Nia Thomas [00:00:03]:
Hello and welcome to the Knowing Self, Knowing Others podcast. I'm your host, Nia Thomas. Join me as we talk to today's guest. A very big welcome to today's show. Today's guest is Ricardo Brito, a life and career coach who specializes in helping tech and creative professionals revitalize their career. With over a decade of experience working with top companies like BMW and Zalando, Ricardo excels in building teams, facilitating collaboration, and guiding people through career transitions. Ricardo's personal journey from a designer to restarting his career in Berlin has really equipped him with that deep understanding of professional challenges and burnout. He is certified by the Animas School of Coaching and Stellar Conversations and recognized as one of Berlin's top 15 coaches by Influence Digest.

Nia Thomas [00:00:57]:
He has successfully helped over 40 clients find fulfillment in their careers and now Ricardo dedicates himself to guiding others through professional challenges, helping them build healthier, more fulfilling careers. The focus on career storytelling is something that we really want to get into today. So a very big welcome to the show.

Ricardo Brito [00:01:18]:
Hi, Mia. Thank you so much for having me here. Really looking forward to dive deep into the storytelling and the career storytelling.

Nia Thomas [00:01:25]:
Tell us about your pivotal moment in your career that made you change professional direction.

Ricardo Brito [00:01:32]:
Yeah. Okay. We go straight to the most dramatic moment. Absolutely. Well, it was January, 2021, I guess. Yeah. And I was in some out of touch leadership coaching pushed by our management at that point in in the company where I was not too happy about. And in the one of these sessions, I'd said I can't do this anymore.

Ricardo Brito [00:01:55]:
And I shut down my laptop, was this close to smash my laptop against the wall because I had it. I was at my wit's end. Uh-huh. And and from then on, started the journey of 8 months of totally lost of I don't know what to do with my life. I never had so much control over my career and my story. And, yeah, there started a new chapter.

Nia Thomas [00:02:16]:
That's quite dramatic. So it was a a real moment. You can pinpoint it to that day, that time.

Ricardo Brito [00:02:23]:
Yeah. That was the water drop. I think it was boiling, but then it was at at that point, it's just like, okay. Everything changed.

Nia Thomas [00:02:31]:
So tell us, what is career storytelling?

Ricardo Brito [00:02:35]:
Career storytelling, at the core of it is making sense of who we are professionally, which sometimes we are not too good at doing it, and to make sense of who we are and to communicate that to others in a way that makes sense to them. And the others on the other side want to hear different things at different stages depending what's their agenda. So story career storytelling is this, is making sense of who we are professionally, what we can also be, and now we can communicate this to the outside world.

Nia Thomas [00:03:06]:
So for me, I I see an absolute link there with self awareness. But what does self awareness mean to you, and and how does it really fit into career storytelling?

Ricardo Brito [00:03:16]:
Well, self awareness to me, it's a constant discovery. Right? At least me personally, as a person, is constantly I like this Ram Daz, approach of, you know, you it's you spend your whole lifetime peeling the onion. So from this self awareness is keeping peeling the onion of things that I didn't know that I was and or things that I thought that I was, but actually I'm not. So career storytelling is about that. Right? It's about surfacing who we are professionally. What are the red threads that are connecting our sometimes even scattered careers? There's always a red thread. What makes Nia Nia, as as a professional, no matter what you have been through in your career? It's surfacing the skills. It's it's surfacing the stories and even the superpowers that we never, you know, we take it for granted or we never look at them.

Ricardo Brito [00:04:04]:
So in the end, it's a tool for self awareness because it's a tool to surface a lot of information that we don't know it's there, we take it for granted, or we totally overlooked.

Nia Thomas [00:04:14]:
That's interesting. And and watchers and listeners, Ricardo and I were talking before we came on air that actually, if we think about self awareness and we think about career storytelling, when you put them both together, it's like a Venn diagram and there's this bit in the middle where there is this overlap and actually you have to have some self awareness to be able to understand what story you need to be telling others because you have to understand yourself well enough to be able to do that.

