Make Your Story Perfect
I got amazing news this week that has me reflective.
Over the past seven years, I’ve gotten my fair share of interesting mail. I don’t mean physical mail, like the endless stacks of flyers I received daily for the Georgia Senate Runoff elections last week. So.much.mail. I mean more of the personal message form: cards, emails, voice messages.
I had someone I didn’t know sent me a personal thank you message. After reading Use Your Words, he thanked his wife for helping him realize his dream of opening his own business with them both tearing up in the discussion.
People have sent me photos of their dogs from around the world when I talked about how a service dog made me honest. Fellow band members sent me marching band photos, when I wrote about I’m with the band. I even received a personal note back from the football coach after the post was sent to him.
People sent me phrases they would put on their socks after reading Sock it to me. Many people described thanking their leaders after reading I just called to say…. Or how Rehire your team made them approach a year-end conversation differently, resulting in an enjoyable discussion.
My inbox collected stories of what would make people feel ridiculously proud of themselves. I still get random photos of spaghetti or waffles. I’ve heard hilarious tales of people trying to master a foreign language, as I did the time I tried to learn German in a month.
I’ve heard a few of you describe how overwhelming it can be to dine in the dark. I loved receiving photos of your kids curled up with the amazon toy catalog this holiday season. I’m thankful, Marie Kondo hasn’t reached out complaining about me telling the world she has a junk drawer.
People often ask me, “How do you know if a story is good?”
The answer to that is: “When you start to hear stories in return.” Each of these messages, photos, and emails are your stories you shared back with me because something in the post resonated with you. Which is the whole reason I do this.
There is one story, more than others, that I am always delighted to hear about.
It is mentioned most frequently, even from random strangers. Messages appear with “My mailman is named George,” or “My Dottie is named Louise. These stories are referring to I dropped my phone down an elevator shaft.
This is the real-life story of what happened when a friend of mine dropped her phone down an elevator shaft - and the life and leadership lessons that come from it. These comments in particular have become the secret wink and handshake that the person liked my thoughts on leadership and engaging others.
I intentionally used that story to open my TEDx talk last year because it’s vivid, gripping and perfectly illustrates storytelling. As soon as you hear the story, you think “What would I do?” As I told the story from the stage, a person in the front row loudly gasped as I described the phone falling and hitting the ground with a thud. She exclaimed “NO WAY!” so loud they had to edit it out. I somehow managed to not laugh.
Stories help you put yourself in the situation and consider: “What would I do if I faced this?”
Storytelling is integral to my work building leaders, team and cultures. Stories communicate value, what we encourage or discourage, and share examples of great. Storytelling isn’t the only solution (in fact, it’s one step of a seven-part model I have for transforming cultures, more on that next month). It is a key skill that can be learned to win hearts and minds. Especially when you need to share data.
I received a message this weekend that my TEDx, is being promoted to TED.com this week!
This is an incredibly huge honor and amplification. Each year TED selects a very small handful of TEDx Talks to promote to TED.com as a TED talk. Brene Brown's first talk on vulnerability and Simon Sinek's Start With Why were both TEDx that were promoted. And as of this Thursday, January 14 at 11am ET, my talk officially goes live on TED.com. If you follow TED on social media, have their app or get their newsletter, you may begin to see my talk in there on Thursday.
Help spread the word!
Watch the TED Talk here: How your brain responds to stories - and why they are crucial for leaders.
Share the talk with others.
Recommend the talk and submit an endorsement:
Sign into or create a TED.com account.
Go to the page of the talk and click the "Recommend" button on the right side of the video player.
Follow the instructions to submit an endorsement.
I always close my storytelling keynotes with the phrase:
“Don’t wait for the perfect story. Take your story and make it perfect.”
Thank you for joining me on this ride as I make this story perfect!
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