Three recent articles provide interesting perspectives on using story to advance in your career.

Journaling is obviously closely related to story, but the idea of journaling isolated to your professional life is unusual. On the American Express site, Glen Stansberry offers 5 Reasons To Keep A Work Diary, one of which is the ability to “see the wins.” Stansberry elaborates:

We often forget the things that we got done during the day for lots of reasons. We’re taught at an early age that what we do isn’t as important as what we didn’t do. After all, what we don’t get done often impacts us more in work and other social settings. This causes us to automatically shove the stuff we did accomplish into the back of our minds, and fret about the undone. However, focusing on what we have done — the wins — in our day rejuvenates. Going to bed looking at what was accomplished can be a massive motivator to help start the next day, and can keep us from closing the day on a sour note.

Stansberry doesn’t mention story, but accomplishments are an obvious springboard for stories. Sure, reflecting on these wins will rejuvenate you, but perhaps even more importantly, the wins will form a databank of success stories that you can use when you look for a new job, or ask your current boss for a raise or promotion.

Leadership and the authenticity of the stories a leader tells about himself or herself is the theme of What Is the Best True Story You Could Tell about You? by Liz Strauss. We need to tell our own true stories, she says, because other stories may not reflect the authentic selves we need to be:

• How many stories in your head are told from someone else’s point of view?
• How many stories in your head are told by a weaker, smaller, less experienced version of you?
• How many stories in your head are untrue?
• Leaders live up to their best truth.
• Leaders choose which stories we live.

How to get at that authentic story? Strauss recommends:

• Collect the stories about yourself — true stories of your life.
• Identify and share the stories that make you stronger. You’ll know them because you like what they say about you.
• Stop telling and believing in the stories that hold you back. File them as historically true but irrelevant.
• Recognize your values by seeing them in the true stories of your life you choose.
• Use your values to keep your true story true and valuable for everyone you serve.

Rachel Farrell draws on Peter Guber’s Tell to Win. She offers a dozen (even though the article’s headline says 13) tips inspired by Guber’s book. Many of these strike me as a especially appropriate for job interviewing; I’ve inserted a few comments in italics within these tips:

1. Data dumps are not stories — dump them, don’t tell them!


2. A purposeful story is a call to action — be sure to make your call. In interviews, the call to action is “hire me!” Keep that in mind as you choose the stories to tell.


3. Successful stories turn “me” to “we” — align your interests. Focus on employer problems, challenges, and needs in interviews. Tell stories that illustrate how you can get the same results for the prospective employer as you have for past employers.


4. Be sure your story tells what’s in it for them.


5. Be interested in what interests your listeners, and they’ll find your story interesting and your goal compelling. Be alert for signals that particular stories you tell in the interview resonate with the interviewer, and keep telling more like those.


6. Remember, the context in which you tell your story colors the story you tell.


7. Your firsthand or witnessed experiences are the best raw material for your story.


8. Employ the element of surprise.


9. Craft the beginning to shine the light on your challenge or problem.


10. Shape the middle around the struggles, then meet the challenge.


11. End with a resolution that ignites in the listener your call to action. In an interview situation, this resolution will typically be a result or success that the employer can then picture you achieving for his or her organization.


12. To tell a great story, make preparation your partner. Practice telling accomplishment stories, but don’t memorize or sound over-rehearsed. Composing stories in writing can cement them in your mind.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I thought I had solved the problem described below, but a reader told me the gray box was still appearing after my fix.

Yesterday, a reader reported a bizarre gray box containing an ad covering a large part of this blog. There seemed to be no way to get out of the gray box and back to the blog.

I wasn’t able to replicate the issue with my own computer or browsers, but other testers said they experienced the same thing. Sometimes the gray box contained an ad, sometimes it didn’t. At right is a screenshot of the gray box without an ad (courtesy of tester Bridget Weide Brooks) Sometimes it could be clicked out of, sometimes not. A URL at the bottom of this screenshot, after several redirects, goes to Groupon. Bridget said she saw an Omaha Steaks ad.

I am flummoxed by the hijacking of this blog by this ad. I do not run any ads on the site except Google Adsense ads an one other ad on the Google Affiliate Network. I cannot find any source code that would be responsible for this ad. And since I can’t seem to replicate the issue, I can’t test solutions.

I apologize to readers if you experience the inconvenience of this gray box/ad. You may be able to get to the blog by trying again. Of course, if you are experiencing the gray box, you are probably not reading these words.

Would also appreciate any thoughts from readers who’ve experienced a similar hijacking or have any idea what could be behind it.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A couple of years ago, I wrote about a study that suggested children who have imaginary friends have more advanced narrative skills than those who don’t.

I lamented that I had not had an imaginary friend, while both my sisters had. My son had an “old family” that had been killed in an explosion, and he was often quite emotional about missing them.

In telling the heart-wrenching story in The New Yorker of his infant daughter’s rare form of cancer, novelist Aleksander Hemon weaves in the thread of his elder daughter Ella, age 3, and the imaginary friend, Mingus (actually an imaginary brother), who emerged during this painful time for the family. Hemon writes:

It is not unusual, of course, for children of Ella’s age to have imaginary friends or siblings. The creation of an imaginary character is related, I believe, to the explosion of linguistic abilities that occurs between the ages of two and four, and rapidly creates an excess of language, which the child may not have enough experience to match. She has to construct imaginary narratives in order to try out new words that she suddenly possesses. Ella now knew the word “California,” for instance, but she had no experience that was in any way related to it; nor could she conceptualize it in its abstract aspect — in its California-ness. Thus, her imaginary brother had to be deployed to talk at length as if she knew California. The words demanded the story.

My son was a late talker, really not using words before about age 2. Perhaps new linguistic abilities are especially explosive for a child like him, requiring the narrative of his “old family” to provide experiences for his new words.

In the case of the Hemon family, Mingus also provided a way for Ella to process the terrible thing that was happening to her baby sister and provide her with comfort. Although Hemon ultimately finds story construction of no value in the isolated world of his baby’s illness, he recognizes that Ella’s need to spin stories is similar to what the author does as a fiction writer:

Listening to Ella furiously and endlessly unfurl the Mingus tales, I understood that the need to tell stories was deeply imbedded in our minds and inseparably entangled with the mechanisms that generate and absorb language. Narrative imagination — and therefore fiction — was a basic evolutionary tool for survival. We processed the world by telling stories, produced human knowledge through our engagement with imagined selves.

