Confidence is always touted as one of the most important factors to succeed in any profession. A little bit of confidence can open up huge avenues and make you do things you didn’t even think you were capable of.

As part of Henny’s training in her new job, she was invited to take part in a training module on the early detection of eye disorders among children. Initially, she lacked confidence as she had never sat together with doctors and eye health experts before. She also felt she did not have experience outside of her daily duties as a nurse. However, she later attended a meeting of the module organizers where she gave input about how the module could be improved and her ideas were accepted, which pleased her.

Following an internship on a pediatric ward, she was invited to help develop a module on how to train others to screen children’s eyes. The development team consisted of ophthalmologists, refractionists, opticians/optometrists, nurses and trainers from the provincial, city and regency departments of health, and was supported by child eye health specialists.

After several meetings, the team of ‘master trainers’ had to present the modules that they had developed. She had never expected to take the role of a master trainer. However, with encouragement from other members of the team, Henny presented a session to the others, who gave her feedback on how to improve her presentation skills. Although she only had five people attending her first training session for other trainers, she felt very nervous. Over time, however, her confidence has grown. She has found that her experience – as an eye nurse who deals with children every day – strengthens her teaching, as it provides her with many practical examples of eye disorders she can share.

When she was asked if there were major changes in herself after becoming a trainer of trainers, Henny said: “The first time I delivered a training session, I prayed that none of the participants would ask questions. But now, it is me who prompts, ‘Is there anything you want to ask?’.” Her dealings with patients have also changed. “Now, my delivery and tone of voice are a bit different. I am more patient and more detailed when explaining something,” she said.

Henny has gained a lot by working at the eye health clinic for children. In addition to increasing her knowledge and making friends, she also gained the trust of her supervisor and colleagues in dealing with patients, particularly children. “If the intention is good, everything will go well, the main point is that I am happy working with children and collaborating with HKI,” she says.

Source: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Very few people succeed in business without a degree of confidence. Yet everyone, from young people in their first real jobs to seasoned leaders in the upper ranks of organizations, have moments — or days, months, or even years — when they are unsure of their ability to tackle challenges. No one is immune to these bouts of insecurity at work, but they don’t have to hold you back.

What the Experts Say “Confidence equals security equals positive emotion equals better performance,” says Tony Schwartz, the president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of Be Excellent at Anything: The Four Keys to Transforming the Way We Work and Live. And yet he concedes that “insecurity plagues consciously or subconsciously every human being I’ve met.” Overcoming this self-doubt starts with honestly assessing your abilities (and your shortcomings) and then getting comfortable enough to capitalize on (and correct) them, adds Deborah H. Gruenfeld, the Moghadam Family Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior and Co-Director of the Executive Program for Women Leaders at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Here’s how to do that and get into the virtuous cycle that Schwartz describes.

Preparation- Your piano teacher was right: practice does make perfect. “The best way to build confidence in a given area is to invest energy in it and work hard at it,” says Schwartz. Many people give up when they think they’re not good at a particular job or task, assuming the exertion is fruitless. But Schwartz argues that deliberate practice will almost always trump natural aptitude. If you are unsure about your ability to do something — speak in front of large audience, negotiate with a tough customer — start by trying out the skills in a safe setting. “Practice can be very useful, and is highly recommended because in addition to building confidence, it also tends to improve quality. Actually deliver the big presentation more than once before the due date. Do a dry run before opening a new store,” says Gruenfeld. Even people who are confident in their abilities can become more so with better preparation.

Get out of your own way – Confident people aren’t only willing to practice, they’re also willing to acknowledge that they don’t — and can’t — know everything. “It’s better to know when you need help, than not,” says Gruenfeld. “A certain degree of confidence — specifically, confidence in your ability to learn — is required to be willing to admit that you need guidance or support.”

On the flip side, don’t let modesty hold you back. People often get too wrapped up in what others will think to focus on what they have to offer, says Katie Orenstein, founder and director of The OpEd Project, a non-profit that empowers women to influence public policy by submitting opinion pieces to newspapers. “When you realize your value to others, confidence is no longer about self-promotion,” she explains. “In fact, confidence is no longer the right word. It’s about purpose.” Instead of agonizing about what others might think of you or your work, concentrate on the unique perspective you bring.

