Podcast transcript: EY Change Happens Podcast – Gabrielle Dolan

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how influential and authentic people lead through change – the good, the bad and everything in between, because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: Those who tell the stories rule the world. Well that’s a quote that’s been credited to native American proverbs, to Aristotle, to Plato and I’m sure many others. Perhaps all of them said it I’m not sure, but certainly the power of storytelling came through loud and clear from so many of the amazing people that I spoke with in Season 1 of Change Happens, so I’m delighted to have with me today Gabrielle Dolan who really doesn’t mind telling a story or two. In fact, she doesn’t mind is so much that she’s made it her life’s work to help thousands of others in the business world communicate via storytelling. 

She is a much sought after key note speaker on ‘Authentic Leadership’ and ‘Storytelling’, she’s an educator and she is an author. Actually she’s an author many times over having just about to publish her sixth book on the topic. In 2020 Gabrielle was awarded Communicator of the Year by the International Association of Business Communicators in Asia Pacific and she doesn’t mind having a laugh at herself or anyone else for that matter which may as well been the impetus for her founding the jargon free Friday movement in 2016. A fun way to raise awareness for the business world’s addiction to acumens and jargon. This is of course something that management consultants like me are heavy contributors to. I’m going to have to be on my toes today to make sure I don’t slip up. If I do I have no doubt Gabrielle will pull me up, give me a metaphorical uppercut and remind me to keep it real cause that’s just the kind of operator that Gabrielle is. Gabrielle, welcome and thanks for coming onto the pod.

Gabrielle: Oh Jenelle I was trying not to laugh in that introduction! As long as you don’t say the word ‘pivot’ we probably should be all good!

Jenelle: Oh look. That is my most ‘hatest’ word as well which has been super hard to avoid through COVID when everyone is need to do that but nah not going to say it. 

Gabrielle: Pivot free podcast!

Jenelle: You’ve dropped it about 3 times already! So I’m not sure! Now I have to acknowledge that you live in the Greater Melbourne area and so you’re currently in another period of lockdown. Tell me, how are you doing?

Gabrielle: Well it’s only a 5 day lockdown, fingers crossed but it was a bit of a sinking feeling I must admit where you go “Oh we’re back here again”. I think the reality is probably for the next 6 months I think we will all be in this period where nothing is certain and we can go into lockdown at any given moment. Yeah I think it’s almost an acceptance that this is life at the moment.

Jenelle: Yeah I think that’s right. I know that such a big part of what you were doing in the pre-COVID world was being involved on the speaker circuits doing heaps of face-to-face training which no doubt you’ve had to turn into virtual delivery. Tell me about how COVID has affected you in your world and where you were or where you are now?

Gabrielle: Yeah if we go back to this time a year ago, I was getting so many sales coming in and in fact it got to the point where I thought I’m going to be so busy the next 6 months I’m going to have to really manage my energy and make sure I can deliver. It was really super busy. Then as we know it was just like every day in March there was someone that cancelled, someone rescheduled and then mid-March everything just stopped. 

Gabrielle: There was a moment where you go “wow I didn’t see this coming” and all my work stopped but literally over about 2 or 3 months there was a lot of clients that said “Ok this isn’t going away anywhere fast so let’s switch to virtual”, nearly everyone just switched to virtual delivery and I must admit I was pleasantly surprised how well I could deliver the workshops virtually. Now I think because the content is storytelling and it’s pretty engaging and interactive that helps. I think work on how do you get the virtual workshops as interactive and engaging as possible which I think I was very successful at. 

Jenelle: What’s the key to being successful at that?

Gabrielle: Look I think.. one of the things I would say to my clients is that my promise to you is this will be as interactive and engaging as much as it can be face-to-face. It is things like practical things using breakout rooms and really encouraging people to use chat and encouraging people to put their videos on, unmuting people and still having that interaction as much as possible to really make sure its engaging. That’s helped when I present I stand so I’ve got energy flowing with me. It has worked but it reminded me of when I was pregnant and was drinking non-alcoholic wine! 

Jenelle: Not quite as fun!

