… when you tend to tell stories about it.
So contends Don Cohen on BabsonKnowledge.org in writing about NASA’s use of storytelling for knowledge management at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the story overseer there, Theresa Bailey.
Writes Cohen:
… the benefits of telling a story can be profound. Shaping stories helps people make sense of experiences they’ve had. Telling them to a receptive audience not only provides heartening evidence that colleagues find your work interesting and valuable, it remind the tellers how much they care about what they do. Describing her scientist and engineer storytellers, Bailey says, “They don’t even know how passionate they are about their work until they start talking about it.”
Let’s apply this idea to your career. Do you tell stories about it? If you don’t, could it men you are not passionate about it and long to do something different?
Victor Sierpina, Mary Jo Kreitzer, Elizabeth MacKenzie, and Michelle Sierpina write in their article “Regaining Our Humanity Through Story,” (Explore, Nov/Dec 2007) about understanding stories told by patients in the medical field and how doing so enables caregivers to “understand our own stories and what has drawn us to the health profession.” The authors note that “without understanding our own stories, we cannot truly know ourselves.” They quote George, Sims, McLean and Mayer, who assert that “your life story provides the context for your experiences, and through it, you can make an impact on the world.”