Ricardo Brito [00:04:41]:
Yeah. And that's that's a great point. And I think we do are not too good at looking at ourselves and telling our own stories, and we are even less good or not so into telling that story to somebody else that needs to understand. And for example, I think we cope with this in 2 ways. Either we create one massive story that is looks like a Frankenstein of the story that has snips bits and pieces of this and that, but we try to compress it, and we tell it to as many audiences as possible. And then we are surprised that, well, they don't get who I am or they don't get my value or they think that I'm weird. But on the other hand, we get very factual, and we are like, you know, the the heritage of the curriculum vitae, which is the facts and figures of my career. And, yeah, we need to get better at those.

Nia Thomas [00:05:30]:
So when you talk about storytelling, what I'm hearing from the way you describe it, there is that self awareness element, there's that factual element of I have to understand where I have been and the journey I've been on, but that storytelling element, that's about communication?

Ricardo Brito [00:05:49]:
Yeah. I mean, it's the output of that process, but it's about communication in the end. Yes.

Nia Thomas [00:05:54]:
You have a free career storytelling toolkit, and and I have had it, and I've had a quick look at it. What will people find if they download your toolkit?

Ricardo Brito [00:06:06]:
So in the toolkit, it's a set of tools that are a representation of the main pillars for me that I go through when building a story, especially when we are in the process of self discovery professionally. Right? So there is it starts with an exercise that is called, the superhero and the superego. This exercise is for us to put space between us and ourselves and to look at us as a character because a story needs a character. And when we start and I make people draw because my background is also in illustration and design. So I like to make people draw, and people need to do their drawing about who their superhero is based on their skills and based on their, their traits. And it's very interesting because people are afraid of it, but in the end they are very proud and can spend a good half an hour just, you know, drawing the weirdest stuff about themselves. And so that's the first step. It's who you are.

Ricardo Brito [00:07:00]:
Where where are you at? What makes you you? Then there is the part of a plot, which is what are you looking for? And this career storytelling is more about where do you want to tell this story? Is this about getting a job? Is this about translating your skills and your story from your previous career to a new one and you need to help people see why is that valuable? So it's about creating what's next. What is this story? What is this story going to be used for? And there is a third element, which is what drives you. Right? What's the motivation of this character? And we go through there is an exercise where you map out successes versus happiness, which often they don't overlap surprisingly. But this will give more information about who you are and what you really like and what really makes you you. Then the the 4th exercise is a career timeline, which is, I'm not gonna lie, is the is the hardest, the most tedious, but also the most rewarding exercise because you need to map out all of your experiences since you were a kid. Like, even my first job as a bartender when I was 15 or, you know, on the summer camp. It does all of this because we all gather experience in in each of these experiences, job experience. And in this in this timeline, you also map out all the different roles that you had that were not your official roles because in that lies a lot of the gold.

Ricardo Brito [00:08:19]:
And with that, all of that information, we start creating some positionings. And then you have like the storytelling cycle where you it shows who you are, who's your motivation, what's your motivation, where you want to go, and then what proves that you can do those things, which is the stories that you take from this career timeline retrospective exercise.

Nia Thomas [00:08:39]:
That is a lot more involved than just writing a CV and getting ready to apply for a new job. I'm just wondering, when people come to you and ask for your help, are they just applying for a new job, or is it something more fundamental? Are they are they at that point of shift like you were where it's a it's a big transition? Both.

Ricardo Brito [00:09:05]:
I I I work with different segments. I work with segments of people who, for example, multi potentialites. I'm not sure if you know that expression. Right? People who can go in multiple directions and have one can say it's like very broad generalists that can go in multiple directions and they do have the experience to go. And I think I'm a I'm a I'm a bit like that. And that's why I understand it. They, for example, have a hard time understanding how to position themselves because they can do so many things. And well, when they sell the story of generalist, they tend not to fly because that's not the job market goes or the clients goes.

Ricardo Brito [00:09:40]:
So we need to understand to which to which entity do you tell which story and how are you going to represent yourself? So we create different positionings. And there is more about making sense of who they are. And my job is to dissect the different directions into cohesive stories with them that they can pick up. I'm going to tell this story to this person in this conference because they want this side of me or to this job, I'm going to tell that. The part of people who are shifting careers, for example, is to help them translate all the knowledge they have and all the previous experience into the new the new experience while showing the value. So for example, let's say a cook that moves from from the kitchen and wants to go to design, there is a surprising overlap of skills in terms of organization, process creating a journey, thinking about the final customer, you know, researching. There's a lot there, but it has different names. It has different applications.

