Every group has stories.
Some are told formally at meetings and celebrations. Others are repeated casually over lunch, during road trips, or when a newcomer asks, “How did things get this way?”
When Akoeley joined a small manufacturing company, she heard one story repeatedly.
Years earlier, the company had nearly lost its largest customer. A production problem appeared late on a Friday afternoon, and several employees stayed through the night to fix it. The founder drove to the plant with food, worked beside the team, and personally delivered the corrected order the following morning.
People still talked about that night.
No policy required them to tell the story. It simply kept coming back.
“If something has to get done, we get it done.”
“That’s who we are.”
“You should have seen the founder that night.”
Akoeley gradually realized that she was not simply hearing company history. She was learning the company’s identity.
That is the heart of symbolic convergence theory. Developed by communication scholar Ernest Bormann, the theory explains how shared narratives can create a common symbolic reality within groups. For readers interested in the academic foundation, Bormann’s work on symbolic convergence theory explores how shared fantasies and narratives help groups develop common consciousness.
In everyday language, the theory says something simple: people become a group partly through the stories they learn to tell together.
A story becomes bigger than the event
The Friday-night rescue happened once. But every time employees repeated it, the event became more than a memory.
It became evidence.
Evidence that the company was resilient. Evidence that leaders should get their hands dirty. Evidence that employees were expected to step up when things became difficult.
Bormann used the term “fantasy theme” to describe shared interpretations and dramatized stories that catch on within a group. Fantasy in this sense does not necessarily mean something false. It refers to the way people turn events into meaningful narratives with characters, motives, conflict, and lessons.
Over time, connected stories can create what the theory calls a rhetorical vision: a shared way of understanding who “we” are and what the group stands for.
That is why organizational stories matter so much.
A handbook can tell employees what the official values are. Stories tell them what the group actually admires.
Stories teach people how to belong
During Akoeley’s first months, she heard other stories too.
There was the employee who admitted a costly mistake before anyone discovered it and was praised for telling the truth.
There was the manager who refused to ship a product that did not meet standards even though a deadline was at risk.
There was also the story of an executive who stayed distant during a difficult period and eventually lost the respect of the team.
Together, those stories taught Akoeley the unwritten culture.
This connects closely to the employee identification process. People begin to identify with an organization when its language, experiences, relationships, and values start becoming part of how they describe themselves.
Eventually the sentence changes from “They do things this way” to “This is how we do things.”
That small word, we, is powerful.
Shared stories help create it.
Stories create heroes and villains
Every strong narrative has characters.
Inside organizations, certain people become symbols of what the group admires or rejects.
The founder who stayed all night becomes a hero of commitment. The employee who spoke honestly becomes a hero of integrity. The executive who disappeared during difficulty becomes a warning about leadership.
Families do this too.
“Your grandfather never missed a day of work.”
“Your grandmother fed anyone who came through the door.”
“Your uncle was always the one who made everyone laugh.”
These stories teach people what the group considers admirable.
They also shape identity. As we explored in identity is built in conversation, repeated descriptions can become part of how people understand themselves.
A family that repeatedly says, “We are people who finish what we start,” is doing more than remembering the past. It is communicating an expectation to the present generation.
A company that says, “We always put the customer first,” is doing the same thing.
The story becomes a standard.
Symbols help carry the story
Stories rarely travel alone. Groups attach them to objects, phrases, places, and traditions.
The manufacturing company still displayed a photograph from that difficult Friday night. An old delivery truck used during the crisis had been restored and placed near the entrance of the plant.
To a visitor, it was an old truck.
To longtime employees, it represented perseverance.
That is why symbols speak before words. Objects take on meaning when communities attach stories to them.
A championship trophy, founder’s desk, family photograph, military medal, company slogan, or church building may carry an entire narrative inside it.
New members may first see the object. Insiders see the story.
The danger of a story becoming too powerful
Several years after Akoeley joined the company, the old Friday-night story created an unexpected problem.
Employees had begun treating exhaustion as proof of commitment.
When projects were poorly planned, people stayed late and said, “That’s what we do here.” Managers celebrated employees who worked weekends. People who asked for better planning were sometimes seen as less committed.
The original story had been about extraordinary effort during an emergency.
The new interpretation suggested that constant emergency was normal.
That distinction matters.
Shared stories can inspire people, but they can also trap groups inside an outdated identity.
A company that tells itself, “We move fast,” may begin ignoring caution.
A family that says, “We handle our own problems,” may become reluctant to ask for help.
A leadership team that says, “We always figure it out,” may stop listening to warning signs.
This is where groupthink begins when agreement becomes safer than disagreement. A shared narrative can become dangerous when protecting the group’s preferred story becomes more important than examining reality.
The strongest cultures allow their stories to be questioned.
Different people may hear a different story
Akoeley also discovered that not everyone experienced the Friday-night story the same way.
Senior leaders heard dedication.
Some longtime employees remembered exhaustion.
A few family members remembered waiting at home while loved ones worked through the night.
Same event. Different perspective.
This is why every conversation carries invisible assumptions. People interpret a shared narrative through their own memories, roles, interests, and experiences.
Leaders should be careful when saying, “Everyone knows what this story means.”
They may not.
A healthy culture gives people room to say, “Here is what that story means from where I stand.”
Sometimes that additional perspective makes the group’s story richer and more truthful.
Leaders are always shaping stories
Leaders create stories whether they intend to or not.
What they praise becomes a story.
What they tolerate becomes a story.
How they act during crisis becomes a story.
Who receives credit becomes a story.
What happens after someone makes a mistake becomes a story.
Years later, employees may not remember the leadership presentation, but they will remember what happened when something went wrong.
That is why reputation becomes part of the message. Repeated actions create interpretations, and interpretations eventually become narratives about who a leader or organization really is.
You cannot completely control the stories people tell about you.
You can influence the kind of stories your behavior gives them to tell.
How to use this theory in real life
Start by listening for repeated stories.
What event does your family keep discussing? What story is told whenever a new employee joins? Which leader is remembered years later? What failure still gets mentioned? What success has become part of the group’s identity?
Then ask what lesson the story teaches.
Does it reward honesty? Loyalty? Courage? Sacrifice? Innovation? Obedience? Independence? Service?
Next, ask whether the lesson is still useful.
A story that helped a group survive one season may become unhealthy in another. Strong cultures preserve wisdom without becoming prisoners of the past.
Finally, tell better stories deliberately. When someone demonstrates the values you want the group to keep, remember the moment. Share it. Give it language.
Values become much easier to understand when people can see them lived out in a story.
Watch out for this
Symbolic convergence theory helps explain group cohesion, but shared stories are not automatically true simply because many people repeat them.
Groups can exaggerate their history, overlook inconvenient details, create heroes who were more complicated than remembered, or build “us versus them” narratives that distort outsiders.
Shared meaning is powerful precisely because it can shape behavior.
That means stories deserve both respect and examination.
Ask not only, “What story do we tell?” but also, “Is the story still true enough to guide us?”
One thing to remember
Akoeley did not learn the company’s culture from a PowerPoint presentation.
She learned it through the stories people could not stop telling.
Those stories showed her who the heroes were, what behavior earned respect, what the group had survived, and what kind of person belonged there.
That is the insight of symbolic convergence theory.
Groups do not become groups only because people share a building, goal, family name, or organization chart.
They become groups when they begin sharing a story about who we are.
Reflection question
What story does your family, team, organization, or community keep telling, and what is that story teaching people about who they are expected to become?
