Stop drifting and start storytelling
Businesses storytell by utilizing teams of marketers, designers, digital strategists and more to get clients, customers, sales, and recognition in a crowded competitive marketplace. Individuals need to learn how to master storytelling for themselves to get that first job in a fast-track company, plum promotion or to gain admission to their dream school.
Let’s take a look at Benjamin from the movie, The Graduate. He’s drifting literally and figuratively…
Everyone needs a break. Hopefully, you’ve taken time to detox after those four long hard years of college, 70-hour work weeks, or high school junior pressure cooker year with AP classes and standardized test prep. Now it’s time to roll up your sleeves and take this in as you focus on your goals:.
Most people are fairly awful storytellers. We don’t have a team of experts to advise and help us. Knowing how to storytell is not an innate skill. Most of us disappoint when telling stories and don’t necessarily know it.
“When our friends try to tell us about movies we’ve never seen or albums we’ve never heard, we usually find ourselves bored, confused and underwhelmed,” said Daniel Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard University.
Gilbert would know. He and his team ran a series of experiments on hundreds of people to examine the differences in our perception of our storytelling ability versus the reality of it.
The results were stark: “People are fairly awful storytellers who leave out a lot of important information,” Gilbert said. “Our friends probably would enjoy hearing us tell them about a painting they’ve never seen or a book they’ve never read if we could describe those things well. But most of us can’t.”
I should know.
I didn’t know how to tell my story when I needed it most to apply to college or ace my first job interview. I had a sense of my narrative, but I never tried to articulate it or prepare to tell it.
I knew I wasn’t very good at it, especially in person. I remember going on my first college interview at Williams.
”What do your parents do?” I was asked. Gulp…
I was uncomfortable with the question and clearly appeared so to my interviewer. I transformed my mother’s job as a dance teacher into a choreographer and my dad’s job as a salesman into a businessman. I never talked about how I was the first in my family to go to college. I didn’t share that I was forging new ground. I tried to pretend to be someone else because I felt that I really didn’t fit into the college scene.
Essentially, if you don’t tell your story, other people will and not in the way you intended it to be told. Anything could happen when they tell it — misunderstandings, false connections, loose ends, red herrings, confusion, and a polite rejection letter saying thanks but not thanks. Stories drive outcomes.
Millions of people are being evaluated everyday by their audience: the gatekeepers at elite colleges, internships, scholarships, graduate programs, jobs and by their constituents and stakeholders. By the time you meet them, you’ve worked very hard to achieve the best credentials — your GPA, test scores, college degree, or work experience. The one thing that they haven’t heard yet is your compelling, engaging and relevant story. Telling it your way, will make you stand out and drive outcomes.
Today, after several decades of experiences and hard work, I’m light years ahead in knowing my stories and how to tell them. Even so, I was still curious to learn more about how to develop this essential skill. So I set out on a quest to learn from the best modern day storytellers in the world. I’ve synthesized their insights, their principles and their practices to teach people how to learn to tell great stories much earlier in their lives.
Most of you reading this don’t have the time it took me to learn how to storytell… you need that skill NOW!
What do the following all have in common?
- Shonda Rhimes of Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy
- Pixar of Inside Out and Finding Nemo
- LucasFilms of Indiana Jones and Star Wars and
- the secretive company Magic Leap
They are the world’s best at telling stories.
You’re probably thinking great, that’s nice, but what about me? I’m not a creator for Pixar, a famous writer for ABC, a creator of one of the largest movie franchises in the history of Hollywood, or hatching a plan to uproot and disrupt modern computing as we know it. You, are the reason I wrote my book, STORY: the art of standing out. I plan to tease out, teach, educate and prepare YOU to storytell like the masters. Sounds interesting, but why is this important?
Most of of your competitors will be like you: smart, determined humans with great credentials. You need to break away from the pack by taking control of the one thing you have left to share: your story. Remember, if you don’t tell your story, someone else will. Don’t leave it to chance. Hone and develop it with the same care and diligence that you did to achieve your credentials.
My hope is that you’ll see me, Shonda Rimes, LucasFilms, Pixar and more as guides to help you craft your narrative.
Anything is possible. Even electing a female POTUS:
That fast track company needs to hire someone; that new position needs to be filled; that college needs to let someone in. Tell your story to make it you.
I hope you enjoyed this post — if you want to connect, you can reach me here via email Kimberlya.norton@gmail.com or connect with me on social: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Also, you can find my book, STORY: the art of standing out on Amazon — here is the link to buy it: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H94D3L1.