Ricardo Brito [00:10:36]:
So translating these transferable skills into a new area, this is what about storytelling. And lastly, when you are in a process of really trying to find what you want to do next, it's very important to do retrospective to understand where there were things that you are really passionate about for 1 and also to dig out skills that you have that you are really passion, but you never pay attention to. For example, as a designer, I worked 15 years in delivering stuff, building stuff. Right? You can touch it and and feel it and and click it. But actually, what I love the most was always the people, was always the collaboration, was always the facilitation, and I didn't took that as a skill, it was kind of oh I need to do this so I can do my work which is doing stuff, but going through these retrospectives and through this introspection that I realized I don't care to do stuff, Actually, I like to work with people, but took me a while to realize that. So these tools help you to to identify and surface, create more self awareness about it.

Nia Thomas [00:11:38]:
Yeah. There there is definitely an alignment there because something that I talk about when I talk about self awareness is that you can't do it on your own, that actually that's just introspection and that you need that feedback, that input from others so that you can really see what you look like, how you come across, your reputation to others, and how your behavior impacts others. And I think there's a lot from what you said there about you need somebody else maybe to help you make sense of your story because they can see things that maybe you can't because you're so close to

Ricardo Brito [00:12:15]:
it? Yeah. You you're totally right. Because sometimes you tell this story, hey. I did this. So for example, I had I had a client who created a line of products, and he was this kind of hands on person. And this line of products did solve a business problem, but the way he was presented, like, well, I created this line of products because I'm a designer. It's like, yeah. But when you tell the story, why you created this line of products, why this was important to the company you were, this is way more than to create a line of products because you identified a business need.

Ricardo Brito [00:12:47]:
You identified a massive problem, and you actually open a new revenue channel just because you create this line of products. And they go, that's true.

Nia Thomas [00:12:55]:
Yeah.

Ricardo Brito [00:12:56]:
But we are so attached to our own def role definitions and then so myotically, sometimes corner in the in the companies that we even forget the impact that we have beyond our role. So, yeah, having a third party looking at what your story and trying to extract the different angles is super powerful.

Nia Thomas [00:13:15]:
Definitely. And I really resonated with what you said about this idea of being a generalist, and it's definitely something that I've struggled with over the last 25 years because I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a teacher, but I'm a general operations lead, worked in different sectors, but that idea of being a generalist, but maybe actually when you talk about it is actually what was the word you gave? It was multi professional?

Ricardo Brito [00:13:45]:
Multi potentialite.

Nia Thomas [00:13:46]:
Multi potentialite. Oh, that is just amazing. I love that word. That's amazing. So what advice would you give somebody who is is feeling stuck in their careers? Where do they start?

Ricardo Brito [00:13:58]:
That's a very good question. I think the first step is to define what type of stuck are you because, you know, it is there is such a big gradient. Right? You can be stuck in a bad company, in a pro in a company that, you know, there's no growth, but you still love what you do. Right? You still love your job. You still love sometimes you you just don't like your job anymore. You are in a rut and no matter what kind of company and project that is getting thrown at, you are I'm just not motivated. I don't know what to move forward. And sometimes it's more existential than that.

Ricardo Brito [00:14:31]:
Right? Sometimes it really goes to your deep core. It's just why am I doing these things that I'm doing and feeling stuck. So I think the first step is really understanding what kind of stuck are you and what are the problem that you are facing because it requires different solutions. Each solution is very individual, but sometimes it's about a tweak. Sometimes it's about exploration. Sometimes it's really about you need to pivot completely. Or sometimes it's just a matter of reframing your whole relationship with your work. So, you know, that would be my first step.

Ricardo Brito [00:15:04]:
Where where are you now?

Nia Thomas [00:15:06]:
So you have chosen to focus on coaching as your as your skill set to support people. Why coaching?

Ricardo Brito [00:15:15]:
So first of all, was not a very conscious decision at the beginning. It was something that I I I landed very much in by accident. I discovered coaching by accident with true therapy, then I go to coaching, and I realized, oh, that's that's coaching. I thought coaching was yelling people what to do and do this, do that, and, you know, have the whip. That's that's the the typical idea we have. Right? But it's not. I realized that it's a lot more broad than than than I thought and has a lot of overlap with design. There's a lot of overlap with how designers think.

