The 5 jobs inside every storyteller role
A year after storyteller job postings doubled, here's what this work actually involves, and an invitation to find yourself in it.
Times executives said “storyteller” or “storytelling” on earnings calls and investor days
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2025, to 11 Dec469
1 square = 10 mentions
Last year we wrote about storyteller job postings doubling, but it would seem this particular story has been running on a single data point ever since. Nobody has published a follow-up on whether the roles stuck, and we’ve been reflecting on a few whispers of cynicism we’ve heard.
Some have compared storytelling to similar buzzwords that came before it like ‘purpose’ and ‘innovation’, predicting that, in five years time, another buzzword will have come along, creating thousands of ‘buzzjobs’ in its wake.
Back in 2018, Daniel Stanley called storytelling a MacGuffin: a magic method everyone chases, which distracts from understanding who you’re actually talking to.
It’s a familiar pattern we’ve seen before. Steve Blank coined the term innovation theater for companies that adopt props (hackathons, lanyards, posters) without substance. It’s akin to ‘disruption fetishisation’ which can lead to the kinds of isolated innovation labs that look better than they perform. As such, they end up either closing or pushing out talent, rather than carving out space for meaningful innovation.
The word ‘innovation’ still gets the odd eye-roll, but the real work has carried on because it was never about the word. If storytelling roles go the same way in five years, the work underneath them will carry on too.
Storytelling is an area of mastery, not a job title
Many ‘storytelling’ jobs ask people to ‘create content,’ even though all content is not created equal. But even when an overarching job title is vague, its position in an organisation usually isn’t. Your storyteller might report into a marketing function, or a PR team, or a creative director. Any of these is fine, as long as you're clear on what you've hired and where they sit.
But if a company changes the job title without paying attention to the system it sits within, a new hire may end up covering more roles than one person reasonably can.
At Brink, we were hiring storytellers long before the boom, and the lesson we keep relearning is that stories change hands between functions, and one person can’t handle it all alone. Over the past year, we’ve been developing a system to cut through oversimplification and recognise what is needed to enable storytelling to create meaningful change. We’ve identified five functions we believe are critical to good storytelling.
The storytelling matrix
Brink’s storytelling matrix presents the system a storyteller operates within. One axis asks whether you start with evidence or with people. The other asks whether your instinct is to make the thing, or to work out where it fits and what it needs to change.
We tested this together at the beginning of the year. Each group took one role and answered two questions: who at Brink does this, and when have you needed someone like that?
Storytelling is more than one job. This map asks two questions: do you start with evidence or with people, and is your instinct to make the thing or to work out where it fits in the wider system? Five roles sit across it.
The matrix has two axes. Vertically, it runs from evidence-led at the top to people-led at the bottom. Horizontally, it runs from craft on the left to systems and strategy on the right. Listeners sit on the centre line at the people-led end.
The five roles
Role 1 of 5 · Sensemaking
Translators
Translators start with the evidence and make it clear without flattening it. They’re the person who’ll tell you they need one more research conversation before they can write anything. Our Translator group split the role in two. Some translate what we know: synthesising dozens of conversations into funding pathways for scaling ventures, or pulling Frontier Tech Hub write-ups together to ask what we actually know about climate, or tech. Others translate how: looking across many pilots to build a playbook or toolkit that someone else can pick up and use. Researchers would call this knowledge brokering, and that field’s own reviews find a huge expansion in efforts to get research into policy, but limited evidence that they change policy or practice.
Role 2 of 5 · Strategic behaviour change
Decoders
Decoders embody behavioural innovation. They’re curious about what failed and would rather run a pilot than a launch. On the Oxygen CoLab, that meant asking which nudges might shift behaviour in health facilities. On a Brink campaign, it meant weighing up whether “regret” framing would land. It’s most useful where there’s space to measure and iterate.
Role 3 of 5 · Production
Builders
Builders make things: films, products, brands, content. This is where most of the boom is hiring. Our Builder group said the best ones get the house style, keep the end user in mind, and push back on the brief, often by asking whether the people in the story could make it themselves. They also pointed out that there’s more than one kind of builder. Sometimes a project passes from owners who can build to specialists who purely build. Sometimes there’s a deadline, and what you need is someone who can execute with very little onboarding.
