The hardest talent to recognize is your own

I cannot take credit for the headline. I scribbled it down in my notebook last week while sitting in the audience listening to a talk from Jon Acuff at STORY. The conference explored being in liminal space – that messy middle between no longer and not yet, or what was and what’s next.

We’ve all been there. Remember those teenage years? Liminal space. So is college. Not to mention getting downsized, relocating, and being stuck in a job that you know is the slow track to nowhere in particular. Many of us are there right now.

While there may be many reasons for being between the no longer and not yet, I’m also reminded of that trite but true saying – change is hard.

For that reason, many of us go to great lengths to avoid change and turn that temporary liminal space into our own permanent parking lot. But that prolonged state of stunted sameness is bound to get disrupted at some point — either against our will or perhaps by some divine intervention (sometimes it’s both).

I gave a talk a couple of years ago where i put a simple math equation up on the screen. It had a series of sixteen numbers on it that looked just like this:

1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1

It represented my professional career. I had been in a habit (much like you, I presume) of telling others I had 16 years of experience up until that point. But what I knew to be true was that I had 16 years of the same set of experiences, over and over, January to December, then repeat. I wanted, even expected, capital E experiences while settling for the comfort and complacency of the lowercase version. It was an excruciatingly long period of the not yet.   

Change – even the obvious, you-know-you’ve-got-to-change kind of change – is hard.

Change is hard is one boulder of a statement that casts a dark shadow on the questions the rumble behind it that still cry out for answers: What might I accomplish by taking a risk? What do I have to offer the world through my talents and gifts? What do I really have to lose?

Later in his talk Jon dropped this, which I think gets to the real issue many of us face:

“We’re not afraid of change.

We’re afraid of looking foolish.”

This kind of bold truth, when spoken, is something we cannot unhear. It shines a harsh light into the dark corners of our fragile selves. I started thinking of everything I’ve ever chickened out of because I was afraid… of looking foolish.

Now that you’ve read it – and can’t unsee or unthink it – the challenge is to relentlessly probe your motivations and insecurities to discern if you are more concerned with how you appear in the eyes of others, or how you can impact the lives of others.

When we are willing to believe in our talent, when we muster the fortitude to lead (or confidently walk alongside someone else) with a bold idea or vision or uncommon compassion, when we lean into the hard things together, we learn more about who we are and what we are capable of. We learn about resilience and vulnerability; trust and tenacity.

And we might just discover that those seemingly foolish ideas we've intuitively shied away from are the very things that can spark the change we desire.

Take a cue from Brené Brown, if necessary, and write yourself permission slips to do the bold things you need to do. Give yourself permission to look foolish (should it turn out that way) – if just briefly.

But know that others will likely see that self-labeled foolishness as having courage and the guts to do what many on the sidelines only dream of doing. And soon they too will have to come to grips with not being able to unhear your motivation and unsee your actions.  

We are told and reminded that it is the brilliant thinkers and the talented doers who change the word. And, so, what are you waiting for?

Jon presented this idea to his audience. Steal it, customize it, print it out, put it on a sticky note at your desk:

The world would be more awesome if ____________________.

or

My work would be more awesome if ___________________________.

My relationships would be more awesome if ___________________________.

What is your “if” that’s hanging out there waiting for you to take action?

Think about it and fill it in.

Then go do it.

Invite others along.

Small ideas that aren't fed and watered stay small.

Small ideas, when shared and nurtured, become bigger ideas – much bigger than any of us imagined.

And that hardly seems foolish.

Four missteps organizations make with storytelling

If you asked a variety of people in different roles across your organization – what’s our company story? –what kind of reaction would you get? Would your colleagues accurately tell the company story? Chances are you might hear them say something like: “that’s not part of my role” or “marketing is in charge of that” or “I don’t really know.”

It begs this important question about storytelling – whose job is it anyway?

The marketing department? C-suite? Management-level employees? Those working the front lines with stakeholders? Sales teams? People behind the scenes? Those with the longest history within the organization?

The short answer is – yes. Yes to all of them. Storytelling is everyone’s responsibility.

