Serious Soft Skills

Today’s episode isn’t about writing the Great American Novel, but rather how we incorporate the powerful aspects of storytelling into how we explain our work and our ideas so we connect emotionally .

Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham explore this important aspect of success, looking at it helps us at interviews, in meetings and when working with any other group. Storytelling can work in any situation where we talk about our work.

Among the topics they cover in this episode of the Serious Soft Skills podcast are:

• Defining how storytelling fits into explaining ourselves
• Making an idea “sticky”
• How widely this approach can be used
• The value of storytelling in a meeting as simple as a daily or weekly status meeting
• The right preparation for storytelling to succeed
• Understanding our audience’s needs
• Why less is more in some cases and why more can be valuable at other times
• Self-editing our stories to meet specific needs
• Why writing the story out in advance or developing great themes and plot lines won’t work
• Building the story from two or three key elements or takeaway you want the audience to learn from your story
• Planting words to make things sticky
• Sticky versus stinky
• How to prepare for an interview to ensure you’re sticky
• Making experiences become sticky through storytelling
• Developing an emotional connection
• Real examples of how storytelling can make us look better to employers and others
• How anecdotes and stories about what you do in a job can help others understand the value you can bring to their organization
• Going from a worker to a worker who did important work
• Finding stories to explain how our skills can be transferrable

Next week

We’ll delve into another one of the 55 soft skills in an episode coming out Wednesday.