Indeed this need to tell stories is deeply embedded. But why do some of us have imaginary friends and others don’t? Why do some of us become fiction writers and others don’t?

There is more than one way to engage with our imagined selves.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A couple of weeks ago, in writing about commencement speeches, storied an unstoried, I noted that Terrence Gargiulo, who delivered a commencement speech recently, was “considering doing a meta analysis of how [he] worked with the craft of story making to research, design, and deliver this talk.”

Well, he’s done it, and the resulting white paper is a wonderful primer on bringing story into the communication of any kind of influential message, including speeches and presentations. The talk that forms the framework of the white paper is the commencement speech Terrence delivered at Santa Catalina School recently.

Terrence puts graduation speeches into the same category as keynotes, and I agree. Both are meant to set the tone for the future. In the case of the keynote, it’s the future of the conference or event at which the keynote is presented. Both are meant to be lofty, uplifting, and motivational. And both are presented to audiences that are not necessarily receptive to hearing a speech. As I mentioned two weeks ago, graduating students tend to want to just get on with it rather than listen to a speech. And while keynote audiences may be inspired by the keynote’s message, they are often eager to move on to the actual content of the conference or event that the keynote kicks off.

Terrence says he sets “the value of keynoting high, ensuring that only the most serious clients engage me in this way.” He also almost always insists on being given other opportunities to work with some of the members of the audience in a different setting other than the plenary address.

First step is some basic research. Terrence researches through his audience’s stories:

Whether or not my clients realize it or not I probe client engagement requirements and stakeholder perspectives with the natural power of story. I elicit stories. Call me wedded to my storied ways, but I don’t know any other way to quickly infer patterns in complex systems.

Once he had done his story research, Terrence found that three themes emerged for his speech. He then developed a story architecture or structure for those themes. He suggests that white-paper readers watch the video of his commencement address while (or before) following along with his outline of the speech’s structure.

In a “Lessons Learned” section, Terrence talks about how he chooses stories for the speech and what kinds of stories he looks for.

One of my favorite parts of white paper is the list of types of stories he included in his speech. This list is a terrific guideline for anyone planning a speech and can be adapted to virtually any kind of presentation:

• Personal History
• Student Anecdotes: Simply translate this one to “audience anecdotes” to adapt to any speech.
• Personal anecdote that ties into speech themes.
• Movie stories from popular archetypal movies.
• Story from a book.
• Historical Story of Major Personality.
• Life Story of Contemporary Young Personality: Again, adapt “young personality” to your own audience.
• Scenario Stories, which Terrence describes as “rhetorical questions that paint a scene” tied to the speech’s themes, starting with the personal, then moving back to the audience.
• Story as Music: Terrence is a good singer and sang to add some humor to the speech. Not for everyone.
• Story as metaphor and image: Set up an image that encompasses the speech’s themes as they relate to the audience; start with quotes; end with vivid word picture.

Terrence ends with additional tips that provoked me to remark: Easy for you to say! Terrence does a lot of speaking, so when he said he delivered the Santa Catalina speech with no practice and no notes, I knew that advice wouldn’t work for everyone. When he says …

Delivery matters but not as much as you think. If you get caught up in the groundswell of stories you are sharing and your audience, you’ll be surprised at how an effective tone, color, and character emerges.

… I thought, well, yes, but you are a practiced professional at delivery, and most people will need rehearsal.

I was intrigued by this advice about stories. It’s important for your stories to fit together to illustrate your themes:

Think in terms of collages of stories. Avoid single stories. There’s a place for them and I am not recommending you abandon great stories with visible arcs, surprises, and tensions. Lots of stories orbiting your talk pull people into the gravity of your message.

The bottom line is this, crucial advice for communicating any influential message: Work to make stories in all their forms a central part of how you understand your message, craft your message and deliver your message.

Terrence has generously given me permission to offer the white paper to you via download: An Analysis of a Storied Approach to Crafting Influential Messages

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

This post is brought to you by the number three …

I’ve written endlessly here about developing stories for use in job interviews and throughout the job search and have suggested structures and sources (such as skills and accomplishments) around which to build those stories.

But what about a package or framework in which to wrap your interview stories? My friend Tim Tyrell-Smith suggests developing three themes for each interview. He says:

• Each theme reinforces your positioning statement.
• Each theme allows you to tell a great story.
• Each theme includes a few of your favorite accomplishment statements.

This strategy reminds me of the way communications professionals are taught media relations. They develop one or more messages, and no matter what the media asks them, say in a press conference, they integrate the message(s) into their response. In the same way, Tim advises:

[A strategy] that you use throughout the interview day and every time you talk with HR, the administrative assistant, and the recruiter. It includes the phone interview, any email communications (cover letter, thank you notes, etc). And you can also use them as part of your social networking strategy.

Tim describes a five-step process for identifying the themes for each interview. The process begins with strengths, and I believe Tim is saying to narrow these down based on what each employer is looking for:

Research your target company, target position and interview team. What are they looking for? What does the perfect candidate look like? What skills and experience are they drooling over?

I find the three themes suggestion very helpful because it keeps the job-seeker “on message.” What are the most important selling points that you want to convey about yourself to a given employer? Develop stories about those. Three themes doesn’t necessarily mean just three stories. Although I contend that as few as three stories can sustain an interview, a databank of more will give you greater flexibility. Three stories for each theme would likely work well.

This approach will keep you from meandering and getting lost in interviews. It also provides the wrapping paper and bow to package your stories nicely.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

The incomparable Madelyn Blair (pictured; love the new hairdo!) has overhauled the Web site of her company Pelerei and is offering “new publications, including videos, offers, papers and presentations you can download for free, along with a store for purchasing products.” Like the sites of so many story practitioners, the Pelerei site reflects a generous and sharing spirit.

Click on Immediate Resources, and you get a menu of papers/articles, presentations, and important definitions. I counted 18 articles under that section alone. Not all are directly related to storytelling, but many are. Madelyn will also be offering free webinars.

You’ll find a blog tied to Madelyn’s book, Riding the Current.

And, you can sign up for a newsletter, Mental Espresso.

Now, as if all that weren’t cool enough, Madelyn is inviting feedback on the new site and if you send her comments before July 4, she’ll send you an electronic copy of her latest book, Essay in Two Voices as a bonus.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Last month I noted that NPR was seeking expectant moms due to give birth in July.

