How Storytelling Helped My Career

And how it can redefine yours.

When we tell our career story- to ourselves, employers, colleagues, and clients, we often concentrate heavily on our skills, impact, and achievements. We mainly focus on hard facts, which is fantastic because it proves our work and accomplishments. However, as humans, we are more predisposed to stories than facts.

"Many of us don't realize, but we don't tell a great story about ourselves and our work; we merely package facts and numbers into something that resembles a story."

This approach needs to include the beauty and power of our narrative. More than just a collection of facts and highlights, our career journey should consist of:

• Our origin: How we arrived where we are.

• Overcoming challenges: The roadblocks we faced and navigated on our career path.

• Growth: We matured as individuals and professionals during our work experience.

• Drive: What motivates us and pushes us forward.

• Identity: Who we are in the context of our work life.
  

These threads, weaved together, form the narrative of who we are professionally. Understanding and rewriting this story is vital to moving ahead in our careers. It fosters real connections at work, aligns us with the right professional opportunities, and ultimately gets us closer to the work-life we want.

Harnessing the Power of Storytelling in Your Career

We all tell stories. They reflect our belief systems and reveal what we hold to be true or false. Our fears and insecurities populate these stories; on the flip side, our overconfidence and triumphs also find a place within them. Like coded scripts that define our actions in the real world, our stories form part of our operating system. But have you ever stopped to question the impact of these stories?

"When we become conscious of the stories we tell ourselves and take control to rewrite them—we harness the power of storytelling."

Storytelling is more than a casual act. It is an integral part of our identity. It shapes how we perceive ourselves and how we present to others. Let me tell you a bit about my story and how I used storytelling to advance my career.

Uncovering the Stories That Shape Our Professional Lives

Just like any great story, my career also has a backstory. From a young age, I knew the scientific fields didn't capture my interest. My heart was, is, and always will be with the arts. But there was a problem—I was convinced I wasn't very good at it. I practiced and practiced, yet there were always others who could draw infinitely better than me with merely a third of my effort.

When I entered art school at the university, I became the odd one out. While my peers reveled in classic painting, sculpture, and abstract modern art, my influences were cartoons, photojournalism, and horror movies..

I had a growing sense of imposter syndrome for five long years. I coped with that by ensuring I would get a job post-college. I taught myself graphic design after classes. I found joy in crafting posters for bands, designing menus for restaurants, and logos for truck companies. However, the story I perpetually told myself—that I wasn't good enough—began taking a toll on my self-esteem and narrative.

Post-uni, I landed a job at a design studio. But again, that lonely, nagging notion of "I'm not good enough" echoed in my mind, reinforcing that I studied arts, not design. I worked in advertisement agencies and brand design boutiques during the day and had my own graphic design freelancer business by night. Despite my efforts, I only partially managed to be the graphic designer and illustrator I had envisioned myself to be.

Then came the move to Germany and, with it, a necessary pivot to user experience (UX). I started from scratch in a new field with little experience and minimal education.

How could I break ground in this new realm? The answer lay in the power of reframing my narrative. 

Rewriting Your Career Story: Shifting Perspectives and Changing Trajectories

The tale of my early career reads like a lowly tale of an underachiever. As a young graphic designer, I struggled with crippling self-doubt. "I'm not good enough,".. I often presented my work as a mere display of figures, downplaying my creative essence and selling myself short. And then came the pivotal shift.

The move into User Experience (UX) design necessitated a shift, more interior than exterior. Short on cash and fresh on foreign soil, I realized the death grip maintaining my old story had on my potential. I had to take a good look within, question the stories I told myself, gather the talents I had underplayed, and finally change the narrative.

Every technical skill can be learned, but life skills and hardened senses won by backbreaking effort are unique to each of us. These personal strengths, interwoven through the very fabric of our beings, are invaluable. My story changed when I realized this truth.

The training in the Arts taught me multidisciplinary flexibility and the ability to learn the foundation of many materials, skills, and frameworks quickly. I found confidence navigating through chaos and uncertainty, justifying my work to cynics, leveraging various mediums to present my original thought best, and expressing myself visually. 

Using My Story in Career Advancement

All these capabilities proved relevant even in my current practice as a coach. In my graphic design days, I honed critical skills in client and stakeholder management, team dynamics, and dealing with real-world implications of design choices on budgets and bottom lines. Those days taught me how to solve problems across different scales and expectations. All these skills are integral to successful UX or product design, and they are skills that cannot be boxed into technical know-how.

Six months of focused dedication as a UX Intern allowed me to learn the essential technical aspects of UX and build a decent portfolio, yet it was not enough to seal landing a proper UX job. Instead, the story I told about myself increased my chances and ultimately won me my first job.

The narrative of resilience, the evident demonstration of my past experiences contributing to my abilities, and my unique skills all added an element of intrigue to my persona. I was not the most technically proficient UX designer, but my diverse life story convinced Anton and Mark to believe in my potential and offer me a career with Futurice. (Thanks for that dudes!) I had a good story, and they were an audience who valued it.

The value of a good story often lies in the eyes of its beholder - an opportunity to start, grow, and prevail against all odds. The one I told opened a new and unimaginable job that led me to a sustainable, meaningful, and financially viable career.

Keep re-writing your story

The exercise of self-storytelling is a continuous, evolving process - one that molds our lives in ways that we might not even realize. They have a profound impact on our self-perception. They shape our beliefs, influence our emotions, and guide our actions. 

In a very real sense, we become the stories we tell ourselves.

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Unearth your unique story and positioning to stand out.