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Behold: The Power of Storytelling

I recently had an opportunity to coach an exceptionally bright young medical student who was preparing for a grueling series of virtual medical residency interviews. After our first several practice sessions, I came to one conclusion—he wasn’t sharing his authentic story; instead, he was trying to show a sterile, perfect version of a medical student that one might find in a CV. He grew up in an environment that did not support high educational goals, and his life had been filled with significant challenges, opportunities, and successes. The reasons he went to medical school and what he wanted to achieve as a physician were beyond compelling. He just hadn’t been prepared to share his story…

I also recently had the opportunity to introduce the keynote speaker at the 2023 University of New Mexico Student Awards. Also, a young man in his 20s, this university alum, shared a story of some of his life’s challenges – parents who struggled with addiction, fighting bone cancer in his teens, and ultimately losing a leg in his 20s due to a bicycle crash. He spoke about him and other young cancer patients looking out the window of the University of New Mexico hospital onto the UNM main campus, hoping that they would live long enough to go to college and participate in the joy they saw outside their windows. His story left much of the audience in tears. 

I am a fan of stories. Stories make words and ideas come alive. They provide examples and perspectives that resonate with an audience, making points more relevant and helping people connect visually and emotionally with a person, idea, or topic.

I am celebrating my fourth anniversary at AMM Consulting. I am so glad to have worked with an amazing variety of clients on meaningful and impactful projects—organizational strategic plans, policy and stakeholder outreach strategy and implementation, communications and training and coaching, and program development.

Regardless of the type of work, one common denominator is critical to success – clear, compelling communications that draw in an audience.  Whether serving as an event speaker, interviewing for a job, sharing your strategic plan, discussing projects with stakeholders, making a case for new local, state, or federal policy, or selling an idea to your colleagues, a powerful story helps draw in an audience.

I lead my clients through a process of identifying and developing compelling stories that connect with audiences.  Check out my updated website and my communications services at www.ammconsultingstrategies.com. 

And by the way, the medical student got into a top residency of his choice. His story made quite a difference!

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Never. Stop. Learning.

At what point did I think I had nothing else to learn in life?  I am embarrassed to admit that there were too many times. 

I recently attended a committee meeting at The University of New Mexico. During the meeting, we were each asked to step out of the room for a minute to provide a personal statement for new graduates, giving them some advice at this point in their lives for use in a future video.

I was thankful for all my public speaking and interview experience and my ongoing work in a Toastmasters club, preparing me well for impromptu speaking. My biggest challenge was thinking about the different lessons I had learned in life that I could share with a recent graduate. But it came fairly quickly for me – Never. Stop. Learning. 

Some of you may have been much like me.  You felt like you knew it all when you graduated from high school.  Then graduating from college, you really knew it all! I couldn’t wait to share all my wisdom with the world.  The older I get, the more I realize that I didn’t really know anything then, and I am still on a path to learn about so many things in the world.

I am thankful for a different kind of mind set now, making a strong commitment to ongoing professional or personal development. I commit to ongoing professional development in a variety of forms – reading books, attending webinars, workshops and lectures, and working on certifications. 

But some of the most important learning I have engaged in looks quite different.  It’s about listening to others’ perspectives (even when I disagree or don’t understand), asking for guidance, reflecting on hard times in my life, travelling to new places, learning from previous mistakes  and spending some time “unlearning” things I learned in the past. (Let’s face it, most of what we learned in school is no longer relevant, represents only part of a perspective or is just totally incorrect.)  Additionally, I am growing by saying “yes” to new challenges and experiences that I never had the confidence to tackle.  This has ranged from rafting the Taos box, to climbing tall poles to starting my own business.

What is your learning mindset? Do you have a desire to learn some new skills or improve existing skill sets? One of my passions is helping people improve their communications skills. Being able to communicate effectively makes life go a lot smoother in your personal and professional world.

In the past couple of years, I’ve helped clients and friends prepare for job interviews, coached them on doing media interviews, assisted them with writing and presenting legislative testimony, and helped prepare them to deliver powerful speeches.  I’d love to work with you and your staff, board or volunteers on communication skill improvement.  Check out a few of my workshops at:

Workshops
Here are a Few Speaking Tips:

Use stories to communicate your point.

If you need to use slides, keep them simple – a few slides with few words, but powerful images

Leave your audience with easy takeaways.  For example, tell them you will give them 3 suggestions and clearly identify those in your speech.

Engage your audience with questions.

Leave your audience with a commitment to a next step.

