Welcome to upSkill Talks brought to you by McGraw Hill. I'm your host, Michel Shah lead UpSkiller at UpSkill Community. UpSkill Talks is a podcast for leaders, leaders who are actively seeking innovative and creative ways to interact lead themselves and others. In every episode, through real life stories and enlightening conversations, we will explore the challenge.

And opportunities real leaders face in today's everchanging workplace. We will present you with real strategies for you to leverage your soft skills and produce transformative results. Thank you for joining me on this journey. Let us begin. 

Let's rejoin Colleen Stewart as she shares an interesting story with a really important lesson.

So I worked with a client, at the end of 2020.

 She's a farmer, young girl, working on her family farm, but about to take over that farm. She's pretty young to be doing that, late twenties, early thirties. And she was invited to. Be a part of a panel at a conference and everybody on that panel was sent five questions about 2020 and she was expected to have an answer for each of these questions.

Well, she called me cuz she said, Colleen, I can't, I can't answer these questions without bursting into tears because frankly, 2020 was. Awful. And I don't know how I'm gonna get through this event. If I cry, I'm gonna lose all credibility. I'm a young woman with a bunch of guys up there, like I don't wanna cry.

And so I said, okay,  we're gonna work on your  stories for each of these questions. And we did, we crafted five stories, authentic true stories from 2020. And she came back from that conference and she said to me, Colleen, not only did you give me content, and I felt confident and I nailed it, but she said, those stories have helped me see 2020 very differently.

I don't see it anymore as a year of tragedy. I see it as a year of triumph.

If we can give that gift back to the people around us, that's pretty incredible. And if you can give that gift to yourself by crafting and figuring out your own stories, that's pretty incredible. 

Colleen knows we are all a bunch of stories walking around, and as she demonstrated, it's actually we're all having the same story. We're all here. We find a way to make meaning out of our own lives. We try to solve the problems that are faced in front of us.

Ultimately, we all want to be able to get better, to serve, to leave something behind a legacy, to transform, to have an impact. That's the goal. That's the journey that all of us are on. The pathway that we take may be slightly different, but that's why we're all here, and that's why stories are critical tools for connecting us, for compassion, for empathy,  for building quality relationships and for  inspiring our humanity.

And therefore, in this world that we live in today, there is no greater gift than the ability to create and tell our stories effectively and to share them with each other. So I'm really, really excited for what we've got here. And I wanna say, Colleen, thank you so very much  I think everyone got some great value nuggets from that. 

 I

I'm gonna take a minute now to address some questions from Upskills and share some additional insights before wrapping up this episode.

 How long should a story be? I know it varies, but how long should we allow someone to sit and listen to a story? I know it depends on how compelling it is and everything else, but there's zero.

An ideal link the most important consideration is not how compelling it is, it's what is the purpose of the story.  The media makes a big difference

so if you're doing a story, for instance, on an Instagram reel, It's gonna be limited by how long a reel can be. If you're going to do something like one of those  Insta stories, then it's going to be limited by that.

For instance, last night when I presented at the graduation ceremony, I have five minutes to cover everything that I need to cover  I'm sharing like two or three stories. So it,  will determine how long the stories need to be. The stories don't need to be very long stories. For instance, last night I shared the story of how those buildings in the distillery came to be. I shared the story of how the b e A initiative came to be. I shared the story of the Chinese bamboo. I shared like three or four stories in one five minute speech. It could be one story that needs more time to develop. So your story, your way, 



 But this story that you're telling here,  is a story of how your business came to be.

So this story is a big deal and it's, it's a big deal because it's a story of how you transform trauma and sorrow and  the lemons that were thrown at you into. Into something positive. A business has come out of all these things that life has thrown you. So I really think I really like that story.

 I The shorter the story, the more.   User-friendly. It is the more use cases it has, because you can drop a short story in social media, on a reel, on a video, on anything, and you can include it in longer presentations  and if it's shorter, people can remember it.

 

And now, let me take a moment just to sum up some of the story, essentially, before we close out.  

 So every story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you follow the work of JK Rollins. Harry Potter's author, she says it needs to have a trigger, a transformation, and a life lesson. So she uses a different framework from beginning, middle end. She uses trigger transformation life lesson as well.

If you take a look at what Pixar does, Pixar uses a different framework. It doesn't matter the framework that works for you. And sometimes one framework is suitable for one situation, another framework for another situation. But  if you notice, the Pixar movies, they follow a seven step process once upon a time.

There was once, there was every day things were going well until one. Trouble strikes and because of that, the first thing happens. And because of that, more of that happens until finally then they have a resolution. And ever since then, lessons learned 

And yes, 

The inciting incident, the trigger. The beginning, how did  the story gets moving, how do you sort of trigger the conflict situation that we're going to be exploring in the story?  So when we're gonna do the story practice I just want to make sure that you are thoughtful. You're clear on your purpose. You make it emotional, make it real and  there are so many different emotions. So we want to make sure we're exploring the wide range of emotions and choosing the emotion that's suitable for your story.

So whether that's joy, sorrow, Happiness, delight, whatever the story needs to convey, choose the appropriate emotion and don't reduce your emotions to just a couple of the most popular ones. Choose the one that's going to be needed for your particular situation, but more than anything else, make sure whatever you  choose to share will allow people to connect.

  The Dr. Sue's story, green Eggs and. It's that  familiarity that the story breeds. All of us are familiar with that story and find ways to take the audience on a journey. That's what the story's supposed to do. When you're watching a movie, the directors and creators and producers  take you on a journey.

The story is so skillfully crafted and  oh my. And you come out and you're talking about it. It's that kind of a planned journey. They know when they're gonna make you cry. They know when they're gonna make you excited. They know the range of emotions that you'll experience as they walk you through that journey, and you have to think about that for yourself.

So keep it simple. Weave in your value proposition because we're talking about business stories, we're talking about stories that will help us gain value, whether it's in business, as entrepreneurs, in the workplace, as professionals  in education, as students or faculty, we're talking about what value do we bring and how do we use stories to highlight those values.



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So they too may gain the skills and insights to produce amazing results. Please go to UpSkillCommunity.com to review show notes and learn how you can join a community of leaders from across the globe. Collaborating to lead in a more meaningful and impactful way. I'm your host, Michel Shah. And again, thank you for joining me on this episode of UpSkill Talks.