Make Your Career Story a Call to Action

Anita Brick:
Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth to help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted, well, you know this is about storytelling, so I'm not going to tell a big story, but what I can say from my heart, we're more than delighted to have Anjali Sharma here. She is the founder of Narrative: The Business of Stories, and she's a trusted advisor by international brands like LinkedIn, Airbnb, and Meta who seek guidance on finding, developing and using their stories to make a dramatic and dynamic change happen.

She works with private and government organizations and has helped companies to increase staff engagement and performance, increase client satisfaction and sales, define company values and effective positions for brands by embedding story skills into their organizations.

She is the author of Strategic Storytelling, which, Anjali, is an amazing book and she has spoken all over the world. And I know it wasn't always easy because I did read the book and you've done some amazing things, so thank you. I also know that it is late in Singapore, so thank you for staying up and sharing your wisdom with us.

Anjali Sharma:
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Anita Brick:
So let's jump in. The first question actually came from an MBA student. She said, "How do you recommend gaining a deep understanding of your audience when you may not know who is, in this case, interviewing you? How do you convey that strategic, compelling and successful story?"

Anjali Sharma:
Yeah, the first rule to storytelling the last decade that I've been constantly working in with corporate professionals is really who are you telling this story to and what's the change you seek to make? So I think my response to this person would be you are definitely aware of which company you are interviewing at. You're definitely aware of what role you're interviewing for. If you don't know who exactly is interviewing you, but you know which company you're interviewing, what role are you interviewing for, those two pieces of information are more than enough for you to be able to make a story strategic.

Now, let me not talk in abstracts. Not that long ago I was working with a marketing professional who was interviewing for a role in Switzerland. Although she was aware that the role that she's interviewing for is a comms role, she wasn't sure who exactly would turn up in this interview.

So she knew the company and she knew what was the role. Based on that, she created a point of view. Her point of view was all marketing and communications in the organization is mostly done for being creative, for getting noticed, but none is done for measuring and how does it actually contribute towards the business, the revenue, the profit.

She had that unique point of view because when she walked into the interview, she did not want to start off by not telling a strategic story. She knew no matter who comes to this interview and who interviews me for this role, I know that this role requires measurement of comms and measurement of campaigns and a clear, visible way to be able to see that how are they are contributing towards the business goals? So she used that strategic approach by knowing what was her role and what did the company want and told that story.

I'm happy to share with you she's right now in Switzerland heading the campaigns team. So it's not necessary for you to know the actual person is going to be who's interviewing you. If you don't have that information, it's okay. You still know the role, you still know the company, and that's more than enough for you to make your story strategic.

Anita Brick:
I love that. One of the things that you talk about, it's great to give the facts and be accurate, and I would say our audience wants to be really accurate. What sometimes is missing is taking that and bringing in some of the emotion to both differentiate themselves and create a call to action. There were a couple of questions around that. This is actually a friend of CareerCast, "How do you advise individuals to be concise while conveying emotions that inspires others to act? In my case, I want them to act by making me an offer."

Anjali Sharma:
I often say that in the last 10 to 11 years that I have been working in this space, the one aspect of storytelling where most professionals roll their eyes is when we talk about emotions. It's because automatically people think about emotions in this sobby, fluffy and subtle way. But I think emotions, when you actually bring in a description of an emotion, not a display of an emotion, when you bring in a description of an emotion, it is a promise to your audience that you have a certain level of cognitive empathy.

I'm not talking about affective empathy. The difference between cognitive and affective empathy was beautifully described by Dr. Brene Brown where she said that affective empathy is like where you are also drowning in the emotion of the other person. Cognitive empathy is understand that when we ask about emotions, we are not asking about display of emotion. We are asking about a description of an emotion. And when you describe an emotion, you have to describe the emotion of the person, make them feel seen, heard and valued. Again, the definition of connection is when someone feels seen, heard and valued.

So say for example, if you are talking to a recruitment manager or a hiring manager or someone who's interviewing you for a role, you understand that this person who leads this department wants to create a department that would do world-class work and he or she is looking for someone who can contribute towards that goal. And you have to be smart enough to recognize that emotional desire of that person to be the leader of that particular team and then talk about how you can contribute towards that.

So here I'm not crying, neither am I laughing, nor am I yelling. I have just been smart enough to recognize the worldview of the person who's interviewing me and then say, "I understand what it feels like to have a team who can fulfill the vision of making your department a world-class department, and that's the person I want to be. I want to be a contributor towards that." That is recognition of an emotion. It's concise. It's to the point. It's described. It makes someone feel seen, heard and valued.

