opening the season after their Super Bowl win. She was credentialed, escorted to the stadium, taken down to the sidelines, and then brought up to a suite filled with sponsors, licensees, gaming executives, and leaders from across the NFL’s commercial world.

For a moment, Jennifer felt she had arrived. Coming from Atari, she knew many of the gaming executives in the room. She was in her zone, moving through introductions and taking in the scale of the NFL universe.

Then Troy Polamalu, the iconic Steelers safety, made a remarkable interception. The room erupted in excitement. Moments later, he went down with a catastrophic ACL injury, and the suite went silent.

For Jennifer, time shifted. She was no longer in the suite. She was thirteen years earlier at the Yale Bowl, playing lacrosse for the University of Virginia. She had gone to goal, pivoted, been hit from behind, and suffered a near career-ending knee injury. She was taken off the field and into the Yale training room. But that room carried another memory. She had been there before with her mother on a recruiting visit, before her mother died.

Until that moment in the NFL suite, Jennifer had never connected those two events: the injury that changed her athletic identity and the loss of her mother in the same year.

Years later, when the NFL launched a talent mobility program that invited vice presidents to propose areas of interest, Jennifer was ready. She asked to build the youth strategy and advance health and safety, with a focus on predicting and preventing injuries. What began as a personal moment of adversity became a professional catalyst for transformation.

Her leadership philosophy grew from what she had needed in that vulnerable time: connection, trust, and growth. Connecting authentically with others, building trust with the people doing the work, and growing through that shared effort became the blueprint she would later write about and bring into her transformation work.

Jennifer’s story offered an important reminder. We do not always have the chance to act on a formative moment immediately. Sometimes we carry it for years before the right opportunity appears. But when we are aware of what shaped us, how it shaped us, and how we want to help, those experiences can become fuel when the moment arrives.

The Stories We Tell Again

After the three stories, a powerful theme emerged. Each storyteller spoke from a very different world: a tank range in Georgia, a forest recovering from fire, an NFL suite in Pittsburgh. Yet each story revealed how lives can be changed by the people who see us, challenge us, support us, and believe in what we might become.

Jerome observed how specificity brought each story to life. George named the people in the tank with him, making them more than roles. Katherine followed Carrie across many years, showing how one person’s influence can echo through generations. Jennifer held the audience in the mystery of a silent moment until its deeper meaning was revealed. In each case, the story became powerful because it moved beyond general lessons and into lived experience.

Julienne added another important reminder: we may tell the same stories more than once, but each time we tell them, a new audience, a new context, or a new moment can reveal something fresh. Stories should not be mothballed simply because we have told them before. The stories that shape us often continue to teach us, and others, when we return to them with new attention.

The speakers also reflected on the need for spaces where authentic storytelling can still happen. In a world increasingly dominated by technology, short-form communication, emojis, and rapid exchanges, stories create room for something deeper. They remind us that leaders are not only roles, titles, or accomplishments. They are people shaped by pressure, grief, mentors, mistakes, resilience, and moments they could not forget.

Listening as Leadership

The event closed by returning to where it began: listening.

Jerome introduced the idea behind Narativ’s Listening Lab, a space built around the belief that the conversations that change us rarely do so because someone offered perfect advice. More often, they change us because someone listened in a way that allowed us to see ourselves more clearly. Through better listening, better questions and better thinking can emerge.

That idea was present throughout Stories That Shaped Us LIVE. The storytellers were not performing into silence. They were being received by hosts, fellow storytellers, and an audience invited to give their attention as an active form of participation.

Julienne offered a final phrase for what stories like these can do: they can incite listening, connection, and community.

That may be one of the clearest lessons from the event. Personal stories are not only reflections on the past. When shared with courage and received with care, they become blueprints for others. They help us recognize our own moments of adversity, our own mentors, our own turning points, and our own capacity to carry something forward.

Because the stories that shaped us rarely belong only to us.

When we tell them well, and when others listen fully, they become part of how we lead.