Hello and welcome to another episode of the Working Conversations podcast where we talk all things leadership, business, communication, and the future of work. I'm your host, Dr. Janel Anderson.

What if I told you that the way that you think about your career, heck, even your entire life, could change with a single shift in perspective? That the work that you do, no matter how small it seems on paper, could take on profound meaning when framed as a story. A few years ago, I had coffee with someone I was mentoring and something I said that day ended up changing the way he saw his work, his impact, his purpose, heck, even his whole life. Today I'm going to share that story with you because when we cast our lives in story form, everything changes.

Okay. A few weeks ago, I received an email from someone that I mentored a number of years ago. You see, I'm on an advisory board with the academic department that I used to teach at at the University of Minnesota. The department has a mentoring program where students in a major, the major of scientific and technical communication, can be mentored by a working professional. They ask the board members to participate as mentors. And I always do. And since my career history is somewhat unusual, I get the students with the more unusual career profiles to mentor, which of course I love. Typically they're working on their master's degree or a master's level certificate and they are somewhat non traditional in their career path. Again, you can see the appeal to me here and how I might be able to contribute to them in ways that other people can't.

Well, this particular person that I was mentoring in that given year had left his career to be a stay at home dad for a number of years. And at the time that I was mentoring him, he was working on an advanced degree and planning his strategy to enter back into the workforce. Interesting challenge. Okay, so this was back in late 2018 and early 2019 when I was mentoring him. So about six years ago. A little over six years ago now. Since then, we check in with each other from time to time and I always love hearing about the incredible work that he's doing. So we follow each other on LinkedIn.

Again, like once a year there's a little bit deeper email from him. Usually that arrives in my inbox to let me know what he's up to. But the email that I got from him the other week really stood out. He shared his career updates and some of the challenges that are happening in his field right now, which I appreciated a little bit about his family as well. Again, the context here completely made sense for him to share that with me. And at the end of the email, he wrote, and I quote directly from the email, “Janel, you were instrumental in changing the way I think. I can't say that loud enough.” Now that is a powerful statement.

Am I right? Are you with me here? Now, as much as I love a good compliment, I had to know what exactly did I say that made such a big difference? So I asked him. I wrote back in his email and after a few days of thoughtful reflection, he sent me back a response that I had to share with you. In his reply, he reminded me of a conversation that we had years ago over coffee when I was mentoring him. It was late 2018. I literally looked it up on my Google calendar because I had to know. Now, early in his career, before he mentored with me, he was deep into the data side of work. Lists, numbers, reports, you know, the type of work. And as a self proclaimed data guy, he saw his resume as a bulleted list of skills and accomplishments.

And he was wondering how to fit the stay at home dad piece of the puzzle into the resume, if at all. Now, that day I challenged him to do things a little bit differently. I told him, your resume isn't just a list of your accomplishments and the things that you've done, it's a story. It tells your career story. It has a beginning and a middle and an end, and it has a climax where something happened and then a resolution to that climax, just like a good story does. Now, at that coffee, I shared with him my career story. And if you haven't heard it already, it is detailed for you as well as why you need a career story and how to craft yours. In episode one of this podcast, which incidentally I recorded several years after this particular coffee, I had already been in the habit of telling my career story, and I explained to my mentee at this coffee how important it was to have that story, to have that narrative about your career.

And again, we'll link episode one up in the show notes so that if you don't know how to craft your career story and you haven't heard mine, you can go ahead and listen to that and get the nuts and bolts about how to craft your career story. You can catch the show notes for this episode at janelanderson.com/207 for episode 207 that this particular episode is.