Get feedback when you need it – While you don’t want to completely rely on others’ opinions to boost your ego, validation can also be very effective in building confidence. Gruenfeld suggests asking someone who cares about your development as well as the quality of your performance to tell you what she thinks. Be sure to pick people whose feedback will be entirely truthful; Gruenfeld notes that when performance appraisals are only positive, we stop trusting them. And then use any genuinely positive commentary you get as a talisman.

Also remember that some people need more support than others, so don’t be shy about asking for it. “The White House Project finds, for example, that many women need to be told they should run for office before deciding to do so. Men do not show this pattern of needing others’ validation or encouragement,” says Gruenfeld. It’s okay if you need praise.

Take risks – Playing to your strengths is a smart tactic but not if it means you hesitate to take on new challenges. Many people don’t know what they are capable of until they are truly tested “Try things you don’t think you can do. Failure can be very useful for building confidence,” says Gruenfeld. Of course, this is often easier said than done. “It feels bad to not be good at something. There’s a leap of faith with getting better at anything,” says Schwartz. But don’t assume you should feel good all the time. In fact, stressing yourself is the only way to grow. Enlisting help from others can make this easier. Gruenfeld recommends asking supervisors to let you experiment with new initiatives or skills when the stakes are relatively low and then to support you as you tackle those challenges.

Principles to Remember

Do:

•Be honest with yourself about what you know and what you still need to learn

•Practice doing the things you are unsure about

•Embrace new opportunities to prove you can do difficult things

Don’t:

•Focus excessively on whether you or not you have the ability – think instead about the value you provide

•Hesitate to ask for external validation if you need it

•Worry about what others think — focus on yourself, not a theoretical and judgmental audience

Source: Harvard Business Review, Amy Gallo

Confidence means having belief in yourself and in your abilities. It is important that you understand your value and know what you bring to the table. Only you can stop yourself back from succeeding.

Julie Zhuo knew she had things to say but she wasn’t sure how to get heard. As a product design manager at Facebook, she had developed valuable expertise in the products she worked on. Yet, she lacked the confidence to share her ideas. She was used to being one of very few women in the room. That had been the case when she was studying computer science at Stanford and it was still true now that she was at Facebook. She knew this meant she needed to make a concerted effort to speak up. But being the minority voice wasn’t the only reason she felt unsure of herself. She says that she also suffered from “imposter syndrome,” feeling as if she hadn’t earned a right to her ideas; she had somehow ended up where she was accidently, not through hard work.

Julie was intrigued when someone in HR told her about a workshop offered at Stanford by the Op-Ed Project. After attending and getting positive feedback about her ideas, Julie tried something she had never thought to do before: write an op-ed.

Last November, she published a piece in the New York Times about the danger of anonymity in online discussions. “It was a matter of someone saying you can do it,” she explains. “It had never occurred to me that I could be published. But it actually wasn’t hard at all.” The reaction she got in the workshop and afterward back at Facebook boosted her confidence. “Since then, she’s gotten a lot of support from colleagues, which has emboldened her to speak her mind. “Of course it’s still a work in progress, but now I’m a much more confident speaker and writer,” she says.

Source: Harvard Business Review, Amy Gallo

Lack of confidence can stem from various factors. Even an able and proven professional can often come across situations where he finds himself lost and with no confidence to move forward. It is to identify the challenge that you are facing accurately and take the necessary steps to recover.

In 2010, Mark Angelo, was asked by the CEO of Hospital for Special Surgery in New York to create and implement a program to improve quality and efficiency. Mark was relatively new to the organization. He had worked as a business fellow for the previous year but had recently taken on the role of director of operations and service lines. Even though he had background in operations strategy from his days as a management consultant, he was not familiar with the Lean/Six Sigma principles he’d need to use for this project and didn’t feel equipped to build the program from scratch. He was particularly concerned he wouldn’t be able to gain the necessary support from the hospital’s physicians and nurses. What would they think of a young administrator with no hospital experience telling them how to improve quality and increase efficiency?