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Words Matter

Words Matter. That’s the name of a business that I wanted to start years ago but never got around to it because I had young children at the time. I have always worked in communications roles throughout my life and words are important to me.

Unfortunately, when the COVID shutdown started last year, I watched way too much news and engaged in too much social media – places where words are becoming increasingly toxic.

Last summer, I noticed a Facebook posting from an old high school friend who is now a business person in my community.  Reflecting the tone of some people during that time, he took to Facebook to lash out at our Governor for her public health decisions.  Though I disagreed with him, I respect everyone’s right to their opinion.  But it went one step further when he used a name for the Governor that some were using in a derogatory way to connect COVID to Asians, something that has resulted in a lot of discrimination and violence against Asians and Pacific Islanders.  

As the mother of two Asian American children and the aunt of an Asian American niece and nephew who have experienced plenty of discrimination, I was irate.   However, learning from experience, I stepped away from the keyboard and took a deep breath.

However, I also remembered Martin Luther King Junior’s quote, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”  After being in the corporate world for years, I realized I was too silent when I heard demeaning language or saw unethical situations. Now I needed to use my words; I responded respectfully but strongly.

Did it impact him?  Most likely not.  His response was defensive, and I have noticed that his social media posts have become increasingly toxic over the last year. Yet, I still felt I had done the right thing.

I am far from perfect. I can’t tell you how many times in my life I had not thought about my words before they came out of my mouth or in using a keyboard. It’s an unfortunate part of being human.  But these times, perhaps more than ever, thinking before we use our choice of words while also using our words to speak up for others is critical.

One of the things that I have loved most since starting AMM Consulting two years ago are the many opportunities to work with people and organizations on their choice of words. Whether developing policy and legislation, writing strategic plans, speeches, and legislative testimony, or coaching them for upcoming presentations, media, or job interviews, I love the opportunity to help them create words that matter.  (www.ammconsultingstrategies.com)

My advice is always to choose your words carefully – make them short, powerful, and meaningful, and most of all, think through their meaning and impact on others. Because Words do Matter.

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It’s More Than Masks, Gloves and Social Distancing. Staying #Resilient During These Challenging Times…..

When I made Resilience the theme for my 2020 blog series (www.ammconsultingstrategies.com/articles) and speeches, little did I know how important resilience would really be this year.……

Earlier this year, I delivered a speech on my Resilience journey, reflecting on how I had come back from surgeries due to accidents, and survived career ups and downs and challenges with teenagers and aging parents. I shared that my self-given grade for resilience was previously a D, yet I am moving up to a B-.  I spoke about my recipe for resilience which I call the PAC solution – Practicing kindness (to yourself and others), Asking others for help and Choosing action.  The last few weeks, I used this recipe by taking actions such as walking every day (have walked more than 70 miles), doing puzzles, reaching out to friends, putting together some new programs for my business and expressing gratitude for the important things in my life.  However, some days were also full of struggle, feeling anxious about my family’s health and financial condition, worrying about my Asian American children being targeted by bigots, and wondering what our society will look like in the future.

For this blog, which I apologize is longer than the usual, I reached out to a few friends to see how they were doing and to ask them about their current resilience strategies, including Melissa Armijo (National Hispanic Cultural Center Foundation staff member, candidate for the NM Public Education Commission); Pauline Lucero (owner of Corazon Training and Consulting), Lori Patton O’Hara (owner of marketing and graphic design firm Design5sixty4); Dr. Suzanne Gagnon (Certified Nurse Practitioner at the UNM Cancer Center); Mary Clark (UNM Facilities Sustainability Manager); Hope McIntosh (CEO of McIntosh Consulting Group) and Dr. Frances “Panchi” Ortega (principal at FTOrtega Consulting LLC).  

