Four Differences between Business Storytelling and Business Reporting

Living the Stories of Those No Longer Living

The Best Times To Share Your Personal Brand Stories

Where to Find Stories that Reflect Your Personal Brand

One of my favourite quotes on storytelling comes from the great Nigerian poet, Ben Okri. He said, “We live by stories. We also live in them. One way or another, we are living the stories planted early in us or along the way. We are also living the stories we plant, knowingly or unknowingly, in ourselves.”

This quote reminds me how much our lives are not only shaped by stories, but also how much our lives are fertile gardens of stories grown from the meaningful experiences we’ve had while living. Some of those experiences are pure entertainment and little more. Other experiences, however, are more enlightening in that we learn something from them: about ourselves, about our interactions with others, about how we navigate through life and through work. Over time, these learnings nourish us, shape us, and help us grow into the person and professional we are today.

Our lives are, indeed, rich with stories. However, each of us is also a story, one constantly in the making and in need of sharing.

I spoke about this in my last blog post when I focused on the importance of taking ownership of your personal brand story, defining what your story is versus leaving it to chance or let others do it for you. In that post I shared some profound questions to help you explore and identify what you, as a personal brand, are all about. Those questions are certainly loftier and more philosophical; but in carefully considering how you would answer them, you dig deep to discover who you are, what drives and distinguishes you, and the difference you hope to make in your work, in others, and the world.

In sharing your personal brand story, you could simply tell people your answers to those questions put forward in this last blog post. Better still, you could show your answers through exemplary stories that bring them to life. But what stories to tell? And just as crucially, where can you find them? Outlined below are three key places to look more deeply into.

Stories from Your Life Experiences

Set time aside, clear your mind, and reflect on your life going as far back as you can remember. Start with your early childhood, growing up, your awkward teen years, college or university, young adulthood, your first love, your current love, starting a family, etc. Think about the high points that fill you with joy and gratitude, but also the low points that gave you pause or set you back.

As you scan your memory, make note of what moments or experiences pop to the surface of your consciousness. Later, look more deeply into each of those experiences and ask yourself if you learned anything from it. Better still, is there anything from that experience that changed you somehow, instilled an enduring value or belief in you, or helped form you into the person you are today? In revisiting your most meaningful life experiences, some of them will fill you with pride and delight, while others may fill you with shame or regret. Don’t discount the latter, as we often learn a lot from mistakes or missteps we’ve made.

Your life experiences provide a fertile pond to fish in for stories that answer some of the questions put forward in my last post. For instance, putting aside all humility, what do you value most in yourself and are most proud of; is there a life experience you’ve had that fills you with pride and brings that characteristic to life? What are the values that shape and guide you as an individual; can you recall life experiences where each of those values was formed and/or which shows that value in action?

Stories from Your Work Experiences

Everyone started somewhere, including you. Look back on the entirety of your career and consider some of the fundamental experiences that propelled it forward, brought it to a grinding halt, or caused a change in its trajectory. Think back on your very first job as a teenager, your first “adult” job in your twenties, the most challenging or humbling work situations you’ve ever been in, and the most rewarding ones. As you do this professional scan, pay attention to the experiences that pop into your mind, because there is often a reason they are so quickly uncovered.

In looking back on your working life, you will quickly realize how full it is of successes and struggles, big wins and sobering losses. What did you learn in the moment of those experiences? Better still, what do you learn, right now, in reflecting on them? If you could give that younger you some advice on how to do things differently, what might you say?

As you consider the entirety of your working life, keep in mind some of the questions put forward in the last post around your personal brand. For example, what are the core strengths that help you stand apart: strengths you should leverage moving forward? What are some potential misperceptions people have of you and where do you think those misperceptions might come from? When did you feel completely at the top of your game and what was it about that time or experience that made you feel that way?

Stories Inspired by Mentors, Trusted Advisors, Role Models

No one navigates through a life or career completely on their own. There are always others along that journey who help you bravely face opportunities or challenges in front of you, who enlighten and guide you, or who point you in the right direction. The interactions and experiences we have with these individuals, what those moments teach us and make us realize about ourselves, provide a great place for harvesting stories.

So, as you take stock of your life and your career, make a list of those people who have had the greatest influence on either. These individuals could be a family member, coach, teacher, friend, colleague, boss, business partner, or even a random stranger from some chance encounter. Consider what those individuals taught you or helped you understand about yourself and your approach to working, to living, or to working and living with others. Better still, think about some defining experiences you had with these individuals, or experiences that those individuals help you make the most of through their counsel and wisdom.

