8 Telling Your Story Your Way
Lynn Meade
Tell me the fact and I’ll learn.
Tell me the truth and I’ll believe.
But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.
–Ancient proverb
Why Tell Stories?
Why talk about telling stories in a book on professional portfolios? Because people prefer stories. They are engaging, they ignite the imagination, and they have the potential to teach us something. Rhetorical scholar, Walter Fisher, says that stories are the primary way we understand the world. Your portfolio should not read like a mere list of achievements; rather it should tell a compelling story that reflects who you are as a learner, a professional, and a person.
A portfolio tells a story. It is the story of knowing. Knowing about things… Knowing oneself…Knowing an audience… Portfolios are students’ own stories of what they know, why they believe they know it, and why others should be of the same opinion.” Paulson & Paulson
Stories Help the Readers Remember You
Cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham points out that “The human mind seems exquisitely tuned to understand and remember stories” and calls stories ‘psychologically privileged’ because they are treated differently in your memory.
“Stories are easier to remember because stories are how we remember. When facts become so widely available and instantly accessible, each one becomes less valuable. What begins to matter more is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact.” Daniel Pink
John Medina, molecular biologist and author of Brain Rules, points out that facts attached to stories last longer. In short, the brain doesn’t pay attention to boring things. The dopamine we get when we encounter a story helps us with memory and information processing; “it creates a Post-It note that reads, ‘Remember this.’”
Let’s face it, job-related artifacts can fit into the boring and easily forgotten category. It doesn’t have to be that way. If we become fact-tellers, instead of story-tellers, then we lull our readers into boredom. They are not interested, and they are not motivated to try to relate.
Stories Help Readers Understand Why Your Experiences Matter
Anne Rinne, in a Harvard Business Review article, says that we can tell stories to help employers know why our experiences matter to them. She says, Telling a good portfolio narrative requires understanding how the different things in your portfolio enhance one another.” She uses her own story to illustrate her point.
When I was a hiking and biking guide, some people said my career looked frivolous (or even like “too much fun”). What they didn’t see was that, as a guide, not only was I usually working 18-hour days — first up and last to bed — but also every day I was learning how to project manage, accommodate differences, balance budgets, build teams, ensure safety, forge lifetime friendships, and spark joy. I didn’t have a fancy title or earn very much, but I got a practical mini-MBA on the trail and perspective that would shape the rest of my life.
Often, I had to fill in these gaps for others. Doing this, and being able to explain why my experience was valuable in this way, didn’t just shape my portfolio. It helped me stand out from other candidates when I applied for jobs.
Stories Help Readers Connect Your Facts with Your Skills
When you make your portfolio a series of facts, there is nothing that the reader can grab onto and remember. I like to imagine that after reading my portfolio, the reader goes home, has dinner, takes their kid to soccer practice, and then goes back home to watch television. When they get up the next day and have their morning coffee, will they remember anything from my portfolio? Chances are, if I only told them facts, the answer would be “no.”
Notice the difference in these two statements from “The Key to Landing Your Next Job, Storytelling.
Version one: “Boosted sales by 15% in the first quarter of the fiscal year.”
Version two: “One of my strengths is the ability to pivot strategically under pressure. For example, our sales plummeted in the last quarter of this fiscal year due to travel bans brought on by Covid-19. To work around this, I started thinking about what our customers really needed from us during this time, and how we could refocus our strategy to serve domestic markets with locally produced products. My team did this by doing A, B, and C. As a result, we were not only able to contribute to improving local economies worldwide, we also boosted our sales by 15% in the first quarter of the next year.”
Stories Help Us Construct What the Situation Means
The nice thing about writing your story is that it gives you a chance to reflect and it gives you the power to define what a situation means. In portfolios, you pick the story, and you pick the meaning. McKilliup suggests, “The stories we tell are more about how we experience and perceive events than about how things really are. They enable our messages and our points of view to be conveyed to the listener or reader.”
The act of writing for a portfolio takes you through the stages of reflective learning: story finding, storytelling, story expanding, story processing, and story reconstructing. The way we construct our stories about events influences how we think about ourselves as the hero or the victim, the rightfully fired, or the wrongfully accused. By writing about your story, you are not only telling others how they should make sense of your experiences, but you are also working on meaning-making for yourself. Because of that, telling your story of growth is an act of transformation and growth. Pan suggests that “This growth, is what makes you, you.” and challenges you to tell your story for yourself first and your employers second.
The ability to define what your story means is particularly important when defining failures and changing direction. Whether you have changed majors, changed jobs, or changed paths, how you tell your transition can influence how people think about you and how you think about yourself. By telling your story, you are making yourself more memorable, you are able to provide meaning-making for yourself and your readers, and you are in control of what it all means. Now you know why you should write a story, let’s talk about how to tell a good story.
Recipe for a Good Story
What Types of Stories Fit Into Professional Portfolios?