Coping Day to Day, Keeping Our Work and Families Going
This team of friends all admitted that they have also had good and not so good days, as they have been anxious about their family’s physical and economic health.  The “taking it one day at a time” mentality is helping. And, we’ve all approached resiliency in our work with different strategies.
Like me, friends Hope and Panchi have their own consulting firms. While starting our own firms felt like a high-risk game a year ago, we are feeling it even more now. For all of us, projects have stalled, either as some businesses have faced financial challenges and other businesses have at least temporarily shut down.  It’s also a very challenging environment to get new business.  Hope, who is a technology consultant, is using social media to share advice on important issues such as how to supervise teleworking employees.  She says she is also learning the magic word of “yes” as she gets more creative in how she uses her skills and takes on side jobs she never imagined she would. Panchi, whose work depends on important grant cycles, is spending time exploring more grants related to her work.
Lori and Pauline, who have both operated their own businesses for some years, are also feeling the pressures. Even though marketing is critical at this time, Lori has clients who have slowed or stalled on projects but she is trying to be more flexible with pricing and maintaining overall space for patience.  Pauline, whose business offers counseling services and provides services to Medicaid Developmental Disability patients, has a career that has focused on resilience, helping children and families come back from traumas and also serving special needs’ populations. Like many of us, she and her subcontractors have been forced to make a quick transition to providing services via telephone and computer while she helps many of her clients cope with stress, anxiety and depression. Routines are especially critical for the developmentally disabled population, and Pauline indicated that they are really struggling as day centers, Special Olympics events and other events tailored for this population are cancelled.
Suzanne has always served as a “front line” employee in the medical world, where she helps patients who are fighting cancer at the UNM Cancer Center.  She is working hard to keep these vulnerable patients safe and talking to many of them by phone, some of whom are very concerned about making it through this time period.  She indicated that it is a stressful time as they try to keep the Cancer Center very contained, protect patients’ health and help them manage the uncertainty.  Mary is also a front-line employee at UNM, managing her facilities team who are still working but on altered but on altered schedules.  She goes in on days that staff are there to show them support, help keep morale up and continue to remind them of ways to stay safe in their work.
Melissa is balancing her work remotely for the Hispanic Cultural Center, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, while also kicking off her campaign for the NM Public Education Commission.  She initially had a strong personal outreach plan in place to meet voters but is now navigating a campaign that’s transitioned to a virtual and mail campaign which can be challenging for an incumbent.

We’ve Been Training for this Resiliency
In some ways, many of us have had some training for this moment when other significant challenges have hit our life. Many of my friends have learned some resilience in the last few years through loss of family members, loss of jobs and experiencing other challenging situations like being left to raise children on their own.

Here’s a compilation of suggestions from this group on staying resilient during this time period include:

  • Keep normal household routines going as much as possible, ranging from regular dinner times, to making the bed, to showering every morning.
  • Maintain boundaries and healthy work hours.
  • Be exceptionally sensitive to others during this time period.
  • Stay active and engaged, whether it’s through work, cooking, exercise, puzzles or other activities.
  • Appreciate and use humor.
  • Mental, physical and spiritual resilience is important. Meditate, exercise and eat well and get outside if you can.
  • Keep positive relationships going through telephone and other technologies like Zoom.  
  • Get through this period by acknowledging your weaknesses and then making strong choices.
  • Accept that we can’t control everything, but we can try to improvise, overcome, adapt and prevail.
  • Give yourself permission to have some down days.  Let yourself feel the emotions and then try to let them go.
  • Find ways to give back to those in need and to honor the legacies of those you have lost.
  • Focus on the science and the facts while not letting your imagination run wild.
  • If you are more fortunate than many in our community (and this group recognizes that they are) express gratitude for your health, having food and shelter, loving families and friends, and the opportunity to get to spend more time with pets and K-12 and college-aged children!   

Thinking About the Future
 I have experienced a huge range of thoughts about how we come out of the other side of shared experience. As Panchi reminded me, New Mexico has always been resilient, and we will get through this as well.  Mary posed the question “Can we look at each other in the eye after this?”  Avoiding hoarding of supplies, showing up to help employees, friends and family members, and expanding overall kindness is one way we can help others be resilient.  Hope says we need to remember Einstein’s definition of insanity – don’t keep doing things the same things again and again expecting the same results.  Will we do all the same things we did before the pandemic or will we allow ourselves to be more open to living outside our comfort zones?

Here are a few of my post COVID 19 thoughts…. When we use the word “community leaders” in the future, who will we be talking about – high paid business people in our community or the essential people that helped us through this including grocery store suppliers and clerks, the truck and bus drivers, the medical workers and the trash recycling collectors?  Will we be advocates for those less fortunate than ourselves when it comes to wages, paid leave and other life essential benefits?  Will we remember how important family and friends are in the future? Will we be kinder to our planet by driving less, consuming less and reusing more of what we have?  Will we remember what we need vs. what we want? And finally, will we recognize the importance of science as it relates to our survival? 

Only time will tell if we show how our resilience in this time period can translate into positive personal and societal change.  As Sheryl Sandberg said in her book Option B, written after her husband unexpectedly died on a family vacation, “I learned that when life pulls you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface and breathe again.” Start kicking against that bottom and breathing again.  It will make all the difference going forward.

Is your organization helping its employees or members be resilient during this time period?  I’d love to come share my tips, virtually for now and in person later, on what I’ve learned along my journey of resilience.