Gabrielle: I spent 9 months going this is alright, this is alright, it’s ok! Then eventually you have full bodied Shiraz and you go “ok who was I kidding!”. I had the opportunity two weeks ago to run my first in person face-to-face training in Sydney and it was like that. It was like drinking a full bodied Shiraz.

Jenelle: Very good. I was actually going to ask you about that. Not the Shiraz bit but you mentioned that you were asking yourself how would you have the energy to keep up with the demand that was coming in pre-COVID but in many ways I think the energy is far more draining when you have to work in a virtual way. What have you been doing to take care of yourself and keep your energy levels up, delivering in a very different, perhaps more taxing kind of way in a virtual world.

Gabrielle: You’re right it is running training virtually is harder, it’s more draining. I run half day workshops virtually and I was coming out of them feeling really drained. At some point in the first couple of weeks it was almost like having really bad headaches. If I run it face-to-face I come out energised and pumped and what was happening is because you have to focus on so many different things. I encourage the chat going. So you’ve got the chat going. The technical side of things switching between your screen and your PowerPoints and coming back. Focussing on looking at the camera. Oh my goodness that is so hard. So hard to focus to train your eye to look at the camera and not have it being distracted by looking at the people on the screen because when you do that you’re actually not looking in the eye to them. It took me a while but I try not to schedule a lot of deliveries so I am very protected with my diary around that because I do want to be giving a 100% to each client, but just little things I did. When I had some of my colleagues say “Oh they deliver training in their slippers”. “I’m going ‘seriously?”. I would still get fully, fully dressed up as if I was doing it on the stage. 

Jenelle: Yep.

Gabrielle: The only slight thing I would wear runners cause we’ve got floorboards in my office, so they’re a bit louder if I wear my normal shoes but I did purchase some very expensive on-brand, my COVID runners that I’m wearing during COVID!

Jenelle: Ok very good. Now I want to take a step back for a moment. This is about storytelling. I was to understand a little bit more about your story. How did you go from an 18 year stint with a major corporate organisation, NAB, to going out on your own?

Gabrielle: Yeah so I spent almost 18 years at NAB starting my career as a Trainee Computer Main Frame Operator which I don’t even think mainframes exist anymore. So that’s showing my age. The last couple of roles I had at NAB were, I had leadership roles. I had some change management roles and I started to notice that sharing a story when you communicated really helped get the message across. It was probably in my last couple of years at NAB I was thinking there is something in this storytelling business and I looked around and no one was really doing it. There had been a couple of people in the States that had written a book about it so I was reading. Then it was literally at NAB after several, several restructures over the last 18 months I applied for one role. I just thought this is the role I want. This is my dream role that I’d been working towards at NAB which was the Global Head of Learning. I thought if I don’t get that I think it might be time to go and I didn’t get it. So it was time to go.

Jenelle: Ended up being a blessing I guess.

Gabrielle: Yeah when I look back in my life and when you look at some of the things that potentially change the direction of your life, they’ve sort of happened when things didn’t go your way. If I had got that job I don’t know maybe I’d still be working at NAB. I remember I applied for when I left school I wanted to be a Graphic Designer and I didn’t get into the course so I just went and worked as Trainee Computer Operator and then got into NAB. So you sort of think things could change your life but normally when things don’t go right that’s when change happens.

Jenelle: Oh now there’s a name for a podcast!

Gabrielle: It’s a great name for a podcast!

Jenelle: You said that when you were at NAB in the last few years you started to realise the power of storytelling. Was there a specific moment that you recall when you realised the power of storytelling? Or a story that you heard that stayed with you and thought “God that was really impactful”. Is there one that stands out?

Gabrielle: Yeah look it was probably about 2 years before I left NAB. I was working on a project and I was the Change Manager and this woman called Meryn was the Project Manager. It was one of the very first implementations of SAP. It was like a massive, massive project. I remember Meryn had told me once a few months before (it was just a random story) she shared with me about a flight she was on and she was a frequent traveller, so whenever she’d go on a plane, she wouldn’t listen to the safety instructions. She was saying that this flight was no different except when they came into land, due to really bad weather they had to abort the landing. The plane circled around again and the weather had got progressively worse and then they had to abort a second time and on the third attempt the Capitan came over the speaker and said “We will make on final attempt to land but before we do we’ll go through the safety instructions one more time.” Meryn said “Everyone was going “Oh my God’”. People were asking questions like could you imagine in that situation.

