Our stories are the currency of our relationships. Storytelling is a great skill and one that can transform ordinary encounters to ones that stand out in memory. When it comes to career, we have infinite opportunities to talk about our work, but most of the time we don’t put a whole lot of thought to this so we end up glossing over, playing small, or skipping any attempt to really share what we’re up to. However, when we consider how much weight is given to a confident and succinct sharing of our projects and ideas, let alone our purpose, we can see the value in spending time preparing for this. You are the author describing what has gotten you here, where you are planning to go, and why. CareerTruth provides you all the tools and exercises to reveal, discover, and document the most important elements of you and continuously adapt, evolve, and develop to fulfill your purpose.
It is critical you have the ability to tell the story of you well in a wide variety of circumstances. Every interaction you have with people is an opportunity to share your story and enable them to share theirs with you. This is how we build connections and relationships. This is how we network internally and externally. This is how we influence with greater impact. This is how we lead to greater outcomes. The ability for you to share yourself in the right doses opens others up to change, learn, be inspired, and create results.
Within the context of your career, being able to tell the story of you has many applications and mediums to consider. These are the specific features of your story you must have to start.
- Your Purpose Statement
- Your Values
- What is important to you personally – You Personal Prioritized Goals like how you want to spend your time, where you want to live, and importance of financial reward
- What is important to you professionally – Your Professional Prioritized Goals like what you feel is most important in this season of your career that ties to your purpose
- Your areas of development you are working on right now, that should align to your Prioritized Goals. For example, I have a goal to get a promotion, so I am learning how to communicate as an executive.
- Your learnings from the biggest accomplishment and failures of your work. All of us have our biggest successes to call upon. You will need these stories to be ready in all types of important moments. Make sure you can tell these successes and even some failure stories well. In CareerTruth’s Professional Inventory, we help you the bigger wins and losses by having you use the STAR method to document each moment of importance. The reason CareerTruth uses this is to enable you to properly tell the story of you well in any circumstance in detail. Roses and Thorns catalogues your smaller-yet-still-significant moments.
- Your Big Idea – what you are working on that excites you today. There is a milestone exercise within CareerTruth to help you with this Big Idea concept, but simply, it is the breakthrough or novel work you are doing to create a big win. This may be part of your day job or beyond the scope, but it is something that shows your enthusiasm and critical thinking about something that hasn’t been done yet.
- What you are doing for others. This may be directly tied to your Purpose Statement or your job, but always have on the top of your mind what specifically you are doing for other people right now.
By knowing yourself well, having a confidence in who you are, and yet being humble to the fact that every interaction you have is an opportunity for you to gain great feedback, you can engage successfully with anyone and likely even help them.
Let’s think about a few circumstances:
- The CEO gets on the elevator with you.
- You are meeting a client for a coffee to discuss business.
- You are at a seminar with people you don’t know.
- You are presenting in a room of work peers.
- You are asked your opinion about a business issue.
- A person who has just failed badly asks you for advice.
- You have been asked to apply for a big promotion.
- You need a job and are going on an interview.
How you use your story or what features of your story may apply differently, yet always being prepared with the fullness of the Story of You is critical to your success. Imagine you walk into a room and just start talking about a topic. Everyone needs to know where you are coming from, why they should listen or engage with you. Your credibility or reason for interaction is based on your story. The right story for the moment:
- A chance to share your purpose – which will most likely sound like a more informal, “walk around” version of your Purpose Statement. For example, when grabbing coffee with someone new, you could say, “Just so you know – a peek into my mind and heart – I consider my purpose in life is to serve people in their business and career. Which is why I’m glad for the time and enjoy connecting like this.”
- You decide to ask for a meeting to discuss something your Big Idea. You may begin with who you are and ask if they would be willing to give feedback on the working concept because it ties to your bigger purpose and values.
- The simple question everyone gets in almost every casual engagement in the elevator, cocktail party or passing at the coffee maker – “What’s going on?” Tell them. Share your current work in a “Walk Around Number”. You are always ready. This means you are not allowed to say…”Not a whole lot new!” when asked “What’s going on?”!
Obviously not every circumstance is the same. Always consider your audience, be respectful of the other person’s time and the place, be clear and concise, and be aware of your delivery. You may or may not have a specific goal for the interaction, but if you do have a goal in a meeting, make sure you apply the right portions of your story to properly display who you are.
Our goal is to give you the tools to be ready. Not only should you be ready to discuss the important features of the Story of You, but the Story of You should be consistent in the different applications that display who you are. Your LinkedIn profile. Your Social Media accounts. Your resume. Your work product. While there are many facets of who you are, there is only one you. There should be common themes from your values and purpose that show up in whatever medium you decide to share yourself. This is not branding. This isn’t packaging. This is you owning your story. Again, you are the author describing what has gotten you here, where you are planning to go, and why. Mastery, Freedom, and Legacy.
Storytelling is a transformative capability in your career and will get better the more you practice. Leverage CareerTruth to capture the moments and chapters of your evergreen career to make sure you take advantage of every personal interaction. Our stories are the currency of our relationships. You will be amazed how people enjoy your story and what you can learn about them from theirs.