Storytelling

As I continue with my job search, I find I’ve been spending a lot of time on LinkedIn. 

Every morning and throughout the day, when I get time away from my other duties as Head of Family Care / Experience/ Happiness ... I check in to my LinkedIn profile and look for updates, job postings and other interesting discussions and useful information. 

I have to confess that some (not all) of the content or the stories posted leave me feeling ... uneasy? I ask myself why?

Is it the self promotion? No, that’s what LinkedIn is all about. I can hardly blame people for using it to promote themselves, their product or service, can I?

Is it the hyperbole?  No, not really, why shouldn’t people be proud, happy, even thrilled to work with great people and say it? Why not publicly recognise that you work with “awesome” “passionate” people, teams or organisations?

Is it the endless array of “X things that ADJECTIVE NOUN’s do” or “Y tips to delivering ADJECTIVE NOUN”? No, where else can people share their business related discoveries about ADJECTIVE NOUN, if not on LinkedIn?

It’s none of these things, not really. I will admit, these things do irritate me sometimes, just a smidge. But I get over it. So what is it about these stories that make me feel ... uneasy?

An answer came to me as I was reading an article about having to tell a story when you bump into your CEO in the elevator: the old “elevator story”. I was reminded about something Anthony Trollope wrote about storytelling.

Anthony Trollope was a Victorian era novelist, He wrote the Barchester Chronicles and over 50 other novels. His contemporaries’ were Dickens, Eliot, Thackeray, and Austen. In his autobiography, he gives some advice to aspiring novelists. It was this advice which came to my mind as I reflected on the art of the elevator story and telling stories generally. He said:

“I have from the first felt sure that the writer when he sits down to commence his novel should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell.

What reader of novels has not felt the “woodenness” of this mode of telling?”

I interpreted this to be about authenticity: I was reminded of it because there is this sense that some of the stories told on LinkedIn and in other parts of our business lives, seem to lack authenticity. The stories read (sound) as though they have been told because the writer (speaker) has to tell a story, rather than because the writer (speaker) has a story to tell.

Of course, in our business lives we all need to master the art of storytelling. It is the stories we tell that provide the context for our purpose; explain the reason for our being.

I guess that is why we call it storytelling and not telling stories.