Jenelle: Oh you’d be paying attention to that laminated sheet.

Gabrielle: Full undivided attention. Yeah absolutely you’d be reading that like you’ve never.. you’d actually be looking for your life jacket which you very rarely do.

So it was a few months later when we were announcing this project I said to Meryn and we had to pull all the HR people together because they were going to be impacted first. There was a couple of hundred HR people that we were going to announce this change to.

Gabrielle: I remember saying to Meryn “Ok what’s the one key message you want to get across?” Cause I’m really a big fan if you go and do a presentation be really crystal clear, if they only remember one thing what is it? She said “I know exactly what they’ll be thinking”. “They’ll be thinking this another HR restructure because we’ve had a lot”. She goes “It’s not”, they’re going to be receiving lots of information about it that may not always be relevant but they need to be paying attention to it because at some point it’s going to impact them, and I don’t know but I immediately thought of the story that she shared about the flight and I said “Why don’t you share that story?” Her initial reaction was “What the hell has that got to do with anything?” I convinced her to do it and I guess maybe because I convinced her to do it I was a little bit apprehensive. I remember sitting at the back of the room and observing the impact it had, not only immediately on the people in the room, but 3 months, 6 months, 12 months later, people were still referring to that story.

I didn’t realise it at the time but I guess when I look back now that was a bit of a sliding doors moment for me because what I started to notice is that the really good leaders were sharing stories. The great presenters were sharing stories and it’s actually something I started to experiment with myself over my last couple of years at NAB. Then when the time come I was fully convinced that storytelling was a better way to communicate. 

Jenelle: As you said Gabrielle when you started with your business and having storytelling right at the centre of its selling point, it wasn’t a very widely known leadership skill. Clearly since then it’s become much more common place, but I guess I’m interested in your perspectives on why there was and to an extent still is that disconnect with business? We all know the power of storytelling. All religions are steeped in story. Cultures are past on through story. History was created in story, from cave dwellers to the Ancient Greeks, to Shakespeare to fairy tales. 

Given that, why do you think there has been such a disconnect when it comes to business?

Gabrielle: Yeah it is hard to understand. We share stories when we want to communicate important messages to our kids for example but we don’t do it in business. There is a couple of reasons why I think some people aren’t embracing storytelling. One is some of the things we’ve talked about they sort of go “It’s just not credible” so “I don’t see it as credible”. They’re perception on what we’re talking about when we talk about stories in business is they think it’s like sharing their deepest, most vulnerable secrets and heart moments but it’s not that. 

My version of storytelling is not about that. It’s just how you can share a story perhaps on your personal life to connect it to a message. When Meryn shared the story about that flight, it’s not a deep personal story for her but it’s just a story that’s come from her personal life and how she’s connected to a message. 

Jenelle: There is a high level of relatability with that story.

Gabrielle: Yeah and that’s the power of it because you can relate to it and you tap into it on a slightly emotional level. I think it’s gradually getting people to understand that the way we’re are currently trying to communicate and influence with just facts and figures is not working. It is not working. There are lots of quotes that say 70% of change fails.

Now whether it’s 70%, 80% or 50% we know a lot of our change efforts fail because we’re trying to communicate and trying to lead change through logic. Again, logic just informs us, it doesn’t actually change our behaviour or influence us to do something different or feel something different. 

Jenelle: You said that partly business folks are scarred from hearing bad stories. What makes for a good story. You talked about relatability. What else makes for a good story and in fact I’ll pick up on the title of your latest book ‘Magnetic Stories’. What makes for a ‘Magnetic Story’ ?.

Gabrielle: I think for a story to be good, for a story to be magnetic and the reason I chose Magnetic Stories as the title of my book is because I know when you hear a good story you could almost have this instant connection to it. Like it’s a bang wow! Got it. It’s very hard to pull away for. It’s very hard to forget once you’ve heard it and that’s the concept of Magnetic Stories.

What makes a good story is you’ve got to be really clear on the message you want to communicate. One single message per story. I think one of the biggest mistakes people try to cram too many messages into the one story. 

