A lack of confidence comes from a lack of certainty. And a lack of certainty comes from a lack of clarity in how you want to serve your audience or your customers. If you know how you want to serve, then you can reverse engineer the stories that can bolster that mission.

Ask yourself these 11 questions to help you discover what matters in your story, what parts of your story highlight your company values, and which ones to trash. You can use these in your branding, messaging, and marketing materials to get people to connect with you, your emotion, and your experience, then get on board to be your advocate—for life.

We spend 1/3 of our lives working, and now, more than ever, people see being connected to the mission and values of a company as a necessity, not a nicety. In that, leaders need to know how to galvanize people, and provoke a sense of belonging and motivation in each team member.

How do you do that? With magnetic, evocative and symbolic storytelling.