The pivotal interactions you’ve had with these individuals can be grow into enlightening stories that can help you bring to life answers to personal brand questions from my last post. For example, when have you gotten off track in your life or career? Perhaps a mentor or trusted advisor are the people who helped you get back on the right one, like my former bosses, Neil Kreisberg or Marie McNeely did for me. Or thinking about what your growing edges are: those blossoming roles, traits, characteristics that are just starting to sprout and which you want to cultivate further. It is often the perspective of others that help you see and recognize those flowering opportunities, just as my former coaches Linda Oglov or David Baker did for me, or my friend and client, Karen Kuhla McClone, who was the one who invited me to leap into business storytelling training in the first place.

Harvesting exemplary stories that form the bounty of your personal brand story is not an onerous task, but it is something that requires some time, contemplation, and focus. But once you start digging, you quickly realize just how fertile a ground it can be.

 

Bill Baker is the founder and principal of BB&Co Strategic Storytelling. For over 15 years, BB&Co has been providing Effective Presentation Skills and Leadership Through Storytelling training to organizations such as Coca-Cola, Cisco, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, Dell, Prudential, and others. BB&Co’s training helps managers, salespeople, finance directors, engineers, scientists and others understand how to use storytelling to improve the impact of their communications and presentations and, with that, their ability to persuade, engage and inspire others. 

Take Ownership of Your Personal Brand Story

Most professionals understand and appreciate the power of good branding. However, while many know the benefits of branding, far too few think about branding themselves: crafting, managing and promoting their own personal brand story.

Developing, defining and managing your personal brand story is an endeavour that every professional should undertake at some point in their career, especially if you’re taking on more leadership roles and responsibilities. Because the fact is, if you don’t do this — take ownership of your own story — others might do it for you, and it might not be the story you want being told.

Why Develop a Personal Brand Story?

Branding in the business world has many advantages that are well-recognized and leveraged. Outside a company or organization, strong branding can differentiate products or services from the competition, create a greater perception of value, and build expectations and loyalty among consumers. Within a company, strong branding can serve as an ideological compass to guide that organization’s efforts. It can also be the cultural glue that unites and aligns an organization, serving as a magnet to attract the people who share that company’s beliefs and values, and rightly repel those who don’t.

Personal branding can reap similar rewards for professionals and leaders. On the outside, strong personal branding can help you stand out because you stand for something that is bigger than yourself. More specifically, others come to value you for more than what you’ve done, and come to appreciate you more for what you think, believe, and envision.

On the inside, having a strong personal brand story — understanding what drives and motivates you, the impact you’re looking to have, what you value and hope for — can serve as a beacon to keep you on the right path and true to who you are. It can also help others understand what they can expect from you because, in sharing and living your personal brand story, you are showing them what you expect of yourself.

Be Intentional with Your Personal Brand Story

Strong brands are not left to chance. Rather, they have dedicated, disciplined teams of people behind them who are intentional in determining how their brands are positioned, promoted and perceived. The same should be true when considering your own personal brand story. You must have intent in managing that story, because if you don’t, it can quickly get away from you, sometimes irreversibly so.

I remember my story getting away from me during my first “grown-up” job at Grey Advertising in New York City. I started as an Assistant Account Executive on the Procter & Gamble business, working alongside a very intelligent, fun and fun-loving group of people including (shameless name drop here) the talented comedian, Jim Gaffigan. I use the term “working” loosely, because I didn’t really do much work. I did what was required of me, but little more. I never dropped the ball and always fulfilled my responsibilities; but I was certainly not impressing anyone, especially senior executives.

Then one day mid-way through my second year at Grey, the Executive VP for our group, the wise and generous Neil Kreisberg, sat me down in his office, looked at me across his desk and asked, “Bill, what are you doing?” Not recognizing the rhetorical nature of his question, I started listing out the various things I was working on that day, such as traffic reports, budget updates, etc. But he quickly interrupted me. “No, Bill. What are you doing…with all this, this job, this opportunity?” In the absence of a decent answer to his question, Neil shared some of the impressions that he and others had of me: that I was a nice and amusing guy who seemed reasonably intelligent, but I always did just enough to get by and never much more, that I didn’t show much initiative or appear to take my job very seriously.

This was tough feedback to hear, but I kept quiet and listened because I knew, deep in my gut, that Neil was right. He challenged me to think about the future story I’d like to be able to tell about my time at Grey and to imagine the story I’d want him and others telling about me. More than anything, Neil opened my eyes to the story that was forming about me and consider whether it was the story I wanted being told. It most definitely was not, and Neil’s talk — his firm but compassionate kick in my butt — made me realize that I needed to take control of this narrative and make it a story I could be proud of.