It’s got to be succinct. When you share a story in business I reckon you’ve got to be around 1 – 2 minutes because it doesn’t matter how interesting you think your story is, the moment someone is thinking get to the point, you are losing them. One of the biggest mistakes is people share stories and they just go way too long. Way too long. They don’t have any discipline about it. It’s almost like the storytelling is all about them as opposed to helping the person/the receiver get the message. There are some really good techniques on how you start your story. How you end it. You don’t want to be starting your story with “Let me tell you a story”.

Jenelle: That’s a valuable 4 seconds of the story time taken up!

Gabrielle: Yeah and people are just switched on. “Just tell me the point”. Keeping it short and sharp. Being on point. Being authentic as in the story has to be true. I am still amazed to this point – when I run workshops I ask that question. Do you think your personal story needs to be true as long as it’s believable and gets the point across? I’m still amazed in I run these with executive leadership teams and how that can be a 15 minute debate.

Jenelle: Oh wow. Isn’t the other one just a fable?

Gabrielle: Well the other one is actually a betrayal of trust. I often share stories and then I go what about if that person said “I just made that up”. Even though they’ve told you it’s made up. So people go to a little white lie, what does it matter? It’s more than a lie, it’s actually a betrayal of trust because I’ve assumed in business you’re going to tell me the truth and if you break that, it’s just not worth it. The reason people do it because they think they’re own stories aren’t big enough or important enough and no one would be interested or, they’re not prepared to show any vulnerability, so they just make up stories or exaggerate them to a point where they’re not real.

Jenelle: What are your tips for recognising something as being good content for a story. I know that life offers no shortage of content. No one knows that better than the comedians out there and Jerry Seinfeld has definitely cashed in on that, but for those of us maybe not on the circuit and just operating within business, how do we go about recognising and collecting stories?

Gabrielle: There’s a couple of ways you can go about it. One is mostly people start with “Well what are the messages?” What are the messages I need to communicate. What are the company values? What is the purpose? What are my individual values? Am I just giving a presentation on risk management for example.

Be clear on the message.
 
Gabrielle: Then it’s going “Where have I experienced something similar to this outside of work?” Nothing to do with work. It almost the personal story becomes the metaphor. Once you realise how your life is full of stories, sometimes the story happens and then you go “How could I use this?”

I’ll give you an example Jenelle. Over winter and Melbourne lockdown for 4 months, my daughter (she was 19 at the time), she got to me onto wine drops. I don’t know if you use them but you buy them at Dan Murphys and stuff like that. 

Jenelle: I’m getting a wine theme in your stories just quietly but there is nothing wrong with it all good!

Gabrielle: Don’t judge! You put in five of these drops into your red wine and it’s normally red wine because red wine is full of preservatives, and it’s meant to reduce the effect the preservatives have on you the next day, which is pretty much reduce the hangover really.

Jenelle: Hangover yep.

Gabrielle: So Friday night we’re sitting there and I opened a bottle of red and I put in the five drops in the wine and I pour myself a glass and Alex a glass. We’re having a glass and then about 20 minutes later Alex gets up to do a refill and she’s just standing there holding the bottle of wine drops and goes “Mum you didn’t put these in the wine did you?” and I went “Yes why?” She goes “You know these are wine drops, these are eye drops!” She’s going “You’ve probably poisoned us and blah, blah, blah.” My first reaction was who was the idiot that left the eye drops next to the red wine bottle! Who does that? My next reaction was how could I use that story? Cause that’s a funny story. Then I go “How could I use that?” That’s a great story I could use if I wanted to get across assumptions. The danger in making assumptions.

Jenelle: Yep.

Gabrielle: Because I just assumed that they were wine drops because they were sitting next to the wine bottle and they looked similar. I didn’t even read the label but mind you if I had of read the label, the label said “Relief in every blink” and I reckon on a Friday night I just would have read “Drink”! “Relief in every drink”! So what I do, some people do spreadsheets, some people have a journal or whatever, I literally write down ‘eye drops/wine drops’ and then I go ‘assumptions’. That now becomes a story I could use. You start to build up a suite of stories you can use.

