The Perfect Story: How to Tell Stories that Inform, Influence, and Inspire

Character-driven stories connect you to the emotions of the character and how they shift and evolve over the story.

I recommend three steps to prepare stories for interviews. First, define three words or phrases that describe you at your best. These should be characteristics you want the interviewer to come away thinking about you.

Not every situation requires storytelling with data. Tell stories: To connect to deeper understanding, mindset shift, or exploration. When you have a new audience or stakeholder. When approaching a decision or milestone. To highlight insights and outliers in the data. To understand scale.

Third, interviews are rich with “Tell me about a time . . .” questions. There are dozens of possible questions that interviewers may ask to understand your values, technical expertise, and communication, learning, and leadership styles.

Stories that include raising stakes, tension, or unexpected elements force the brain to pay attention

Experiment with removing items and notice if the pacing or outcome is impacted.

Before any potential interaction, think about your audience and what you want them to know, think, do, or feel. This is a good habit, regardless of whether you plan to tell a story. The answers help you plan for the interaction and shape any communication toward that outcome.

We care about these characters and what becomes of them because of their emotional truth.

Simply pay attention to those things that fascinate you. You will soon recognize the endless story ideas for your toolkit.