Ricardo Brito [00:15:49]:
Designers are not allowed to make conclusions. They are allowed to research and making hypothesis and asking questions and facilitate processes of facility of creation and and unstuck and crystallizing ideas. So I saw a lot of parallels with my own profession as a designer, like, the type of methodology, the type of mindset that I needed, And it brings a mix of process, but the human part and the emotional part of processing these, you know, reflections, experimentations, explorations, and I like that. I like this overlap between, you know, the more technical part, but also the more human part. And bringing a bringing process to a chaotic process in the end, that's what that's what I'm that's what I'm doing. I bring process to a chaotic process, which is finding what you want to do, who you are professional. And this is what designers are paid for. We are thrown in the chaos, and we are supposed to make sense of it.

Nia Thomas [00:16:47]:
Yes. It's, yeah. Of course. It's only when you describe it in that way that that makes absolute sense. But if I'd have described it in that way, I probably wouldn't have been able to to find those commonalities. So, again, it's really important to have somebody else who can who can see your world from a distance, have that objectivity, and maybe can put that mirror up so that you can see things from a different perspective.

Ricardo Brito [00:17:10]:
Yeah. What what has helped you, for example, to understand yourself a bit better?

Nia Thomas [00:17:15]:
I've done some feedforward exercises with my team, and they have fed back to me about the things they would like me to do more, do less, do differently. And I've discovered some things about the way that I explain things. I did a a specific feed forward, exercise a couple of months ago, or maybe it was even a year ago now, and they fed back that they would like me to explain more. So my simple thinking that actually I had explained sufficiently, I had handed the information over, but people were saying, you are so ingrained in what you think and what you know that actually you just need to spend a bit more time with us to make sure that you're sharing it with us. And something like that was was very helpful. So I I I like feedforward. So for people who are new to feedback and feedforward, feeding back is what has happened in the past and you can't really change it. Feedforward is about what can I do differently next time? You have the ability to be creative and proactive and change things.

Nia Thomas [00:18:20]:
I quite like that feed forward. I think those instances have helped me think about the way that I impact others, and they've helped me make a change.

Ricardo Brito [00:18:31]:
That's lovely. Thanks for sharing. And I love this idea of fit forward. I never heard about it. It makes so much sense to make this split between past and future.

Nia Thomas [00:18:41]:
Yes. And I think I read it in Tasha Eurich's book insight, and I think it might be a Marshall Goldsmith thing. So if anybody's interested in feedforward, put it into Google to see what comes back. So you support tech and creative professionals particularly. At first glance for me, you could say that those professions are are quite opposite. Although having had started this conversation, I think I'm starting to see that there are commonalities. What are the commonalities that you're finding in the challenges that people within the tech industry and the creative industry are are experiencing right now?

Ricardo Brito [00:19:17]:
Well, there is there is a lot to impact on that one. Let me start with 1 the differences between them. I don't think there is much difference because it's both our works of passion, and it's professions and people who went to this career because they love what they do. You know, they love to be engineers. They love to be designers. They love to be artists and illustrators. You know? There is a comp a passion component. And when there is a passion component, there is an identity component.

Ricardo Brito [00:19:46]:
And when there is an identicated component, there's a 5050 chance that at some point in your career, that's going to be a liability and a problem for you because it's too intertwined with your work and who you are and your self values intertwined with that because you live it. It. You have passion through it. So it makes it harder to understand what you want to do. It makes it harder when things go wrong. It makes it harder to gain distance from yourself to gain perspective. So both the creative side and both the tech side, they are professions driven by passion, and they they come with the same set of issues in that in that regard.

Nia Thomas [00:20:19]:
That's very interesting. So in terms of these common issues that you're finding across the board with the people you're working with, what are those common issues?

Ricardo Brito [00:20:28]:
So one of the issues is burnout for sure. I think there is burnout in in self worth attached to it because when we work for passion and their identity is mixed, So if when the output is not what we wanted or we don't have full control or we are trying to pedal against the wind, it's it it attacks us directly. It detects our identity. It detects our self worth. At a certain point, it chips away self team. It chips away your, you know, your own your own perception of yourself. And at certain point, you might have not noticed that you should have stopped or rethink what you are doing, but you were so focused on the passion and making it work and real. I want to get this that, you know, you didn't you didn't have the perspective to do it.