Jenelle: Fantastic. Now I’m wondering about the D&I, or the Diversity and Inclusiveness angle of storytelling. I’ve certainly been in sessions where people have told stories about being at the golf club, or the yacht club and such and such a thing happened and the stories are kind of smacked of privilege or they were so skewed to a particular a gender or demographic profile that actually it felt quite alienating. It didn’t engage the heart.

How do you guide people around that?

Gabrielle: Yeah you’ve got to be careful of the stories you share and almost the detail you put in. I call these ‘speed humps’ where you’re not meaning for anything by it but because of the things you’ve said you can start to alienate people. I remember a speaker on stage was sharing a story. It was like a comment that he’s cleaning lady said to him, but the way he set it up, he seriously set it up like I was at my lodge and it was a beautiful day and we had the fire on and a view and the cleaning lady was there. It was like “Oh my God!” 

Jenelle: Not relatable?

Gabrielle: Yeah! So all that detail about the beautiful lodge and blah, blah, blah, if he simply said I am fortunate enough to be in a position to have a cleaner, I know a lot of people can’t and I have a really lovely relationship with my cleaner and respect what she does and then get into what she said. That would be so much different as opposed to “I was at the lodge” yep it’s alienating. You do have to be mindful of that. That smack of privilege. Sporting – you don’t want to get heavily involved in sport. I’m not a fan of sporting analogies I don’t think they ever work but I’m not saying that you can’t share sporting stories but you don’t need to explain the rules to everyone. Right!

This comes down to again the detail you put in.

Jenelle: Yep.

Gabrielle: You can use your sporting moments but I don’t need to know the rules of cricket to understand your story.

Jenelle: Yeah very good. I had the great privilege of interviewing Liz Broderick last year our Former Sex Discrimination Commissioner, now the United Nations Human Rights Counsel and she said something that’s always stuck with me, it certainly stayed in my mind for a very long time. When I asked her how she makes change happen, and she said “I’m the keeper of thousands of stories and when I step up and advocate for change it’s not just me Liz Broderick speaking, it’s Liz Broderick fuelled by thousands of incidents of human inequality that I’ve seen.” Those stories, the stories of others have been her driver for change.

I’m wondering are there any stories that stay with you that people have told that you’ve seen be the catalyst for driving some kind of change?

Gabrielle: Yeah and it’s a really good point because some of the work I do is how do you share your own personal stories but there is real power in sharing other people’s stories. It’s almost the content of the new book is connect with customers and engage employees through brand story telling – is the tagline of the book. It’s all about how do you find those stories of people doing – your employees delivering great customer service and how you can share those stories with all employees to demonstrate – this is what we do. 

I always get drawn to the really basic stories that survive through organisations because they almost become urban myths because they’re so relatable. The one I love the most it comes from 1975 in America - Nordstrom. You may have heard about this because it is well known if you Google it. There was a customer who bought a set of tyres from a tyre shop and he came back a few months later to get a full refund but the tyre shop had closed down and there was a Nordstrom store in its place. Nordstrom don’t even sell tyres but the shop assistant still gave him a full refund. That happens in 1975 and if you do a Google search on Nordstrom tyres refund or something like that, over 7 million references to it come in. That story has been told for 46 years and people are still talking about that story. I know Nordstrom’s during the 80s and 90s (I’m not sure if they still do it now) but there induction programs for example are just story, after story, after story of their employees/other employees living the values. To me that’s when you can get change happen because it’s through a story and you can see what’s possible, through a story you can see injustice, you might hear a story about one person and that’s probably what Liz Broderick does, you hear a story of one person and you almost go “That should never happen again to anyone.”

Jenelle: Well I think the power of one to change the lives of many is incredibly impactful.

Gabrielle: Yep.

Jenelle: Maybe we’ve talked all around it but in your words Gabrielle what are you personally seeking to change?

Gabrielle: What I’m seeking to change is really the way we communicate in business. Part of it, you mentioned jargon, free Fridays at the start, part of developing that was part of this movement. I worked for 20 years in a corporate where I would go to meetings, I’d go to presentations and you’d walk out going “What the hell was that about?”. I’ve got not idea. Now I work with leaders that get really frustrated saying “We communicated to them”. “We told them”. What I see is the frustration from both sides. 