Anita Brick:
When you're thinking about being asked to give a presentation, you're often given a scenario and a problem, and then you present what you would recommend that they do. How do you balance telling a story that is in the present, like you talk about the difference between story and narrative, and helping them see their future with you in it? I mean, how do you bring the two together? How do you take them, okay, I can do this because I have the history to do this, but now I'm going to be able to take you into the future that you see and I am part of it?

Anjali Sharma:
Yeah, so there's two questions in this question. It's wonderful. It's great that it's a question with a lot of substance and your two different parts to it. I think it's wonderful. And I think your first question is probably a question that is very relevant for a majority of the people. The second question is a question that often comes into play when you're getting into some sort of a leadership position because that's when you're talking about the future and trying to bring people into a future that they aspire to be a part of.

So I'll answer the first question, which is where we talk about the story and the fact. So I think the first thing I would want everyone to start understanding is that they're not two separate things. When you are able to take a fact and wrap a story around it, deliver it with a certain level of humanity, it's a perfect communication. So it's not like there is a fact on this one side and then there's a story on another side. It's not like that. I want to give you a very quick example of that.

So say for example, I'm trying to convince the management that I would like them to allow us to run a campaign that educates healthcare practitioners who prescribe our product. So I'll walk up to the management and I will say, "We need to run a educational campaign for the healthcare practitioner to ensure that our brand reputation remains in place." A couple of weeks ago, we received a call at a customer care call center from a mother whose child, by the way the story that I'm telling you is actually real. It's not something I'm making up. We received a call from a mother whose young child after consuming one of our advanced medical nutrition baby milk formula turned blue-black. The custom care officer said, "Please rush the baby to the hospital."
The baby was rushed to hospital, the baby is fine, but we wanted to investigate and find out if our product had something to do with what happened with the baby. We were not able to get to the bottom of it, but as we investigate the situation, what we have realized is that there are many calls in our customer care call center that actually indicate to us that this kind of baby not feeling okay calls are quite a regular thing, so what exactly is happening?

What we have realized is that our healthcare practitioners are not prescribing the product in the right manner. I have just taken a real-life example, just brought the fact and the story together and made sure that the anchor of the story is brand reputation because that is what the management cares about. They care about efficiency. They care about the image and the reputation of the organization, and they care about the profitability because that is what their KPI is. That's the first part of the question.

Bringing narrative and a story together, now, that story that I just told you, that's a story. That's in the moment. That's right now. If I was to attach a piece to that and talk about the future, our North Star, our North Star is to bring health through food to as many people as possible, and in the future we want to continue to be the leading organization that actually does that, that live by that, and actually becomes a market leader, not just locally, not just regionally, but globally. When you start attaching the bigger vision and the five-year plan to that particular narrative and show the longer picture, then you're getting into the narrative space because you're not just talking about what happened in the moment, but you're talking about what can potentially happen in the future.

So stories are a part of the narrative. You can tell a story without a narrative, but you can't tell a narrative without a story in it.

Anita Brick:
Right. No, that makes sense. It sounds like when someone is bringing people, funders, a hiring manager into the future, they need to use narrative if the organization or the funder is seeking a better future because if we keep them in just the story, it won't necessarily be enough for them to take action to either hire us or fund us. Am I on the right track here or can you maybe add a little nuance to that?

Anjali Sharma:
You are absolutely right. I think the way to look at it is that if you want to explain to people what does this even mean? For example, if I make a statement like, "Digital transformation is the backbone of our organization's growth," what does that even mean? If I want to bring meaning to that statement, I will tell you a story. That's it.

But if I need to explain why does digital transformation needs to be the backbone of our company, then I have to tell you a narrative because a narrative will start from the past. In the past, we were like this, and now the things are like this, therefore we must this because things have changed like this. They have created a problem for us which now needs to be solved. And in that problem you will tell a story because the story will be like, I don't really understand this problem in absence of a story, so I will tell a story that will help you understand that problem. And then you will say, "And when we do this today, then tomorrow would look like this." Then you go into the future part of it.

And you're very right because no investor is just looking at what does this mean, what the investor is really looking in, why does it matter to me tomorrow, why do I need it, what has changed from the past till now because of which now I need to change and I need what you are offering?