The initiative has resulted in a blog called The Baby Project, which is following nine expectant mothers who are due to give birth this summer. “They come from all over the U.S., and have a range of stories and experiences to share,” the blog notes.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Angela, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Q: If you could share just one piece of advice or wisdom about story/storytelling/ narrative with readers, what would it be?

A: Everything that you do, from the tiniest actions to world-changing events are part of your story. It is true what they say about even the smallest help being able to make a difference. Do everything that you can in your life to make your story as personal and unique, but also as influential as you possibly can so that you can be the best you can be.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Angela, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2. and Part 3.

Q: To what extent do you think the storytelling approaches you tout could apply to older students — say, high school and college?

A: While storytelling these days is often thought of as an elementary activities, often just a time-filler in an under-developed lesson plan, storytelling does not end with graduation from 5th grade. Any person, no matter how old, has the capability to make a change, and I believe that the change actually begins at the story level, and that the way that we perceive and experience reality is based on the stories that we tell and that we listen to. This is basically how the world works at all levels. Whether we think something is real or false, whether we think something is important or not, whether it is worthy of our intention or it is just noise, it comes down to the story and whether we choose to believe in that story. Storytelling is an art that people of all ages need to learn to be able to communicate and make an impact in whatever field they choose to excel in.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Angela, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, and Part 2.

Q&A with Angela Maiers, Question 3:

Q: The culture is abuzz about Web 2.0 and social media. To what extent do you participate in social media? To what extent and in what ways do you feel these venues are storytelling media?

A: I try to be as involved as possible in as many social-media venues as I possibly can. I work through almost all of [the most popular venues], though I focus on blogging as my main form of communication.

In my opinion, these mediums are integral to storytelling in the modern world, and, indeed, their founding ideas are all, at base, storytelling itself. Social media would not be successful without the small stories that are Twitter posts and status updates or larger, socially curated stories such as those that I post on my blog.

Social media is an effective way to communicate personal stories with a large audience for the greatest possible effect, and I believe that in the future social media will become the core of our storytelling culture.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Angela, her bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A.

Q&A with Angela Maiers, Question 2:

Q: The storytelling movement seems to be growing explosively. Why now? What is it about this moment in human history and culture that makes storytelling so resonant with so many people right now?

A: Storytelling has always been the center of human communication, from the oral tradition of ancient civilizations to the blog posts of today. What is novel about storytelling in the modern day is that we now have the ability to share our stories with larger groups of people in a far shorter time frame. We can use technology to communicate with people across the globe to truly change the world. As more and more people discover this phenomenon, more and more stories can be shared, and the sheer volume of stories now emerging through technology is the driving force behind global change that is creating the image of the growth of storytelling. In truth, storytelling has always had a critical impact on our lives, and we now simply have a greater capacity to harness that impact using the Web.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I first encountered Angela Maiers when I attended her session at last November’s Reinvention Summit. I wasn’t that excited by the idea of her session because her area is education, focusing on K-12, while I’m much more interested in postsecondary ed. But I immediately got swept up and enthralled by her passion and enthusiasm. I am most excited to have her join the Q&A series. This Q&A will run over the next five days.

Bio: [From her Web site]: Angela Maiers is an award-winning educator, speaker, consultant and professional trainer known for her work in literacy, leadership and global communications. She is a consistently energized and recognized worldwide speaker greatly impacting leadership through not only the education field, but the international business community as well. Challenging educational philosophies and business ethics, Angela strives to achieve total synergy and unstoppable energy by reconstructing the thought process of many dated ideologies.

Today, Angela is at the forefront of New Literacy and Web 2.0 technologies. An active blogger and social media evangelist, she’s deeply committed to helping learners understand the transformational power of technology. Her intimate knowledge of teaching and learning, down-to-earth style, and powerful message of personal empowerment have made her a highly sought after keynote speaker and a vibrant courageous voice in both the business and education space.

As owner and lead consultant at Maiers Educational Services, she uses her passion for literacy and technology to discover creative ways to assist schools and organizations in meeting their learning and productivity goals.

She is an alumnus of The University of Iowa with a master’s degree in Educational Supervision and Reading. She has spent 22 years working in elementary, middle and university settings as a classroom teacher, reading specialist, coach, special programs facilitator, and university professor.

When she is not at home in Clive, Iowa, spending time with her husband and two teenage children, you will find her on her blog or on Twitter at @angelamaiers — her favorite space for thinking, creating, and pushing the scope of her imagination and learning.

Q&A with Angela Maiers, Question 1:

Q: You said in your Reinvention Summit session that education needs to be reinvented, not reformed. Most people would probably agree, especially after viewing documentaries like Waiting for Superman. But given that such reinvention certainly won’t happen overnight, what can parents do to ensure their children are storytellers and story appreciators?

A:Parents need to understand that their children are far more unique than anyone could possibly imagine. Rather than expecting a certain car, eer path or specific qualities from a child, parents need to embrace those talents that their children our given and understand that all children can be geniuses and leaders in their own special field.

Like, Haley, whom I wrote about in my book [Editor’s note: Learn more about Haley here], Classroom Habitudes, many children are subjected to criticism for not fitting to a certain standard. Rather than encouraging this, parents need to embrace the differences of their children. Storytelling is integral to this process. Through storytelling, key truths can be communicated, and the process of learning can be much more effective and more compelling for students. If parents and educators alike focus on the power of stories, we could see a far stronger future with far more people communicating their stories effectively to make a difference across the globe.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

One of my occasional forays into my own story …

Since moving to our woodland farm in Washington, Randall and I have known we might want to add livestock. Chickens seemed like good gateway critters, especially since a chicken house came with the additional land we annexed last summer.

We decided we would, in fact, start with baby chicks this year. We picked out a breed called Norwegian Jaerhons because they were excellent layers, cold-tolerant, and good foragers (and because of Randall’s Norwegian heritage). We ordered them probably in January and were told we’d get them in April. In the meantime, Randall spent long hours rehabbing and optimizing the chicken house and pen. We joked that he had made it into a luxury condo.

In April we learned that the Norwegian breed wasn’t yet available, and we’d get them in June. We talked about switching to a less rare breed, but had our heart set on the Norwegians. We were told they would ship on June 14, and we’d get them June 15. The supplier would call us when they were shipped, and the post office would call us when they arrived. Neither call came. The supplier would not respond to calls or emails for about 72 hours. We finally got a voicemail saying they hadn’t had enough of the Norwegians and couldn’t fulfill our order. We had never gotten any indication that could happen. And wouldn’t you think they would have let us know of this lapse in advance of our waiting by the phone on the 14th and 15th?