When communication is done poorly it’s really frustrating for the person delivering the communication and it’s really frustrating for the people receiving, because the person communicating thinks they’re communicating but it hasn’t happened. 

I do love a good quote. One of my other favourite quotes comes from George Bernard Shaw and he said the “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”.

Jenelle: Yes.

Gabrielle: I love that - the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. Communication is really important in any aspect of our life. What I see in business is people being not clear on their message so they can’t get across. They are using jargon words that say nothing. They’re using acronyms that they assume everyone understands and for every acronym that you think you know it can mean something completely different to the person receiving it.

We talk in a way in business that if we spoke the way we do in business in any other aspect of our life, people would call us out for how ridiculous it sounds.

Jenelle: Well people do. My children and my parents certainly do! So it’s always a good test to try out what you say at work at home and see how far that goes.

Gabrielle: Yep.

Jenelle: What do you get out of that if you help people communicate better. What’s in it for you?

Gabrielle: Oh Jenelle, clearly it’s my business so I get paid for that which is good. But seriously what I do this for, why I would do it for free is when I get emails or phone calls from people that have done my training workshop and say things like I followed your framework. I shared a story. You’re right I was really nervous beforehand. It was a little bit vulnerable so I wasn’t sure how it landed but then they tell me about the feedback they received from their team or their clients. When you look about why I’m doing this, to change the way the business world communicates. It’s almost to me – I’m going to chip away with that, with one leader at a time, one story at a time. Every time I hear some great feedback about someone had the courage to share a story and the impact it’s had, I go tick another one. Another convert to the power of storytelling and that’s why I do what I do.

Jenelle: Fantastic but I’m also interested in the reverse. What’s the flipside of that when storytelling doesn’t go well for people?

Gabrielle: Yeah I guess that to me sometimes is a sad thing when someone will say to me “I shared a story once – it was a personal story”, and I’ve had people say “It just went terrible”, “I felt terrible”. One person said “I even had my team laugh at me because of it”. 

Gabrielle: I hear stuff like that and it breaks my heart because what I see is they haven’t been trained to do it well. First of all I should just say this hasn’t happened after they’ve done my training, it’s happened before they’ve done their training. My concern with storytelling being really popular at the moment is there is a lot of companies that are going “We want our leaders to tell stories”. “We want our leaders to be more human”. “We want our leaders to be vulnerable, show vulnerability”. But if you don’t teach them how to do that you are setting them up for failure and the point is when someone has a shocking experience like that they will never do it again. They will just never do it again. 

We need to be setting our people up for success not for failure and going storytelling how hard can it be, because it’s bloody hard. It’s bloody hard to do this in business.

Jenelle: And tell me who are the storytellers that have stood out in your mind and left a mark on you?

Gabrielle: There’s probably a lot that I could mention that you probably wouldn’t have heard of because they’re just people going about their day-to-day jobs. If I look at more people with a higher profile I think Alan Joyce the CEO of Qantas is a very good storyteller. When I get on planes, I haven’t been for a while but I often read the letter from the CEO and it’s pretty good at using really short sharp stories, like a couple of sentences to a good effect.

Michael Ebeid who was the ex-CEO of SBS and Senior Executive at Telstra, he’s a very good storyteller. He’s prepared to show vulnerability. I think that’s the key. I think the key to the really good storytellers, the good storytellers are prepared to step into their vulnerability and own their stories.

Jenelle: Fantastic and given you and I have had a number of chats over the years, one thing that really sticks out is your quite irreverent. You’ve got the real free spirit about you. Very much just have a crack kind of vibe. Where does that come from? Has that always been the case? Or did something happen and you’re like “You know what life’s too short”.

Gabrielle: I think like anything it was the way I was raised. My parents were very big on “we’ll just give it a go”. I think I would have heard “just give it a go” quite a lot in my life of what could go wrong. They were also very big on “give it a go but if it’s not working don’t give up just try something different”. 