Things changed for me after that moment. I leaned into my work instead of just getting through it. I asked for more projects and responsibilities and made sure no one regretted giving me either. And I started pushing and stretching myself and looking at my position at Grey as the start of a career instead of just a job. And from that moment on, I started living the personal brand story that I wanted to become instead of letting that story haphazardly become what it may. And I never looked back.

Things to Consider around Your Personal Brand

At the core of any strong brand are some foundational concepts that define its reason for being, its vision for the future, what it values and what makes it remarkable. But to be clear, these core tenets like vision, mission and values are not, on their own, the full story of a brand as much as they are extracted from that larger, deeper story, even if it has yet to be fully articulated. They can also serve as the fundamental threads of that larger brand story when it starts getting woven together.

The same holds true for one’s personal brand story — i.e., you must first explore and identify the more philosophical ideas of who you are, what makes you unique, what you envision or hope for, what you value, etc. As you do so, here are some things to consider. All of these are questions I ask senior leaders and executives when I’m providing one-on-one coaching for them, and some of them are identical to the questions asked of me when I worked with own coach (and now good friend), Linda Oglov.

  • Without being too humble — and considering not only your career, but also your life — what do you value most about yourself? What are you most proud of?
  • What are the core strengths that help you stand apart and which you should leverage in the future?
  • What do you want your legacy to be? Thinking back from the future, what do you want to be known for? What kind of impact do you want to have had: on work, on business, on the organization, on people, on the world?
  • What are some misperceptions that people have about you? Can you identify where those misperceptions might come from (e.g., My quietness is misperceived as indifference; or my strong conviction can be misconstrued as combativeness)?
  • What are the values that shape and guide you in your career or life? What are the principles or commitments that are most important to you and drive you as a professional and person? In the name of what do you do what you do?
  • When have you gotten off track, in your career or your life? When did you feel you were not being true to who you are or your values? How did you get things back on track, and importantly what did you learn from that experience?
  • What are your growing edges? In other words, what are those traits, characteristics, roles, responsibilities, etc., that have more recently started to emerge and which you would like to capitalize on moving forward?

Take your time in answering these questions and do not try to do so all at once. Rather, treat this is as an iterative journey of discovery. Grab a drink, start writing, walk away from it, come back to it, and write some more. People are complex, and so are the threads of your personal brand story. At some point, your answers to these questions will start to feel right…feel “on brand” and consistent with the larger story you can share about yours.

 

NOTE: This post is the first in a series about personal branding. In later posts, I will discuss how to find exemplary stories that bring your personal brand to life for others, as well as when and in what circumstances you should share your personal brand story.

Bill Baker is the founder and principal of BB&Co Strategic Storytelling. For over 13 years, BB&Co has been providing Effective Presentation Skills and Leadership Through Storytelling training to organizations such as Coca-Cola, Cisco, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, Dell, Prudential, and others. BB&Co’s training helps managers, salespeople, finance directors, engineers, scientists and others understand how to use storytelling to improve the impact of their communications and presentations and, with that, their ability to persuade, engage and inspire others. 

 

 

How to Make Business Storytelling Reflective and Relatable

One of the more popular stories I hear during our Storytelling for Business training workshops is of someone running their first marathon. This popularity is for good reason, because running a marathon is no easy feat, and one learns a lot from doing so.

I have never run a marathon. I have no intention of running a marathon. So, I can’t, personally, relate to that particular physical journey. However, when a “first marathon” story is told really well, I can still relate to the storyteller runner who’s telling it. Because even though I have never run a marathon, I have had to overcome plenty of tough challenges that seemed epic or insurmountable when I first faced them. In other words, even though I have never shared the storyteller’s physical experience of running 26.2 miles in one go, I have shared a similar mental and emotional experience of conquering an intimidating, overwhelming task.

For business storytelling to be effective, it must be relevant and relatable to the audience, not just the storyteller. More specifically, the storyteller should try to make sure that audience can see themselves in the storyteller’s story, even if they never shared the experience the storyteller is recounting. The more the audience can relate to the story being shared, the more meaning and insight they can glean from it, and the deeper and more lasting impact that story will have.

Outlined below are three things you can do to make sure the stories you’re sharing are relevant and relatable to your audience, not just to you.

 

ONE: Take a strategic approach to your business storytelling

 

When you think strategically about the stories you’re telling at work, you don’t start with the story; rather, you start with your audience, identifying the impacts you want your story to have on them. More specifically, you think strategically about what you want a story (any story) to do for your audience, so you can find and develop the best story to do it.

