“My boss tells amazing stories. I could listen to her for hours.” I was talking with an IT audit manager at a global pharma company when she made that comment. These weren’t stories about deep-sea diving with sharks or trekking in the Himalayas. These were stories about work. About audit projects. And they were gripping.
This VP of audit held her audience because she knew how to paint a vivid picture of the work, adding cool details, diving into the interplay between the characters (stakeholders, leadership, audit), bringing to life the quest to solve the problem, and finally, making the connection to the real heart of all the work – making life better for customers who are patients with life-threatening illnesses.
As this IT audit manager went on to say, she could feel the VP’s passion for the mission. It was inspiring. It made her want to do more. To make every project really count. And to learn to tell amazing stories of her own.
What I have experienced while interviewing leaders with successful careers in the digital trust disciplines is that they are able to tell high-impact stories about their work, their teams and their projects.
One might be tempted to say, well, they have the gift. A talent for telling good stories. Likely some of them do. But the majority of these leaders have told me that this is a skill they learned, and more importantly, practiced.
There is a lot of talk about the need for digital trust professionals to develop their soft skills. We normally think of effective communication, clear writing, and emotional intelligence, to name a few.
Storytelling needs to be highlighted on that list of critical soft skills.
Here’s the why. Royston Guest, a British entrepreneur and leading business strategist, says it well: “You can memorise data and facts, but you need a story to change opinion and behaviour. The crucial part is to create meaning in what your people do, how they do it, and why they do it. Your ultimate goal is to make them feel inspired, energized and motivated to deliver their best work.”
Stories help stakeholders immerse themselves in a situation and to experience it more deeply. That deeper, more personal engagement with the story fosters dialogue, improved understanding, better problem-solving, and ultimately, a better shot at acceptance of change, adherence to a control, or remediation of an issue.
Clearly all these things are important for successful technology projects, and in turn, success for the practitioners themselves.
That’s the message. Work on your stories. This is vital for professionals early in their careers, more experienced people looking to get promoted up the ranks and senior leaders who want to survive and excel as they strive to lead very large teams and critical missions.
Start now. We’re more than halfway through the year. There are seven months of stories from this year to record, mull, and refine into messages that land solidly and are heard the way you want them to be heard.
Beyond being heard, you want your messages to be transmitted and fully embedded in your team and in the minds of key stakeholders.
I recently met up with a couple of top-notch marketing leaders, a chief marketing officer for an innovative consumer products company and a creative director for a famous athleisure company. They talked about how companies are now mostly “soundbite cultures.” They said that their goal in creating excellent messaging (often presented in a deck) is to make it easy for the message to permeate the business. “The unit of information that can make its way through a business of any size is tiny. You have to make it small and memorable, and easy to repeat to others. You have to craft it in a way so that anyone can pick it up and tell it. The story needs to be able to travel without you.”
Eye-opening, right? So, how do you actually do this with stories you want to tell about a project or about your own work? It sounds like it should be easy, but creating a concise story that that runs for 1-2 minutes with all the relevant information to make the point it not simple. It takes thought, revision (really hard to get it just right in a first draft – or on the fly!), and practice. That being said, it’s not hard, either.
Here’s an 8-step plan. Let’s do this!
Step 1: Start by remembering and recording your projects and work assignments. My recommendation is to create a project journal where you record your projects – the who, what, when, where, and WHY. Also write down the lessons learned, tools used, challenges overcome,problems solved, mistakes made and corrected, and how you demonstrated leadership or took initiative. Bottom line: What was the “So what?” of the project. Why did it matter? How did it add value? How did you add value?
The project journal is a time-saving tool. Choose a format you like – notebook, Word or Google doc. Start with 2022, and from there as you have time, work backwards year by year, or simply write about the projects that have been the most important to your career and skill development. Here’s the link to my LinkedIn article on project journals.
Step 2: Use a story framework to structure your stories. A story framework that I have used for years is the STAR method: Situation, Task, Action, Result. Easy to remember, and it keeps you on track in four simple steps. And here’s a second framework to try, and I love this one because it is well-suited for digital trust and cybersecurity. This method was developed by branding guru Donald Miller.
The “Character(s)” is your internal or external client or stakeholder. The “Guide” is you. The flow of the action is easy to follow.
I tried the StoryBrand framework with a couple of friends, one in data governance and the other in IT audit. Both found this to be a phenomenally useful tool.