For five months, Mark struggled to get the project on track and his confidence suffered. He knew that his apprehension was in part due to his lack of knowledge of Six Sigma. He read a number of books and articles on the subject, talked to consulting firms that specialized in it, and spoke with hospitals that had been successful in developing and implementing similar programs. This helped but he realized he still didn’t know if he would be able to get the necessary people on board. “I was anxious and stressed because I had no idea how I was going to transform the organization. I knew I couldn’t do it on my own. It was going to take a collective effort that included our management team and all of our staff,” he said.

He talked with the CEO who had supported him since the beginning. He also looked to his family for emotional support. Through these conversations he realized that his anxiety stemmed from a desire to be liked by his colleagues and therefore to avoid conflict. “After many discussions with my CEO and observing how he handled these situations, I learned that it is better to strive to be well-respected than well-liked,” he said.

This was a turning point for Mark. Instead of worrying so much about what others thought of him, he focused on doing what was best for the patient and the institution. In December, he presented the vision for the program to the entire medical staff. While he was nervous about how it would be received, he knew this was a critical moment. “I was able to get up in front of one our toughest constituencies and present the vision that we had been developing over the past few months,” he says. His presentation was met with applause. “In the end, my confidence grew by leaps and bounds and we were able to design a program that has since taken off with great success across the hospital. I was able to overcome my mental blocks and knowledge deficits to build a program that will truly help transform how we approach performance improvement and patient care,” he says.

Source: Harvard Business Review, Amy Gallo

In life, we are often faced with various challenges that put us down; draining our confidence and belief. Usually, however, all it takes to come back from this is to get back on your feet and realize your potential. Build your confidence back up and better things start happening.

Jane had successfully owned her own business, a café, for over 25 years and was actively involved in the day-to-day operations until a serious health issue was diagnosed. The condition was directly linked to years of working in a kitchen and she was advised that she could no longer continue working in this environment. Eventually, Jane was forced to sell her business. Having been divorced for a number of years and in her early 50s, her personal circumstances dictated that, financially, she would have to continue working.

Jane discovered a program that offered support in helping unemployed adults over the age of 50 to explore their potential and assist them back into employment. She initially felt that she had no skills or experience and was beginning to really worry about what employment opportunities were available to her. The program encouraged her to look at the skills she used in running her own business. Before long, she had a list that included dealing with the public, customer service, marketing and promotion, recruiting and managing staff, dealing with complaints, as well as an array of financial skills.

This helped build Jane’s confidence and shaped her CV as well as a number of job applications. She also started to think about what she enjoyed doing in her spare time and realized that the tourism sector was something she would be interested in exploring further. She applied to work in a local hotel as a breakfast assistant. However, her employer was so impressed that she was offered a supervisory position due to her wealth of experience. Jane worked in the job for around six months and continued to learn and develop her personal interest, which was focused on becoming a tour guide.

Having continued to pursue her ideal job, Jane has now successfully realized this goal and is currently working as a tour guide for a local tourist attraction, where she thoroughly enjoys meeting and guiding tourists and gains a great deal of satisfaction from the work she does.

Resilience, the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors. A ‘bouncing back’ from difficult experiences.

In a practical sense, Resilience is a set of skills—sometimes learned, other times innate—allowing you to persevere, manage stress, and triumph in the face of challenges. Faith’s at the core of these skills. For many women, resilience is a strength considered essential. Both women and men need resilience to deal with difficulties in life. But, women often need more resilience than men to overcome traditional obstacles placed in their way, in order to advance in the business world. Many women, however, are not aware of the amount of resilience they do possess.

Kanika Tiwari is the co-founder of JetSetGo – India’s first online marketplace for private jets and helicopters launched in 2014. Leveraging her more than eight years of experience in the aviation industry, Kanika realised the frustration of customers while dealing with charter brokers and operator due to the fact that due to sheer lack of transparency and non-availability of charter planes, customers pay astronomical amounts. It was from here, that the idea to develop JetSetGo started.

JetSetGo is fundamentally re-defining the private aviation business, by seamlessly creating marketplaces that join the dots between charter customers and operators on one hand and service providers with operators on the other. It recently raised funding from Yuvraj Singh’s debut startup fund, YouWeCan Ventures, in July this year. For Kanika who has beaten cancer too and is now entering unchartered territory, the flight to greater heights has just begun.

