Tell Your Story (L2)

Learning Objectives:

Students will

• Discuss the importance of creativity and innovation in the workplace
• Brainstorm and contribute ideas, strategies, and solutions
• Develop and/or improve products, services, or processes
• Connect personal values to a career in a concise narrative
• Refine or improve one’s personal story, based on audience.

Correlations:

This activity was created to be used primarily with:

• WRS: 1. Creativity and Innovation
• CCRA: 10. Demonstrate creativity and innovation

Secondary WRS skills include:

• 3. Initiative and Self-Direction
• 4. Integrity
• 10. Teamwork
• 12. Career and Life Management
• 13. Continuous Learning and Adaptability
• 20. Professionalism
• 21. Reading and Writing

Icebreaker

Use the following pre-activity process questions to create your own discussion or quiz OR skip them and go immediately to the video.

Pre-Activity Process Questions

1. What are the main elements (i.e., parts) of any good story?
2. Aside from your ability to do the job, what is of highest interest to job interviewers? What do they most want to know?
3. What are personal core values and where do they come from?
4. What are the parts of emotional IQ?
5. In a job interview, how do you demonstrate core values that employers would most benefit from knowing about you?

Watch the following video with students or assign it for class discussion

Watch the video embedded above (first three minutes or so) of Bill Gates in a mock interview: https://youtu.be/5dQ6t7g5Vpo. Bill Gates is the co-founder of Microsoft and is one of the wealthiest people in the world.

Pay special attention to the way he puts his character and personality into answers he gives about his skills, working with others, his ambitions, aspirations and fascinations. He is telling a personal story of his character sometimes by describing what he is not.

He becomes more than just a resume, because he has a consistent story in which he describes himself in a number of ways. The characters that come alive in stories, the ones that stand out and make us remember them, are not generalized abstracts of people. We know them by their deeds and actions, by their hopes and dreams, by their persistence and determination. Find the essential story of yourself, and you will stand out to others. You will be remembered.

Making a Connection. Transparency. Empathy. Emotional IQ. Self-Awareness.

All the above are sought by interviewers who want to know:

• Who is this person?
• How will this person get along with others?
• How will this person represent the company?
• How might this person react to stress, problems, and adversity?
• How does this person solve or overcome problems?

The worksheet will help your students tell their own stories as they would in an interview or professional setting. The idea of telling your story is tremendously creative in that it forces the student to connect elements of experience or story elements to a character trait.

How To Tell Your Story

The first step in telling a story of yourself is deciding what is appropriate per the company and opportunity you seek. We have thousands of stories that essentially make up who we are. Remember, we are shaped by events and our reactions to them. We are the characters in our own movies. Your event does not need to be deeply meaningful. Small stories can carry big messages, especially if they are examples of your character.

The fact is, even if you have the skill set to get hired, interviewers require more because they have no idea how you will act/behave/perform as an employee day after day. Not only are you competing with others for the same opportunity, but, to be considered, a company wants to feel confident that you will be an asset to its culture and values and that you intend to commit to them. So they will probe with questions that are about who you are as a human being, not just who you might be as a worker. They want you to reveal your character. You are more than just a resume.

There are a couple of essential things that every story needs:

• Character(s)—this is simple. In a personal story, this is you. More importantly, decide which characteristic(s) you want the story to show, but you might save this to reveal it at the end.
• Setting—this allows your audience to understand “context” to make it real to them. It could be a historical moment, or a particular day or location.
• Plot—these are the events. Focus on the simplest way to tell the events, which is sequential, chronological.
• Conflict—what is encountered as a problem.
• Resolution—what you learned or how you overcame the problem, which should highlight your characteristic or character element. What this story taught you about yourself is what you want others to know.

Walk Students Through the Following

Focus on the worksheet. Now that you know what to include, let’s write your personal story.

But remember, in an interview, you need to be short and to-the-point. You can’t worry about this when you draft it, but ultimately, you will need to revise this story and pare it down so that you might describe it quickly with an answer. You also need to decide how much of your character you want to reveal and think about appropriateness (avoid TMI—too much information). You need to think of putting yourself in a positive, personable light. Stories of failure for example are interesting if they message is one of resilience, determination, or something you learned about yourself or corrected in your behavior.