Anita Brick:
I love it. Could we do a little tutorial because people may even know theoretically some of the things that you share? I think what is missing for many people is how do I apply this to me when I am flawed in terms of my ability to present, whether it's in an interview or at a conference? Would you be okay with that?

Anjali Sharma:
Yeah, sure. Why not?

Anita Brick:
Okay, good. All right. Someone, she is very passionate about the story and for her it really is a narrative. She's bringing people into a future that isn't super clear. She's a data scientist, and we love data scientists. We need to have the data to back things up because otherwise they're just soft and fuzzy and for many people just don't have enough substance. She forgets she's a human being. This is what she has told me, and her humanity gets lost. What would you advise someone to do to bring their humanity in, in the midst of all the data that they have?

Anjali Sharma:
If I was to tell you very honestly, this is something I learned from a book called Making Numbers Count, in this book that the best data presentations actually don't have data in them. I want to go back to your question, what's the advice for this person? If you are a data scientist, you have found the data, your data has an insight, that insight has the potential to actually make a change happen and change the future, then you need to take that insight and go, okay, step by step I'll take you through because you said we are doing a tutorial, so we are going to do a tutorial.

Anita Brick:
Okay, let's do it.

Anjali Sharma:
So step number one, my insight is this. For example, my insight is based on the data that if we were to increase our product supply in market A, then we can maximize our growth. Okay, so based on the insight, this is what I think the action we need to take. Based on the insight, you put your action in one box and say, "This is my solution. Okay, that's it." Now you've got to tell the story of how you arrived at that and how it can change the future.

Now once you've got the solution, then you've got to go, okay, if there is a solution, what is the problem that this solution solves? Okay, so the problem now has to be the problem from your audience's perspective, not your perspective. You're not telling the story for yourself. You're telling the story for your audience. So you have to think if it's management, is it an efficiency problem I'm solving? Is it an image problem I'm solving? Is it a money profitability problem I'm solving? From my audience perspective what is a problem? So now you've got two board, you've got the solution I'm telling based on my insight, and you've got the problem that this solution solves.

Now, once you've got the problem that this solution solves, in between the problem and the solution you're going to put another storyboard where you are going to talk about people experiencing this problem like in a story. So if you are saying that our organization has done X number of innovations, made their supply chain faster, yet not achieved results, it's because we are not actually feeding that particular market from where the maximum amount of revenue comes from, then you tell that story. In between problem and solution, you tell a story. A story is about a certain situation where certain things happen, certain actions are taken, therefore there are certain consequences.

In the book I go through exactly how you build a story. The humanity of your communication will come from that story that you plug in between the problem and the solution. You can articulate the problem statement, but are you going to make me feel the problem, not just make me hear the problem. When you're going to make me feel the problem through the story, ah, then I'll be like, okay, now I get what this problem is.

The majority of the entrepreneurs, their startups fail not because they don't come up with a good solution. It's because they come up with a solution, the problem that they're trying to solve through that solution is not felt by their audience. Audience don't even know like, okay, fine. If the problem is just a problem statement, people don't feel that.

So you've got problem, you've got story, you've got solution. Now if you're really building a solid narrative, after you've built a solution, you've got to talk about based on this solution what does the future look like. Not for you, not for the product, for the person for whom you're building this story. Is it an investor? Is it your employees, for them what does the future look like?

And if you want to make the narrative even more robust, add one more board to this. When you started to explain the problem, go before that and say, "How did we get into this problem? What changed in our world? We didn't have this problem many years ago. Something changed. It was like this in the past. Today it's like this." Therefore, a problem comes out. When the problem comes out, this is how people experience the problem. That is where humanity comes in. Therefore, now you can add your data to the problem as well by saying that is how people experience the problem and the data tells us that the magnitude of this problem is like this, so we are going to do this. This is the solution so that the future looks like this.

Very quick revision, the first board is here's my solution. The second board is here's my problem from the audience perspective, not from your perspective. After you've articulated the problem, tell how people are experiencing this problem, what's the data that supports the magnitude of this problem? Then after the solution, you will add another board, what does the future look like? Then before the problem, you'll add one more board and ask yourself, how did you get into this problem? How come in the past you didn't have this problem? What changed in our world? What was it like yesterday? What IS it like today?

Anita Brick:
So that's quite brilliant, so thank you for that. Can we continue with our tutorial just a little bit?

Anjali Sharma:
Yes, by all means.

