The Stories That Sound Like Truth
LYF Series #5: Stories Sound Like Truth; Logos Helps You Test Them.
This is the fifth official article in the Lead Yourself First (LYF) series. If you're just joining us:
“The Way Back” served as the prelude, introducing the themes and questions we’d explore together.
“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall” outlined the Leadership Compass that anchors this series.
“Reading the Room” took us deep into the first compass point: context — how we got here, what shaped us, and what needs shedding.
“Who Are You Without the Title” revealed our second compass point: ethos, our credibility.
“What Moves You” explored our third compass point: pathos, our emotions.
This piece moves us into the next compass point: logos — the stories that sound like truth, and how to test whether they deserve to lead.
Jasmine — or Beyoncé, as she insisted we call her — sat in the back corner of the classroom, the farthest from me she could get, yet her presence was always the one most felt. When she wasn’t there, the air was heavier, like someone had turned down the wattage in the lights.
She was bright, clear-eyed, stunning. She came dressed for class: stylish ensemble– not the sweatpants preferred by her classmates– full makeup, full set of nails. She showed up. And she had a way of sliding in comments that made the whole class crack up.
One day, Jasmine turned in an analysis paper quoting from a newspaper article. In the signal phrase she used to introduce the source to her readers, she referred to the “article” as a “story.”
The journalism bloodline in me — grandfather the founder of the hometown paper, father the reporter-turned-publisher — laughed and bristled at the misuse. Without a moment’s hesitation, I just corrected it in the margin, teacher hat firmly on: “refer to the source as an ‘article,’ not a ‘story.’”
Despite my “correction,” she kept calling them “stories” in subsequent class conversations and essays. Over time, I saw the point she wasn’t trying to make but was making anyway: even “the news” is someone’s arrangement of events, a version of reality.
It was the first time I noticed how quickly I defended the Language of Authority without asking if it deserved defending.
Choosing Stories
The most insidious “stories” are the ones we never agreed to believe — they just streamed in through people who wore some kind of authority badge: Parents. Pastors. Professors.
Some of mine:
Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.
Sex should be saved for marriage.
Women are not trustworthy.
Only author-intent matters; the reader has no “say” in the interpretation of a “text.”
I kept the first two out of conviction; the last two cost me decades.
I believed I couldn’t trust women, so I didn't let many of them close. Oddly enough, I didn’t have a single, credible reason I could point to as to why I couldn’t trust women; I just didn’t. There was no name, no face, no experience to correspond to the story…just a story– women are not trustworthy.
Then there was the “real life” poetry professor — brilliant, mercurial, convinced that only the author’s intent for meaning mattered when reading poetry. I thought meaning was co-created between the text and reader. We sparred in class. In essay margins, there would be lots of red ink, indicating that the essay– “Lacks focus and direction!”
And here’s the irony: he probably wasn't wrong. My essays at 19, 20, 21 years old probably did lack focus and direction. My whole inner life was a draft — messy, sprawling, scattered. The problem wasn’t his observation. The problem was how I received it. Instead of separating his comments from the work, I let them become stories about me. Not about a paper, but about my capacity. I translated the commentary into “I lack focus and direction.” I carried that story for decades…until finally, I didn’t.
Stories don’t just float around on their own. They take shape in the way we arrange them, repeat them, and give them authority. That arrangement — the structure of a story, the way it lands — is where Logos lives. Logos isn’t the opposite of story; it’s the architecture that makes the story persuasive.