Reflection –

Storytelling design thinking strategy for gifted challenge

Challenge & Selection

My name is Rosli and I am the Leader of youth in an evangelic church. As leader, I have always

occasion to advice and help persons as counselor at church. Consequently, I am solicited by lot of

believers each week needing to be listened and empowered.  Currently, my challenge is to help

two gifted having some difficulties often to get friends and feel integrated in this world. Indeed,

gifted are very specials individuals having hyper empathy, great cleverness and passion to do

everything perfect in the church and daily life. I my case, they are very interesting persons able to

enrich my own skills and learn from others to feel normal.

Consequently, I have to listen all these persons and my best tool is the storytelling. What is it?

According to Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie “Storytelling is the difference between solving a

problem and creating a cause. It allows to get people to pay attention for just a little bit longer,

with a little bit more diligence and energy to raise the level of engagement!” In our context the

storytelling is the appropriate tool to help others finding themselves the way to well organize their

ideas and innovate. It mean that I used to show them the way to be more creative and design their

own strategy to feel well integrated in daily life.

How did I apply this tool of design thinking to help these gifted designing their thinking and

innovate?

Application

As I said my application of design thinking concerns various persons. But, I prefer share the case

of two gifted in my current work. It is not a scientific analysis, but it can help you to understand

more these persons.

Firstly, I met a student who likes long life learning and did not have friends because he is an

introvert person. Generally, this kind of persons has problems to communicate theirs feelings

easily with others. In spite of he was a very clever and active person at church, his great cleverness

and geek lifestyle were an obstacle to socialize often. He is full of knowledge’s and felt very alone

to have nobody to share with. Yet, he told me later that he felt in confident when we discussed

together. How? Personally, I started by a time of listening during our conversation to get his

attention. After the step of listening, I always found a story to tell about the richest of his

personality and close by saying “you are not alone, but a wonderful person like Daniel or Joseph

in the bible”. The storytelling is a metaphoric way to help him finding his personal identity

wellbeing.

Secondly, I am the mentor of another student in Business sciences. This one is extravert and had

difficulties to accept the failures in his own life. I remember that he is always busy and study hard

to never fail. But, he felt alone to never find someone else to share all is new discoveries also.

Currently, I am his councilor because I learnt how to help gifted after my previous experience. I

can assure that the storytelling applied in this case produced good results with this business

sciences student having lot of friends and does not feel again alone.

In brief, all these experiences attest that story telling is a good support to help people to find

personal strategy of wellbeing by design thinking way to innovate.  In spite of design thinking can

be apply in business, the story telling is a useful tool to change mindset and empower gifted in

their permanent seeking of social integration.

Insight & Approach

Personally, in the past years, I never knew that my practice at church was based in a very useful

tool of design thinking. Consequently, this course improves my own understanding of the

strategies to innovate and change individual’s behaviors positively.

During my practice with the gifted, I understood that success does not depend on IQ only. They

are not as strong as we imagine, because they need affection and friends to recognize the

usefulness of their great abilities. So the story telling allows them to identify heroes sharing their

experiences and less suffer before the imperfect situation of daily life.

By applying storytelling, we can motivate, solve conflict, increase creativity, grow productivity

and promote social integration of everyone. As Advisor at church, this experience testifies that

everyone needs to have friends and psychological support. In business, social changing process

and innovation, the story telling shows that it is possible to orient the energy of our mind positively

whatever our social condition to impact positively human being on this earth. Indeed, the wish of

God is to see all of us in happiness.

Another alternative approach to apply design thinking with gifted can be “learning launch” as in

my case because I take course with them to reduce their feeling of loneness. But, I believe that the

different tools underlined in this course can be tested with gifted regarding their profile although

you will need to get their confident before in order to have great impact in your challenge to help

them.

Thanks for this course and I hope that my sharing can help you to see the gifted differently and

manage their great potentials easily in your business and life because they are source of high

innovation.