So, we decided to see what we could find locally. No easy task, because chick season is pretty much over. We planned to check the feed stores (which turned out to be pretty much out of them) and Craigslist. I went on Craigslist early Saturday morning. The closest Craigslist is Spokane (about an hour and a half away), and I knew Ran would not want to drive too far to get chickens, so I wasn’t too hopeful. I decided to go back a week into the listings. There were literally hundreds of farm listings. I got back as far as last Monday and saw “egg-laying pullets [young female chickens], Kettle Falls.” It was the only Kettle Falls listing I saw and one of the only ones anywhere near our town.

We briefly considered whether we wanted pullets rather than baby chicks. We had looked forward to raising chicks. Randall talked poignantly of putting the baby things away. It was a little like planning to adopt a baby and then finding out you’d be adopting an older child. But with four-month-old pullets, we wouldn’t have to wait as long for eggs (they should start laying in about a month), and we wouldn’t have the annoyance of sexing chicks and having to get rid of roosters (we had planned to give them to the local feed store).

The gentleman selling them was doing so because he had recently been diagnosed with leukemia. He needed to build a larger enclosure for his poultry and couldn’t do so because he was too tired. He had five pullets and a rooster of each of the breeds we wanted (Rhode Island Reds and Plymouth Rocks). We decided to get three of each of the pullets. He had a third breed, but they weren’t good foragers. He and Randall caught them, put them in a big dishwasher box, and we brought them home. And they all lived happily ever after, we hope.

Our flock of girls is pictured above right.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I haven’t run a Q&A in this space since early April — because I haven’t had any to run. Several practitioners have committed to them but haven’t yet responded.

You know how sometimes when someone borrows money and doesn’t pay it back when expected, the borrower then starts avoiding the lender and feeling like they can no longer have a relationship? Sometimes I wonder if that’s how some of my prospective Q&A respondents feel. Don’t feel that way of you do. Your responses are always welcome; any stated deadline was only a suggestion (personally, I need a deadline or I’ll never do what’s asked).

I’m also happy to report that I did recently receive a new Q&A and will be running it starting tomorrow.

If you haven’t been invited to participate in a Q&A but would like to be, please email me.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Cover letters gave me my start in the careers sector. In the 1980s, I realized I was rather good at writing them. Toward the end of that decade, a work colleague asked me for information about cover letters. After I gathered a huge sheaf of materials — and this was pre-Internet — I realized, hey, I could turn this information into a book. That’s what I did in 1990, selling the manuscript to my first-choice publisher in less than a week after submitting it. Dynamic Cover Letters was only the second cover-letter book on the market.

In the ensuing years, I’ve talked and written so much about cover letters (as well as writing cover letters themselves) that I got kind of sick of the subject. This year, however, a number of articles about cover letters (many of them questioning whether the letters are even necessary anymore) re-energized me to the point where I conducted extensive research toward updating some of the principles I’d always touted about cover letters. The result was the white paper, Cover Letter Reboot: A Crowdsourced Update of Traditional Cover-letter Advice for Today’s Job Search.

Because the white paper was directed at our Quintessential Careers audience, it doesn’t get into story. But many of the cover-letter wants and needs that hiring decision-maker opinions expressed in the report could be met by stories in cover letters. A couple of examples:

[I want to see] a cover letter that shows some personality as we are looking for someone who will complement our company culture and will fit in. — Sheri Graciano, human resource manager, Sacramento Convention & Visitors Bureau

I want to be tantalized and teased by a cover letter! I do not want a rehash of the resume. I want to see the 3-4 juicy accomplishments from a candidate’s career (that match my advertised need). These highlights must excite me to such a level that this candidate becomes a can’t-miss prospect. If I am not swept away by the cover letter, then reading the resume is often anti-climactic and doomed for failure. — Ron Kubitz, recruiting manager, Brayman Construction Corp., Saxonburg, PA

Former TV reporter Danny Rubin has just written about telling stories in cover letters:

Some of the most effective ones use a work experience/life adventure as a launch point for who you are and why you are different. Your cover letter, like a solid piece of journalism, then becomes distinctive and has a twist. If I may be so bold, I will show you the opening lines to a cover letter I wrote a few years ago for a marketing job at a youth group I joined in high school. I wrote:

It was April 1998, and I had to be the coolest kid in the world. I had just arrived at the Jamestown 4-H Camp for my first youth group convention. But I wasn’t supposed to be there. That spring, I was a timid 8th grader who had just snagged the invite of the century: a chance to sit alongside my older cousin, a revered senior and president of the organization. Man, was I excited…

Rubin suggests that job-seekers write cover letters “as if you are telling a story to a friend or parent. How would you say it?”

• Tell an anecdote about your current workplace.
• Think back to an experience that made you want to go into the particular field.
• Find a way to relate your life to the job in question and give an employer something he or she will remember.

In my book, Tell Me About Yourself, I offer a whole chapter on stories in cover letters, some of them of a similar early-experience ilk to Rubin’s, above. The cover letter story in the illustration at left isn’t exactly gripping, but it shows how a job-seeker can describe an accomplishment in story form in a cover letter.

Although stories in cover letters can accomplish much more, Rubin’s right when he suggests that stories will make your cover letters something that most letters aren’t — interesting. ” Everyone’s cover letter will include work experience, job skills and salary requirements,” he says. “No one else’s will contain … stories.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

As a pre-teen (and, embarrassingly, probably somewhat beyond that), I swooned over romance comics. These short, melodramatic, illustrated tales drew me in like a magnet and utterly engaged me. Stories had titles like “Love Betrayed,” “Flame in My Heart,” “Love Made Me Hate,” and “Pathway.” I still have a very small collection of them.

I was thus intrigued that author Michael Barson has anthologized some of these tear-jerking stories in a new book, Agonizing Love: The Golden Era of Romance Comics.

This story form had its heyday in the 1940s and 50s. Romance comics began to fade in the 60s (my era) and were virtually gone by the 70s, Barson notes. Since the author anthologizes but doesn’t analyze, I suppose he can be forgiven for having no idea why this story form died (“… romance comics became extinct like a dinosaur. … I don’t know why”). Seems to me, though, he should have at least advanced a theory.