Role 4 of 5 · Ecosystems
Connectors
Connectors watch which stories are already circulating and who’s telling them. They build coalitions, organise around a shared narrative, and would rather seed an idea in the right places than launch it loudly into the wrong ones. On uBoraBora, that meant placing grantees’ stories inside a bigger argument about how to be a flexible funder. On the Oxygen CoLab, it meant working out who could be talking to whom, and how best to connect them. The group’s verdict was that this role is always needed alongside a Builder. Our designer Sarah said: “I never don’t need this person.”
Role 5 of 5 · On the people-led axis
Listeners
Listeners surface stories that already exist, through trust and time. They aren’t fast and they shouldn’t be. Their dream brief does not involve “20 quick testimonials.” MIT’s Otto Scharmer describes four levels of listening: downloading, where you hear what confirms what you already think; factual, where you notice what’s new; empathic, where you see through someone else’s eyes; and generative, where you listen for what could emerge. Listeners work in the last two. On GoMuhazi, that looked like a funders’ circle that surfaced what funders and ventures each needed from the other, and where the value lay for each. It’s also the core of coaching. Holding space is where someone’s story starts, and it filters through into everything made afterwards. When the Listener group answered their second question, they wrote: “We always need it, but it’s hard to tangibly show the value.” That’s true of most of this work. The reading, the listening and the sensemaking rarely make the final cut, but they’re why the final cut works.
The best stories change hands more than once
Innovation Manager · Listener
Coaches grantees to surface their own stories from the work.
Researcher · Translator
Works out what those stories add up to
Designer · Builder
Builds portraits and mosaics to present stories within stories
Community Manager · Connector
Places that pattern inside a wider argument for flexible funding
Programme Lead · Decoder
Lines up incentives and framing techniques for maximum impact.
We find that nobody fits in one box, but usually across more than one.
On our Citizen Science Future of Work project, one person worked out what a huge pile of stories added up to, then handed it to our Designer Sarah to turn into portraits and mosaics. Before our People Manager Clare wrote a new internal policy, she ran listening circles so it started from Brinksters’ lived experience.
The gaps showed up too. One group pointed out that a team made up mostly of Builders makes beautiful things that never connect to the bigger picture. And not every brief is a white paper. When the Builder group listed the times they’d needed one, the examples ran from a brand for a new programme to a report on a run of convenings to personalised socks.
A lot of the time, it isn’t us telling the story at all. Our Griots work starts from the belief that the people closest to the work are best placed to tell it, so much of the job is coaching pilots, civil servants, grantees and innovators to tell their own. The roles show up there too. Among the Oxygen CoLab grantees we coach, some see far more need for a Connector than others, and some already hold more of the skills that sit underneath it.
Where would you put yourself?
When the title has moved on in five years, we believe all of these jobs will still be needed, because the stakes are rising. There's less funding available, so evidence has to work harder to land. The listening gets harder too - a Center for Effective Philanthropy survey published last month found that 58% of nonprofit leaders hold back from being fully honest with their funders, mostly for fear of losing future support. How do you balance existential needs with the need for honest evidence that can influence real change?
We'd like to meet people who want to use storytelling as a force for real impact, so we've put the matrix online. Find your place and tell us about the most complex thing you've turned into a story. You'll see where everyone else has landed, anonymously.
Placement map. Vertically, it runs from evidence-led at the top to people-led at the bottom. Horizontally, it runs from craft on the left to systems and strategy on the right.
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Sources
- Brink. The bridges we need between evidence and impact
- Casual Films. Like Purpose and Innovation, the Corporate World is Getting Storytelling Wrong
- Daniel Stanley, Words That Don’t Work. The Problem with Storytelling
- Steve Blank, 2019. Why Companies and Government Do “Innovation Theater” Instead of Actual Innovation
- Vip Vyas and Diego Nannicini, INSEAD Knowledge, 2020. Is Your Innovation Process a Corporate Illusion?
- Brink, Medium. Behavioural innovation: embracing behavioural science for lasting impact
- Brink. Innovation Carve-Outs (PDF)
- Katie Deighton, The Wall Street Journal. Companies Are Desperately Seeking ‘Storytellers’
- Paul Cairney, BMJ Quality & Safety, 2023. Translating evidence into policy and practice: what do we know already, and what would further research look like?
- Stephanie Beasley, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 2026. Nonprofits say funders aren’t providing what they need to address new hardships