When thinking about what story to tell, you should always remember your audience and purpose. Who will be reading your story? What is the overall goal of your portfolio? The answers to these questions should guide your process. It is also important to realize that your portfolio is really a series of stories and you should not tell just one story, but rather you should infuse your story throughout: The story of your about me, the story of your artifacts, the story of how you have demonstrated career competencies. In addition to all of those, you might want to work on a dedicated story that illustrates more about who you are. Below is a list of possible stories to include in your portfolio.
Beginnings
- Tell of a competition you entered and you won that caused you to learn something new that you were good at.
- Describe inventions, experiments, and creations you made as a child and how they illustrate your passions.
- Tell how the childhood games you played put you on a course for where you are now.
- Explain how an event in your childhood made you who you are today.
- Describe a foundational figure from your childhood and how they influenced your values, work ethic, or thoughts.
Overcoming Obstacles
- Tell the story of how you were the underdog, but came out the victor.
- Tell about a time you failed and the lesson you learned. (Check out this example story by Brandon San about relearning)
- Describe a failure and what you learned from the experience.
- Tell about a mistake you made and what you have done so not to repeat it.
- Tell about a challenge you faced and how you overcame it.
- Tell of a situation where you learned that you were more resilient than you previously thought.
Transitions
- Describe an event that caused you to realize what doesn’t work for you.
- Tell about the trigger that caused you to realize where you were meant to be.
- Write about a time you tested yourself and discovered a new passion.
- Tell about a time you showed leadership and how that was a transforming moment.
Defining Moments
- Tell about “that moment when” you discovered…
- Tell about a defining moment that shaped who you are today and who want to be tomorrow.
Now that you have stories you might write, it is time to get started. It can be hard and it is easy to become stressed and frustrated. The best thing you can do to write is to just start writing.
Writing is Hard, I Get It. That is Why You Have to Just Do It!
When it comes to writing, one of the best things you can do is get started. Don’t wait until you have it all figured out, just work on getting it down. Start writing. Just start getting your ideas down. Writer Ann Handley says, “Show up and throw up.” Don’t write to be perfect, don’t write expecting it will all just flow out naturally, just start writing. Writer Anne Lamont, author of Bird by Bird, describes her writing process.
Writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts. The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later…Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.
Silence Your Inner Critics
When you begin writing, you may have the little voices tell you that you aren’t good enough, you aren’t smart enough, and that your idea is insufficient. You need to recognize that almost everyone has those voices and that your success depends on you telling them to be quiet. Realize self-doubt is normal. Be brave and take back your brain! Writer Anne Lamont, tells of her voices:
What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. First there’s the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady, who says primly, “Well, that’s not very interesting, is it?” And there’s the emaciated German male who writes these Orwellian memos detailing your thought crimes. And there are your parents, agonizing over your lack of loyalty and discretion; and there’s William Burroughs, dozing off or shooting up because he finds you as bold and articulate as a houseplant; and so on. And there are also the dogs: let’s not forget the dogs, the dogs in their pen who will surely hurtle and snarl their way out if you ever stop writing, because writing is, for some of us, the latch that keeps the door of the pen closed, keeps those crazy ravenous dogs contained. Quieting these voices is at least half the battle I fight daily.
Your inner critic will just slow you down. Take control by sitting down and writing and silencing your inner critic.
Closing
We have talked about why to tell a story and how to tell a story. You have many prompts to help get you started not it is time to just sit down and write that first draft, you will find that you will be transformed in the process.
Key Takeaways
- Stories are easier to remember than lists of facts.
- Stories connect facts with skills learned.
- Stories tell why your experiences matter.
- Good stories are about a lead character who is interesting. They have driving forces, trials and tribulations, turning points, and resolutions. There is a lesson to be learned.
- Storytelling is always an act of recreation where you make sense of what you encounter.
- Writing is hard, the best thing you can do is just sit down and start writing
Creative Writing Prompts from Other Colleges
Write About You
Who am I?
Who am I becoming?
Who do I dare to be?
LaGuardia Community College CUNY
Tell about Your Professional Development Plan Using a SWOT Analysis
“In addition to students’ assigning meaning to the past and present experiences that they track on their eportfolios, we also require that students imagine a story of what their lives may look like in the future. Students create this story by writing a professional development plan. In the plan, we ask that students perform a SWOT analysis. Using the self-awareness that they gain from their eportfolio profiles, they reflect on their professional strengths and weaknesses. Then, they examine the opportunities and threats in their industry or job of interest. In this section, they incorporate industry research, as well as anecdotes from informational interviews with an industry professional. Students conclude their plan with the specific tasks necessary to obtain their career goals.”
Emory University’s Goizueta Business School’s class Communication and Professional Development
Tell About a Signature Assignment
Martin Causan – Signature Assignment in Public Speaking
Serenna Hammons– Signature Assignment in Physical Science
Write About Inspired Insights, Magnificent Failures, and Unanticipated Connections.
University of Waterloo
For more on her assignment. Katie Willink. For an example: Lylie Myles, Senior Online Learning Assistant
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*I changed “her” to “their” to reflect a more modern read. In context, this quote is speaking about professionals changing careers.
