Challenge

The challenge is to find a minimum number of people required to take an employability  course that I’m teaching this month for a project that I’ve been working on during the  past year. This project revolves around helping others develop their soft skills towards  the change in paradigm that we’re currently seeing when it comes to labor. Under this  new scheme, it is estimated that automatization will take over and many jobs currently  being executed by humans will be replaced by robots. This will not only expose us to the  possibility of massive displacement, but it will also mean that many of the jobs that we  currently do will disappear and other new jobs that don’t currently exist will replace  them.

This requires for a change in mentality and leads us to a new age of “talentism” in which  we’ll have to pay less attention to technical knowledge, standard degrees and formal  education and more to the areas of soft and interpersonal skills that won’t be ever  replaced by robots. Only the “human touch” will sets us apart, and this translates in  things like having empathy and emotional intelligence.

The people who are lending me the space to perform the course are demanding a  minimum of 12 people to enrol, this is why “selling” it is a challenge. The course  specifically provides a hands-on methodology through which participants will be able to  uncover their talents, competencies and values that will later allow them to follow some  steps to develop an action plan, work on some strategic canvases and come up with a  concrete strategy to follow when it comes to landing their “dream job” or at least  coming closer to dedicating their lives to something that’s truly meaningful to them  whilst ultimately putting their talents to work.

Selection

The tool I’m interested in applying to the challenge presented is Storytelling. This tool  will allow me to put the audience’s needs at the center and connect emotionally to it  while presenting the reasons behind the need to develop those key skills that we will all  need in the upcoming years. I have selected this tool because it lets me create a space  for reflection and pose powerful questions that will leave my audience thinking and  wanting to know more about the topic. As per the lectures, when we’re trying to drive  transformation, we need to help the audience understand the current situation and how  it is more dangerous than other possibilities. This helps ignite the motivation that people  need to take action, get involved and gain the reassurance they need to have that there  is a better path.

Most of the times people don’t want to look on the inside because they fear they might  not like what they find. But ignoring problems and avoiding opportunities to improve by  getting out of our comfort zone won’t allow us to move forward. Through storytelling  however, people can relate and understand the feasibility of the solution presented and  how they don’t need to walk this path on their own.

Application

Rather than advertising the training program as just a course whilst trying hard to get  people to enrol by publishing plain information about it, I decided to create a story about  my own journey and how I went from a job that I was good at and felt stable but which  didn’t fulfil me, to creating an actual strategy that allowed me to land the job I wanted  within a year. I wrote this story as a post on my website and published it. Then shared it  on different social media channels available, so that it is more persuasive than a single  poster ad.

To accomplish this, I presented a clear sequence of events that helped move the story  from the beginning to an end, and in between I asked a few questions to help the  audience reflect about their own situation. I conveyed the most powerful part of my  message by using an analogy and telling the audience that they are not a tree; and for  this I used the below image. I explained how in my coaching sessions it comes up  recurrently when people are asked to select an image that represents how they  currently feel, and invited the audience to understand that this feeling is not reality. I  also asked them to answer themselves honestly what specifically they’re currently doing  to be at a different place.

I still don’t know if I will manage to get all the people I need to enrol in the course, but I  believe this is an effective strategy as it is focused on the audience rather on the actual  thing I’m trying to sell. They can relate to my story and feel the same pain points I felt,  which might encourage them to connect more easily and be willing to discover this  methodology towards systematically finding a dream job.

Insight

From applying Storytelling to my challenge, I discovered that stories can be extremely  powerful. This made me realize there is a different and better way of conveying  messages and getting ideas across. This is affecting the way I communicate to people as  I’ve learned that it is paramount to put people at the center and as I have changed my  perspective about design thinking and innovation. I have come to understand that this  is a continuous rather than a fixed process and that it isn’t about novelty; but about  value creation, being flexible, curious and observant to come up with ways to make  other people’s lives better.

Approach

Next time I might use the same tool to promote my courses, and I could also include a  short video to tell the story in a more graphic way so that images are more vivid for the  viewers. For this I could use a software such as Doodly (which I own) and develop a  sequence with voice over to explain the problem and take the audience on the journey  with me. This might create a greater need to take action and help motivate my audience  to support me and themselves.