Psychological resilience is defined as an individual’s ability to successfully adapt to life tasks in the face of social disadvantage or highly adverse conditions.

Jack Ma, who founded Alibaba and is its Executive Chairman was rejected from as many as 30 jobs, including a job at KFC before he became the richest man in China. His e-commerce company, Alibaba attracts 100 million shoppers a day and his real time net-worth is a whopping $21.9 billion. But, being the richest person in China didn’t come easy to Ma. He went through a lot of rejection before seeing all the unprecedented success.

For starters, Ma revealed in a recent interview that he failed a college entrance exam three times. Unfortunately, it didn’t just end there. Ma faced more obstacles when he founded Alibaba in 1998. The brand didn’t turn profitable for the first three years, and Ma had to get creative.

One of the company’s main challenges was that it had no way to do payments and no banks would work with him. This is when he decided to start his own payment program called Alipay. The program transfers payments of different currencies between international buyers and sellers.

People called the idea of Alipay stupid at that time. Today, 800 million people use Alipay.

Organisations have become increasingly interested in how to develop employee engagement. The success of such an intervention is not only dependent on its quality, but also on the organization of the intervention and the process. Read on to see how resilience is an important predictor of engagement.

In a randomised trial by Jo-Anne Abbott, Britt Klein, Catherine Hamilton and Andrew J Rosenthal, an internet-based online resilience building program was evaluated among sales managers at Australia. This program was designed to enhance resilience by teaching seven skills to help improve ability to cope with challenges and setbacks and maximize potential achievements. Sales managers found the resilience training very enjoyable and believed it would improve their work performance and life skills.

At an individual, employee level, personal resources such as self-efficacy and resilience and job resources like social support and supervisory coaching may be important predictors of engagement. The conclusion will be that these factors should be optimized at the personal level.

You become resilient by dealing with small-scale stress’s that you’re able to learn from. Women have many more opportunities to do that in their lives than men do, in part because they have more exposure to the stresses that come from being excluded from the privileges that come automatically to little boys and that continues throughout women’s lives as they carry different burdens and expectations from men. Women still carry more child rearing responsibilities. They carry more of the emotional load in families. The gender biases that exist either beat you down, or you develop a sense of yourself and others as being okay.

Chanda Kochhar is the managing director and chief executive officer of ICICI Bank. She is widely recognized for her role in shaping retail banking in India.

Kochhar joined ICICI as a management trainee. In 1993, she was appointed as one of the core team members who were assigned the responsibility of setting up the bank. She was promoted to assistant general manager and then to deputy general manager. In 1998, she was promoted as the General Manager and headed ICICI Bank’s major client group, which handled relationships with ICICI’s top 200 clients. From 2007 to 2009, she was the bank’s chief financial officer & joint managing director.

This journey was no easy task. In her career which extends to over three decades of experience, she remained strong willed and alert. Her determination to make it to the top only grew from year to year. Kochhar’s career growth can be traced along with the expansion of the bank over the past several years. In 2009 she was appointed the Managing Director and the Chief Operating Officer of ICICI bank and in 2011 she was awarded the Padma Vibhushan.

When people value a goal as more valuable, meaningful, or relevant to their self-concept they are willing to expend more effort on it when necessary. The influence of individual differences in resilience results in different levels of effort.

The aim of a study by Tracy Ann Hudgins was to identify relationships between resilience, job satisfaction and anticipated turnover among nurse leaders.

This quantitative study by used a sample of 89 nurse leaders (bedside, department, division and organisational) from a multi-hospital health-care system in southwestern Virginia.

There were significant relationships between resilience, job satisfaction and anticipated turnover. Additionally, it was found that the variables of job satisfaction and anticipated turnover significantly overlapped in their meaning and created a new construct of intent to remain (ITR) that has a statistically significant relationship with resilience.

The conclusion of this study was that with higher resilience, nurse leaders are more likely to intend to remain in their leadership positions.

There is significant research found in scientific literature on the relationship between positive emotions and resilience. Studies show that maintaining positive emotions whilst facing adversity promote flexibility in thinking and problem solving.

Positive emotions serve an important function in their ability to help an individual recover from stressful experiences and encounters. That being said, maintaining a positive emotionality aids in counteracting the physiological effects of negative emotions.

