Nobody likes a phony and nobody wants to feel like one. Acting like yourself is hard enough. Trying to be someone else just feels terrible.
The crisis arises when a business situation calls for what feels like a phony performance. There are certain situations when you might feel pressure to behave in ways that don’t come naturally.
For example, my clients labor under my insistence that they should sound decisive and accountable in a job interview. That can be hard for people who don’t roll out of bed in the morning with those words on their mind.
People might strain under the expectation that they should boast about their own individual accomplishments. Good people, we all agree, prefer to talk about the strength of a team. How then can this be the expected behavior?
Networking is another chore for many of us. The advice says we’re supposed to chat up people who aren’t expecting to hear from us.
How can we do that when we despise the same behavior in others?
You’re My Hero
All of my heroes are human. We’re all made of the same fallible stuff. That includes the person who is interviewing you, the client who might hire you, and the former co-worker you’re hoping to work with in the future.
If you’re looking to get hired or promoted, you should emphasize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. Obvious, right? Then why is it so much harder than it sounds?
Remember that nobody is taking you as literally as you’re taking yourself. Nobody looks at a resume and expects it to be as true and complete as a mortgage application. It’s like a dating profile in some ways. You only put in things that are helpful. You leave out anything that’s not.
Why does it feel squicky to talk about ourselves this way? How do we overcome that gross feeling that comes with the sense of being boastful, arrogant, or self-important?
First of all, your intent matters. If you fabricate or exaggerate in an effort to fool somebody, to earn something you don’t deserve, that’s bad. Don’t do that! If your purpose is to put yourself in the best positive light, to stand out for a moment from all the others, that’s why you are here. This process has been designed specifically with this expectation in mind.
Selling yourself does not require you to become someone you are not. You can market your capabilities, articulate your value, and ask clients for their business without feeling terrible about it.
Here’s how.
Hero Biff
Over the course of interview preparation, I’ll sometimes invite a third imaginary person to the session with my client. I call the interloper “Our Hero.”
Our Hero joined a recent coaching session with my client Biff1. Biff is empathetic, analytical, and creative. He has a modest and reserved demeanor. It’s not in his nature to be boastful, to speak openly about his own accomplishments, or to take even the partial credit he is due for a team effort. Biff sounds great, right? And he is.
We summon “Hero Biff” in order to help Biff execute the performance we want him to give in an interview. This version of Our Hero possesses the capabilities that Biff needs in order to articulate his value in a clear and compelling way. Hero Biff isn’t lying, and he’s not even straining credibility on Biff’s behalf. He’s just telling their story in a particular way.
Biff doesn’t need to become someone he is not. He is fine the way he is, and you’re fine the way you are. Biff is still Biff, and our Hero is our helper. He’s there to help us focus on the behaviors that will help Biff get the outcome he wants.
Let’s now touch briefly on the worst career advice ever given:
Just be yourself!
The word “just” is doing a lot of work, here, isn’t it? A super well-adjusted person must have written this. Easy for you to say, pal!
Well, you already are yourself, so we can check that off the list. It’s true that keeping yourself calm is very important, and that’s hard to do when you’re faking something.
If an employer needs you to be someone or something who you are not, none of this is going to work. You are not going to appear in the interview as though freshly emerged from a chrysalis, still dewey from your sudden metamorphosis. We are not method actors. This will not work if your approach is to pretend to be something you are not.
Think instead about making good choices. Our Hero does this when they make decisions about what and how to communicate. They’ll prioritize telling the stories in ways that support the achievement of your goals. They’ll minimize unneccessary attention to your uncertainties and insecurities.
We all give tiny performances every day. We have a persona2 for our spouse’s parents, one for parent-teacher conferences, and another when we’re buying a car. Just a slight shift in your mindset can transform your interview performance. Think about this, and release yourself from the expectation that you must become something you are not.
Here are a few specific tips for channeling your hero persona in an interview:
Emphasize your individual contribution first, then acknowledge the team effort. Many people do the reverse, which is kind. It doesn’t necessarily show an interviewer what they’re looking for, if what they’re looking for is a leader. That’s why you’ll hear the advice to say “I, not we” when talking about your accomplishments. This can be tough to swallow, but you can do it.
Accentuate the positive. Don’t volunteer your deficiencies. Resist the temptation to minimize or apologize for something you just said. If you spend the whole time talking only about your strengths, will you seem like an unbalanced deluded whacko? If you’re at the Wendy’s drive-thru, yes it will. In a job interview, this is exactly what most interviewers want to hear.
Answer questions with your “leadership stories” — anecdotes or narrative about what you’ve accomplished. You should prefer this approach to talking about “ways of working,” ideas, preferences, or opinions. This is the heart of the “behavioral” interview question (these often start with “tell me about a time”.) The idea is that a candidate’s description of their own accomplishments gives better insight than what they say about what they will or would do in the future.