Anita Brick:
Okay, here's one that I see a lot. I was working with someone, he kept getting turned down. He wanted to be a strategy consultant, and the good news is eventually he did. I looked at his slides, it was like an eye chart. I kid you not, there were probably 500 or 600 words on one slide. How would you advise someone who is really loving their content to let some of it go?

Anjali Sharma:
This is a tough one, and I'll go back to one of my early reads in storytelling. I read that the best story is the story when there is nothing left to take out. What that means is that you've taken everything out that you possibly can and you're really just left with the minimum amount.

Add to that by saying that when you were left with whatever there is, you have to always, always think is this something I love or is this something my audience need? I think what you love versus what your audience needs are two very different things. A lot of the parts of my book were taken out, which I absolutely loved, but I let it go because the editor understood what the audience need.

Why do we get attached to something? We get attached to something because we have spent a lot of time thinking about it and coming up with it. We think it's brilliant and it's insightful and it's the intelligent process that makes us feel like we are great, we've been able to come up with this. But the truth is that the story is not for you. You don't tell stories for yourself. You tell stories for your audience, and although it sounds like common sense, that is one of the biggest mistakes people actually make.

So if you have this chart, I think the only thing you have to ask is what's the value of this chart for your audience, and if the value of this chart is zero for your audience or minimal for your audience, then it's got to go. I think that's really the most ruthless and the simplest way I can probably say it. It's not about what are you going to say, it's about what are they going to say when they hear you?

Anita Brick:
Yeah, you're absolutely right. It reminded me of I was giving this experience of something at a conference, like 1,500 women at this conference, and I was told that I had seven minutes. How can I possibly do this in seven minutes? It was 18 the first time, and then I got it down to 15, and they're like, "Got to keep going," and I did. I got it down to about seven. It was so much better. There was an author who said, "This would've been shorter if I had had more time," and I think that what you're saying creates humility in the other person, but it also shows empathy on your part because you've been there. I've been there, and we all get there at some point, that question, is this for me or is this for my audience? And if it's for you, it's not going to go that well.

Anjali Sharma:
Yeah, but I think it's the discipline. It requires discipline to ask that question. One day before your presentation, what are you thinking? I'm thinking what am I going to say? We have to discipline ourselves to say it doesn't matter what I say. What matters is what are they going to think and what are they going to say after I have finished speaking? Because I don't speak for myself. I speak for my audience.

It's like a checklist you have to have. So I often say you have to have a checklist of you have to ask. Everything in my deck is correct, but is it going to connect? What have I done to make sure that it actually connects? Now, once I look at my connect and I go this is what I've done for it to connect, that means that I have created something that is useful for my audience because I am only communicating to connect with them. I'm not communicating to connect with myself.

Anita Brick:
Brilliant. Can we do a part three of the tutorial and then a closing question?

Anjali Sharma:
Yes, of course.

Anita Brick:
Okay, so here's part three. They've done the things that we've been talking about. They have a story, it's concise, it's compelling, it is really for the audience, and they've told it about 50 times, so their delivery starts to wane. So how do you get someone to have vitality and energy if they've heard the story many times, but it's the first time we're going to hear it?

Anjali Sharma:
Actually to be honest with you, it's not the repetition of the story that makes it dull because I personally, my experience has been that if I tell the story repeatedly, I actually become even better and better and better at it. It's not the content that is making you, like I'm bored. I think let's go a little bit deeper into this, right?

Anita Brick:
Yes, please.

Anjali Sharma:
If you are telling a story, it's something you have experienced yourself, you end up delivering those much better than the ones you've actually read about or heard somewhere. The reason for that is because you are literally reliving that process whilst you are actually telling, you will have a lot of really interesting details in it.
So for example, if you've actually lived it, like an experience you will not just say, "And I turned right, and I saw a car there." You naturally say, "And I turned right, and a red Toyota Camry was standing or was parked over there." You start going into details and those details activate people's visualization and they make people believe what you're saying and you are reliving that experience.

The thing is that your energy is not a result of how many times you've actually told that story. Your energy is a result of maybe you are probably fatigued of constantly delivering, constantly delivering. Is it that you are delivering the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again, which is more like exhaustion versus the fatigue towards the story?

Anita Brick:
Ah, okay.

