Self Reflection – Storytelling 

 Challenge 

 I am working in the consultancy industry and a on my level I send a significant part of my time in   business development and sales activities . While there are some clear cases where the client is   asking for a certain specific service , a lot of times my work is related to identify problems and   challenges that the client is either not aware or not able to fully grasp . 

 Once a challenge identified it still needs to be pitched to the client and in most cases there is a very   diverse group of stakeholders involved here . So not everyone is technical or business focused ,   different seniority and educational background and of course even different language background ,   make it most of the time very challenging to describe the challenge in a way that everyone has the   right ( not necessarily the same ) understanding and sense of urgency . 

 Selection & Application 

 A lot of times I use the approach of storytelling as the medium of choice to bring my message across .   Storytelling is for me a way to describe the challenge , the issue , the approach simply the whole topic   in a way that resonates with the audience . Instead of focusing on the pure facts , I build a story   around what the challenge is , how it affects the stakeholder , what are the impacts and then but a lot   of focus on the description of how a solution could look like . 

 Storytelling helps that everyone in the audience get a sense of the challenge that is relevant for   him / her . They are able to connect the dots , the bigger picture of the issue and also see how a   challenge in an area that might not be directly in their area of responsibility might affect them and   why it is important to tackle it . Storytelling helps me to connect the dots and get message across . 

 People start to pay more attention if they feel engaged in the story and not just see it as another   standard business activity . I sometimes see later that my client use the same or a similar story   internally to continue to talk about it , they make it their own story . 

 Insight 

 My eye opening experience was when I once heard my sales pitch story a few weeks later directly   from my client when they explained to me in a weekly status meeting how they tackled a challenge .   While in the past most of the times my storytelling ends once I win or loose a pitch . But this time I   saw how everyone made it their own story , they connected it with their own contribution and how   the approach of storytelling also helped them internally to speak about their contribution instead of   just talking about a few facts on a dashboard . 

 Approach 

 My key takeaway from the course and my past experience is that combining storytelling with the   right level of visualization might even increase the power of story . While so far I considered myself   also as one that can not draw and of course during a live pitch I feel much more comfortable with 

 prepared slides and notes , but my learning here is that there are juts a few basic drawings that you   need to know and applying them with help to even more overcome the challenges that I face daily   when bringing a story across to people with so diverse backgrounds in terms of seniority , culture ,   language , experience etc . 

 A few first attempts of starting drawing directly in a live pitch in front of my client turned out quite   well , even a not so perfect drawing is always good for a joke and for sure it helps to keep the   attention much better then just looking at a standard slide with some facts . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: 
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Self Reflection – Storytelling 

 Challenge 

 I am working in the consultancy industry and a on my level I send a significant part of my time in   business development and sales activities . While there are some clear cases where the client is   asking for a certain specific service , a lot of times my work is related to identify problems and   challenges that the client is either not aware or not able to fully grasp . 

 Once a challenge identified it still needs to be pitched to the client and in most cases there is a very   diverse group of stakeholders involved here . So not everyone is technical or business focused ,   different seniority and educational background and of course even different language background ,   make it most of the time very challenging to describe the challenge in a way that everyone has the   right ( not necessarily the same ) understanding and sense of urgency . 

 Selection & Application 

 A lot of times I use the approach of storytelling as the medium of choice to bring my message across .   Storytelling is for me a way to describe the challenge , the issue , the approach simply the whole topic   in a way that resonates with the audience . Instead of focusing on the pure facts , I build a story   around what the challenge is , how it affects the stakeholder , what are the impacts and then but a lot   of focus on the description of how a solution could look like . 

 Storytelling helps that everyone in the audience get a sense of the challenge that is relevant for   him / her . They are able to connect the dots , the bigger picture of the issue and also see how a   challenge in an area that might not be directly in their area of responsibility might affect them and   why it is important to tackle it . Storytelling helps me to connect the dots and get message across . 

 People start to pay more attention if they feel engaged in the story and not just see it as another   standard business activity . I sometimes see later that my client use the same or a similar story   internally to continue to talk about it , they make it their own story . 

 Insight 

 My eye opening experience was when I once heard my sales pitch story a few weeks later directly   from my client when they explained to me in a weekly status meeting how they tackled a challenge .   While in the past most of the times my storytelling ends once I win or loose a pitch . But this time I   saw how everyone made it their own story , they connected it with their own contribution and how   the approach of storytelling also helped them internally to speak about their contribution instead of   just talking about a few facts on a dashboard . 

 Approach 

 My key takeaway from the course and my past experience is that combining storytelling with the   right level of visualization might even increase the power of story . While so far I considered myself   also as one that can not draw and of course during a live pitch I feel much more comfortable with 

 prepared slides and notes , but my learning here is that there are juts a few basic drawings that you   need to know and applying them with help to even more overcome the challenges that I face daily   when bringing a story across to people with so diverse backgrounds in terms of seniority , culture ,   language , experience etc . 

 A few first attempts of starting drawing directly in a live pitch in front of my client turned out quite   well , even a not so perfect drawing is always good for a joke and for sure it helps to keep the   attention much better then just looking at a standard slide with some facts .
### Output: 