Friday, November 27, 2009

Business Storytelling: Interview Stories

I just read a great article by Michael Neece, CEO, InterviewMastery.com on the use of stories during the interview process. He gives a lot of the same advice I would give and he does it in a very organized way so that it is easy to follow. The piece that I loved is what he added to the end of his story format, tell them what you learned. That is a critical piece that I had never thought to add. It makes great sense, you explain the whole process and then like Aesop you give the moral. Nice, Michael thank you.

If you would like to read the whole article (if you are job hunting I think you should) the article title is Telling Structured Stories, here is the link:

http://www.net-temps.com/careerdev/career-tools/career-advice.html

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Business Storytelling: The Importance of Repeating

Someone sent me the following quote from Henry David Thoreau. She was using it as a helper for people to change. Which of course it does support. I of course read it and thought, that is the power of the story!

"As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives."

The thoughts we tell ourselves are like little stories. We also tend to repeat the same stories over and over. We tell them to children to help entertain but also to teach lessons. We need the repeat reminders even if we don't think we are telling the stories to learn anything; we are learning.

Make sure the stories you tell over and over are positive, learning stories.