This “audience first” approach to strategic storytelling unfolds through the following line of questioning:

1) Who is my audience and what situation or circumstances are they facing right now? What’s happening to them, inside of them, around them? What’s the context for a story?

2) What do I want my audience to do after hearing a story; the action I want them to take; start or stop doing; do more of or less of?

3) What do I think my audience needs to think and/or feel, or stop thinking and stop feeling to take that action?

4) What’s a message I believe they need to hear and take-away?

5) And finally, do I have the right story to foster and facilitate all of the above? Do I have the right story to deliver that message, to shape those thoughts and feelings, to inspire that action or change in behaviour.

Because a strategic approach starts with the audience and keeps them always in mind (versus being self-centredly focused on the storyteller), it helps ensure that the story being developed and shared will be relevant and relatable to that audience. This is the difference between just telling any story in a workplace situation, and telling the right story, to deliver the right message at the right time.

 

TWO: Decide whom your audience should relate to in your story

 

One key difference between business reporting and business storytelling is that business stories, workplace stories involve people. They’re about human drama, not just operational, technical or financial drama. Moreover, they convey not just what happened, but what happened to someone: what they heard, said, thought, felt, and experienced. While reports have facts, stories have characters; and the more your audience can relate to those characters, the more learning and wisdom they can pull from those characters’ experiences.

However, most stories have more than one character. Therefore, when you develop your story and think strategically about it, you need to decide which character you want your audience relating to most.

As an example, you might share a story from sport that involves a coach and a team of athletes. When sharing that story with new managers or directors, you would likely want your audience relating to the coach character. More specifically, the human drama unfolding would demonstrate how effective she was in empowering her team and inspiring them to take on greater ownership of their own success. It would bring to life the struggle that coach felt balancing her impulse to simply tell her team what to do with her realization that encouraging them to figure things out on their own would lead to more sustainable success.

On the flip side, when sharing that story with new employees, you might want your audience relating more to the team member characters. In that case, the human drama would centre more on those athletes weighing the ease of being told exactly what to do by their coach with the pride and fulfillment they experienced when they took on more responsibility for their own success and figured it out themselves.

Same situation; same cast of characters; but it would feel like a different story because the relatable character and the drama unfolding for them would be different, as would the message or lesson revealed at the end.

 

THREE: Take some creative liberties to make your story more reflective of your audience.

 

Storytelling must be genuine in its intent to be most effective, facilitating the audience’s thinking versus trying to manipulate it. With that said, I think it’s ok to embellish a story, as long as there is a genuine strategic reason for doing so. You shouldn’t lie from beginning to end. You don’t want to say anything someone could Google fact-check you on. But if you want to take some creative liberties with your story to make it more reflective of your audience and/or make the point of your story come through more clearly, I think that’s ok.

As an example, one area of a story I will often embellish to make it more relatable to my audience is the inner dialogue that was going on in my head during the ordeal I’m recounting. For example, “And I remember thinking to myself I couldn’t do this anymore; I’m in way over my head. But then I woke up the next morning, I realized I could do this, but it was going to take hard work and belief in myself.” To be honest, I can’t remember if that’s exactly what I was thinking at that time; but I know that’s what my audience is thinking right now.

Relatable stories are like a mirror you’re holding up to your audience. In taking those creative liberties, in exercising those embellishments, you can often make that mirror more reflective of your audience and what they’re going through. When this happens, your audience’s connection to your story will be stronger, but also their connection to you and the wonderful wisdom you are sharing with them.

 

Bill Baker is the founder and principal of BB&Co Strategic Storytelling. For over 13 years, BB&Co has been providing Effective Presentation Skills and Leadership Through Storytelling training to organizations such as Coca-Cola, Cisco, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, Dell, Prudential, and others. BB&Co’s training helps managers, salespeople, finance directors, engineers, scientists and others understand how to use storytelling to improve the impact of their communications and presentations and, with that, their ability to persuade, engage and inspire others. Sign up for our next open-enrollment, online Storytelling Training workshop!

Your Business Storytelling Doesn’t Always Have to Be about You

Often, during one of our business storytelling training workshops, someone will raise a concern around telling stories about themselves and their own experiences. “I don’t want it to feel like it’s all about me,” they will confide. “Like I’m bragging or congratulating myself.”

In response, I will always say that the very fact they have that concern tells me they won’t let that happen — i.e., that it’s typically people with little to no self-awareness who end up making their storytelling all about them, using their stories to pat themselves on the back and/or try to manipulate their audience into doing the same. We’ve all run into people like this before. “Enough about me. What do you think about me?”