However, it’s not surprising to see most organizations delegate the role of storytelling to the marketing department.

This is misguided thinking and where many organizations miss the point of that all-too-trendy term – storytelling. Here are four missteps that organizations commonly make with storytelling.

1.     Confusing story management with storytelling

Someone or some assigned team needs to take the lead in unearthing and positioning the organization’s most important stories. It should be their task to write them down for the sake of sharing in-house with employees and externally/online for stakeholders and customers in a clear and consistent way. The marketing function is a logical choice for establishing these pieces and developing the repository where the organization’s history, key messages and must-share stories can be found.

But let’s be clear – this is simply the act of story management.

What we’re talking about is storytelling – the verbal articulation of something deemed important – and that should be everyone’s business.

2.     Failing to connect the story with actual storytellers

Most of us don’t like the idea of being marketed to or sold something, at least not until we are ready to engage on our own terms. That fact alone makes every other function outside of the marketing department, and the vast majority of employees in an organization, critical storytellers. When people within an organization are empowered to tell stories about the business and their business – what we do, why we do it (purpose), who we seek to serve, why it matters, how we’re different, and why you should care – it is no longer marketing or sales. It is the sharing of ideas and of a larger ideal. It is storytelling.  And this becomes immensely valuable in cultivating a desirable work culture, attracting and retaining new hires, and stirring the curiosity among people who become clients, customers and advocates.

3.     Overlooking the importance of empathy and delivery

Consider this excerpt regarding the nuance of story from the English novelist E.M. Forster:

“If I say to you the king died, and then the queen died, that is a sequence of events.

But if I said the king died, and then the queen died of grief, that’s a story. That’s human. That calls for empathy on the part of the teller of the story and on the part of the reader or listener of the story.”

Read this again:  “Empathy on the part of the teller of the story...”

That is significant.

If we rely on marketing for our stories but don’t have an intimate knowledge of those stories ourselves and how to tell them – with empathy – our attempt at telling stories becomes little more than a list of facts, talking points, or a sequence of events. Worse yet, if we rely solely on marketing to be the mouthpiece of our stories we miss untold opportunities to engage people on the importance of our purpose and our work.   

And there’s this:  “...and on the part of the reader or listener.”

This is an important reminder that our audiences will engage and process our stories differently.

Every time I deliver a messaging document to a client for the first time, I ask them if they will humor me as I read it aloud. They are perfectly capable of reading it on their own, but I know that people interpret what they hear differently from what they read. Inflection is added in the right places for needed effect, and my voice becomes the audible highlighter of words and ideas that they otherwise might skim over.

We need the marketing team’s help to craft stories and position them for a compelling read in all formats – from the tweet that piques interest, to the website copy, to tangible printed material that compels a stakeholder to slow down and sit with our words.

But we also need the c-suite to lead by example – to know and convey stories with the passion we should expect from leaders, so that managers and employees (as listeners) can make a personal connection and become storytellers themselves by following their lead.

Marketing has its place.

Content is valuable and can be readily accessible.

But there is no replacing the sound and impact of a point well-made coming from a leader. 

4.     Ignoring the history of a story and failing to pull from it

David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author and well-known historian, said this about the importance of history and story in a 2004 commencement speech at Ohio University titled The Bulwark of Freedom:

“We have to know who we are if we are to know where we are headed. This is essential. We have to value what our forbears did for us or we are not going to care about it very seriously, and it can slip away.”

While McCullough refers to the story of one’s country and the importance of knowing history as it informs the future of a nation, the same can be said for nearly any organization or institution. Past and present stories provide the factual and credible narrative needed to set us apart from others. It is what we must lean into, it is our compass as we seek to chart new and exciting futures. 

Is your organization recording the stories that matter by writing them down, reciting them and sharing them regularly?

Do you and the people in your organization know its rich history, its defined purpose and how it intends to make a difference?

This isn’t arbitrary work. Your organization’s reason for being is rooted in story.

If you don’t know the story, you can’t tell it.

And if it’s not seen as something to take seriously, then there’s truly a lot at risk of slipping away.