Over the past 20 years – as a PR and communications professional – I’ve worked with hundreds of people to tell their story about what they do.

I’ve helped them tell stories about their startup, their nonprofit, their small business, their organizing work, their charitable giving, their job. I’ve worked with startup founders, CEOs, small business owners, people living in poverty in the developing world, people living in poverty in the US, immigrants, non-immigrants — in English and with the help of translators. I’ve helped people write their story, prepare for press interviews, news spots and documentaries, for public speaking at seated conferences or outdoor rallies, for TV, radio, podcast or book interviews – in front of peers, strangers, protestors, publicly elected officials, press, investors or donors. 

I started during the rise of the blog and saw the transition to digital media, the emergence of social media, the broadcast backlash, podcast domination — and whatever this is now. 

You name it, I’ve done it… and I’ve come out the other side with one question: Why are we so bad at this?

If you don’t think telling a story about what you do is difficult – just try. Most people trip over their words, stopping and restarting — creating a market for people like me to coach them in storytelling. And while there are some people who are “naturally” good at it, I’ve not met more than a handful in 20 years — for everyone else, it’s really, really hard. And this is a big problem.

Everything we do that matters – we do with others. 

The problems we are working to solve are bigger and more complex than before. Our teams are more diverse, disaggregated and interdisciplinary. Big problems require funding and investors need to know who and what they are investing in — what’s the story? Startups need people to join a team to work on something that doesn’t exist yet, with a shared understanding of the problem and a shared vision of the solution.

This isn’t a communication problem — it’s a story problem.

Stories are how we predict what happens next, enabling people to work collaboratively and individually at the same time. It’s how we generate alignment — by telling stories that are useful rather than arguing about who is right. It’s how we inspire action — because communication doesn’t contain tension, only stories do. 

So — why are we so bad at it?

Over the past 20 years, I’ve found the same mistakes repeated again and again.

1. We tell stories about ourselves that we were told. We’ve been hearing stories about ourselves from our parents, teachers, bosses, mentors and colleagues our whole lives — and we repeat them without challenging them.

2. We tell stories that were useful in the past — not now. When we started telling stories about what we do, we told them to demonstrate that we belonged — at a college, at a company, at a social event. We emphasized the ways we were similar to others in the group and left out the parts that differentiated us. Those stories become less useful over time.

3. We get stuck in identity. Stories are not about identities, they are about actions — and they are supposed to change over time.

Each time I couldn’t believe how much more interesting their life was than the story they were telling. Because — by definition — an interesting life can only be lived by an interesting person, so they must have an interesting story!

I’m not obsessed with stories. I’m obsessed with what you are doing.

I’m obsessed with where your idea came from and why you can’t let it go. I’m obsessed with how you didn’t give up even though it was hard and you had no idea how to make it work. I’m obsessed with what’s unique about you — specifically — that made you the only person who did what you did. And I’m obsessed with what happens next – how does the story end? Do you do it? Who helps you? What do you learn?

After 20 years in this work, I can tell you the most incredible stories I’ve ever heard have been about what someone did in real life — and I think that’s why we’re so bad at telling stories about what we do.

We’re so used to fictional heroes that we can’t see when we do something heroic.

We’re used to trying to fit in, but stories care about what’s different — what’s novel. We’re used to hiding our “failures” instead of seeing them as the necessary second act. We relish the drama in fictional stories but minimize it in our own — forgetting that the drama is life.

I created Story-Modeling™ — developing the theory and testing the method over several years — because we’ve learned to be bad at telling Stories About What We Do™ — and we can unlearn it. Because we already have everything else: imagination, dreams of what’s possible, characters and conflicts, climaxes and finales, comedy and tragedy.

Your interesting life is happening because you have an interesting story, and your story is interesting because in all of 8 billion people — yours is novel.

Tell it.

Fiona Ramsey
Founder, Story-Modeling™