Bad Story
Two to three days, designed around one team after we've learned what's actually happening in it.
Explore Bad Story
The Storied Co.
Teams don't just share work.
Teams don't just share work.
They share meaning.
Every interaction gets interpreted. Those interpretations shape how people respond - and those responses shape what happens next. We help teams see the stories within them, around them, and between them, so they can be more deliberate about what comes next.
Your story isn't broken. It's unfinished.
Something you've probably seen
Everyone was in the same meeting. Nobody left with the same story.
Nobody is lying. Everyone was there, and every version describes something real. But somewhere between what happened and what it meant, the accounts separated. From that point on, each person is working from their own — and the team keeps moving, apparently aligned, on a set of assumptions nobody has ever compared.
A leader thinks they asked for feedback.
The decision was already made.
A manager thinks they're being clear.
This is what being controlled feels like.
Someone stays quiet to avoid a fight.
Everyone's on board.
Leadership calls it a reorganization.
We've seen this one before.
Teams are always making meaning. Usually without noticing they're doing it.
Three places a story comes from
Most of what shapes a team isn't on the agenda.
Within
What am I bringing into this?
History, identity, past experience, and the assumptions we don't know we're making.
Between
What have we taught each other to expect?
Trust, conflict, repair, and the relational history two people carry into every exchange.
Around
What has this place taught us to expect?
Norms, rewards, consequences, and everything the organization demonstrated before anyone said it out loud.
Same moment. Three different sources. Usually all three at once.
A free reflection
How much of your team’s actual story is making it into the room?
Every leadership team runs on interpretations as much as facts. The Storied Team Diagnostic is a short reflection on where your team’s story is rich, and where it may be getting thin.
Why it repeats
What we believe shapes how we respond. How we respond becomes part of what happens next.
- Leadership asks for feedback.
- The room stays quiet.
- Silence is read as agreement.
- The decision goes ahead.
- The team concludes the question was never real.
- Next time, fewer people speak.
Nobody in that sequence did anything obviously wrong. It still got worse.
Loops aren't the problem. Not seeing them is.
The flagship experience
Bad Story
See the story your team is living.
Bad Story is an immersive, fully curated team experience designed to surface the stories shaping how people communicate, respond under pressure, handle conflict, take risks, and make meaning together.
It isn't a workshop, an assessment, or a leadership retreat with a facilitator attached. It's two to three days built around your team specifically, after we've spent time understanding what's actually happening in it.
Don't give us a slot on your agenda. Give us the agenda.
You bring the team. We design the experience.
What we do
In the room with you, and with you after we leave.
The Storied Co. works with leaders and teams on the stories underneath their work. Some of it happens face to face. Some of it lives in tools we build, so the work keeps going between the moments we're together.
Whole Story
A year-long leadership journey for a team that wants to grow beneath the surface: monthly sessions, two retreats, coaching woven through the year, and the Storied app between gatherings.
Ask about Whole StoryStoried, with Lumen
Storied is the app that holds it together: check in with your body and mind, notice your patterns over time, and walk the journeys you're part of.
Lumen is the guide inside it. A mirror rather than another tracker.
Sign in to StoriedWhat is your life trying to tell you?
Next, we're building Storied spaces for families, marriages and churches, each on the same idea: your story isn't broken. It's unfinished.
Where this came from
Story changed how we saw everything.
Two of us, coming at it from different directions — a doctorate in leadership on one side, clinical practice on the other — kept running into the same thing. People don't respond to what happens. They respond to what they've decided it means. Once we could see it, we couldn't stop seeing it — in the teams we led, and in conversations we'd been having for years without getting anywhere.
Read the longer versionWhat story is your team living?
You probably already have a guess. Tell us what your team is navigating and we'll tell you honestly whether Bad Story is the right thing - including when it isn't.