8 ways to build connection through story (with practice exercises)

I used to think strategy built trust, but I have learned it’s honesty and the courage to show what’s real, that makes people stay.

I used to make the mistake of thinking that connection could be engineered solely through strategy.

I obsessed over frameworks, metrics, and positioning until one day, a client told me my most “strategic” post felt robotic. It stung, but it was true because I had been trying to sound like an expert instead of remembering what it meant to sound human.

That’s when I started developing what I now call the Connection Building Structures, a set of narrative frameworks rooted in lived experience, designed to remind us that people connect through honesty, not authority.

When I look back, the moments that built the deepest trust in my work weren’t the polished success stories but the messy ones where I admitted I didn’t have it all figured out.

These eight structures are what I now teach in my coaching and writing programs, having emerged from that realisation.