How storytelling helps data-driven teams succeed
Whether on the court or in an office, winning leaders use data and storytelling to achieve sustained performance from their teams.
Faculty
Shira Springer is a Lecturer in Managerial Communication at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Her teaching and research focus on leadership communication, sports strategy, and storytelling. She’s also a journalist. Her columns, features, and essays appear in a variety of publications, including the Sports Business Journal and The New York Times. Her writing often addresses issues at the intersection of sports and culture, especially women’s sports and gender inequity.
Shira's essays have appeared in The New York Times best seller Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History (Hachette, 2018) and Our Boston: Writers Celebrate the City They Love (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013). She’s also coauthored MIT Sloan case studies on the National Women’s Soccer League.
Shira teaches the MBA core course Communication for Leaders and the MBA elective Advanced Leadership Communication. She also teaches storytelling in the MIT Sloan Executive Education program.
Prior to MIT, Shira covered sports for The Boston Globe, multiple NPR programs, and NPR affiliate WBUR. She reported on all four major Boston professional teams, the NBA Finals, World Series, Super Bowl, Stanley Cup Final, and the Winter and Summer Olympics, and she served as the Globe’s Celtics beat writer for seven years. As a Globe staff writer, she also reported extensively on the Boston Marathon bombings and shared in the paper’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize for that coverage. In addition, she's earned national recognition and awards for her investigative journalism, feature writing, radio storytelling and media criticism.
Shira previously taught at Boston University in the College of Communication where she developed and launched the courses Sports Storytelling and Sports, Gender and Justice.
She holds an AB from Harvard University in social studies and an MBA from Boston University.”
Whether on the court or in an office, winning leaders use data and storytelling to achieve sustained performance from their teams.
"Beyond the big numbers, female athletes competed on their own terms."
"You also have to be cognizant of how far women have come and how far they still have to go. The percentages are not the whole picture."
"Purposeful, memorable stories signal what holds value and what doesn't, especially in an overcrowded sports landscape."
"Investing more thought and more money in sports tech geared toward women's sports can help narrow the gaps and narrow them quickly. "