In his early years, teachers told Thomas Edison he was “too stupid to learn anything.” Work was no better, as he was fired from his first two jobs for not being productive enough. Even as an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. Of course, all those unsuccessful attempts finally resulted in the design that worked.

The process or this cycle of resiliency involves – when people are faced with an adverse condition, there are three ways that they approach and it defines whether it will promote well-being or not. The three approaches are: An eruption of anger; They implode with overwhelming negative emotions, go numb, and become unable to react; They simply become upset about the disruptive change.

The first and second category of approach leads people to adopt the victim role by blaming others and reject any coping methods even after the crisis is over. They prefer to instinctively react, rather than respond to the situation. Those who respond to the adverse conditions in themselves tend to cope with it and halt the crisis. Negative emotions involve fear, anger, anxiety, distress, helplessness, and hopelessness which decreases a person’s ability to solve the problems they face, and they weaken their resiliency.

The third category of approach is employed by resilient people who become upset about the disruptive state and thus change their current pattern to cope with the issue.

Today Disney rakes in billions from merchandise, movies and theme parks around the world, but Walt Disney himself had a bit of a rough start. He was fired by a newspaper editor because, “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” After that, Disney started a number of businesses that didn’t last too long and ended with bankruptcy and failure. He kept plugging along, however, and eventually found a recipe for success that worked.

Resilience is, in reality, found in the average individual and it can be learned and developed. Resilience should be considered a process, rather than a trait to be had. It is a process of individuation through a structured system with gradual discovery of personal and unique abilities.

A common misapprehension is that resilient people are free from negative emotions or thoughts, remaining optimistic in most or all situations. To the contrary, resilient individuals have, through time, developed proper coping techniques that allow them to effectively and relatively easily navigate around or through crises. In other words, people who demonstrate resilience are people with optimistic attitude and positive emotionality and are, by practice, able to effectively balance negative emotions with positive ones.

You may not have heard of Akio Morita but you’ve undoubtedly heard of his company, Sony. Sony’s first product was a rice cooker that unfortunately didn’t cook rice so much as burn it, selling less than 100 units. This first setback didn’t stop Morita and his partners as they pushed forward to create a multi-billion dollar company.

Being resilient does not mean that a person doesn’t experience difficulty or distress. Emotional pain and sadness are common in people who have suffered major adversity or trauma in their lives. In fact, the road to resilience is likely to involve considerable emotional distress. Resilience is not a trait that people either have or do not have. It involves behaviors, thoughts and actions that can be learned and developed.

These days, Henry Ford is a household name, but it hasn’t always been that way. At 23, Ford was just a machinist’s apprentice with big aspirations. There were a few early failures that taught him valuable lessons and sparked his future success. His first lesson came when he designed his first automobile, the Quadricycle, but it wasn’t fit for mass-production.

Ford’s Detroit Automotive Company had a similar, short-lived history. The board of directors dissolved and the company disbanded. It was a short-lived project and a failure in the eyes of the industry. With a tarnished reputation and no financial backers, Ford was in a bad spot. After months he found the right man – Alexander Malcomson.

He now had the backing he needed to begin creating the automobile he had always envisioned – the Model A. It took 5 more years and countless failures before the Ford Motor Company came out with the world’s best automobile – the Model T. What’s important to notice is Ford’s perseverance and ability to overcome setbacks. He used failure and the feedback gathered from those failures to fine tune his design ideas.

Resilience is that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. Rather than letting failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise from the ashes. Psychologists have identified some of the factors that make someone resilient, among them a positive attitude, optimism, the ability to regulate emotions, and the ability to see failure as a form of helpful feedback. Even after misfortune, resilient people are blessed with such an outlook that they are able to change course and soldier on.

J. K. Rowling, the second wealthiest woman in the world, is a good example of resilience. She was a struggling writer, and at the time of writing her first Harry Potter book, her life was a mess. Rowling was going through a divorce and was left to support herself and her daughter in a tiny flat in London. She was living off of government help and her mother had just passed away, things were in a rut. In 1995, when she completed her first Harry Potter book, it had been rejected by 12 publishers, yet she never gave up. Even a small publishing company told her to get a day job because they didn’t believe her children’s book would be successful. Instead of giving up she decided to devote most of her time to developing the rest of the Harry Potter series and eventually got them published.

