Example Reflection – Storytelling

Challenge & Selection:

I am an aerospace engineering student and I decided to apply to be a member of the  university rocketry team, in the propulsion sector. I rightly guessed that the first part of  the selection process was a simulation, like those job interviews,  in this one the  candidates were randomly grouped and  had to a create a new fictional team from scratch  and participated in an also fictional competition, so I prepared myself studying not only  about propulsion but also about the internal dynamics of the teams, competitions and  possible problems. During this group dynamic, our fake rocket broke and we had to  arrenge funds by convencing unknown sponsors of why to invest the quantity we needed  to fix it in our team. While we were planning what to say, the whole group only considered  that explaining our issues in a logical and direct way, since we expected all of them to be  as rocketry enthusiasts as we are. We couldn’t be wronger. Our very first possible sponsor  had absolutely no knowledge about rockets or rocketry teams, he was a simple man with  a very proeminent fortune due to his bakery chain conquered throughtout his life and  wanted to return it to the society by helping finnancially any team of the event, and he  could not look more bored, by talking to him to gain time to develop a new strategy I  realized how much valued effort towards dream chasing, so I decided storytelling, it  humanized our argument and brought the closest point of view his background could  provide, it was the best way to convince him to sponsor us.

Application

During our conversation he told us about his grandfather, his core inspiration who teached  him how to bake, and how he knew since his childhood he would be a baker even when  he and his family could barely afford food, so I told him about the brilliant Mae Jemison,  the first ever black woman to go to space, about how she knew since her childhood she  wanted to study hard to become an astronaut, how Tenente Uhura from Star Trek inspired  her and how she proved all the probabilities against her wrong, just like him when he just  not overcame poverty as also helped several of his employees to have a better life. Then  I said each of our team members were on the way of chasing our dreams, and how his  sponsorship would help our trajectory  since the competitions were not just an way to  practice all the things we were learning but also to be able to get a good networking to  improve emotional intelligence, to work under high pression, to believe in our potential  and another plenty of tools who will help us to achieve our life goals.

Insight & Approach

By the end of the conversation we were no longer the potentialy snob scientists talking  about things he did not understand who just wanted his money. We were equals to the  juvenile him, chasing his dreams, forging ahead his way to the top. Our “boring”  thechnical talk which distanced him from us gave space to a passionated conversation  about the conquer of life goals and learning through the journey. We got the sponsorship.

For more that it all was just a symulation, storytelling approached us to our sponsor, things  no longer were simply about money, it was about impacting people’s life, and it made all  the difference.

I just wish  I had discussed about it previously with my team, while we planning our  approach to the sponsors, since it was a group project with no formal leader established  we all should be aware of all strategies, but we got into this trick bias we did not thought  about enough hypotesis while were planning how to approach the sponsors and I had to  improvise it. If I wasn’t doing this course during the same period it would highly probably  ended up with a totally different outcome.

