Who are you???
How to grasp your personal story and tell it with intention and impact.
‘Can you briefly introduce yourself please?’
How many times in your career have you been asked to do that?
What tends to follow is a recital of name, job title, and career path. Year after year - the only thing that changes is an updated job title.
Yawn!
Who really wants to hear someone regurgitate what we can learn from their LinkedIn profile in under a minute?
What we really want is for someone to tell us something meaningful about themselves. Something that gives us a sense of who they are. We want to hear their story.
But before we can tell our personal story, we must first understand it - far beyond a superficial level.
What is your personal story?
Who are you?
What do you stand for?
What’s been the making of you?
How did you end up where you are now?
Your personal story is the story of you - your how, your who, and your why.
Simon Sinek’s TED Talk ‘Start with Why’ is so widely watched, quoting from it almost borders on cliché. Yet it’s relevant here.
For when it comes to our personal story, most get stuck in the outer ring of his golden circle ‘what I do’.
Very few ever get to discover their true personal story, which lies in exploring the inner ring of self-discovery and ‘understanding their why’.
Three benefits of discovering and telling your personal story
1 It develops self-awareness
Who are you? What and who has shaped you? How has that influenced what you care about, your career, and does it offer any insights into what triggers you?
This type of self-discovery is enlightening. Yet in an ‘always on’ world, most of us never create the time or space to think about these things.
“Exploring your personal story is a way to proactively think about those life events that have shaped you and how they are influencing you today. It encourages reflection, self-awareness and leads to personal growth.”
Karin Mueller, Liebfrog’s founder and Managing Director
2 It brings clarity of thinking
Better self-awareness offers so many benefits but among them is clarity of thought. Understanding and articulating your personal story is an opportunity to see hidden connections and bring clarity to what truly matters to you.
“If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going. And if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably going wrong.”
Terry Pratchett
3 It builds connection and trust
Sharing who you really are builds connection and trust. And lack of both is a growing problem in business.
Just look at Gallup’s 2022 ‘State of the global workplace report’, which shows the number of engaged employees hovering around the 20% marker – that’s a failure to connect.
Or Edelman’s 2023 ‘trust barometer’, which this year suggests polarisation (another failure to connect), threatens to tip from a crisis of institutional trust into one of interpersonal trust.
Interestingly, Edelman’s research also shows that for the third year running, business has been the most trusted institution, so there’s certainly an opportunity for executives to push harder on that open door.
And building trust and connection matters because everything we’re striving to achieve at work – collaboration, innovation, change - is built upon it.
As Simon Sinek so concisely says, “we connect with people who believe what we believe” and personal story is one of the most powerful ways we have to do that.
Told well, your personal story builds bridges, empathy, and trust.
February 2023
This blogpost is part of a three-part series on telling our personal story.
Head over to the other parts:
If you don’t want to miss future articles, tips and resources to help you leapfrog leadership’s hurdles sign up for Liebfrog’s free monthly newsletter