Often, the mistake that a public speaker makes is that he makes the speech about him (without realizing it). Perhaps we can take a few lessons from Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in 2012 about how to deliver memorable speeches and become a highly regarded and respected speaker.

What becomes telling is when you starting take note of the different types of pronouns President Obama uses and how often he uses them in his entire speech. In his 21 minutes victory speech, these were the tally of the usage of the different pronouns.

I – 33 times

You/you’re/your – 56 times

We/Us/Our – 110 times

The usage of the different pronouns is key in creating resonance within the speech. A common ratio that public speakers can use to measure their speech effectiveness is the “I/You (We) Ratio” (or I-U Ratio). Great speeches generally have a lower I-U ratio because the focus is not on “I” as an individual but about “You” as an audience and why you should listen and what should you listen out for. During the course of any speech or presentation, the audience is always asking “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM) and “So what?” so it is imperative to always ensure your speech is audience-centric and also, to create value and stake for the audience to listen in to what you have to say.

Considering this was a Presidential Victory speech, it is no surprise that the speech was centered on President Obama himself for some moments as the electorate needed to hear what is President Obama is committed to as the leader of the nation hence the considerable usage of ‘I’ for 33 times.

Yet, it is more important to note how many more times he used the pronouns ‘You/You’re/Your’ and ‘We/Us/Our’ in his speech. The former pronoun classes (56 times) has the effect of creating affinity and personal connection because of how it sounds as if President Obama is talking to you and no one else but yourself.

The latter pronoun classes (110 times) ensures that this speech rallies and involves everyone, including President Obama himself, on the same line and towards a common endeavor. This is all the more important, considering that there was a significant crowd who voted for Romney’s camp as well but now, President Obama has the task of involving and not sidelining them.

“We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America.”

That was one of the many bold yet resolute declarations made by the 44th President of the United States of America, President Barack Obama, in his Presidential Acceptance Speech 2012 after a long-fought political tussle with Governor Mitt Romney. Being one of the greatest orators in our times, to describe President Obama’s Acceptance Speech as “electrifying” would hardly be an overstatement.

In every aspect of persuading his audience of his firmly held convictions of “Yes, We can”, converting his cynics of his administration’s commitment to change and compelling the common electorate to believe that he has a role to play in making United States of America great, President Obama has done it impeccably through his speeches. There are definitely many reasons that made President Obama’s Presidential Acceptance Speech in 2012 great. One of the key elements, however, which Obama practiced exhibited throughout his presidency was humility. In every competition, there’s a deserving winner who basks in the limelight and often a neglected “loser(s)” who fades into the shadows of obscurity. Yet with President Obama as the winner of the US Presidential Elections 2012, there was hardly any show of arrogance or hubris.

Instead, President Obama displayed great magnanimity and humility as a leader and fondly embraced his political rivals, Governor Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in the early moments of his victory speech.

“We may have battled fiercely, but it’s only because we love this country deeply and we care so strongly about its future. From George to Lenore to their son Mitt, the Romney family has chosen to give back to America through public service and that is the legacy that we honor and applaud tonight. In the weeks ahead, I also look forward to sitting down with Governor Romney to talk about where we can work together to move this country forward.”

The fact that President Obama could have made a cursory appreciation to Governor Romney but he did not and chose to take one step forward to recognize Governor Romney’s lineage and “legacy” of public service, convinces his electorate that this battle was never about him to start with. It was about a common future for America where their intention (both his and Romney’s) behind this political campaigning were driven by love for their country and aspirations for the nation’s future rather than their own pride and ego.

President Obama was quick to embrace and set aside their differences and get to work to forward America. That was his commitment.

Persuading your audience is more about the audience than the words you use. When trying to convince a person to see your viewpoint, you have to do more than just put your point across. You need to build a connect with the person. Quiet often, people will do something that might not be evidently beneficial for them at first glance if you manage to make them see it from your perspective.

