So, if you’ve done the previous blog post’s exercise on knowing your story, read on to begin to share your story! 😉 

If you haven’t, open up a new tab and just go one blog post back! This exercise was a TOTAL game changer for me and had a big enough impact that I have shared it with tons of friends and even done entire episodes on it on the podcast! 

Knowing your story is a necessary precursor to the leadership skill of sharing stories, because it means you have already taken the time to dig into all this stuff on your own. The last thing you want when you’re sharing personal stories at social gathering, with friends, or at work is for that to be your therapeutic story-sharing time. 

Tune in to the full episode here!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts

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Do the therapeutic side on your own so that you can get everything off your chest and externally process it. Why? Because once you’ve taken care of yourself in that area, you can facilitate that growth experience for others!

And that is where we see sharing your story become a tool in your leadership tool box. 

It’s like during the safety brief on commercial flights: Put your air mask on before assisting anyone else; know your story before sharing so that your sharing can be others-focused.

So how to share those stories of yours:

Let’s pretend that you are out at lunch sharing “remember when” stories, and I’d like you to specifically envision yourself as a leader:

• You might be catching up over lunch with friends (you can be a leader there!)
• You might see yourself at a Monday morning bright-and-early review meeting in the conference room at work
• You could be in the locker room with teammates
• You could be in your dorm room common area with your roommate
• Or even at an outdoor get together with some friends on a saturday night

So take wherever you are envisioning yourself and see yourself sharing “remember whens:” 

Remember when this time? And “oh yeah! I did something similar to that a few years ago, let me share my experience with that….”

And I just want you to ask yourself one simple question: 

Who are you sharing for?

Are you sharing for you? or are you sharing for them?

Who are you sharing for?

If you want to develop yourself as a leader, it’s going to have to be more often than not the latter of those two, and you’ll need to shift into a more frequent “sharing for them” mode.

To explain this a little better, I’ll explain first what it’s not:

We shouldn’t be hopping into the conversation to tell a story *just* to make yourself look really cool. It’s not sharing something challenging *just* to make other people feel sorry for you.

We can tell the exact same story and, depending on our motivation behind sharing it, we can get completely different reactions and make a totally opposite impact!

Sharing your story with the heart of a leader behind it means you are using story-sharing to open the door for others to do the same. You help them become more comfortable and it promotes open conversation and, ultimately, cohesion within your team. 

Sharing your stories in this way even paves the pathway for empathy, and if you listen to the podcast, you know that empathy is a super incredible, valuable, shared understanding that promotes trust, bonding, unity, and so much more. Empathy is basically like a golden ticket in your leadership journey! 

Stories captivate and inspire others to listen to what you have to say.

Stories are what we listen for everyday. They are what makes a movie the type of one where you’re halfway through and you really want to refill your popcorn, but you just don’t want to miss one step in the journey you’re on with the main characters! And then the absence of stories is what makes obligatory lectures at graduations and banquets yawn-worthy and the presence of personal testimony and heartfelt storytelling is what makes the clock disappear.

Take the time to do the “knowing your story” exercise and then go practice! If you’re intentions are right going into the story-sharing opportunity, then (in my opinion) you can’t go wrong!

I believe in you!

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