How to Ace the Interview (and get the job already)
He was preparing for a second interview.
It was for a leadership position for which he was well-qualified.
He had a beautiful presentation: pretty slides with lots of graphics to highlight his approach to leadership.
But something was missing.
What was it?
And why, in several months of interviewing, hadn't he yet landed the job for which he was so well qualified?
It wasn’t his expertise. It wasn’t his experience.
The answer surprised even him. It was right there, under his nose.
It was him. He was missing.
His interviewers wanted to know him, to get a sense of what it might be like to work with him.
Without a story -- your authentic story -- those facts are just the bricks and boards.
“The story of your life is not your life," novelist John Barth once wrote. "It is your story,”
Telling a good story.
Any good story must have the following:
Compelling: a well-told story, engages the listener
Authentic/believable: the narrator must believe with all their heart their own story
Directed: when the narrator knows herself, the direction of the story is clear
Clear narrative voice: in fiction and in life, the narrator must know herself
#4 is key. Without self-awareness and self-knowledge, your story won't be yours. People can sense when something is fake or put on.
Your narrative is not fiction.
Only when your story arrises from the truth of who you are, is it compelling and trustworthy.
This comes from the work of knowing yourself -- and accepting all you, the good, the bad and the ugly.
When your story comes from a place of self-knowledge, it will necessarily be compelling, authentic, directed and clear story.
Who's the narrator of your story?
You can begin to learn self-awareness by analyzing the stories you tell everyday.
The stories you tell about encounters, conversations, challenges and triumphs at work -- in all of these communications, you are telling the story from a certain narrative point of view.
Yes, of course, the narrator is you. But which you?
Who are you being when you tell a particular story?
Here are some examples of ways to analyze your story, and learn how you may be unintentionally showing up in the telling:
Is it a story of the world stacked up against you? -- Victim
Is it a story of rebellion? -- Adolescent
Is it a story of doing everything for others? -- Martyr
Is it a story of abandonment and helplessness? -- Child
Is it a story about mistakes, failure and how they made , hubris to humility? -- Mature Adult
These examples are generalizations, and all of us are probably some combination of some or all of these perspectives.
But taking a meta view of your story can help you determine how you're showing up in life and leadership.
Know yourself.
"I'm going to rework this whole presentation," my client concluded. "I need to illustrate more with stories about how I learned the most important lessons of leadership."
Great stories are born of fearless self-examination -- not self-criticism.
Self-discovery is a process that is most helpful when it is tempered with copious amounts of self-compassion.
When you not only know who you are, but embrace it all -- the mistakes, failures, struggles, dark nights, triumphs and rebirths -- you are unshakable.
We are each the authors of our own lives.
Discovering yourself is an inside job and, at least for me, a lifelong process.