On a nifty site, The Golden Age Romance Comics Archive, “proprietor” Jenny Miller asserts that romance comics died because of “changing mores, television, the Comics Code, and the decline of comics in general.” (Bless her heart, Miller has scanned dozens of these books, so you read them online.)

Miller also interestingly notes in her Very Brief History of Romance Comics that “the comics were written and drawn almost exclusively by men, and they tended to reinforce notions that a woman’s primary goal in life was to marry.” Thus, another explanation for their demise may be the women’s movement of the 1970s. Interesting, too, that it’s a man who has anthologized these comics.

Earlier this year, I lamented the demise of serialized comic strips, particularly my beloved Brenda Starr. More recently, ABC television announced it is ending two of its three daytime soap operas, “All My Children,” and “One Life to Live,” leaving a minuscule number of soaps on the airwaves.

Story forms have risen and fallen throughout history. We’re not reading much epic poetry these days. Sociological, cultural, and psychological factors undoubtedly explain why a given form catches fire in the first place and later dies out. A historical study of the rise and fall of story forms (if one hasn’t already been done) would be fascinating.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I have a special place in my heart for graduation/commencement speeches. I’ve written a few as a speechwriter and delivered one as student speaker at my undergrad commencement.

Commencement speeches are strange animals because the main intended audience, the graduating class, isn’t really much interested in hearing a speech; the grads just want to get on with it.

Most commencement speeches, sad to say, are not memorable. They are long and full of platitudes.

I admired and still admire the late Shirley Chisholm, who inspired me in 1972 as the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. I was excited when I learned she would be the commencement speaker at the university at which I was teaching (she lived nearby). But what a disappointing, platitudes-laden speech she gave, with no stories of her fascinating career or run for president.

The best commencement speeches …

• Show evidence that the speaker (or his/her speechwriter) went to the effort to research the school its students, its faculty, its traditions, and so forth to personalize the speech.
• Of course, contain stories.
• Offer a nice balance of humor, pathos, and uplifting messages.
• Are short.

This last one happens rarely. US Senator Bill Nelson of Florida delivered one of the best commencement speeches I ever heard because it was just five minutes long. He understood that graduates do not want to hear a long-winded speech on this special day.

Arguably the best-known and revered commencement speech of recent years was Steve Jobs’s talk at Stanford in 2005. Jobs not only told stories (three stories from his life), but launched into his stories immediately. The speech contained little beyond the stories but conveyed powerful messages. Jobs veered away from any traditional speechwriting structure, but, boy, did his unusual formula work. You can both read the transcript and watch the speech.

My dear friend Terrence Gargiulo asked me to comment on the video (embedded below) of a commencement address he gave at Santa Catalina School, to, I believe, middle-schoolers. Terrence wrote, “Story operates on a lot of different levels in the talk. I am considering doing a meta analysis of how worked with the craft of story making to research, design, and deliver this talk.” With the exception of length, Terrence’s speech met all the criteria I listed above. He did an especially phenomenal job of researching the school and students to make the speech personal.

I told Terrence the speech was too long, especially for that age group. He noted, however, that he had held the students’ attention — and that’s really all that matters, right?

Celebrities, known for their ability to entertain and inspire, can get away with longer speeches.

The Huffington Post recently ran its picks for the Best Commencement Speeches of 2011. Because they are in fact long, ranging from 15 minutes for Amy Poehler to 26 minutes for Michelle Obama, I didn’t watch all of them, but picked out a few to see what kind of role storytelling played.

The best storyteller I saw was Michelle Obama, who deployed stories of Spelman College, site of the speech, and its students to convey her messages.

The least storied speech (given technically not at a graduation but a Harvard event called Class Day) was Amy Poehler’s, but it’s still a very funny speech and well worth watching.

Three other speeches I watched were at least somewhat storied. Denzel Washington told stories of failure and how he benefited from those failures. The fruits of failure was also the theme for Conan O’Brien (not actually one of the Huffington Post 10), who, after 16 minutes of one-liners, talked about the story of losing “The Tonight Show.”

My favorite speech was delivered by Tom Hanks. Mind you, I think Tom Hanks is a god. Any acceptance speech he has ever given for an award has been eloquent and poignant. I try never to miss him on talk shows because he’s a superb storyteller. Hanks did have a good story — more like a joke — about 13 minutes into his speech, but his speech was largely unstoried. Still, he speaks so beautifully and uses words so well that he never fails to draw me in and uplift me.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

At a symposium on the Future of the Humanities this spring, Steven Knapp gave a talk called “The Enduring Dilemma of the Humanities.”

As I read the text of the talk in the Phi Beta Kappa Key Reporter, I was less interested in Knapp’s main thesis about the humanities than in the way he kicked off this premise by citing a school of psychology called essentialism and a book by Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, How Pleasure Works, that focuses a chapter on essentialism.

It is perhaps unfair to try to describe Bloom’s approach without having read the book. I’m relying on the small preview that appears on Amazon. I also note that the description of psychological essentialism in sources like Wikipedia don’t seem to exactly match what Knapp and Bloom are talking about.

In a nutshell (in essence!), Bloom says that the pleasure we get from everyday objects is relate to our beliefs about their histories. He cites our willingness to pay huge amounts of money for artifacts with historical meaning an significance (for example, the shoes thrown at George W. Bush by an Iraqi journalist). Bloom asserts that everyone he knows “owns at least one object that is special because of its history either through its relation to admired people or its connection to someone of personal significance.” If we were to lose the object, its replacement would not be as meaningful, even if it is physically identical.

Knapp elaborates:

It turns out that the origin of an object makes a profound difference to human beings, and according to Bloom, that difference is built into the way we relate to the objects around us. Bloom regards this human disposition as a kind of innate essentialism in the human psyche: We automatically and involuntarily see objects as connected with their histories in ways that transcend their physical and aesthetic properties. That’s why it matters to us whether an image was created on purpose or by accident, and that’s why we care more about what a picture was intended to represent than we care about what it actually looks like. Hence Bloom reports on “a series of studies that found that even three-year-olds would name their pictures based on what they were intending when they created it.” One investigator found that “even 24-month-olds are sensitive to a drawing’s history when deciding what to call it.”

What these studies point to, it seems to me, is the inseparability of our notion of particularity from our notion of history. What differentiates one object from another, from the point of view of human interest and value, is not what it looks like but where it came from, how it came to be, what it was intended to do or mean. That’s why there is something profoundly unsatisfying about the idea of replacing a lost wedding ring or a lost childhood toy with an exact duplicate — let alone replacing a beloved person with his or her exact clone, a proposition frequently explored in science fiction precisely because it is so disturbing.

