Making the Most of Your Personal Story in a Business Context

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live."

Joan Didion, American journalist

Storytelling is often a way of making sense of our lives. Narratives drawn from our lived experiences can be the most powerful.

In the business world, storytelling is an essential communication tool. It can make complex data accessible and develop relationships. Leaders rely on it to enthuse teams around a strategy or to shape an organization's culture. But these skills can be accessed by anyone who wants to connect and engage—be it at a major conference or an in-house workshop. It’s possible to turn significant life and career events into stories that bring your business messages to life. 

Scientific research into our psychological responses to storytelling shows that something remarkable happens in our brains when we hear a story we relate to. I want to take this a step further and show you how to use the power of vulnerability to open up honest conversations and build strong professional relationships that last.

So, when preparing a pitch, how do you draw on your life story to communicate the message you want others to hear?

1. Understand your personal story (because your life is a treasure trove)

Think back over your life, your career path, the life choices and life events that have shaped you as a person. Your job, hobbies, relationships, travels—alone or with friends and family—pastimes, extraordinary or unusual people you've met, and people who have inspired you.

Some will stand out as entertaining or inspirational, but some might also have dark or painful elements. As you run through these experiences as material for a story, you'll get a sense of what works and what doesn't—what articulates your business message and connects and what sounds or feels fake.

2. Understand the human connection

Have you noticed how in social settings, one story tends to trigger another? When someone tells a good anecdote, others want to chip in with theirs. One good story leads to another, and this process builds trust and mutual understanding. This happens for well-understood scientific reasons because when we tell and hear stories, something incredible happens to our brains. They suddenly get in sync with the speaker's—it's called "neural coupling."

The human brain easily loses focus and likes to shift concentration constantly. But in the presence of an engaging story, the meandering brain stops still and produces the hormone oxytocin, which increases generosity, compassion, trustworthiness, and sensitivity to social cues. When we hear a story, the neurons in our brains fire in the same patterns as the speakers. Our minds get in step.

3. Use metaphors and learning points

Metaphors are not just literary devices but also techniques for thinking and communicating. They can put a picture in your audience's mind, creating instant recognition. Business life does not exist in isolation from the rest of our experiences—in fact, it has a glorious wealth of relatable activity we see in many other endeavors that have next to nothing to do with our working lives. Sport, family life, politics, the world of entertainment and the media, travel, and recreation—when we tell stories using metaphors, we have a vast array of relatable experiences to draw on.

Metaphors work particularly well as problem-solving techniques. We see challenges being met and obstacles overcome outside business all the time. In stories with sporting metaphors, for example, we see business goals (a word borrowed from sport, of course) being realized through effective leadership, good strategy, and teamwork; in stories, using personal hobbies or recreation can often connect across cultures, just like sports. Personal cookery triumphs and disasters are full of potential for learning points but also offer great metaphors in the heat of the business kitchen (where recipes for success, secret ingredients, and half-baked concepts abound).

4. Bravery works

All the trials and difficulties you've encountered and all your experiences create a unique resource for a story you can usefully share with prospective partners. Failures and setbacks you have had to deal with are the backbones of authentic stories that are relatable and gain empathy. And the braver you are, the stronger the connections you'll make, even with total strangers.

Anxieties that your audience will think you're being "heavy" and oversharing are understandable, but they will reward your bravery if it is genuinely authentic and they point toward a valuable learning point. Pain is OK if you can show the gain, so be brave in your storytelling. If you can show you learned something useful from a bad experience, tell the story—it will always work.

The reason these bravery stories work is that you are also giving the audience permission to access their own; they feel less isolated and more able to connect because their brains are in sync with yours. This can be a powerful foundation for good business relationships because with sharing, bravery, and authenticity comes the gold dust of successful business relationships: trust. There is no faster way, in my experience, to foster a trusting atmosphere than being brave with your own vulnerability, and no more effective method for transmitting your bravery and vulnerability than through good storytelling.

Storytelling is an ancient human habit, and when you do it well, you are connecting at a deep level with your listeners. As the best-selling English novelist Philip Pullman put it, “After nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”

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Originally published: 22 June 2023