Matthew Dicks: preference

Transcript context

…I could see why people wouldn't naturally do this. If I'm a head of comms for a company, the last thing I want is to make it about me. And what you're saying is, you actually should, because people will find it a lot more interesting. Yeah, you don't want to make it all about you, but there's just little tricks. The easiest trick is, if someone asks you, "How are you doing today?" If you say, " I'm doing great," you've just really screwed it up. That's the stupidest answer you can offer. If you ask me, "How am I doing today," I'm immediately going to think to myself, elementary school teacher is probably my best personal interest inventory item. Because if I'm an elementary school teacher, everyone loves me. They think I'm doing God's work, even though they don't want to pay me a dime to do it. So if you say, "How are you doing today?" I will say to you, "Pretty good. My fifth graders were actually decent human beings today. They didn't try to kill me." So in that way, I'm going to slip in the fact that I'm an elementary school teacher by answering your question, I'm going to demonstrate a bit of amusing content in the process, and maybe a little self deprecation. But whenever I'm asked a question, I am trying to include an item of my personality, my life, something that might be of interest to people while also answering the question. You don't want to walk into a situation and say, "Hi, I'm a married elementary school teacher with two kids and two cats." But that's what I want to do because I know that that's going to make people feel connected to me. So I have to find strategic ways to work it in. I teach people to do it all the time. But it starts with understanding what about you might mean something to other people, and how can I get it in there without me sounding like I'm only talking about myself? What else? So we're basically talking about ways to become a better communicator and storyteller in business. You've shared a few tidbits here. One is, think of this personal inventory about yourself that makes you relatable. Try to share it in stories you tell, and presentations, and things like that. What else can people do to become better storytellers in business? I know this is a big question, but let's see where it goes.…

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