That said, there is no reason why the stories you share in a workplace situation have to be about you. You can just as easily, effectively and convincingly tell a story about someone or something else: a story that you heard about a customer, colleague, or client. Or you could share a relevant, analogous story lifted from history, sport, the news, literature, cinema, social media, folklore, etc.

However, when you’re telling a story that isn’t about you, you must still insert yourself into your storytelling. More specifically, think about “bookending” yourself around the story. Let me explain.

In our business storytelling training programs, we teach the typical plot structure that most stories follow, where the main character in the story heads off on a journey or down a path, experiences challenges or problems along the way, overcomes them, and then learns something valuable as a result of that experience. We also look at different versions of that plot structure where, for instance, there is no turning point in the story or resolution to the tensions (e.g., a mistake or blunder that was made and never corrected), but the protagonist still gleans insight and wisdom from the experience.

Telling a story about someone or something else is also a variation of the typical story plot referenced above. More specifically, it requires the storyteller to build off that plot structure by wrapping themselves, as the storyteller, around the story. More specifically…

 

1) The Storyteller Introduces the Story and Their Connection to It

 

The storyteller must first start with their own connection to the story, telling the audience why they’re thinking of the story they’re about to share, setting some premise and context for it and establishing some relevance to the situation the audience currently faces. For example:

“When I look at the challenges we’re facing with this software initiative — and how unexpected and unsettling some of these challenges are despite our careful planning — it reminds me of one of my favourite movies: Apollo 13. Have you seen that film? Apollo 13 stars Tom Hanks and Ed Harris, and is based on the true story of one of NASA’s third lunar mission…”

 

2) The Storyteller Shares the Story

 

Then the storyteller tells the story to their audience but does so through the lens of their own memory of that story and their personal reflection on it. The storyteller would distil the story for the sake of focus and brevity, but they are still telling the story, not reporting the story.

In this case, using the example above, the storyteller would summarize the plot of the Apollo 13 movie, but would focus on the pivotal “Houston, we have a problem” moment where a major, unexpected predicament with that lunar mission occurred. The storyteller would continue by talking about how the crew and NASA team overcame the monumental problems they faced, ensuring the plot of the story is setting up the lesson or moral they want their audience to take away from it.

In sharing that plot, they would also want to make sure that their audience can relate to the drama unfolding, even though, it’s very safe to assume, none of them has been on a lunar mission — i.e., “Yeh, that’s kind of how I think and feel about this software initiative blowing up right now.”

 

3) The Storyteller Conveys the Impact of the Story on Them…and Their Audience

 

Then, importantly, the storyteller brings it back to themselves by conveying the impact the story had on them and why they’re now reflecting back on it. In this regard, the storyteller makes clear what lesson, idea or message they pull from the story they just shared, as well as what they want their audience to take away from it. For example:

“I remember when I watched this movie for the first time. And even though I knew they got home safely — because I knew the true story the movie was based on — I was still tense with how overwhelming their challenges were. And I was equally impressed and inspired by how they went about tackling challenges and working through them. I’ve been thinking of this story, this movie, for the past couple of days, because it made me realize that things often don’t go as planned or envisioned. Something will almost always go wrong, especially with complex projects like ours.

But Apollo 13, and the true story that inspired it, reminds me that when something unforeseen occurs when a project gets knocked unexpectedly off track, it’s important to stay calm and assess, know deep down in our core that a solution exists, and then work methodically and confidently as a team to solve it. And that’s what we’re going to start doing, right here, right now.”

 

Building a Robust Business Storytelling Library

Understanding that the stories you tell in workplace situations don’t always have to be about you relieves some pressure while opening up a rich treasure trove of stories for your business storytelling library. The fact is, there is a big beautiful river of stories flowing past us every single day. Not only stories we hear from customers, clients, and co-workers, but also stories we can source from cinema, social media, the news, sport, literature, history, folklore, etc.

Cast a net into that river and capture the stories you need or the stories that speak to you. And make sure when you’re sharing one of those stories with others, you wrap yourself around it, conveying how it affects you, and how you want it to affect your audience.

 

Bill Baker is the founder and principal of BB&Co Strategic Storytelling. For over 13 years, BB&Co has been providing Effective Presentation Skills and Leadership Through Storytelling training to organizations such as Coca-Cola, Cisco, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, Dell, Prudential, and others. BB&Co’s training helps managers, salespeople, finance directors, engineers, scientists and others understand how to use storytelling to improve the impact of their communications and presentations and, with that, their ability to persuade, engage and inspire others.

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