I remember a time, a specific moment, I would have been about 17 or 18 applying for a job. One of my first full time jobs. Sent off the letter you wrote as you did in those days, had a job interview and then I noticed the following week the job was advertised again in the paper. I remember saying to Mum “I clearly didn’t get the job”. She said “Well clearly no one else got the job either so why don’t you apply again but write a different stronger letter”. So I did. Based on the interview I had and I got through that interview process. Learnt a bit more about what they wanted. I wrote a stronger letter. I got a second interview and the first question they asked me was “Why did I apply again?” and that my letter was a lot stronger the second time. I literally said “because I really want this job and I know I can do it” and I was offered the job on the spot. 

Jenelle: Wow.

Gabrielle: And it’s something I try to tell my kids. Do something. Don’t keep doing the same thing and expect a different result but don’t give up. Don’t give up just because it doesn’t work out exactly as you wanted it to the first time. Try something different.

Jenelle: Now you’re an Ambassador for SisterWorks. It’s a not-for-profit organisation that supports women who are refugees, asylum seekers or migrants. What do you do with them? Is storytelling a part of what you do with them?

Gabrielle: Storytelling is a little bit of a part with what I do. I run some training for them. Helping them. They often get asked to speak at International Woman’s Day events for example. These are migrant women refugees where English is not their first language but they have amazing stories to share. Helping them share their stories in a more effective way to corporate is what I can help do.

Jenelle: Very good.

Gabrielle: Yeah, that’s something I do but also as an Ambassador I support them where I can. Share their stuff on social media. They’re doing a big fundraising walk in Alice Springs in May which me and my husband are going along as the Ambassador. Just trying to actually.. through my profile increase their profile.

Jenelle: Fantastic.

The last three: three fast questions on change to finish the podcast

Jenelle: Now I’m going to finish this discussion Gabrielle with the ‘Fast Three Questions’ that I like to finish off the podcast with. I’m going to hit you with those. Oh my God that just sounded like “I’m going to tell you a story, didn’t it!”

Gabrielle: It did! I’m going to ask you three questions and then when you’ve answered those three questions we will recap those answers!

Jenelle: At least I called myself out on it! 

Gabrielle: You did! You did!

Jenelle: What are you reading, watching or listening to right now?

Gabrielle: Oh I’m not a Netflix person but I have just finished watching The Queens Gambit and oh my God I loved it! And I loved the fact there was only seven episodes.

Jenelle: Totally [36.29] with.

Gabrielle: I just finished watching that. I so loved, first of all the strong Female lead in it and just loved how all her male supporters rallied around her right at the end. I loved that at the end!

Jenelle: Love it. What is your superpower? Now that can be something that is additive to the world. Or a useless party trick.

Gabrielle: I’m really good at poaching boiled eggs. Poaching eggs!

Jenelle: I was just going to say “Poaching boiled eggs, that really is a superpower!”

Gabrielle: That is a superpower! I’m a pretty good cook. I do cook but poaching eggs and I say that as a superpower because I can’t believe how many people find that really difficult.

Jenelle: No I paid it. I actually struggle with poached eggs. So yep that’s fair. 

Gabrielle: Yeh.

Jenelle: Now if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard. Now that can be something that you’ve read yourself or something that you’ve come up with and live by. What would that be?

Gabrielle: Oh gosh do you know how ironic this is? Because I’ve literally two days ago signed off to get billboards around Melbourne and Sydney to advertise the new book! So this isn’t a metaphorical question that you might have proposed it to be!

Jenelle: Ok. This is a procurement question!

Gabrielle: My message on my billboard, “Are your brand stories magnetic?”. 

Jenelle: Very good. Well thanks so much Gabrielle as always plenty to takeaway from conversations with you. Certainly the power of storytelling comes through loud and clear and also knowing that it’s the small stories that matter and have that high level of relatability.

We talked about the power of sharing the stories of others to drive change. I love the Shaw quote of ‘Shattering the illusion of communication having taken place’ and you certainly are chipping away one leader at a time. One story at a time and I want to thank you for that. It’s something that does make a difference. It’s something that does drive change and your personal example of just giving it a go. If it doesn’t work out, try a different way. Find a different path. It’s something that you live and breathe and something that I think is inspiring for us all.

Thanks again for your time.

Gabrielle: Thank you Jenelle and thank you for ‘Making Change Happen’.

Jenelle: I love it! We must finish on that note!

End tape recording