BOOK EXCERPT: The Heart of the Matter (Chapter 1)

Editor's note: Each week, the Henrico Citizen will present a new chapter of The Heart of the Matter, a forthcoming book by Gayle Turner and Shelli Jost Brady, longtime Central Virginia leadership consultants, storytellers, and community builders. Through stories and reflection, the authors explore how the values people hold and the stories they tell shape the decisions they make — at work, at home, and in communities. Follow along each week as the book unfolds, one chapter at a time.

Chapter 1 — Everyone thinks they’re doing the right thing

No one wakes up in the morning intending to be the villain in their own story.

Every one of us—without exception—believes we are doing what we can with what we know, what we feel, and what we fear. Even when our actions hurt others. Even when we violate our own stated values. Even when, in quieter moments, we know we’ve crossed a line.

We justify.
We explain.
We rationalize.

And when justification feels thin, we reach for the most dangerous moral solvent of all:

“The ends justify the means.”

It’s how good people excuse bad behavior. It’s how leaders defend decisions they would never tolerate from their competitors. It’s how families stay silent when they should speak. It’s how organizations drift from who they said they were into what they swore they’d never become.

Joseph Campbell said, “Everyone is the hero in their own story.”
That insight is not poetic—it’s diagnostic.

Because once you see yourself as the hero, every obstacle becomes a threat, every critic becomes an enemy, and every compromise becomes “necessary.”

And once that narrative takes hold, values become negotiable.

The day I realized story was not entertainment

I didn’t come to this understanding through leadership theory or neuroscience. I came to it through a French film.

Mon Oncle d’Amérique, directed by Alain Resnais, draws on the work of French behaviorist Henri Laborit. The film interweaves three fictional human stories with raw behavioral science. What Laborit demonstrated—relentlessly and uncomfortably—is that much of what we call “choice” is actually conditioned response. We pursue reward. We avoid pain. We dominate, flee, freeze, or submit depending on which strategy once helped us survive.

But what stunned me wasn’t the biology.

It was the realization that we don’t live intentionally, by choice, or from pure instinct—we live from the stories we build around our experiences .

We don’t just react.
We narrate our reactions.
We defend our reactions.
We build identities around our reactions.

And then—without ever realizing it—we live into those stories as if they were the truth.

That was the moment I first understood:

We live into the stories we tell ourselves.

Not occasionally.
Not metaphorically.

Literally.

You did not choose your first operating aystem

Left alone, people operate from:

• The programming  they grew up with
• The emotional weather of their childhood home
• The survival strategies that once worked
• The culture of their last job
• The behavioral norms of their peer group

It is the extraordinary person who has ever consciously chosen the values that govern their behavior. Most simply inherit, adapt, or absorb them. And because they have never been named, they are rarely examined.

That’s why two intelligent, well-meaning people can look at the same situation and see entirely different “right answers.”

Different stories produce different heroes.
Different heroes justify different actions.

And when these unexamined narratives collide inside families, teams, and organizations, the result isn’t healthy tension—it’s moral confusion disguised as conflict.

Neuroscience confirms what the stories reveal

Modern neuroscience later confirmed what storytellers have always known:

Humans do not decide rationally and then feel.
We decide emotionally and then explain.

Granted, this is a bit of an over simplification. Research has shown the emotional brain fires first. The rational brain arrives late—like a press secretary sent out to make whatever just happened sound reasonable.

This is why smart people still make destructive choices.
This is why ethical people sometimes behave unethically.
This is why saying “they should have known better” misses the point.

They did what felt right inside the story they were living.

And that brings us to the first unavoidable leadership responsibility.

When stories go unexamined, someone else decides the ending

If people naturally live into inherited stories…
If emotion drives decisions before reason arrives…
If everyone believes they are the hero…

Then culture forms— not by design but by default.

Leaders are responsible for shaping their organization’s narrative.
If they don’t do so intentionally, it will develop by default..

When values are assumed instead of stated,
when behavior is excused instead of examined,
when alignment is hoped for instead of built—

the stories that fill the vacuum are rarely noble.

They tend to be fear-based:

• Protect yourself.
• Don’t speak up.
• Stay small.
• Don’t be wrong.
• Don’t be next.

And fear-based stories ultimately produce fear-based cultures.

A quiet truth most leaders miss

People are not misaligned because they are malicious. They are misaligned because they are faithfully living by different stories of what “right” looks like.

Until those stories are surfaced…
Until values are named…
Until expectations are clarified…

Collision is inevitable.

Which brings us to the first pillar of everything that follows:

Clarity.

The first pillar: Clarity

Clarity is not about control. It’s about honesty.

It is the act of a leader standing up and saying:

• This is who we are.
• This is what matters here.
• This is what “right” looks like in practice.
• This is how we treat each other when it’s hard.

Clarity removes moral guesswork.

Without clarity:

• People fill in the blanks from fear.
• Control replaces principle.
• Silence becomes permission.

With clarity:

• Expectations stabilize.
• Trust becomes possible.
• Stories stop colliding.

But clarity alone is not enough.

Because what leaders say is only a hypothesis.

What they live becomes the proof.

And that takes us directly into the second pillar.

Closing reflection

If everyone believes they are the hero…
If emotion drives decisions before logic intervenes…
If inherited stories shape behavior more than mission statements…

Leadership begins with clarity of values.

Before you can align people, you must first clarify what they are aligning to.

And that is why the future of every family, business, and community rests not in what it claims to value—but in how clearly the values espoused are lived every day. This is what’s meant by integrity.

Discover what matters most to you by taking "The Culture Compass" free to discover and prioritize the values that guide your decisions; visit storytellerschannel.com/culturecompass.