How To Position Yourself As An Expert With This Story
Storytelling can help you market yourself as a thought leader who deserves attention.
When you’re running a smallservice business, you sell expertise. Prospective clients want to know: Have you got the goods? Can you do the job?
But how do you accomplish this goal? You can’t go around proclaiming yourself as an expert. In many fields, you don’t get a license or credential. You’ve got a lot of competitors claiming they’re just as good as you are…but you know better.
One of the best ways to establish expertise is to tell a story that surprises your listeners, creating an “Aha!” moment for them.
Your goal as a service professional is to provide transformation. Transformation almost always begins with an awareness of what’s happening now and what needs to be changed. As a change agent, you often create this awareness by delivering what’s come to be known as “aha” moments.
Let’s review some examples from one of the best books I read last year: The End of Average, by Todd Rose. At first, I thought the book would be more self-help, along the lines of, “These Days You Can’t Afford To Accept Yourself Average. You Have To Be Outstanding.” Instead, his message is, “The concept of ‘average’ can be dangerous to your business, education, and life.”
What makes this idea shocking is the word “dangerous.” Most systems, products, and institutions are designed to target the “average” person. It seems reasonable…until you realize that targeting the average person means targeting nobody. And that means you deny admission to many highly-qualified people.
Rose creates an “aha” moment with two stories.
Story #1 opens the book with a concept story. Back in the 1940s, the US Air Force took measurements of pilots across several body dimensions, such as arm span, waist, hips, neck, and shoulders. They used the average of each measurement to build cockpits.
Following a series of air crashes, the Air Force went back and measured thousands of pilots on ten dimensions. Not one pilot even came close to the “average” measurement on all ten. Ultimately, they learned to create adjustable cockpits, with seats, backs, and armrests that could be adjusted for each pilot.
Rose concludes this story with a stunning episode of a fighter pilot who saved a plane that was nearly destroyed in combat — a small female who didn’t fit the averages.
Rose uses body size as an example of what he calls “jaggedness.” Nobody will be average in all dimensions of body size. And nobody will show a personality trait through all situations and activities. I’m very comfortable speaking to groups but I avoid most parties. Some children behave well at home but not in school, or vice versa. So, Rose, suggests, it’s better to say, “I’ve got this personality style in this situation but not that one.”
This story works because
— it fits the purpose: It’s intended to show the importance of respecting jagged edges and not rejecting people who don’t fit the standard (because maybe nobody does)
— it’s relatable: Many audiences will know someone who’s been in the military and many will relate to the hero as someone they could admire. Strongly anti-war or anti-military audiences won’t respond.
— it’s undeniably true
— it’s consistent with the author’s brand as an Educator
Story #2 is an origin story with a purpose.
Todd was such a poor student in high school that his options for college were extremely limited. Bored with classes, he achieved poor grades and was known as a problem to many of his teachers.
When Todd got to college, he decided to figure out how to make academic life work for him. His advisor recommended getting the basic courses out of the way freshman year. But, Todd knew, he wouldn’t do well in boring classes. He needed to build up his study skills with classes he enjoyed. He realized a certain math class would be “stultifying,” so he found a way to test out of the required math classes.
But Rose also considered his own temperament and quirks. He avoided classes where he’d be seeing his high school friends. He knew he’d slip into his old “class clown” role and become a problem rather than a success story.
Even more remarkably, Rose talked his way into the college honors program. He discovered these classes encouraged free-wheeling discussion — something he enjoyed. And he learned how to pass a critical thinking exam by building on his own analytical style, with diagrams and pictures.
Ultimately, he earned graduate degrees at Harvard. Not bad for a kid whose teachers had given up on him.
Once again, this story works because
— it fits the purpose: It’s intended to show that sometimes failure isn’t due to the person; it’s due to an improper matchup between the dperson and the situation.
— it’s relatable: Everyone’s been in school. Many of us were bored or couldn’t relate to the way we were being taught.
— it’s undeniably true
— it’s consistent with the author’s brand as an Educator: Rose isn’t sharing the story to help us get to know him better; he’s using his own experience to clarify a concept.
These findings can be applied to business as well. How many times have you heard someone say, “I became successful when I realized that the prescribed rules wouldn’t work for me.” And have you listened to someone telling you, “If you don’t [go networking, create a podcast, do a lot of speaking, post to Pinterest four times a day, work 60 hours a week, or … ], you will never be successful.”
Hang around long enough and you’ll find someone who never did those things. They did SOMEthing, but they made the process their own. Maybe they shifted to a new business model to accommodate the way they work. Maybe they adjusted their goals. But ultimately they honored their own uniqueness.
Similarly, saying someone is “a successful businessperson” doesn’t mean they’re successful on all dimensions. They’ve learned to compensate for their weaknesses and leverage their strengths. If you rate them on qualities such as time management, interpersonal skills, perseverance, and technical savvy, they probably won’t score high on all those dimensions. I can’t imagine someone succeeding without strong audience awareness, but I bet somebody out there has done just that.
Learn more about the qualities of a good story with this free training.
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This article was originally published on my Strategic Storytelling blog.
