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The purpose of the Story Matrix is to create an archive of collected and organized stories.

Stories are tools of influence and persuasion. You deepen relationships by telling stories that help people see the context and connect to emotions. The benefit is that you will gain clarity around the job your stories can do for you and you will have a place to pull stories from so that you are able to tell the right story at the right time, for the right reasons.

Imagine a quiver of arrows, each arrow represents a story you can tell. Today you will start to collect and organize some of your arrows. By drawing from your past, your collection will grow and in upcoming units, you will practice the art of presenting with panache. There are SO many different types of stories but below you will be focusing on 4 of them.

Success

Failure

Stories that highlight a win! Success stories show us the how and why of success. They often are Inspirational but too many success stories can make you sound arrogant or big-headed.

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Stories that highlight a missed opportunity, or mistake(s). While failure stories may sound counter-productive in a job interview or sales pitch, a well-thought-through failure story shows the audience you have humility and resiliency, and are willing to admit error and learn. But be aware that if you tell too many failure stories, your audience may question your credibility.

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Fun - Stories that highlight something unexpected or a funny misunderstanding. Fun stories lighten the mood by relaxing your audience and demonstrating you can have fun when making decisions. A humorous story shows a side of humanity that others do not but pay attention to the number of fun stories you are telling, as you do not want to morph into a clown.

Legends - Stories of famous, historical, business, or cultural icons. These stories are long-form and much richer in content. Legend stories ask a lot of the audience because they will be required to actively listen the entire time therefore, powerful legend stories should be concise, tight, and timed. They are the most powerful type of story but are the hardest to achieve.

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For the next 20-30 minutes, reflect on your own stories and start to collect them below. Try to think of 4 scenarios but you are not limited to 4.

  1. List a scenario in which you will most likely be telling the story (internship interview, group meeting, competition, class presentation, proposing a party to the parents etc).
  2. Focus on writing a different personal story for each category: Success, Failure, and Fun.
    1. If you have time, fill out the Legend column for each scenario you create.

Success

Failure

Fun

Legend

Situation Type

Scenario 1: Interview

Talk about a volunteer job then explain what values or lessons it taught you

At times, I struggle to understand concepts taught immediately but I am always able to overcome this by asking others for help in a respectable manner

Home alone for the first time and taking action to take care of your house in a fun way (ie; accidentally making a mistake, pets….)

Talk about a talkshow host that is well known and joke about how you got your interview answers