Asking for Business
Most creative professionals despise selling and marketing themselves. Many are perfectly exhausted with social media marketing. Social media are a playground for unhealthy comparative thinking. It makes you feel bad, and lately it’s been terrible for business too.
Networking is fundamental to finding jobs, clients, and growing your business or career. Many would do anything to avoid it, but I can assure you with perfect confidence that it does work.
Because I know how you feel about this, I’ve been working for years to find ways to make it more tolerable. The fact that we are together right now shows that I’ve been at least partially successful! My own success comes from the effort I’ve put into building relationships, networking, and talking to people about what I do. You can do this, too.
The yuck you feel when it comes to marketing yourself online is completely understandable. Science shows3 that terrible people, unlike you, do not feel bad when marketing themselves. If nothing else, the bad feeling might mean that you’re a good person.
We have all been conditioned to feel this way by the spammy, shlocky, intrusive, and annoying junk that we see everyday. Nobody wants to go put more of that stuff into the world.
The answer is simple: Do better! The “how” will be different for everybody, but here’s a basic recipe:
Create content that you’d find interesting if somebody else made it. Whatever else you do, also be a content creator. Write about yourself, your work, your industry, the craft, the business, your clients, or your projects. If you don’t like to write, make videos, audios, or animated presentations. It doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t matter where you publish it as long as you do. The more you publish, the more feedback you’ll get. This feedback will tell you what’s connecting with customers. Watch for those signals, and then make more of that.
Don’t be boring. If what you have to say is interesting, the Internet will help people find it. There is no great content on the internet that nobody knows about. If people aren’t finding and engaging with your content, even one or two a month, then you’re not making the right stuff. People pay for content with their attention. That attention makes people more likely to hire you over time. Being interesting is the price you pay for that result.
Talk online in the first person — meaning “I” or “we” — rather than in the voice of a company. I think people are more likely to connect with and remember a person than a company, I know I am. Companies have to work a lot harder to earn the trust that individuals start out with. When you connect with potential customers, say hello to them. Introduce yourself, and say something like “I’d love to arrange flowers for you someday.”
Participate in communities relevant to your business and your customer’s interests. Make comments, engage, and interact with people. You know you’ve found the right community when it doesn’t feel like a chore. You don’t have to spend hours a day on it. Successful small businesses and freelancers are not invisible on the internet. Being an active participant elevates your visibility and helps people pay attention to you.
Making Small Talk
Whether you connect with people in person or online, small talk is huge. I used to be great at it. When I got sober I became much worse. I now have the casual conversation skills of a freshly-groomed schnauzer. Even for people with a lot of experience, it can be exhausting.
I have found some tricks that make it less painful. Practice them enough and you might find that you are enjoying yourself.
Remember the name of everyone you meet. Put them in your phone along with a reminder to connect with them. Never fail to connect online with a newly-met person. When you meet people, repeat their name back to them a few times out loud, without shame. My brain has an amusing habit of immediately discarding the person’s name within two seconds of me hearing it for the first time. I have learned to just ask them to repeat it, and to my knowledge this has not ruined my career.
Here’s my trick for making small talk effortlessly, with charm and grace. Pretend that you’re a podcast host (should be easy, since you’ve been fantasizing about it for years.) Lob out a starter question like “What’s the last thing you did that you’re really proud of?” And then shut up — just listen attentively until the sound stops. Ask another thoughtful question like “What was the hardest thing about the pandemic for you?” People love answering questions about themselves, because it fulfills their fantasy of being an amazing podcast guest4.
Don’t pitch yourself while you’re trying to act cool. You cannot be cool while pitching yourself. Many have tried, none are chosen. We have all met someone who does this, and it’s so gross we have to pretend it’s not happening. It’s also not necessary. Just casually mention what you offer, like “I’m a financial planner who helps people make the most of their money.” If the person wants to talk about it, they’ll ask you about it. If not, as you’re wrapping up, you can say “I’d love to be your financial planner if you ever need one.” and you can offer to send an email to keep in touch.
Be Careful Out There
The truth behind the otherwise insufferable “growth mindset” is that our failures or deficiencies illuminate opportunities to improve. Your reluctance to be an aggressive salesperson or a pushy hawker doesn’t mean you’re not capable of being the businessperson you want to be.
You can do things differently from the way you’ve seen it done, and still be successful. Playing to your strengths means rejecting stereotypical behaviors. Craft your own approach, mindful that the table stakes are set by what’s “expected” in our imperfect world.
You’ll be most effective when you’re being yourself. The great news about that is that you already are.
Biff is not really my client. Or else, they’re all Biff. Your choice!
It’s been said that the very famous and utterly awesome Mike Monteiro acts like a jerk on the internet, but is a very gentle sweetheart in real life. That describes me perfectly, except exactly in reverse.
Well, it should.
If they ask you a question in return, you can say “No, I ask the questions.” I have always fantasized about saying this.