When you're job hunting, it's easy to get distracted. You get caught up in sparkly job titles and buzzwordy JDs. You can forget that the company and work needs to actually fit you.

A year and a half ago, an Ei job posting popped up on my LinkedIn feed – Director of Programs. I headed to their website to do my research, finding myself drawn in by the design and impressed by the endorsement from David Kelley (I've done a lot of Design Thinking work in my time, so this was quite "sparkly" for me). But I still had a central question about the job: Did the work fit? Was it reflective of my values, my experience, the impact I wanted to make in workplace learning?

Then, as I read further, my answer was revealed. So much so that I said aloud: “Wait, is this real?”

The website listed three practice areas: innovation, storytelling, and management.

• Innovation: Believe it or not, I’d trained in human-centered design as a fifth grader and had spent my career applying those skills in a range of settings, from a Redwood forest to a corporate boardroom.
• Storytelling: I’d been telling stories on stages and in living rooms dating back to my debut in the national teen poetry slam in 2004!
• Management: In my most recent job I’d been coaching managers and facilitating leadership development workshops, and loved it.

After I joined the team at Ei, I would describe these three domains to friends and family. Many of them would say the same thing: “This job was made for you!”

But, others would tilt their heads and with a tinge of uncertainty say, “Wow, that’s quite a range!” Or prod even further: “Why those three?”

The Why

These three skill areas emerged out of real companies’ needs. Listening and partnership are in our DNA at Ei. When a company comes to us with a challenge, we collaborate with them to create a learning program that will help them build internal capacity to solve that challenge. And after years of collaborating with teams and companies across industries, we found these three areas essential to any organization’s success.

Innovation: Sparking Ideas

When you hear the word innovation, you may think of something big, like an electric car or the next frontier of AI. But the tools and mindsets of an innovator can help your team make critical changes that are less flashy and more intertwined with the day-to-day, too.

Maybe there’s a pesky work process that’s never been questioned or an inefficient approach to customer data collection. Challenges are best solved by centering the humans most impacted by the problem. That’s why participants in our innovation programs spend time “riding along” with those stakeholders, so they can see the problem through their eyes.

Storytelling: Unlocking Communication

No matter your role, there will be times you have to compel others to action. This could take the form of a client pitch for a new strategy. It could be convincing a team member to adopt a new work process. Heck – it could even be a proposal to your boss for a four-day work week!

When we work with teams on storytelling, learners build their capacities to connect with an audience, communicate a vision, and motivate others. Want to know the thing we spend the most time on? Moving away from reading or memorizing. The best presentations are the ones that feel fresh in the moment.

Management: Building Leaders

Good teams start with good leaders. It may not surprise you to learn that one of the best ways to improve as a leader is to increase your self-awareness. What we don’t know about ourselves, we can’t change.

In our “Looking In, Looking Out” manager series, we launch with an Introduction to Conscious Leadership. Participants undertake some meaty introspection in this workshop, but they get to do it with coaching from one of their peers. Bonus side effect? Deeper bonds forged between leaders in the organization.

In fact, we just kicked off a manager series yesterday, and one person wrote in the chat: “That might have been the best conversation we’ve ever had.”

Your Turn

There was one final (and obvious) thing that made it clear this job was for me. It wasn’t the sparkly design, impressive quotes, or unique founding story. It’s much simpler: the name Experience Institute.

I’ve seen the difference experiential learning can make for my entire career. Whether you’re a seventy-five year old learning to swim for the first time (I’ve taught one of those!), or an executive developing a new business strategy (one of those too!), the best way to learn is by getting out there and experiencing something new. Change comes when you stretch out of your comfort zone.

So, your challenge is to try one of the three “try it out” actions I’ve offered in this post. And please, if you do, tell us about it!

Just like we do with the teams we support in our programs, we’ll be cheering you on from the sidelines.