Essentialism, Bloom writes, is the “notion that things have an underlying reality or true nature that one cannot observe directly, and it is this hidden nature that really matters.”

In other words, the story of the object, even though neither Bloom nor Knapp ever use that word. Knapp, of course, uses “histories.” Close enough. While it’s possible I don’t know enough about essentialism to make this statement, the connection between story and essence seems clear. The “hidden nature” of objects to which Bloom refers is their story. The objects that give us pleasure do so because the stories behind them give them meaning.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

By the end of this summer, I will publish a workbook companion to my book Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling to Get Jobs and Propel Your Career. I plan to self-publish the volume and charge a nominal fee, tentatively $2.99.

In the time since Tell Me About Yourself came out in 2009, I’ve collected so much material I wish I had known to include or that I’d love to include in a new edition. The book has sold respectably, but I suspect not well enough for the publisher to be interested in a new edition.

And beyond new material, I want to specifically create a workbook that will help folks develop communication skills — through story — that they can apply to job search, career development, and the workplace. My plan is to fill the workbook with hands-on exercises.

I envision that business-communication and career-development teachers will find the workbook useful with their students, and coaches with their clients. Individuals, of course, will also benefit.

Anyone who read Tell Me About Yourself and wants to delve deeper into applying story to the job search, as well as gain more how-to interactive experience, should get a lot out of the workbook, but folks will not have needed to read Tell Me About Yourself to use the workbook.

Please email me if you’d like to be notified of the availability of Tell Me MORE About Yourself: A Workbook to Develop Better Job-Search Communication through Storytelling.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve written lots of posts extolling the benefits of using stories in the job search, as well as about how to structure those stories. (I calculate that about 14 percent of my posts have been about story in job search/career since I started this blog in 2005.) But I haven’t reported/written much about how to tell stories well in settings such as job interviews.

My colleague Sharon Graham (pictured) has just written a post that addresses that process. She advises that prospective interviewees “practice articulating longer versions of your resume bullets using a situation (introduction), action (body of the story), and result (conclusion) that you hope will keep your listeners interested.” But, of course, interviewers will likely want to hear some stories that aren’t on the resume. Sharon tells how to leverage those:

• Knowing how to engage listeners in an interview is pivotal. Reflecting on your brand story is a good jumping-off point. Whether your interviewers actually ask you to tell them why you believe you should be hired over any others or not, be ready with a short opener that tells them what makes you special.
• Telling stories that reflect your passion helps diffuse tension. In fact, when you are totally immersed in a story, you will relax and the content will flow. Some stories will seem to take longer than in practice while others will feel much shorter.
• Listening for opportunities to tell a short story will give you a chance to share more. Even when asked a traditional question like “what kind of leader are you?” you may spot an opening to segue into a story that illustrates your leadership style.
• Checking for reaction and interest is important. All great storytellers look around as they speak. They feed off the energy of their audience. Being aware of the reaction you are getting can keep you going or give you a hint that it’s time to wrap up.
• Keep the momentum – as long as your audience is captivated. If you are not entirely sure, you can pause and say something like, “Have I shared enough or would you like me to continue?”
• Wrap up the entire interview process with a fitting conclusion. Ensure your listeners know how much you appreciated their interest in you and your stories of success, and how much you would enjoy working with them in the future.

Sharon also nails one of the biggest reasons story is such a useful tool in interviews: “Once you start in on a story that is dear to your heart and deeply familiar, you will tell it convincingly.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Is it not enough to respond to a job-interview question with a story structured in Situation (or Challenge or Problem) —> Action —> Result format? Well, in this space, I’ve suggested many alternatives to that story structure (or should I say, others have suggested them; I’ve reported them).

But a post by Scott Herrick was my first encounter with the notion of using the Hero’s Journey structure in response to an interview question.

Interestingly, Herrick is talking about a very specific interview question — What project are you most proud of? — but I know of no reason this structure should not work for lots of other interview questions.

Herrick suggests that the response to the project question should be “the one that you are proudest of and is told as the hero’s journey.”

Referencing this breakdown of the Hero’s Journey, Herrick describes the structure:

• The call to adventure
• The road of trials
• The crossing

Is this so different from Situation (or Challenge or Problem) —> Action —> Result? Not really. The Road of Trials portion of the Hero’s Journey adds obstacles to the mix, and the Crossing adds learning and wisdom. But I’m a big proponent of presenting a wide variety of job-search story structures and approaches because what resonates with one person may not with another.

What’s missing from Herrick’s post is an example of what an interview response using the Hero’s Journey as a structure might look like.

Herrick concludes:

When you tell your hero’s tale (your story), you are really summarizing your unique reasons for hiring you. You are telling the hiring manager that you have the job skills, you have motivation to overcome obstacles, and can work with a team to make business results. After all, those are the only three answers to interview questions [In another post, he asserts that all interview question boil down to (1) Can you do the job? (2) Will you love the job? an (3) What people do you like to work with?] And your hero’s journey provides the powerful answer to all three.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I hope you’ll check out a very engaging recorded conversation between my friend Trey Pennington and Tom Asacker (pictured) about story and storytelling and where Asacker sees it fitting into a comprehensive marketing plan.

Trey talks about his own evolution from simply a social-media expert to a social-media expert who realized that something more was needed — something to cut through the clutter and foster connection with human beings. That something, he realized, was story.

For his part, Asacker noticed that he connected more deeply with audiences when he told stories. That was significant information because he had also realized that the old methods of communicating weren’t working anymore. Just repeating a message doesn’t make people believe it. Storytelling is the next evolution of marketing communication, Asacker realized.

Still, many businesses don’t understand that consumers make their own meaning about those businesses.

They also don’t understand, Asacker noted, that it’s not enough to engage people. As an example, he told a story about world-reknowned violinist Joshua Bell playing in a Washington, DC, subway station. (This story is well-known enough for people to apparently question whether it’s an urban legend or not; it is detailed on Snopes.com and identified as a true story.) In 45 minutes of playing, only six people stopped to listed to Bell for any length of time, and the musician collected only $32 in tips, while a few days later selling out a Boston theater, where seat prices averaged $100. The point, Asacker said, is that even being the best won’t stimulate the desire to “buy.” The story (or experience) of the people walking by was not enhanced in any way beyond being able to hear an excellent violinist.