We tend to think of our personal stories as relating to major events, but actually, a story is easier to tell, the simpler it is. Our values should play themselves out in any situation, not just the major ones. And that’s the thing about core values and core principles, they define us no matter what. Some stories are able to relate to common experiences and it never hurts to put a little humor into it as long as you remain humble and avoid belittling others.

Go over personal story elements with students, using the worksheet in the materials section at the top of the page.

Example Scenario:

You are interviewing for your dream job (the job should be something related to the course being taught; the teacher should introduce his/her own story, but it can be fictional). The interviewer asks: How are you at handling stress?

Characteristic(s)—which characteristics do you want to reveal that are evidence that you can handle stress?

Setting—what is the context of your story, the circumstance in which it began? This is not just about age or place. It is about your situation.

Plot—what happened? Every plot has major and minor points. Forget the minor, focus on the most essential steps. This is tricky. You don’t want to bore but you don’t want to lose your audience either. Plot points connect the dots of a narrative.

Conflict—what was the problem or dilemma that put you under stress, describe how stress may have been effecting you or what it threatened. Conflict is also a plot point, but it reflects how you felt at the time rather than purely what happened and it may take some time to re-examine the reasons why you felt stressed.

Resolution—what is your punchline? Even if the outcome was not totally positive, what positive lesson was learned and how did it shape you? What is the moral of your story? What did you learn about your character and what do you wish to leave with others to make a lasting impression?

For the Future:

Now, take what you’ve learned about telling a story and apply it to four or five different values or character traits. Learn these stories so that you can tell them quickly and effectively in an interview or in other professional settings. Remember, the story is not about event. It uses event description to reveal your character, your personal values or core values. These stories do not need to be work related, but they should be focused on a value that an interviewer might want out of a worker in your job-role. Deeply personal beliefs in politics, religion, and love should not be discussed in a professional interview. The stories one chooses to bring into an interview should be revealed when asked, but should also be appropriate to the audience and employer. Employer research is important.

Common questions asked in an interview:

Source: Indeed.com (with examples of answers)

1. What interests you about this role?
2. What motivates you?
3. What are your greatest strengths/weaknesses?
4. Why should we hire you?
5. What type of learner are you?
6. What does customer service mean to you?
7. How do you define success?
8. How do you handle conflict?
9. Do you consider yourself to be a leader?
10. How do you handle criticism?

Artifact:
(what the students complete)

• Complete the Tell Your Story Worksheet.

Evaluation

Post-Activity Process Questions

1. Which career are you interested in and what are your personal core values that your story described?
2. After telling your story in simplest terms, what did you learn about yourself?
3. Why do you think it’s important to be able to tell concise stories about your character in job interviews or simply when meeting new people?
4. Why is telling your story considered to be a creative process, even when it is based on factual events? What other workplace readiness skills did you use to complete the worksheet?
5. In the Bill Gates and Steph Curry interview video, what elements of Gates’ character did he reveal? Did you learn something new about Curry?

Differentiation Method
(to address learning styles and disabilities)

• Rather than having students complete every portion of the worksheet, have them focus on core values and list those values that they would like to turn into personal stories.
• Have students work in pairs, as storyteller and listener and have listeners offer ways to improve stories or ask questions that will help improve the stories.
• Have students perform a thorough analysis of the video interview between Bill Gates and Steph Curry.

Vocabulary:

Students will complete the vocabulary exercises for the following list on Quizlet: https://quizlet.com/_9v7emn?x=1qqt&i=wcwth

• Character, in a personal story, this is who you are, or generally, the features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing.
• Conflict, what is encountered as a problem, antagonism, or opposition, as of interests or principles.
• Creativity, using the imagination or contributing original ideas or finding new ways to connect different elements in unique ways.
• Emotional IQ, is the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately.
• Empathy, the ability or practice of imagining or trying to deeply understand what someone else is feeling or what it is like to be in their situation.
• Making a Connection, in an interview, humanizing yourself by sharing your unique characteristics, becoming personable.
• Plot, the main chain-of-events of a story.
• Resolution, how you overcame the problem or conflict and what it taught you, or what you learned.
• Self-Awareness, knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires.
• Setting, this is the context, situation, or circumstance of the story, or generally, the surroundings or environment of anything.
• Transparent, revealing your true character and goals and actions, not hiding.