So at that coffee we talked through his career journey, including the choice, and it was a choice to be a stay at home dad and the specific skills that he had picked up in that role in that part of his journey and how it all hung together in a powerful story. Well, his lessons from that conversation went even deeper as he explained in his email to me the other week about how that coffee conversation changed. In addition to a resume telling a career story, he said, so does the work I do every day when I frame it as a story. So this clicked for him in a way that changed everything now. And he's been back in the workforce for five plus years. His job isn't just about numbers. His job is about impact. And he tells about that impact through story. He frames his work through story, both for himself, for the people he serves, and for the people that he talks about his career with. So he shared an example from his current role at where he works at a hospital that makes that shift crystal clear.

So at the hospital where he currently works, he handles purchasing for primary and secondary specialty care, including dialysis equipment. One of the programs that he supports allows patients to do dialysis at home instead of making regular trips to the hospital or to a dialysis center. Now if you've ever known anyone or known of anyone who needs dialysis, you know how significant this is to do this at home instead of leaving the house to go to a center or hospital multiple times per week. This is huge.

Now on paper he said his job is simple, placing orders. But when he steps back and looks at it as a narrative, the meaning of his work is absolutely transformed. And here's how he put it in his email to me. And again I quote, “Today I placed an order for a carrying case and supplies that a patient will need to travel with their dialysis equipment. This patient will have the ability to leave their house, go on vacation, or visit family. On paper, I placed an order for equipment. But what I really did is give that patient their freedom back.”

Now right there, that is the power of personal narrative. He is framing his work not just as ordering equipment. That's what it is on paper, and quite frankly, that's boring. But literally what he is doing is transforming patients lives and in this instance, giving them their freedom back so that not only can they travel from their house, but they can travel from their house and still complete the dialysis that is literally keeping them alive. So he is giving them his their freedom back. His job didn't change, his mindset did. Now instead of seeing himself as someone who processes purchases at a hospital, he sees himself as someone who enables people to live fuller lives, to have freedom. And that shift in perspective, one that we all have the power to make.

It turns his work from a series of tasks into a calling that brings him forward into the world to do amazing work and transform lives. And this matters for everyone, including you. The way that we frame our work and our lives matters. It matters deeply. If you see your job just as a position description, just as a list of tasks, it's easy to feel disconnected or uninspired, or worse, actively disengaged. But when you start thinking of your career as a story, as a powerful narrative, as a calling, then everything shifts. And you don't need to be a motivational business speaker like I am for you to have this shift. You can be like the person that I mentored who is in purchasing at a hospital and see yourself doing meaningful work that literally changes the lives of other people.

So if you're struggling with this, and if you're wondering, how do I get from my position description, how do I get from my job description or my resume to a powerful calling, well, here, let me give you a place to start. Start by asking yourself and literally writing out the answer or speaking the answer into your phone's recording device or something like, what is the big picture of what I do? Who do I serve, and for what purpose? So ask yourself that big picture question. Really zoom out and look at it from 10,000ft, from 30,000ft. What is the impact? And then get a little bit bigger, then dig a little bit deeper. What is the impact that someone else experiences as a result of the work that I do? And again, here's where you can get down into the stories, into the narratives of the people that you serve, and you can write out their stories, because that's where you're going to deeply see the impact that you have when you consider things from the perspective of the people that you serve.

Now, these might be external customers, like the patients of the particular person that I was mentoring, and, you know, the patients that he serves. They might be internal business partners in your organization that you serve. They might be senior leaders in your organization, because maybe you're analyzing data and sending that data upwards in the organization for them to make decisions from.

It could be if you're in human resources and you're screening resumes to pass them on to the hiring managers, then you've got individuals that you are serving as job applicants and candidates to work in your organization as well as the hiring managers that you're serving. And you can craft the story from both directions. In fact, that would be very powerful so that you see the instrumental role that you are in terms of Being that matchmaker in your organization, that's bringing the right talent to the right manager at just the right time. Do you see how this completely makes a difference in terms of you're not just screening resumes, you are a powerful matchmaker that's bringing the right talent to the right position at the right time.