In 2007, the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, knew that he needed help. His social-network site was growing fast, but, at the age of twenty-three, he felt ill-equipped to run it. That December, he went to a Christmas party at the home of Dan Rosensweig, a Silicon Valley executive, and as he approached the house he saw someone who had been mentioned as a possible partner, Sheryl Sandberg, Google’s thirty-eight-year-old vice-president for global online sales and operations. Zuckerberg hadn’t called her before (why would someone who managed four thousand employees want to leave for a company that had barely any revenue?), but he went up and introduced himself. “We talked for probably an hour by the door,” Zuckerberg recalls.

After the holidays, Zuckerberg e-mailed her, and they had the first of many dinners. They met at the Flea Street Café, around the corner from her home in Atherton, but then decided that they needed more privacy. His tiny Palo Alto apartment—which had almost no furniture—wouldn’t work. So for six weeks they met for dinner once or twice a week at Sandberg’s six-bedroom home. Sandberg, who goes to bed early and starts e-mailing at 5 A.M., often had to usher the nocturnal Zuckerberg out at midnight. “It was like dating,” says Dave Goldberg, Sandberg’s husband and the C.E.O. of the online company SurveyMonkey. Sandberg says they asked each other, “What do you believe? What do you care about? What’s the mission? It was very philosophical.”

By February of 2008, Zuckerberg had concluded that Sandberg would be a perfect fit. “There are people who are really good managers, people who can manage a big organization,” he says. “And then there are people who are very analytic or focussed on strategy. Those two types don’t usually tend to be in the same person. I would put myself much more in the latter camp.” Zuckerberg offered her the job of chief operating officer.

People at Google tried to persuade her to stay, pointing out that Facebook’s chief financial officer would not report to her and that she would not be invited to join its board of directors. But eventually she took the job. Later, Sandberg would tell people that Facebook was a company driven by instinct and human relationships.

The art of storytelling is often a technique used by successful people to persuade their audience and achieve success.

Once upon a time, a job-seeker underwent a frustrating series of interviews over a five-month period with no job offer. Then the discouraged individual read a book that suggested composing personal stories. Doing so, the job-seeker found, provided him with better interview preparation than any coaching he had ever experienced. Using stories he hadn’t remembered before he read the book, he said, made him more confident, convincing, and persuasive in his interviews. Stories enabled him to present himself in a personable and powerful way to his interviewers. He again used stories during the next round of interviews. The story ends happily with his hiring in an executive position that represented a major advance in his career. The job-seeker is a real person who posted a review on Amazon.com of Annette Simmons’ 2006 book, The Story Factor.

The book, Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers, from which this chapter is excerpted, extends the ideas of Simmons and other current authors who tout the value of storytelling. It focuses on a narrow yet powerful use of storytelling — telling stories to advance your career, whether by moving up in your current organization or landing a job in a new organization. The title comes from the most commonly asked question (which isn’t even a question but a request) in job interviews, “Tell me about yourself.” Composing stories to reveal your personal and professional self in response to that “question” is just one way to use storytelling to propel your career.

Simmons writes that the natural reaction of an unfamiliar person whom you hope to influence is to distrust you — until you answer two major questions. The first question is “Who are you?” In resumes, cover letters, portfolios, and interviews, job-seekers attempt to tell who they are, but how often do you think these communications really convey a sense of who the job-seeker is? Simmons’ second question, “Why are you here?” can be translated as “Why are you contacting this employer?” and “Why do you want to work for this organization?”

Stories establish your identity and reveal your personality. Stories satisfy the basic human need to be known. Clearly, being known among employers is a major goal of job-seekers, and it is in large part through resumes, cover letters, portfolios, and employment interviews that employers get to know candidates. Job-seekers can gain the employer’s recognition by integrating story into these career-marketing communications.

Stories establish an emotional connection between storyteller and listener and inspires the listener’s investment in the storyteller’s success. When stories convey moving content and are told with feeling, the listener feels an emotional bond with the storyteller. Often the listener can empathize or relate the story to an aspect of his or her own life. That bond instantly enables the listener to invest emotionally in your success.

Stories illustrate skills, accomplishments, values, characteristics, qualifications, expertise, strengths, and more. Employers don’t want to know merely the dry facts of what you’ve done. They want examples, anecdotes, illustrations — stories. You can showcase just about any skill with a story. Washington advises that “using anecdotes to describe job skills is a highly effective interview technique.” Truly scrutinizing the stories behind your life and career enables you to recognize patterns that reveal and reinforce who you are, what you can do, how you are qualified, what you know, what you value, what you’ve learned, and what you’ve accomplished.