Work with these frameworks and let me know what you think. And if you try both STAR and the StoryBrand Framework, let me know which one you found more helpful and why!
Step 3: Determine for each of your stories what you want your audience to hear and know by the end of the story. What is your message? Is it a call to action? A cautionary tale (e.g., this failed, here’s what we learned and how we are going to do it better)? A clarification of the project’s mission?
On a more personal level, perhaps you are trying to demonstrate, through the story, your ability to successfully execute on a complex project, lead a team through change, quickly adapt and thrive in new circumstances … or any number of messages you might want to convey in a job interview, a performance review, or when networking.
→Try this: If you had to write your takeaway message as a tweet, what would you say?
Step 4: Add context (time, place, business units or teams involved, duration of the project, and so forth). Embed numbers in place of vague words such as “a lot of people” or “many recommendations.” Add metrics that quantify the size, scope, dollars saved, time saved, ROI or other data that will make the project meaningful and REAL for the listener. If you are talking about something you did, be sure to clearly state your role in the project. (Tip: Use “I” when appropriate; don’t make yourself invisible by always using “we.”).
Step 5: Consider your audience. What language will you use that speaks specifically to your audience? You want your audience to engage with your story. Using words they will connect with will help you achieve that. If it is business stakeholders, have you explained the technical elements in a way that is easy to understand? Have you eliminated jargon? Have you pitched your metrics and relevance to the business at the right level?
Step 6: Write your story down! You must write it down. As a wise CISO told me once, if it isn’t written down, it doesn’t exist. Very importantly, the story will not take shape just in your head. You need to work with it, shape it, mold it – on the page.
Step 7: Practice your story. Walk around your room, your office, out in a park (the goal is to find some place you can talk to yourself and not feel weird) and tell your story out loud. Out loud. You have to do this. You need to hear the words coming out of your mouth so you can hear them, and feel and know if they are right. If not, you change them. Reword until you’ve got a story that is action-packed, clear, concise and fun to tell.
Your goal is NOT to memorize your story, but to have it so clearly framed in your mind that even if you use slightly different words, the story flows and the message is clear. You don’t want to sound as if you are reading a script! This might take several rounds. Keep at it. The payoff is absolutely there.
Step 8: Find folks who tell great stories. Listen, learn, try out their style. This is an ongoing practice that will help you dramatically improve your storytelling ability.
Now, how about an example of a business story? Here’s one that was posted on LinkedIn by Whitney McGinnis, the second CIO at McDonald’s:
“Yesterday was a proud moment when X. took center stage at our Global Technology townhall (in front of over 900 global attendees) to share the great outcomes that he and his team have driven in our POS deployment process. Deploying POS to ~14,000 restaurants without disruption is no easy feat. Our legacy processes had us upgrading only once every 18 months! That type of pace just isn’t sustainable in today’s digital world. Under X’s great leadership, we now deploy four times a year, ensuring that we can continually deploy new features for our customers and crew. We are leading the way for all the other countries. We are on a journey to get even faster over time, but I’m so proud of how far we’ve come already.”
The goal of the story is to applaud a leader and a team, and to praise the innovative steps McDonald’s is taking to ensure satisfaction and happiness for their customers and crew around the world.
The CIO’s story is a winner because it sets the scene and puts you in it at the global townhall. It is specific with the numbers it includes. Her story tells you why this work mattered in small, big and global ways. Finally, the writing is energized and positive. We can feel the CIO’s pride and we applaud her for being a leader that applauds her team’s success.
We might even think “Gee, I’d like a boss like that. She sounds great.” Whitney McGinnis didn’t have to say, “Look at me, I’m a terrific CIO.” This story leads us to infer positive things about her leadership capabilities and the success she is having, without her saying it.
That is another reason stories are so powerful. They allow the listener to draw their own conclusions. If we have crafted our stories well, our listeners will know us better, understand our work, and see us as we want to be seen.
In telling a story the way the CIO at McDonald’s told her story, we can speak confidently about our work and share authentically about ourselves, without sounding braggy.
The takeaway: Get started on your stories. Own them. In doing this, you’ll have done a powerful thing to ready yourself for evangelizing your projects to stakeholders, inspiring your team, impressing your boss during your performance review and preparing for job interviews.
Perhaps the biggest win of all is the confidence you’ll find in yourself by recognizing the value of your work.