Until then, stay safe and healthy.
 
Best,
 
Amy
 

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The Second Resilience Journey — Navigating the World of Politics

#Resilience. In my kick-off newsletter for 2020, I introduced my resilience series by talking about being told at the end of last year that I might have a brain tumor but not to worry….  I celebrated resiliency at the beginning of 2020 with knowing that I didn’t have a brain tumor, I had survived a few tough years on the professional and personal front, and I had successfully made it through my first year of business. 

The past six weeks, I was reminded that resilience is also about navigating the current political system, whether it be at the local, state or federal level. I just got through working on a few issues at the 2020 New Mexico legislative session where I watched many people passionately trying to advocate for the passage, or opposition, of more than 700 pieces of legislation.

I’ve spent countless hours at city council and county commission meetings, legislative committee meetings and other political bodies.  I’ve seen people yell at elected officials, speak when it’s not their turn, try to read a complete lecture  a public meeting, get up and speak on the wrong topic, and sometimes, never tell elected bodies what they are advocating for, or against. Yet a critical part of our democracy is public interaction and communication with elected officials. 

Working in political systems is all about staying focused under pressure, persisting through obstacles and being self-aware.  At the core of this resilience is being an effective communicator.    Whether you have a few minutes to speak in front of a political body or have a few minutes to sit down and speaker with an elected official, here are a few tips that can help:

  • State the problem you want to be solved.  Use compelling examples, statistics and trends, or real life stories that make a personal connection and make the challenge clear. 
  • Be relatable by using words like “we” and “affects all of us” to make a personal connection with officials.  Don’t make this an “I” or “us and them” issue.
  • Put solutions in simple, understandable terms. Whether you are encouraging officials to vote in support of a proposal, or vote against a proposal, make sure that you make it clear what you want them to do. Focus on the benefits of the solution. 
  • Don’t assume that elected officials are well versed in your issue.  They are responsible for following many issues and can’t possibly be knowledgeable about all of them.
  • When they ask questions, be brief and to the point.  Just answer the question!
  • Use clarity, passion and power in your voice.  Don’t sound defensive, hostile or extreme.
  • Keep it brief. Whether you are at a meeting making public comment or visiting one-on-one with an elected official, be respectful of their time and make your point brief. Consider having a one-page handout to provide further detail that they can read later. 

Do you or your team need some coaching on developing and delivering key messages on critical issues?  Do you have a group that is looking for a speaker for a workshop or regular meeting? I’d love to come share my tips for effective. resilient communications with your group. Visit my website at www.ammconsultingstrategies.com or just call me at 505-269-0287.  

Until our next journey of resilience,

Amy Miller
 

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It’s Not a Tumor…. Celebrating Resiliency in the New Year

Whew!  It’s a  great way to start out 2020.  At the end of 2019, an issue with my ear expanded into doctors wanting to “eliminate the worst-case scenario.”  That’s not always great for someone like me who thinks about too many scenarios anyway……

Yet, this little scare reminded me that life is full of challenges and opportunities.  I have spent the last few years focusing on resilience – overcoming some tough challenges and moving forward to do the things that I love most.  My journey of personal resilience led me to help individuals and organizations become more resilient.

AMM Consulting just celebrated its one-year anniversary of being in business.  It’s been a year that has exceeded my expectations.  I’ve had opportunities to successfully deliver services in strategic planning and organizational assessment, stakeholder outreach and advocacy, meeting planning and facilitation, communications and marketing, and program development for a variety of clients including state and local governments, local non-profits, professional associations and private sector companies. I’ve also had the opportunity to increase my own public speaking and provide communications coaching to others, helping them prepare for media interviews and job interviews, make presentations to elected officials and deliver powerful speeches.

Not only have I been able to use my expertise to help others, but I’ve met many powerful people along the way who deeply care about the future of their organizations.  In these often uncertain and stressful times, they are figuring out ways to become more resilient – anticipating and preparing for change by planning to be more flexible, responsive and adaptive.  

What is your plan for resilience in 2020?  Does your organization want to be more strategic,  better communicate to your employees and customers, and gain visibility for your organization? 

To kick off 2020, I’m offering a free 15-minute consultation related to my suite of services https://ammconsultingstrategies.com/services/  Call me at 505-269-0287 or email me at amillernm@gmail.com.

Stay tuned for future issues of the AMM Consulting 2020 Resilience newsletter series where I will share tips on communications, advocacy and strategic planning skills to help you in the New Year.  

Best wishes in this New Year,

Amy Miller
AMM Consulting
www.ammconsultingstrategies.com