2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Communication serves as an important skill for engineering leaders, enabling them to convey complex ideas, inspire teams, and navigate professional environments. Among the methods used to foster these essential skills, storytelling is increasingly recognized as a central technique that contributes to its development [1]. Storytelling develops key leadership skills engineers need to be successful, including clear communication, creativity, and empathy. While storytelling has been used in many academic fields, its structured application within engineering education remains relatively new.

In this practice paper, we explore a range of curricular and co-curricular initiatives that incorporate storytelling into engineering education and investigate its impact on leadership development.

To evaluate the effectiveness of these storytelling initiatives, we examine qualitative and quantitative data, including results from the Empathy and Care Questionnaire [2]. Drawing on existing research, we present an analysis of storytelling as a tool for effective engineering leadership development. By discussing practical examples from our educational programs through the lens of existing research, we underscore storytelling as a transformation tool, fostering effective communication and values-driven leadership in our engineering leaders.

Citations:
[1] R. P. Wright and J. M. Dziak, "Storytelling as a primary leadership tool," 2016 IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT, USA, 2016, pp. 1-12, doi: 10.1109/AERO.2016.7500928.

[2] Hess, J. L., Strobel, J., Pan, R. (Celia), & Wachter Morris, C. A. (2016). Insights from industry: a quantitative analysis of engineers’ perceptions of empathy and care within their practice. European Journal of Engineering Education, 42(6), 1128–1153. https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2016.1267717