The Power of Story

This episode is the launch of a series of episodes about story telling.

I was inspired to think more deeply about storytelling during one of my previous episodes. In the episode on Leadership in season 1, I spoke with Dr. Christi Garst- Santos and she mentioned a core component of good leadership involves storytelling. Telling the stories of your staff, your group, community,  your mission. The story of what you are trying to accomplish.

https://careers.sdstate.edu/

https://www.jim-loehr.com/books

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Episode Transcript

(00:04):
[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.]Welcome to career connections. I'm your host, Kevin Folger. This episode is a launch of a series of episodes about storytelling.
I was inspired to think more deeply about storytelling during one of my previous episodes and the episode on leadership and season one.
I spoke with Doctor Christy Garcia Santos, and she mentioned that core component of leadership involves storytelling.

(00:27):
Telling the stories of your staff, your group, your community, your mission, the story of what you are trying to accomplish.
This is so important. We encounter content on storytelling in many ways, whether it's, for example,
StoryCorps on NPR or stories of individuals on social media platforms or books, novels,

(00:48):
literature and books on storytelling, myths, folklore, history, nonfiction,
fiction are all important components of our lives that help us understand the world around us.
Sometimes looking at a topic directly does not help us understand the issue.
So instead, through a story, we can often help illustrate principles, morals, ideas of our social contract, and on and on.

(01:13):
We tell ourselves stories daily.
I am currently writing a book and find myself struggling on how to highlight the different aspects of my life within the same story.
I could write the story of my ongoing development as a father. The lessons I've learned as a father that regrets, etc.
Or I could solely focus on the story of my professional career. Am I successful?

(01:35):
Am I a failure? Somewhere in between. There's often depends on framing.
For example, when I started college, my overall goal was to become a trombone professor at a university.
I have failed at this goal. However,
I have had and continue to have a very rewarding career in higher education where I have had a positive impact on many students and in my mind,

(02:00):
my story is a story of resilience. Learning from mistakes and striving to help.
As we age, our stories take on different themes and we tell ourselves different stories.
Thoughts about how we think. We show up in the world, how we think we are valued.
A book I recommend is The Power of Story by Doctor Jim Lair.

(02:22):
Doctor lair has had an impressive career helping professional athletes, CEOs, a multitude of people.
Some of the content focuses on business, but much of the book is about you.
It requires a lot of self-reflection. Each chapter asks you to interrogate different ideas you have about your life, your work, your values.

(02:43):
And Doctor Larry asks you to actually think about what you want written on your tombstone.
Think about assumptions you're making and develop an understanding of the stories we tell ourselves, the helpful ones and the problematic ones.
One of the things I really like about this book is its focus on turning your thoughts into actions.
So much so the final chapter is about accountability. So wherever you are in your career, this book is worth the read and the work.

(03:13):
Are you a college student? Add this to your schedule. Are you working on a career pivot?
Gift yourself the time to work through this book. Are you an educator?
Dig in and see how this book could inform your work with students, clients, peers.
In my work as a really good supplement to what you are already teaching and in taking your your students through.

(03:34):
I find this really relevant to career development because our careers are a significant aspect of our story.
As students were often asked, what are you majoring in? You're out of school and you go to some sort of gathering.
You're often asked, what do you do? So it's important for us to really think about what kind of professional do we want to be?
What or how do we want people to think about us?

(03:59):
And these kinds of questions, of course, extrapolate out to where we work as well in marketing.
What is the story where we want our people to know? What do we want our clients to know?
Our customers to know. If we're collecting data, what story does the data tell?
If we're trying to network. You have to understand how to answer the question.

(04:20):
Tell me a little bit about yourself. If you work for such and such company, what does that mean?
For example, I'm employed by South Dakota State University. What does it mean to be a jackrabbit?
So I'm really drawn to this idea of storytelling as being a powerful tool for leadership.
So in the next series of episodes, in the second season of Career Connections,

(04:43):
you can expect to hear me explore different topics anchored on the theme of storytelling.
This will happen with guests. There might be a couple of episodes where it's only me.
Uh, but I do hope to incorporate many different voices, uh, exploring this overall idea of storytelling through.
Individual topics. As always, thank you for listening to Career Connections.

(05:10):
Please reach out with questions or topic suggestions. My contact information and other helpful links are in the show notes.