Asacker contrasted that scenario with a similar and also well-known story, which he attributed to seminal ad man David Olgilvy. I’ve seen the story in a couple of video renditions, one embedded below, though Asacker told it slightly differently from what you see here.

In the blind-man story, the story presented to passersby gets enhanced — to successful effect.

The best product or service, Asacker said, is the one that consumers have created the best story about. The challenge for marketers is to discover how to create vivid memories for their audiences. For the “how to” of telling stories well, Asacker recommends Robert McKee and Michael Margolis.

Trey and Asacker discussed other examples of entities that tell stories either successfully or unsuccessfully:

Steve Jobs is known for stories that embody a quick way of communicating with people and making meaning. Trey, a self-described follower of the “cult of Apple” since 1984 described how fellow “cultists” aren’t interested in any negative stories about Apple because they are convinced of the story of Apple’s perfection. Trey faced their wrath when he dared to suggest that ads for iPad veered off the traditional path of Apple advertising. He learned his lesson and now has no intention of talking about how his Verizon iPhone drops just as many calls as his AT&T one did. Potential customers create a story of Apple ownership in their heads, one of the gentlemen said. It’s one thing, for example, to say in iPod can hold 40,000 songs. It’s (literally) a different story to say you could drive 25 roundtrips from San Francisco to New York and never hear the same song twice.

On the flip side, President Obama, Asacker asserted, is creating a disconnect by telling a story in which the economy is getting better to an audience that doesn’t believe that improvement is real.

Storied cartoon characters, such as those depicting toenail fungus and mucous, and on a more pleasant note, Scrubbing Bubbles, can be effective in helping people construct stories in their minds.

Looking at these examples, story purists would probably say that not all of them really represent stories. Asacker agrees that sometimes when he talks about “storytelling” in marketing, he’s really talking about metaphors, analogies, and experiences. He uses the term “vividness” to characterize what he’s going for. Asked to give a definition of storytelling, though, Asacker said it consists of communicating an event with words, pictures, and sound. Storytelling is also creating meaning in people’s minds. Story is life, he says, and we create stories to make sense of our lives.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Inspired by the New Yorker article I read about neuroscientist David Eagleman (discussed here), I’m now about halfway his new book Incognito: Secret Lives of the Brain, which I find brilliant and fascinating. His style reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell’s — only even better.

One of his major premises in the book is that our conscious minds comprise the tiniest portion of what goes on in our brains:

Your brain is carved by evolutionary pressures just as your spleen and eyes are. And so is your consciousness. Consciousness developed because it was advantageous, but advantageous only in limited amounts. Our conscious minds are limited representations of the activity in our heads. Consciousness is the lowest man on the totem pole in the power structure of the brain. Most of what we do and think and feel is not under conscious control. … Almost the entirety of what happens in your mental life is not under your conscious control.

Those of us who follow story know that our brains are wired to think in story form, but Eagleman sheds some light on this process that offers some fascinating nuances. Just a few examples:

“We are constantly fabricating and telling stories about the alien [mental] processes running under the hood,” Eagleman writes. He discusses experiments with patients who have had the right and left hemispheres of their brains split from each other. “When one part of the brain makes a choice,” Eagleman writes, “other parts can quickly invent a story to explain why.”

Turns out it’s the left hemisphere that is the seeker of meaning, the sensemaker, the “interpreter,” the weaver of stories. The split-brain experimenters, Eagleman says, concluded that the “left hemisphere acts as an ‘interpreter,’ watching the actions and behaviors of the body and assigning a coherent narrative to these events.”

Hidden programs drive actions, and the left hemisphere makes justifications. This idea of retrospective storytelling suggests that we come to know our own attitudes and emotions, at least partially by inferring them from observations of our own behavior.

“The brain’s storytelling power kicks into gear only when things are conflicting or difficult to understand,” Eagleman asserts. In other words, your brain doesn’t need to come up with a story about how to ride a bicycle once you already know how to do it. Dreams, however, are another matter. “Dreams illustrate our skills at spinning a single narrative from a collection of random threads,” Eagleman writes. “Your brain is remarkably good at maintaining the glue of the union, even in the face of inconsistent data.” Think about it. The typical dream is full of wacky bits, but when we relate them to others, we do so in story form.

Unfolding brain research continues to shed important light on how story works at the core of our beings, even at unconscious levels to which we will never have access or control.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Another bit I read in David Eagleman’s Incognito (see this post) is that people who read material while holding a pencil in their teeth think the material is funny “because the interpretation is influenced by the smile on [their] face.”

So, I wonder if I could train myself to smile more by going around with a pencil in my teeth. (See last week’s post on my smiling problem.)

Given that my biggest issue is smiling during presentations, the pencil idea seems impractical given that I could scarcely talk that way.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

In the newsletter of our parent site, Quint Careers, this month, we’re publishing a Q&A with author, interview coach, and career expert Pamela Skillings, I was pleased to add her to the list of career gurus who support storytelling in the job search.

Here’s a sneak preview of her Q&A:

You can improve your interview results dramatically by becoming a better story teller. Every job interview includes behavioral questions (“Tell me about a time when…”). Some are nothing but behavioral questions.

Do yourself a favor and develop some go-to interview stories (non-fiction only, please) about your top accomplishments and/or most relevant projects. And make sure each story includes a happy ending (positive results with numbers if possible).

Pick stories that demonstrate your most valuable competencies and those most in demand in your line of work. Good examples of leadership, teamwork, and problem solving are always crowd pleasers.

Next, practice telling these stories in the comfort of your own home until you feel you’ve got the right flow and the right level of detail.

By identifying examples of your best work and keeping them fresh in your mind, you will be prepared to show off your greatest hits when it’s interview time.

Skillings also recommends stories for questions like “Tell me about yourself” and “Why should we hire you?”:

I advise first jotting down the top 3-4 qualities that you feel set you apart from other candidates for this particular position. What do you want the recruiter to remember about you when deciding who to call back? These qualities should form the basis of your pitch. Then you must practice weaving them all together into an irresistible 2-minute story. Turn on a recorder (iPhone voice memo feature works well) and see what comes out. Your first few tries will be terrible, but you will find the right approach and the right rhythm if you keep trying. Ask an objective friend for feedback if you start to feel too close to it.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve been thinking a lot about personal narrative recently (see previous post), especially with regard to personal branding and career.

