Are You Good at Telling Your Stories?
Curt Skene’s In2Win! Career Coaching Supplement.
During any interview your success will come from being able to tell relevant, exciting stories that draw in the listeners and encourage them to become active participants in how your stories play out. Practice being brilliant at telling “your stories” by using drama (e.g. add challenges you faced and other striking elements), use tonality and excitement to inspire the listener to want to hear more. Remember, it’s important to tell why you took certain actions because this communicates how you strategically thought through your process. In your career-marketing arsenal you need stories that punctuate your successes and your ability to work through challenges (people and processes).
You need stories that demonstrate how you think, react on your feet, lead and inspire others. Always keep in mind that you get as much time to tell your stories as your delivery style earns you. Keep your topic interesting, the details relevant and your voice enthusiastic and always watch your pace (slow and fast).
While everyone intends on listening to the stories you share there is often a lot of “chatter” going on in their mind, so work hard to keep their attention on you. Try recording your stories and listening to them to make sure your delivery is exactly what you intend or find a trusted friend to test out your story-telling skills.
A strong career story needs a clear challenge, meaningful action and a measurable positive result.
Why I Wrote This Page
Because the brain remembers narrative far longer than it remembers data. A list of qualifications fades almost immediately. A story with real tension and resolution sticks, sometimes for years.
This is well documented in how people process information: facts alone don’t transport a listener anywhere, but a story does, and once someone is “inside” your story, they remember it the way they remember their own experiences. A résumé full of bullet points is quietly competing against every other candidate’s bullet points. A well-told story isn’t competing with anything, it’s simply remembered.
This is why the same accomplishment, told as a flat fact versus told as a story with a real challenge and a real outcome, lands completely differently in an interviewer’s memory an hour later.
Action Steps
- Take your top three accomplishments and rebuild each one as a short story with a real challenge, not just a result.
- Practice telling them out loud until the pacing and tonality feel natural, not memorized.
- After telling a story in an interview, watch for whether the interviewer references it again later. That’s your signal it landed.
In2Win! Afterthought
Curt’s current observations and updated guidance will be added here.
Suggested Reading Links
The Learning Library contains hundreds of books on a variety of business and career topics. We want to make sure you don’t miss these ones.
What does this page mean for your search?
Share an idea, ask a question or learn from other In2Win! members. Posting requires a Quickstart, Premium or VIP login.
Be the first to join this discussion
Join the Discussion →