In this 7‑day StorySpark series wrap‑up, the host recaps the first week’s six storytelling challenges—showing up, object‑based, silent video, photo/memory, impromptu word‑prompt, and data‑driven storytelling—before introducing the Day 7 focus: interview storytelling. Participants are given a series of “Tell us about a time when…” prompts and asked to craft a story with a clear beginning, progression, challenge, and takeaway. Two participants share their stories: Tanay describes debugging a slow software release for a BPO client, identifying network latency and JavaScript loading issues, applying minification and caching tricks, and achieving a dramatic performance boost that earned him a bonus; Alka, a clinician, recounts persuading a family to resume thyroid medication for a young woman, addressing misconceptions about side effects and emphasizing the necessity of hormone replacement. The host concludes by inviting the audience to submit their own stories via WhatsApp or YouTube comments, announces an upcoming Storython on confidence and mindset, and encourages continued practice of storytelling beyond comfort zones.
Chapters
Awesome! So welcome everyone to the day 7 or the end of week 1 of StorySpark session. So before we go on today's challenge, I'm going to do a quick recap of what all we have done in this week, because in this 7 week— 7 days, we have taken up 7 challenges which is related to different dimensions of storytelling. So we started with day 1 which was about the power of showing up. There people, when they showed up in the meeting, they also showed up where else they showed up in life and what were the benefits, what were the learning that they had. On day 2, we had an object-based storytelling where people showed a specific object that they had and showed a story about that. On day 3, we had a silent video going on without any audio and we looked into how our mind perceives everything in form of a story. So it was very interesting to see everyone's different perspective. On day 4, we did a photo challenge or a memory challenge where everybody showed a photo taken by their phone cameras and told a story about that. On day 5, we did an impromptu challenge where we were able to share, answer a question on the fly, and there were words popping up. And it was a challenging one where people had to really stretch their imagination and make those words as part of their story. Yesterday, or on day 6, we did something called data storytelling where there was a graph or a picture or visual showed and we were supposed to share a story. So how do we take it to the next level? Is today is the day 7 of the intro week, which is where we are looking at different dimensions of storytelling. So for today, I have selected something called interview storytelling. So storytelling has got various, uh, dimensions, and one of them is very predominantly used is for interviews. Now this could be whether you are going on a podcast or YouTube Or it could also be for the jobs or career or promotions. So I've taken the second one where it is more applicable for job or promotion, or you are going as an entrepreneur, you are going to pitch. So what is going to happen is I'm going to share the screen. I've created the question, and once we see the question on screen, I want you to take few seconds and I want you to think about the story not just tell the fact, think about a story. So take 30 seconds and then tell a story of that. And it's, it's in the form of tell us about a time blank, and there are 6 questions. So we'll go one by one, one each. Tell us a story with proper beginning, uh, progression, what happened, what were the challenge, and things like that. And then you conclude it with a takeaway message. All right, so clear with everyone? Now let's start with the first one. So the first question that I was— tell us about a time when you solved a problem, right? So let's take 30 seconds and think about it. You want to make a mental note or you want to make a note in your copy, and then we'll go around the room. We'll probably do 2 rounds of all the questions, so we'll do one this and one more and then I will end the video with another challenge for audience. So let's think for 30 seconds about a time when you solved a problem. 10 seconds more. All right, so I'm gonna ask Tanay first because you joined first. So did you remember a story when you solved a problem?
Yeah, it was, it was in the beginning of my career. I was having like just 2 years of experience. And then we gave a software release to one of the clients, which was like a BPO. And, and just after the release, the software was not working. It was very slow. The people were just, just frustrated means how it was, it was working. So what, what that, that client said that you need to sit there and solve that problem and you are not going to go back home until you solve this. So, so we were there, I was the most junior, even the, even the head of my department was there, the senior engineers were there and we were given a, a room there in, in their office in Gurgaon. So we need to travel from, from Noida to Gurgaon and sitting there conference room and, and trying to solve the problem. We were just not able to understand why it is happening. It was working fine in, in our premises, but it was not working there. After much of like digging into the problem, we came to know it was, it was a network issue. Because of the— because it was— everything was getting served from, from a different continent, and it was taking too much time to download. And it was like a— I am not sure if you know the JS files. There were like 50 of JS files which are getting downloaded, and there was a latency, latency there. And we now, we had identified this— what was the problem? And, and then, then we have to solve for it. We cannot solve on, on the fly because we have to make like code change and all. Then we— I searched a lot, and, and then we came to know that we can minify this JS, we can combine them, we can, we can we can cache them. And I have to— I've applied like multiple tricks to just solve it. And then we were able to solve this by doing some code change, like putting some filters and all that. We were able to solve on the fly. And the result was that the page which was taking like multiple maybe a minute to, to open it, it started opening in a, in, in a second. And it, it was like a big reward for me as well. Like, from next 2 years, they just paid me like 150% of the, of the bonus.
Nice, excellent, awesome story. Power to you, SPTY. Okay, let's go to Alka Ji. Tell us about a time when you solved a problem.
So there was this girl, she entered my clinic yesterday, 80 kilos, tall, about 5'7", and she was quite plump. And she came with 4 adults. There was a father, her mother, her uncle, and her grandfather. And when they entered my clinic, I said, my God, what kind of problem is it? So I looked at them and I asked them, Why so many people? So they said something like, we love her a lot. And when I started questioning her, she was suffering from thyroid, and her parents decided not to give her the thyroid medication. And I, I was like livid. I, I can't take this. So I asked the mommy and the daddy, why not? So she said, medicines have got side effects. So I said, what about this? 80 kilos of weight, it doesn't have side effects. And then what we realized was, from 13 years of age to 17 years of age, she has not taken a medication. She has not taken it because she thinks— and she was diagnosed for thyroid at the age of 13— because she thinks that taking the medication is going to have side effects. And I told them, you can take— see, you've been taking food, you're going to have some side effect. When you're breathing the air, you're going to have some side effect. This, this is something lacking in your body. The T4 hormone is lacking in your body. You have to take the T4 hormone through a tablet. There is no other way. And surprisingly, they all agreed. 4 adults in the family agreed, and even the mother, even the daughter agreed. I told them, now you please go and take your medication. You can do yoga, you can do exercise, you can lose your weight, but yoga is not for just reducing your weight and for not taking thyroid medication. If you still want to do it, you do it, but it will be an additive to taking the medication. So that's what, that's what happened. They agreed to take the medication. So thank you for that.
Excellent, excellent, very nice. And yeah, it showed that when you are able to articulate and share what it is that they're looking for, you can help them overcome a challenge. Awesome. So now I think we are running out of time, so I've decided not to go for the second one, but I'm going to leave it for the audience and for the people who are joined here as well. The next question is, tell us about a time when you overcame a challenge. So that is the personal challenge that all of us go through. So this is the question I'm leaving it. So you can be member of the Confidence Storytelling Hub, can create a video or an audio and post it in our WhatsApp community. If you're watching it on YouTube, you can post a comment below this So story power to all of you. And for the members, we have the week 2 of the Storython this evening at 8 PM, where we will be talking about building confidence and mindset. And from now on, we'll go into the StorySpark session about this as well. So this week is all about different exploration of storytelling. From today— from tomorrow onwards, it will be about working on the mindset. So I've still not decided whether I will put it on YouTube or not, but until then, as I say every time, keep learning, keep growing, and keep going out of your comfort zone. See you for the Storython and for the next StorySpark session. Take care, have a great day. Thank you.