The story starting point I recommend in my book Tell Me About Yourself is almost more an assessment than a communication tool. I call it the Quintessential You story; it’s a narrative that truly reveals your character and what makes you unique. The story might disclose what makes you tick, what drives you, what you value, what your goals are, how behave in a crisis or a time of change.

You may not use this story in developing your personal brand or in your actual job search, but you’ll use it as a starting point to help you get to know yourself better and draw from it to develop additional stories that illustrate your brand, your skills, and your accomplishments.

My all-time favorite Quintessential You story came from one of my former students, Kellie, who told of working in a hospital and developing a relationship with an Alzheimer’s patient. You can read the story here. The traits we learn about Kellie from this story certainly are building blocks to her personal brand, her “about me” story.

In developing your foundational story, ask yourself, what story can I tell that best captures the quintessential me?

To read the chapter in my book that deals with the Quintessential You story and see examples and prompts, go here in my blog-within-a-blog that serializes the book, then scroll down to the post titled The Starting Point: A Story That Captures Your Essence, then start scrolling back up the page to read subsequent posts.

Robin Roffer shares some similar ideas in a post entitled How To Become The Superhero Of Your Own Story. Some nuggets:

• Building a captivating story about yourself involves sharing the epic moments in your life that reveal your true character.
• When you reveal yourself through story, you honor your accomplishments and set the stage for your next triumph.
• If your story inspires you, it is sure to inspire others.

Roffer also shares a nice list of possible personal story structures from Brendon Burchard (no link to his work provided).

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Impowerage, an online magazine redefining aging, is running a writing contest on the topic, “It’s Never Too Late to Change Careers.”

The contest is down to five finalists, and one, Cathryn Wellner, is a good friend of A Storied Career.

The contest organizers “noticed a common theme to many entries of changing careers.”

While some writers were forced into another career by the recession, others decided to finally pursue their passions later in life. Regardless of the reason behind it, most were happier with their new careers.

Cathryn tells the story of boldly going after the position of director of the oldest senior theatre troupe in America at age 57. Another finalist tells the story of a 55-year-old dancer. Another became a freelance home staging assistant, novice photography artist, and beginner writer.

For those who’d like to pursue a passion but feel they’re tool old, these stories are inspiring.

You can vote on your favorite story through June 17. This page tells you how.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

In writing about performing beyond one’s job description, Patty Azzarello is making a point about job growth:

As soon as you start doing the job, what the job needs to be evolves as the business grows and as the world changes. If you do your job as written for too long a period of time, you will become out of date. You will begin to lose relevance to the business. You will not be adding enough value.

You will also not have any accomplishment stories to tell your next employer if all you do is what’s in the job description. Job descriptions contain only qualifications, duties, and responsibilities.

Stunningly, many job-seekers use their job description as a starting point for their resumes (and it’s always completely obvious when an applicant has done so). Thus, their resumes are filled with duties and responsibilities, which are of minimal interest to employers compared with accomplishments and results.

Azzarello packs her post with lists of questions an employee could ask himself or herself to see if he or she is adding value.

Most of those same questions could be used as prompts for developing accomplishment stories for resumes, cover letters, and interviews. A sampling:

What business outcomes does my work drive?

• What is the business outcome that happens as a result of my producing this work?
• How does my work impact profit?
• Does my work impact quality, innovation, efficiency, competitiveness, cost reduction, process improvement, sales effectiveness…
• Can I tune my work to create a better or different business outcome?

What has changed?

• What has changed in the market since I started this job?
• What has changed in our customers’ business since I started this job?
• What has changed in our competitors’ business since I started this job?
• What has changed inside our company since I started this job?
• Do these changes require a change in the way my job is done?

Most of the bullet points in Azzerello’s post could serve as a superb template for developing accomplishment stories. I highly recommend it.

Azzerello concludes “It’s dangerous to rely on your job description to tell you want to do or to wait for your management to tune your job along the way.”

It’s not only dangerous in your current job but dangerous for future opportunities.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

OK, right off the bat, I have to admit that this post is neither really about storytelling, nor is it a story. But it’s something I need to write about.

I have come to realize that I have a smiling problem. I don’t smile enough, in the right way, or in the right situations.

I don’t see my wan smile (below left) as a major problem in photos, though my sister does. She claims that for most of my life, I have abandoned my “real” smile (seen in the photo at right). Certainly, I do not show teeth. I’m not sure why. My teeth are not very white, but I’m not aware of being overly self-conscious about that.

I have also been told from time to time that I don’t smile enough. I’m a pretty positive person, and I usually feel smiley on the inside, but I guess I don’t very often project my inner smile on the outside.

My smile issue hit home for me this week in a couple ways. I was giving a presentation to a group of high-school students about nonverbal interview behaviors. I was making the point that smiling is extremely important in a job interview because it’s the best way to show enthusiasm. But even as I speaking this idea to the students, I could not manage to smile!

I find it especially difficult to smile while delivering a presentation. For me, it’s hard to talk and smile at the same time. But I know it can be done. Two of the best speakers in my Toastmasters club consistently smile while presenting.

In fact, later in the same day I had presented to the high-school students, those two smiling speakers placed in our club’s mock speech contest.

This day of smiling contrasts taught me an important lesson: While a smile won’t always be appropriate to a speaker’s content, a smile enhances a presentation (just as it does a job interview) enormously.

It’s time for me to learn to smile when I talk.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Came across a concept today that has me scratching my head.

Quantified Self. Apparently it’s an emerging trend, and the Quantified Self folks just held a conference (here’s a good article about it). They have a Web site:

Quantified Self is a collaboration of users and tool makers who share an interest in self knowledge through self-tracking. We exchange information about our personal projects, the tools we use, tips we’ve gleaned, lessons we’ve learned.

OK, so what is self-tracking?

… use [of] a computer, mobile phone, electronic gadget, or pen and paper to record your work, sleep, exercise, diet, mood, or anything else

The site’s Complete QS Guide to Self-Tracking lists tools and apps that quantify things like energy, fitness, food, goals, health, learning, llifestyle, location, medicine, money, mood, productivity, relationships, and sleep.

I can sort of see the appeal of this approach to data-heads. I note that I’ve even written about some of the tools mentioned as telling a story in a quantitative way. I also see that some listed tools, such as a journaling app, are really more qualitative than quantitative.

But I’m having a hard time seeing how “self knowledge through self-tracking” can really be meaningful.

I’m very tempted to start a competing movement called Storied Self: Self-Knowledge through Stories.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.