Okay. And then ask yourself, once you've done that other work, how can I frame my experiences as a narrative, as a story that shows the work and the impact? So now that you've got that, the next question to ask yourself is, how can I frame my experiences as a story, as a narrative that includes the impact that my work has instead of just that list of tasks? Okay, so every job, yes, every job has meaning. When we zoom out far enough to see what that meaning is, to see the impact that we're having on our colleagues, if it's business partners that we're impacting on the customers that we serve, if there is either a direct line or a dotted line from the work that you do to the customers that you serve. So whether you are leading a team, whether you are managing data, whether you are making coffee or cleaning toilets, there is a story behind what you do.

And when you tell that story in an empowering way, it fuels your motivation, it gives your work deeper meaning, and it helps others see the deeper value of your work as well. Now, if this idea resonates with you and you want to get started, here's how you can start applying this right away.

Number one, rewrite your resume as a story now. Yes, of course, your resume needs to conform to some conventional formats. I'm not saying write it as a story. Chapter one, chapter two, chapter three. But don't just list your jobs. Describe the transformation that you brought about in each job and be ready to tell it more as a story form, especially if you are interviewing.

If you're interviewing for promotion inside your organization, if you're interviewing for new jobs, if you are like the person I was mentoring, having been a stay at home parent or something else that has taken you out of the workforce for a while and now you're about to enter back into the workforce, really think about reframing all the things that you've been doing since you've been away from work, or for those of you who have not been away from work, all the accomplishments and things that have happened in your past roles, transforming them into stories with impact that demonstrate the power that you had in that role to change things for other people. So what is. And then also take that view from 10,000 or 30,000ft and look at what is the narrative arc of your career. Go back and listen to episode one of this podcast for that step by step.

But really you want to find out what were some of those turning points, the inflection points, the jobs or the roles or the specific customer or the person that you managed that really made a difference in your career. So that's step one.

And then step two is reframe your day to day work. Instead of answering like I answer customer service emails or saying something like that, think I help solve problems and I connect people to the resources they need.

So brainstorm a list of your most frequent and most important tasks and then recast them as part of the story. And get into the habit of using the frame of story to describe yourself to others when you talk about what you do, instead of saying I ran a meeting or I led a discussion, say why let a discussion that helped our team move forward on an important initiative or that helped solve a problem for a customer.

And then step three Practice telling your own narrative. When someone asks you what you do, tell them the story of your impact, not just your job title. The longer version works great in job interviews and in those getting to know you conversations, whether that be on a date or with somebody you're sitting down to coffee for the first time. And then make sure that you come up with a short, snappy elevator pitch of it as well. It's great in the actual elevator at work when someone asks you what you do. And it's also great at a networking event or at a party or quite frankly, more practically, this happens in my life more when talking to another parent, when sitting in the stands at your kid's baseball game or something like that.

So have that shorter, snappier elevator pitch version of it ready to go. By shifting from lists and performance, by shifting from lists and job descriptions to narratives and stories, we don't just make our work more meaningful, we make it more powerful. So I will leave you with this last question. What's your story? I want to hear it. Tell it to me. If this episode resonated with you, I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear your story. You can find my email address online, you can find my phone number online, you can call it up and leave it to me in a voicemail, or if you don't want to type it all out, send me a message on LinkedIn, pop into my inbox, find me on social media and send me a dm.

And let's start rewriting the way we think about work and life and tell it as a story again. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with somebody who might benefit from hearing and until next week, keep working on what matters most to you and keep working on how you tell your powerful story.

As always, stay curious, stay informed and stay ahead of the curve and tune in next week for another insightful exploration of the trends shaping our professional world.

Now, if you learned something or you simply enjoy this content, please subscribe to my channel on YouTube, subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice, and follow me over on social media. These are all excellent no cost ways for you to support me and my work and you'll find links to my social media over on the show notes page janelanderson.com/207 for episode 207. Until next time my friends, keep thriving and keep working toward the future of work that we all want. Stay connected, stay curious and I will catch you all next week.