But Davo, dude, I’m a technician man, I’m not a writer or a consultant.

Fair enough. Instead of writing about the stories that you hear to help others, use the stories to help yourself. You probably won’t hear as many stories pertaining to exactly what you do for a living as you will hear other types of stories. This is where you need to dial in your own personal radar. To begin with, be open to stories you hear from your son’s kindergarten teacher to your boss to Joan the bartender. Then, as the story works its way into your skull, allow yourself to think about your own life. What is relevant? What reminds you of something else? Who reminds you of someone else? How would you do that in your job? How could you learn to do that? How does that pertain to something you do for a living? The questions that you can ask are endless and the more you ask, the more will surface.

You see, stories that are not specifically about you, can be like running a reverse or mis-direction play in football. The flow is going one way and then BAM! it goes in the opposite direction. Suddenly there is daylight, less tacklers, less noise. Suddenly you are able to think with more freedom. Suddenly a very relevant thought appears from where there was none. Lessons learned from these types of stories have a tendency to dig their heels into your brain’s turf and will not easily slip away.

For more conventional stories that will entertain and teach you, drop by Mark’s bookstore.

Dan encouraged me to write back in the 90′s.  It might well have been Michelangelo telling a factory worker that he should paint.  Dan is one of the most interesting and engaging authors who I have ever read.  Dan weaves storytelling around the distillation of complex subjects.

Dan’s expertise, besides writing, is in steam and hydronic heating.  For those of you who are interested in teaching technicians, Dan’s book How to Teach Technicians: Without Putting Them to Sleep is one of the finest books of its kind ever written.  And the cool thing is the book is written towards teaching technicians in general, not industry specific.

Visit Dan’s site Heating Help and get to know this master storyteller, ok Pal?

“Hi Dave.  Our A/C unit isn’t working.  Can you please send Bob out?”

“Good morning Sue.  Bob is actually out of town working and won’t be back for a week.”

“OK Dave, we’ll wait.”

Bob was our most popular technician – with most of our commercial customer’s admin staff  – who were all women.  And what absolutely drove these women nuts was Bob knew he had it going on, knew exactly what was going on with all of these women, but pretended he didn’t.  In other words (and I can’t believe I am saying this), Bob didn’t flaunt it.

I can’t tell you how many calls for service that we received from ladies who asked for Bob, when there really wasn’t a problem.

Desperate Housewives

True story.  And then there was Ted.  Ted ran a service call for a woman who lived on a very affluent street.  He repaired her system and sold her a service agreement.  Five more women who lived on that street bought service agreements within four months – and they all demanded that Ted service their equipment.  Our service agreements consisted of two maintenance visits per year.  At the women’s insistence, we scheduled Ted to take care of all the houses within a three day period twice per year.

Btw, I really didn’t pimp out our guys here but it kinda felt that way…

Photo by Wadeboy on Flickr