Anjali Sharma:
So I think what you have to really take notice of is how many times is this person actually delivering this story? Is it a physical fatigue or is it a story fatigue? Story fatigue, if it's a personal experience, likelihood is no. You don't get tired of telling the same story again and again because you relive that experience every time you tell it, and you actually get better and better. When I say better and better, what I mean by that is you make it shorter and shorter. You make it concise because you know at what point your audience feel what so you're able to make those adjustments.

Anita Brick:
That is a really brilliant thing, and I don't know that I've had anyone ever share that before, and thank you. Do you have time for one more question?

Anjali Sharma:
Yeah, for sure. Go ahead.

Anita Brick:
If you were going to leave our listeners with three things, what are three things that you would advise someone to do to create a story, in this case, a career story that is compelling and impactful and a call to action?

Anjali Sharma:
So if you want to build a career story, firstly, I think you need to have a base ready irrespective of where you are being interviewed. So what do I mean by a base story ready? A base story ready means you think about three steps. The first step is broadly what your career has been all about till now, 25 years or 10 years, or 5, 11 years in marketing and communication in X, Y, Z places and ABC industries. You write that down broadly like what has it been?

Then you write specifically what are you doing right now, like currently you're working as a product innovation specialist, whatever you might be working as right now.

And then finally you go into the passion part of it and what are you really passionate about in the work that you do? So broadly what you experience has specifically what you're doing right now, and then you're finally going to I'm passionate about what? People are not passionate about their entire job. They're passionate about something that they come into a flow with. They really enjoy that part of it. So you write down what are you really passionate about.

And once you've got those three elements put together, your base story is ready. You should always have your base story ready. When you talk about the passion, you have to attach some evidence to it. Where have you actually lived your passion? Tell a short story about a time where you managed to make your first $500 by buying something on Alibaba and then selling it in a shop. Your love for business started with that. What is the evidence to the passion? Have a few examples there. So that's first. First have a base story ready if you are looking at telling your career story.

After that, I think once you have an actual interview opportunity, you have to start looking at your base story and then really starting to make it strategic. For example, if you are talking about your current role as a product innovation specialist, but the job that you're interviewing for is a data science job, then you are going to look at the product innovation specialist role and see what aspects of that actually contribute towards data science role. So you're going to start then tailoring, looking deeper into the base foundation story and start to strategically make it right for a specific interview for a specific role.

The first step is foundation story. Second step is tailoring the foundation story to suit wherever you are going. The final thing, final thing I would say to you if you are wanting a role for a certain after an interview that you're giving, always remember you are not able to demonstrate your character skill in an interview, your personality is revealed. So I think what you really then have to do finally is to look at what are the things that you can do that reveal your character in this conversation.

So these stories that you add, these minimal stories to your passion, reveal your character. A story is like a DNA strand. It reveals the entire fabric of your character. A line that was said by Steve Denning, stories are important. It's not just about you. It's also about the people who are actually interviewing you, what kinds of stories you can elicit from them, what kind of things you can actually ask from them, and you can make them say, "Wait, what?" Intrigue them.

For example, an interview I gave at a company called Swarovski many years ago. I started the response to a question that was asked of me by saying that what delights me today is that I'm sitting here to give an interview for a company where every second second a Swarovski crystal is sold somewhere in this world, and that's what my research had told me. So you have to find interesting facts and things about the company that you are being interviewed at you can use wherever appropriate whilst you are in that conversation. You have to be obsessed about the people you seek to serve. You have to be obsessed about the company in terms of finding out and coming up with those things.

In revision foundation story of yours, build that. Second when you know the company that you're interviewing for, rejig and shape that foundation story to suit that in an authentic way, not in a manipulative way. And finally, it's time for you to shift your focus from yourself to the people that you seek to serve, consumers, customers, hiring managers, recruiters. What is it about them that you know can use in the interview to show them and demonstrate to them you truly, deeply care about them as well?

Anita Brick:
So you are quite brilliant with this. I can see very clearly the passion you have around this. It shows through your authentic excellence, and thank you so much for sharing this with us. You added some new things for me. And if you helped me today, I know that you've helped our listeners. Thank you for writing Strategic Storytelling and staying up very late so we could have this conversation.

Anjali Sharma:
Not at all, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Anita Brick:
Please keep me posted on how things continue to evolve. And you and I both know that when you make a connection through a story, you can change a life. Not to sound grandiose, but I think you can change the world too

Anjali Sharma:
Absolutely.

Anita Brick:
All right, thanks again.

Anjali Sharma:
Thank you, Anita.

Anita Brick:
And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.