Ricardo Brito [00:21:13]:
That's that's one. The other one is we get very myopic because we are so passionate. Our world is probably not is broad, but it tends to be very intense and focused at the same time. So it's hard to get out of this and get understanding where can this be used. And this is more prevalent, for example, in designers that some I'm discussing in the design community because, for example, designers from all the people I've worked with, they are they are the ones who have the hardest time leaving the word design, the word. They can do exactly the same thing in other professions, in another context, but it doesn't have the word design in that there is this attachment to the words, you know, to the titles because this is who I am. You know? It's not what I do. So I think this this is the core problems and then goes into different avenues depending where the people are in life.

Nia Thomas [00:22:05]:
It's what I do, not who I am. And something that I talk a lot about when I'm talking about self awareness and self aware leadership is that the for me, what I do is that, right now I'm a director of a children's charity, but how I do it is through self aware leadership. And it's interesting you're talking very similar about the role is what you do, but the storytelling allows you to describe how you do it, and then that becomes portable.

Ricardo Brito [00:22:36]:
Yeah. And one thing that I'm curious about, what helped you to do that? Do that change? Because for me, for many years, I couldn't separate those. Right? And was it always like that for you that you kept it separated, or at certain points, things changed?

Nia Thomas [00:22:51]:
Well, I guess for me, I I have always had a 9 to 5 job, so that's my career, and that's what I do. But when I did my research, that was outside of my work, so it wasn't funded by my organisation. It wasn't supported necessarily by my organisation. It was because I had a personal interest in it. So I've always had those two things running alongside each other. So my career, which is what I do, and then what I'm learning about self awareness and self aware leadership is informing how I do that more and more. So I guess for me, it it was by accident because my research was separate to my day job, And, I've really continued that and realized that one allows me to observe the other. The practical elements allows me to put that into practice so that I'm constantly doing testing out the how then reflecting on the what.

Nia Thomas [00:23:49]:
So maybe mine was was slightly different to yours and that it it was through circumstance, I guess, through research.

Ricardo Brito [00:23:56]:
Yeah. Lovely. Thanks for sharing.

Nia Thomas [00:23:59]:
Many people who I know, working in the charitable sector are facing quite uncertain future at at this time. They're gonna be wanting to get their career stories ready to move on. Where should they start to develop a clearer career story if they are working on their CV, which we we've touched on CVs, which is quite technical. It's about a a timeline. But if they want to really think about how to make that into more of a coherent story, where do they go?

Ricardo Brito [00:24:31]:
So my recommendation is, for example, with this career timeline, it's always to do a retrospective of other relevant experiences that you have that are relevant for the future and mapping out all the jobs that you had. So for example, let's say you had a job as a salesperson because I don't know so much about roles in charity, but let's say but but let's say you were you you had the salesperson, but you were also a project manager and you were also some sort running some sort of training within the organization. Your sales job is your title, but there is project management and there is, for example, this educational piece that you're creating trainings insight. So out of this job, you can already create 3 different positionings. You can create a CV where this is stress out your sales or your project management or your or education. So mapping out all of those experiences and the impact that you had, it's crucial for for start. And this takes, you know, a couple of days to map out this. Because while understanding what was my role, what was my impact and what were the results? This is kind of the plot, right? That you can tell to anybody.

Ricardo Brito [00:25:48]:
Right? So one metaphor that I tend to use is what's tie what if you think about the Titanic movie, what is that movie about for you?

Nia Thomas [00:25:58]:
It was the ship that sank and the story of the people who were on the ship.

Ricardo Brito [00:26:03]:
Wow. It's the first time that somebody gives me that reply. So I love that. So a lot of people say, well, it's a love story. It's a class story. It's a story about classes or it's a you know, there is but in the end of the day, it's a bot that sinks. It's basically it. But the bot that sinks is the fact and the other part is the package where that fact is delivered.

Ricardo Brito [00:26:26]:
So the career timeline is the facts. It's the bot that syncs. Okay. You're mapping out all the facts, but then you need to create the package around, which is in which which story I'm going to tell to this person. Is this a love story? Is this, you know, a project management story, an educational story, or a sales story? And it has a beginning, a middle, and the end. Right? What I did or what was the problem, what was the solution, and how how what was my impact.

