I had a journey down memory lane last week. It was the 21st birthday of our daughter Jess and we had a party. So, I decided to do the mandatory photo wall capturing her 21 years.

Photo Wall

I went through all the old photo albums and selected about 50 photos to form the collage. This process brought back so many memories and stories.

In my storytelling workshops, one of the methods I share on how to find personal stories for business is to go through your old photo albums or scroll through your digital photos. This process will spark memories and provide you with a list of potential stories you could use in business to communicate a message or a value.

By creating a photo wall for Jess, it reinforced just how powerful this process is for finding stories.

Generating Stories

For a lot of the photos on the wall, I could share a story about that time. And some of these could potentially be used for business communication.

For example, the photo of Jess at the snow. It was the first time she went skiing in Switzerland. She totally nailed it with the help of a friend who sacrificed his own need for speed down the slopes to teach her. In a business context, the potential message could be around mentoring, support or even courage.

All I would need to do is be clear on my message and then decide which elements of the story I include to communicate that message.

Four Types of Stories

There are four types of stories you can share in business.

• Personal
• Professional
• Public, and
• Parables.

While they all have a purpose, it is your personal stories that can have the greatest impact. Yet, I still find that they are the most underutilised.

In my experience, the main reason people shy away from sharing personal stories in business is because they do not know how to masterfully link the personal story to the business message. Without this knowledge, they see it as too much of a risk and therefore don’t have the confidence to attempt it.

And there are still some people who don’t understand the power of storytelling. They believe that business should be devoid of personal information and emotion. Therefore stories are not professional and only data is credible. I think that might be a convenient story they are telling themselves, because the inconvenient truth is that they don’t have the skills to craft an effective story.

Storytelling Workshops

What participants in my workshops often say to me is that they now realise that storytelling is not only professional and credible but should be expected of any leader.

My aim for my workshops is to give people the capability to tell stories with success. Once they have the capability, they then have the confidence to share their personal stories. Subsequently helping them to connect with their customers, engage their employees and have greater impact.

If you want to discuss an in-house workshop for your team or a keynote at your next leadership event, then let’s chat. You can also check out my only scheduled public workshops for the year in November (Storytelling) and December (Presenting). Make sure you take advantage of the early bird offer that ends soon.

P.S. I am thinking of introducing an ‘Ask Me Anything’ type newsletter every now and again so if you have a question you would like answered fire away. Nothing is off limits… well within reason. 😉