Stories paint vivid pictures. Remember when your parents read or told you stories when you were a child? You undoubtedly visualized the story as a sort of movie in your brain. Job-seekers can use colorful and even entertaining stories to imprint lasting visual images onto employers’ minds.

Stories explain key life/career decisions, choices, and changes. Especially revealing to employers are personal and career stories about coping strategies, risky moves, choices made under pressure, imperfections, and lessons learned from mistakes, failures, and derailments.

Stories told well help you portray yourself as a strong communicator. Effectively using stories in job-seeking venues offers the further benefit of demonstrating your communication skills, which is huge because most employers seek candidates who communicate well. David Boje, a well-known scholar in the organizational-storytelling field, wrote in 1991 that “people who are more skilled as storytellers and story interpreters seem to be more effective communicators than those who are less skilled.”

Source: www.livecareer.com

The biggest secret to being a persuasive speaker is actually very simple. Connect with your audience. Show them you care. And if the time comes, prove your empathy.

Born into poverty, Joe Girard sold 13,001 cars over the course of 15 years-not fleet sales but sales to individual car buyers. He holds the Guinness World Record for being the world’s greatest salesman. In 1973, he sold 1,425 cars, and in one month, he sold 174-a record that still stands today. HBR (Harvard Business Review) senior editor M. Ellen Peebles spoke with Girard about overcoming personal hardship and how he created thousands of relationships, one at a time. Now out of the car business, he speaks to people around the world about how to sell.

“When you bought a car from me, you didn’t get just a car. You got me. I would break my back to service a customer; I’d rather service a customer than sell another car. After a few years, there was pandemonium outside my office, there were so many people waiting to see me. So I started seeing people by appointment only. And the reason people were willing to wait a week for an appointment rather than go buy from someone else right away is because they knew that if they got a lemon, I would turn it into a peach.”

“People are sick to death of sitting around in service departments. When I was selling cars, my right-hand man could go to the service department while the customer’s car was at the curb and get three or four mechanics to come right out with toolboxes and take care of the customer in 25 minutes. Sometimes they would install $15 or $20 worth of parts-a lot of money back then-and the customer would say, “How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” I’d say. “I love you. Just come back.” You get service like that, where are you going to buy next time? That’s what makes businesses big: word of mouth. If you create it, it’ll make you. If you don’t, it’ll break you.

And the reason I could get the mechanics to come out right away is that I loved them, and I let them know. I made a deal with a nice Italian restaurant, and every third Wednesday I would take all of the service people to dinner-the people who wrote up the service orders, mechanics, the parts department, everyone. I would eat with them and tell them how much I appreciated them, how much I loved them. Once a year, I invited all the service people and their families over to a big barbecue at my house, to eat with me and my family. This is something that all executives should think about: There are service people in every company. They are the ones you wine and dine. You say you love your customers. What if they aren’t so likable?”

“It’s like a marriage. You need to like each other. And if you treat people right, you will love them. I told my customers that I liked them, that I loved them, all the time. I would send a card every month with a different picture, a different greeting, and the card would say, “I like you.” I would close a sale, and I would say to my customer, “I love you.” I even gave them buttons that said, “I like you.” People may have had to wait for an appointment, but when I was with them, I was with them body and soul.”

“I grew up in the ghettos of Detroit. I started selling cars in 1963 at the age of 35. I was out of a job, had no savings, and was in serious debt after a failed home construction business, and my wife told me there was no food in the house to feed our children. I pleaded with a local car dealer for a desk and a phone and promised that I would not take business away from any of the other salespeople. I wore my finger black dialing a rotary phone trying to get leads, and that night, when all the other salesmen had gone home, I saw a customer walk in the door. What I saw was a bag of groceries walking toward me. I literally got down on my hands and knees and begged, and I made my first sale. The customer said that with everything he had bought over the years-insurance, houses, cars-he had never seen anyone beg like that. Then I borrowed $10 from my boss against my commission and bought food for my family. So I appreciate every person who bought from me so much. I would tell them, “I thank you, and my family thanks you. I love you.”