At the beginning of this week, I promised some new material on storytelling and career/job search, which I knew would spring from the storytelling track at the just completed conference of the Career Management Alliance. This is the first of several reports.

It’s amazing how much more vivid, clear, and exciting concepts can be when you see their originators explain them passionately in person than when you simply read their words.

I came away from the conference’s storytelling track re-energized about storytelling in job and career. My colleagues George Dutch, Karen Siwak, and Chandlee Bryan delivered brilliant presentations on their niches in the world of storytelling in job search and career.

George (shown at left on the storytelling panel at the conference) has previously discussed his Personal Story Analysis and Individual Passion Pattern Mapping methodology on these pages, but he brought it to life in his presentation. He left most of the attendees in his workshop hungering to learn his methodology. He would like to train others but notes that he has not yet determined how to teach parts of it.

His jumping-off point is the fact that — according to the World Health Organization — the No. 1 workplace disability in North America is depression. “If individuals lose the thread of their story and how it relates to the bigger Story that shapes our worldview, our deepest values, our culture … then we put our lives in danger at many levels,” he said in his Q&A.

George’s methodology orients clients to a long-term process and works best with people who are want to get into a different career.

The case study (and I note that a case study is in itself a story) George presented in the conference is this one that he also offers in the success stories portion of his site. It’s the story of a software tester who “needed to make a career change … to find professional fulfillment.”

George finds less value in nometheic* forms of assessment that look at skills, values, and traits, and instead focuses on an idiographic approach that studies clients’ individual behavior and uniqueness.

(*Most references I’ve seen say “nomothetic” rather than “nomotheic.” Here’s a Wikipedia entry on nomothe[t]ic vs. idiographic).

George’s Personal Story Analysis bears many similarities to another idiographic method, the Dependable Strengths Articulation Process (see also Dependable Strengths®: Finding Your Unique Excellence)

Like Dependable Strengths, George’s approach has clients look at the activities that have been enjoyable and satisfying. While George distinguishes between activities that were “enjoyable and satisfying,” and those the client was proud of, Dependable Strengths has participants identify experiences that they can characterize as those they feel they did well, that they also enjoyed doing, and are proud of. George asks clients to break their life story into decades. They began to develop a sense of the power of their own story.

Clients then identify their top eight enjoyable experiences and elaborate on them using these questions/prompts:

• A clear statement of the enjoyable activity (in one sentence)
• What caused you to get started in the activity?
• Write a detailed story of what you did. Note the parts that were particularly enjoyable.
• What parts gave you the most sense of satisfaction and fulfillment?
• Was there some significant reason you stopped the activity?

Through his book, JobJoy: Finding Your Right Work Through the Power of Your Personal Story, George offers a downloadable version of the exercise, Enjoyable Achievements and Autobiographical Events, but his aim is not for individuals to take themselves through the process (he believes they need a professional to guide them) but for them to send their completed exercises to him so her can develop (for a fee) a “JobJoy Report.”

Based on this input, George conducts his Personal Story Analysis Process that identifies that client’s natural talents, preferred subject matter, natural relating style, and essential motivation, aspects that all added to their key success factors.

He then presents clients with a highly detailed Individual Passion Pattern Map, which often surprises and empowers the client.

The next step was to translate the client’s story into a new, different, and better job that matches his or her pattern and harmonizes with his or her authentic self.

Clients feel a sense of “I can do this.”

In the Ideal Job Exercise, clients develop an your ideal job description that summarizes their strengths in a single statement:  

To fulfill my motivational pattern, I need (Insert your preferred subject matter — e.g. visual, shapes & forms, tools, etc.) and require my talents (Insert your natural talents — e.g. problem-solving, organizing, whatever.) and which has the end result of (Insert you essential motivation, e.g., a quality outcome, etc.)

  “Integrating the ingredients of your motivational pattern through this exercise,” George says, “gives you an effective tool for remembering and communicating your strengths to others and provides a standard against which you can evaluate a particular job fit.”