Q2 Leaders are – or are at least curious about – living life on purpose. It’s everything to do with the first 3 Habits (of the 7 Habits): Be Proactive, Begin with the End in Mind, and Put First Things First. I’ve come across a step-by-step process for creating a “personal life plan”, presented by Donald Miller in his Building a Storybrand podcast that I’ll share with you here. The podcast describes the process and goes through a real-time example. The link can be found in the engineer your life section below.
The difficulty with “Tell me about yourself”
One of the challenges we face is having an answer to the inquiry “tell me about yourself”. If you’re like me, you might stumble through an answer. I have often given a chronological sequence of events and roles I’ve had (engineering student, software engineer, project manager, ScrumMaster, team lead). I get done and I feel relieved I gave an answer, but I know it was blah.
A better answer
By working through the steps of creating a personal life plan, you’ll end up with several sentences that concisely state your purpose. And when you do tell people about yourself, with the results of this exercise, you will explain who you are and what motivates you with conviction and passion. Interesting, not blah.
Why is having an answer important?
What I’ve found is the more dialed in I can get and the truer I can be with explaining who I am and what drives me, the more people support me. I’ve been exploring my mission statement for some time now. It’s still evolving, but even so, when I explain it I often get a reply of “I’m excited for you.” Great! I’m excited for me too, and more so now that you’re excited. And, when I explain what drives me and what I’m attempting to accomplish, it gives the person I’m talking to validation about their own aspirations. Many times that person ends up acknowledging their true goals and takes action towards them.
Is it uncomfortable to share what drives me?
At first, it was uncomfortable to share what drives me. I find that when I get an accurate purpose statement and put a little context around it, people are generally interested, or at least intrigued. With a few “I’m excited for you” responses, my confidence around sharing has increased. I’m looking forward to using the results of the personal life plan creation to explain who I am, what drives me, and why. The answer to the request “tell me about yourself” will be the story pitch resulting from working through all the steps. So let’s get to it.
Creating your life plan (and being able to give an interesting answer to “tell me about yourself”)
This process was presented by Donald Miller in the Building a Storybrand podcast, episode #180. The link to the episode can be found in the engineer your life section below.
1. Create a Mission Statement
Donald Miller gives us this cue to help us create a mission statement:
“Your life should be a counterattack against something that you perceive as an injustice or an unfairness”.
Donald Miller
I’ve heard John Maxwell1 ask the following questions to get at what motivates us:
“What do you sing about?
What do you cry about?
What do you dream about?”
John Maxwell
Answer those questions and you’re well on your way to creating your mission statement. That is, what motivates and drives you to action (or what you want to motivate and drive you to action).
My experience: I thought this part would be easy for me. I’ve done similar exercises in the past. And, my first pass did come easily (note I said first pass…the subsequent passes were a little trickier).
2. Key Characteristics
What are the characteristics that a person carrying out the mission stated need to have? These can be aspirational, meaning if you don’t possess these right now, that’ s OK. You’ve simply identified an area you will want to work on.
Keep the list to 3 characteristics.
My experience: I found this to be slightly daunting. I wanted to list more than three characteristics. I whittled mine down, but I want to revisit these soon.
3. Critical Actions
What 3 actions do you need to take repeatedly to carry out your mission and exemplify the key characteristics you’ve noted? These need to be actions. A critical action is not that you will think more. A critical action is to write a thank-you note once a week, or to listen to a podcast or two regularly, or keep up on the latest technology via attending webinars and conferences.
My experience: This challenged me because:
- I didn’t want to use some of the examples given in the podcast but I was tempted to because they sound really good
- I wanted to capture more than 3 actions
- I hadn’t though about actions quite like this before. It was refreshing, but challenging.
4. Identify Themes (aka why is this mission so important?)
This step involves coming up with a theme. Look at everything you’ve captured, and ask yourself, why is this mission so important? That is, why bother? What consequences are there if you don’t execute the mission?
My experience: I really had to think about this one. I kept thinking of what I perhaps should state…but what I thought I should state wasn’t completely accurate for me. Combined with the experience in the next step I ended up revisiting my mission statement in step 1.
5. Create Your Story Pitch
This is where you get to write the answer to “tell me about yourself” that will be interesting and engaging, and will likely garner a few “I’m excited for you!” responses.
The steps presented by Donald Miller are:
- Start with a challenge
- Agitate the challenge a bit
- Add personal stakes
- Present yourself as the solution to the challenge
- State the result/why it matters and repeat the theme
My experience: When I got to this part I realized that what I’m about isn’t exactly what I had written in the mission statement. It wasn’t right – close, but not entirely accurate. I sputtered around with a few more attempts and then decided to list the people I’ve helped and the results. It didn’t take long for a theme to jump off the page. I ran my new (hastily drawn up) mission statement past a few people that know me. They gave me great, honest feedback.
I’m a coach, so making a list of people I’ve helped made sense for me. For you, maybe making a list of projects you’ve contributed to or your accomplishments that made an impact makes more sense. I found the list helpful in sussing out the mission statement and theme.
My experience with asking for feedback: I was a little hasty and instead of talking to everyone in person or at least on the phone, I texted. And, I didn’t give enough context as to what I was doing. And I confused everyone. Luckily, I was asked for clarification and once I gave more context they were able to give me pertinent and useful feedback. Bottom line is that I’m glad I asked for feedback to make sure I was on the right track with my mission statement, but I will do it in-person next time.
My Story Pitch
The personal life plan consists of the responses in all 5 steps of the process. I’m not sharing all of my responses here, but I will share my story pitch. The story pitch is your answer to “tell me about yourself”. I still have work to do on mine, but here’s a draft. Let me know what you think!
Engineers have so much potential, but sometimes don’t have confidence in their unique skills and talents. Due to lack of awareness of the tools, resources, and techniques that exist to encourage reflection and growth, engineers miss out on the joy of living a life lived on purpose. I come alongside engineers to help them develop confidence and to act in an intentional way. I do this because I believe we all have unique value to contribute, and when we contribute using our unique value, we feel fulfilled.
Teresa’s story pitch
tl;dr
What’s the answer to the inquiry, “tell me about yourself?” A great answer can be found when you create your story pitch, which is a result of working through the 5 steps of creating a personal life plan.
engineer your life
- Listen to the podcast. Here’s a link to the episode on TuneIn, but you can find the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Look for Building a Storybrand with Donald Miller, episode “#180: How to Create a Personal Life Plan before 2020”
- Work through the steps. You’ll certainly find out something about yourself.
- Let me know what your story pitch is! I’d love to feature what you and your fellow Q2 Leaders come up with.
reference
1“Unleashing the Power of Passion”, John Maxwell, https://www.johnmaxwell.com/blog/unleashing-the-power-of-passion/ , accessed December 29, 2019
