When your Authentic You is not part of the professional stories you tell, your stories are less-than-believable. As a result, the folks listening to your stories are left with no conclusion and one question: SO WHAT?
Because instead of authenticity, you tell:
- Products and services, features and benefits stories. You tell traditional-sounding, buying-and-selling or STEM-based explanatory stories. Or;
- Just how great you are stories. Because, things always go perfectly in your stories since you are the hero or heroine of every story you tell.
When the Authentic You is missing from your professional stories, your stories sound like everyone else’s: self-focused.
Consider that your colleagues, clients and investors crave stories that answer their question: “So What?” The people listening to your stories desire knowledge and actionable insights which can be applied to their own stories. For their own professional success as they serve each other and their own clients.
Leaving the Authentic You out of your professional stories leaves your stories sounding prescriptive. Clinical-sounding, professionally sterile. Step-by-step recipes where you intone: “Do-this, then do-that to accomplish this or that.”
So what? Your third-person, objective stories sound no different than what everyone else intones. When the stories you tell lack personal authenticity, you tell stories at your listeners. Instead of inviting them into the story you tell. And telling your stories with your listeners.
Including the Authentic You in your professional stories involves embracing risk and opportunity, simultaneously.
The Authentic You emerges when you courageously make the decision to step one millimeter outside of the comfortable professional stories you currently tell. And take your first, one millimeter step forward, to connect your stories with your clients’ stories.
The thought of taking your first, one millimeter step forward scares the heck out of you, doesn’t it? After all, that’s not the comfortable recipe you were taught to follow when telling stories, is it?
Taking your first millimeter step forward, into what is uncomfortable and unknown, translates your current professional stories into more authentic ones. Stories:
- About your real-life experiences, instead of idealized, perfect and sanitized stories.
- When project progression is less-than-ideal and nowhere close to linear.
- And, when the eventual outcome is the result of struggles and setbacks.
- Most importantly, how other people in your stories become unintentional heroes.
When your stories include the Authentic You, you are a supporting character and not the primary focus.
These are the stories your colleagues, clients and investors really want to hear. Really want to co-invest in. Stories which move them beyond just making their own numbers and fulfilling their own KPIs. Stories which catalyze their belief that they will get to where they need to go. Together.
Consider the mission-critical components missing from the professional stories you currently tell. Why continue to hold yourself back from moving forward? Let’s get to where you need to go. Together.
- Frustrated in your professional trajectory, working within job functions with no creative elbow-room?
- Stuck reacting to tactical workforce issues rather than innovating new pathways to productivity and profitability?
- Losing more employees and clients, over the course of each year, than you are winning each sales quarter?
Contact me right here. Let’s storytell. Together.
My One Millimeter Mindset® Storytelling programs translate across communication disconnects between people and professional disciplines in today’s challenging Internet of Things workforce environments. Create purpose-driven strategic business and human capital value by leveraging storytelling for professional innovation and employee and client success and retention. Contact me right here.
Image source: Adobe Stock
Leave a Reply