Nia Thomas [00:26:52]:
There is definitely guidance there about not making CVs and job applications generic. Because from what you said is you have to make sure that the story that you're telling is relevant to the role that you're heading towards.

Ricardo Brito [00:27:07]:
Exactly. And it does and I think people jump the gun to the CV when they don't think about what are the bullet points that I'm going to put there. What is the angle that I'm that I want to show in this CV? Right? So by doing this retrospective, you do a couple of things. You know which information goes into each CV, so you create multiple story lines. You are better prepared when you go to interviews because it's not just bullet points. It's a retrospective that you did in your head and in paper of what you did. So you know how you're going to pitch that particular job in an interview, And you know which data and which, you know, results you're going to show that proof that you can do that job. For me, it always starts with this retrospective because when you want once you have debt, then you can build CVs, then you can build portfolios, then you can build your scripts for for interviews.

Ricardo Brito [00:28:01]:
So I prepared this canvas to make it as easy as possible for people to work with it to to map that out in a in a logical and orderly manner.

Nia Thomas [00:28:11]:
A lot to think about there. And, as we know, certainly in the UK, there's a lot of people moving careers. I and I think the the great resignation, I I think we are still there. We're still at the in this time. So people might be really interested to explore more of this. And as I said, Ricardo has got a toolkit that you can download from his website, and we'll make sure that there is a link to the show notes because I I think a lot of people would benefit from that. My last question before you go, what are your thoughts on storytelling, with recruitment becoming more digitized and more automated? Where do you think we are going with career storytelling?

Ricardo Brito [00:28:50]:
Oh, that's all over the place. Because I've there is no consensus, to be honest. I've I've talked with recruiters. I talked with people in the HR departments, and I talked with candidates. And it seems there is no consensus about what's actually going on. Some we don't understand the extent of AI that is that is being used. Some people say, you know, it's not used because it's too clunky. Everybody asked this question, how can I make my my CV more, more AI friendly? And and how can I pass to the first interview? And it's true.

Ricardo Brito [00:29:21]:
I have to say it is becoming increasingly harder to get the first interview, and I don't the the way that I solve that with the people that I've worked with is finding other alternative, which I call it the pirate way, alternative ways to get into that company. You know, reach out to the hiring managers, try to find who they are, you know, find people to refer you. You know, do all of these jobs, which is everybody's applying to a job. Do something else different. Send a package. I don't know. Be creative. There is a couple of creative ways.

Ricardo Brito [00:29:54]:
Of course, this adds scale. It's hard, especially when you are unemployed, but finding alternative ways to circumvent the first one is a good method. I think storytelling is not going anywhere because the the more automated the processes become, then the differentiator is once you are there in front of the person, you still need to represent yourself. You still need to, you know, showcase that you know your stuff and that you can bring value. Again, it's also a way when you have when you know your story and you know which stories to tell. Anytime you meet somebody in an event, in a cafe, the random person you met at the bus, you never know. It might be your next employee or your next referral. So storytelling is always there in a way or another.

Ricardo Brito [00:30:37]:
It's it's hard nowadays. The first interviews in all of these ATS systems, I'm curious to see where it goes. But the last point that I want to say about this is storytelling is also about ourselves and how we make sense of the world. So even if it's not to tell the story to anybody, but to ourselves, that is already enough because I think it circles back to to to what you do. Right? Which is raising your self awareness of who you are so you can be also a better professional.

Nia Thomas [00:31:08]:
And that's a wonderful way to end our conversation. Ricardo, I've really enjoyed it. I've this is a conversation I've never had before, and, I'm gonna go back and really explore your toolkit, and I will definitely be sharing it with my colleagues, and I hope we can talk again, about this in the future. Riccardo Britto for today, thank you so much for joining me.

Ricardo Brito [00:31:28]:
Thank you so much, Nia, for having me. I love this conversation and looking forward to keep discussing about this.

Nia Thomas [00:31:36]:
Thank you for joining me on today's show where we discuss self aware leadership with thinkers from around the globe. If you want to make sure that you keep in touch with what's going on in the world of self aware leadership, head over to my website and sign up to my newsletter. Looking forward to having you on my learning journey.