Are You Prepared for the Dreaded Question, "Can you Give Me an Example?"
Introducing — All My Stories
Uh . . . let me think . . .
It was a brief moment of panic.
I was in the middle of an interview with
the author of The Pathless Path for his podcast. Paul was a pleasure to chat with and he was doing what every competent interviewer is supposed to do. Ask good questions.I had just finished paying passionate lip service to the growth practice of leaning into discomfort and the necessity of breaking our own rules when Paul chimed in with the question.
“Can you give me an example?”
You’ve probably also been caught off guard by this question when speaking conceptually about your values, beliefs, experience, or attempting to enroll someone else in a point of view or perspective. A moment when you were jolted out of the pleasure of hearing yourself talk by the need to verify your claims. You know you’ve been caught when find yourself buying time with the phrase, “uh . . . let me think.”
It’s easy to wax eloquently about lofty principles, but can we back them up with examples from our own life, concrete experiences that show a listener what our ideas actually look like, where the rubber meets the road?
So when Paul asked, “Can you give me an example?” I reflexively clenched, because I’ve felt foolish plenty of times when I realized in the midst of a conversation that I wasn’t really walking my talk.
In this case, fortunately, I was prepared. But only for one reason. Because I’ve trained myself to think in stories.
I described a recent online seminar I’d participated in where every one of the 200 attendees felt smarter than me. Okay, well, that’s every seminar I attend, but the point is, when the presenter asked if anyone had a question, I had lots of them. I waited, hoping someone might ask my question for me. But nobody else put up their little digital hand. In that moment, I noticed the private shame policeman in my brain mutter, “Don’t you dare put your hand up, they’ll all know you’re an idiot.” But it was precisely the self-aware part of me, noticing the critical voice, that reminded me how important it was to speak up and challenge my inner shame police. So I asked me question, and then saw half the attendees on camera nod their heads like they had the same question too!
You can see how a simple story like that communicates so much more about taking small risks than parroting the cliche “you need to get out of your comfort zone”.
I was recently interviewed by the VP of a tech company who was considering me for a speaking gig. He asked me a question about speaking to an international crowd, with a diverse cultural mix. He wanted to know if I had experience working with an audience like that. The thing is, I knew I had, but I couldn’t give an example in the moment of such an audience and demonstrate I’ve served that type of crowd. In my profession, I need a story about this. Because I didn’t have one in the moment, I lost the gig.
Where are your stories?
Storytelling is squarely part of my job, but it’s part of every professional’s job because leading by example, and speaking in verifiable specifics, is what works.
Credibility, authority, and influence arise from our authentic experience.
Over the years I’ve written about, recorded and collected hundreds of stories that illustrate various principles related to organizational and professional development. But I have them listed in too many places, scattered among digital files, notes and platforms. This year decided I needed to take the time to organize them all in one place.
I needed a place for all my stories.
But the way I imagined accessing and organizing these stories, including how I could search on them and retrieve them for use at the right time, wasn’t accommodated by any platform, system, or tool I could find.
That’s when I started thinking of building one.
So here’s my big news.
In the next 7 to 14 days, I will have this as an app in hand. This tool will help me remember my best stories, easily record them whenever they pop into my mind, and allow me to share them with targeted audiences and contacts of my choosing.
The app is called, All My Stories.
I made brief mention of the app in my last newsletter, inviting anyone who’d like to access to the beta version to let me know as I’ll be offering a lifetime deal to early adopters.
I’ve already got a line up of interested users and I’ll be letting a limited number of founding members through the door, so if you’re interested, reply this email and let me know right away.
Here are a few screenshots from the developer’s desk to get a sense of how it will work.
1.) A rich library of story prompts will help you remember and retrieve life experiences that you may have forgotten exist in your history.
2.) After the prompt has jogged the memory, you can briefly note the details of the story in text form or with a voice recording.
3.) Once you’ve got the story down you’ll be prompted for a title and then to estimate how old you were, or when the story occurred, so it can be automatically seeded into a chronological master list of your life stories.
4.) You can then add custom tags you create to the story so as your master list grows you can easily search for themes and topics that automatically pull up the life stories from your inventory that correspond to your need for a writing project, live presentation, or special event.
There’s even more functionality I’m excited to share with new users, but I’m most excited to have it at my own fingertips.
In sharing the idea with others I’ve had all sorts of use cases described I hadn’t even thought of beyond my personal need for it as a public speaker.
preparation for a book or memoir
recording the stories of your family and parents as a familial legacy
being better prepared for sales presentations
move stories from a stack of diaries or personal journals to a searchable database
use it in house for colleagues to better connect in a company
keep track of ideas for your blog or newsletter
have stories on hand for teaching a subject
use the built-in prompt system to develop backstory for fictional characters in your writing
empower your therapy or mental health clients to use it to track their progress . . .
The list goes on!
Let me know if you want to be on the waiting list for the app at an introductory lifetime price and I’ll add you.
Just reply to this post if you got in your inbox, or subscribe to Honestly Human and reply to the welcome email. : )
Story Sharing Day
For those of you who are new to Honestly Human, on Saturday’s I host a Story Sharing Day, where I supply a prompt and we practice sharing our authentic life experiences with one another.
I can guarantee that you are under-estimating the positive impact your personal life stories can have on others.
This is a chance, not only to delight and inspire others, but to get more confident with sharing your stories so you can step up in future personal and professional situations.
These meetings are usually a small group, so don’t worry about feeling overwhelmed by a big crowd.
Saturday, April 20th, 9 am PST
What was the most challenging time of your life? What were you facing, how did you meet or fail to meet the challenge, and what would you do differently facing such a challenge again?
Thank you for being a subscriber of Honestly Human!
Here’s a video of me telling a funny story about being at the dinner table as a kid and the simple story prompt that helped me to remember it.
This was very timely for me as I have an interview on Monday. Easy to talk about your values, beliefs, etc. but challenging to call back examples on the spot. This was especially great: "I was prepared. But only for one reason. Because I’ve trained myself to think in stories."
Going to check out this app once it's live. There's so much power in organizing your life into coherent stories - which writing online is an immensely powerful facilitator of.
Thanks for being you, Rick. Always look forward to these posts.
It's weird, but this post is one of your most candid ones yet. I actually didn't have the vocabulary to phrase this difficulty until now. We all love spitting out life philosophies we've learnt in life, but you'll be taken seriously only when you can back it up with stories.
Maybe we should all "think in stories". (Love that phrase)