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How to create a powerful interview brand

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You’ve done your resume, you’ve updated LinkedIn, you have 15 – 20 accomplishments statements memorized. Are you ready for interviews? Not quite yet. There’s one more thing you need that will be the connective tissue that brings everything together during the interview process. You need an interview brand, I call this an interview brand as opposed to your general employee brand as this one is specifically crafted for the interview process.

The interview brand is like a ‘meta-resume’, its 3 or 4 lines long, its what you use to answer the ‘tell me about yourself’ question and its also what you use to continually ‘match’ yourself to the requirements of the role. Your interview brand should have 4 key elements.

  1. Unique – Something about your background experience that’s a little unusual or a little unique. This should instantly pique the curiosity of the interviewer.
  2. Holistic –  A description of all of your past experience in one sentence, crafted in such a way that you demonstrate how you’ve cultivated the relevant skills and knowledge over time.
  3. Therefore I can…. – A combination of elements 1 and 2 means you bring a specific and unique value proposition to the table. It should be easy to imagine how this value proposition can be used.
  4. This is useful for…. – This involves flipping element 3 from ‘what you bring to the table’ to ‘this would be useful for companies looking to….’

My interview brand

I have a background in Engineering and HR, both in education and experience. (Now isn’t that a little unusual!)

I have worked for global, hi-tech Canadian companies for the past 26 years. (See the theme?)

I am able to accelerate strategy with effective HR (combination of 1 and 2)

This is of particular use for small to medium Canadian hi-tech companies looking to expand, scale and grow and are interested in learning from my experience.

Send me your drafts and I’ll be glad to give you my feedback.

 

Physics and Flow…. Or is it Fysics and Phlow?

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Everyone’s talents are unique.

Flow is the overlap between peak performance and joy in practicing one’s talents.

Focusing on a few key strength areas can make a profound difference.

These are good reasons to write a strength statement, not an easy exercise but definitely worth it. 

Strength statements are your talents manifest. Unique to you but can be used over and over again; a description of you in flow.  

If I only had one strength statement, it would be;

I love helping people loosen the mental knot

Hopefully this tells you about me; I love to think, I love to learn, I love translating what I know into your context in such a way that you come up with a few powerful ideas.

As someone once said to me; ‘Everything that didn’t matter dissipated until I could see clearly’. That is very rewarding to me. 

 Someone I work with, Jen, created a strength statement for herself;

I use energy efficiently to stimulate the building of momentum to overcome challenges.

I think we all resonate with this one, either because we welcome and appreciate it in others or we aspire to have it in ourselves or both.

I’ve also heard Jen say many a time, ‘time to rip off the bandage’.

Then it clicked.

In physics, Power is the rate at which energy is transferred, used or transformed. Energy transfer can be used to do work, so Power is rate at which Work is performed. 

Power = Work/Time

Imagine you do 100 units of work over 100 hours. Average power (1 unit/hour) may be so weak that people barely notice.  Do the same work in 1 hour and your power is now 100 times greater, that’s packing quite a punch.

Your power output is 10X higher if you run a mile in 6 minutes versus walk it in an hour, even though you’re doing the same amount of work in both cases.

People notice power more than they notice work, that’s the power of Jen’s strength statement.

So then I looked at few more;

‘I love helping people go from confusion to clarity through dialogue’ (increase signal/noise ratio)

‘I love tuning an idea for a specific audience without losing any of the idea’s meaning’ (transponder)

‘I love it when my days are so filled with a range of challenging, impactful tasks that the only way to deliver on all of my responsibilities is to be so efficient and productive that not a single second of my day is wasted.’ (peak instantaneous power; friction-less energy transfer)

You’ll know a good strength statement when you see one and recognize the person’s unique talents and see what timeless positive force the strength is tapping into.

 

Knowing others is intelligence

Knowing yourself is true wisdom

Mastering others is strength

Mastering yourself is true power

– Lao Tzu

 

There is more in you

Talents are like electrons

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Some talents – such as stage performance – are easier to spot than others – such as Einstein having an idea related to quantum physics.

So, what is a talent?

This is a very hard question, as evidenced by the fact that we don’t have a universal definition although people have been celebrating talents and peak performance ever since we’ve been people.
 
In 1925 Werner Heisenberg said ‘discard any hope of observing hitherto unobservable quantities such as the position and period of the electron’.
 
This statement hit our understanding of physics upside the head.

Talents are like electrons.

One of the basic tenets of physics was that every particle has a position and velocity. In other words, your stuff is in a spot and its either moving or not.

Unfortunately this isn’t true, we can’t know position and velocity with absolute certainly, the more we know of one, the less we know of the other. Physics (and therefore reality) is fuzzy and so are talents, you can’t put out a trap and catch them.
 
Peter Drucker said ‘Most people don’t know what their strengths are. When you ask them, they look at you with a blank stare, or they respond in terms of subject knowledge, which is the wrong answer’.

Notice he uses the word ‘strength’ as opposed to ‘talent’, secondly he tells you what it isn’t versus what it is.
 
Surfacing your talents

1. Do the Strengthsfinder survey, its been around for many years and you can do it for $10 online.

2. Send me an email with your thoughts

3. Collect data – count your strong moments over the course of 3 to 6 months

4. Send me another email, I’ll respond with some ideas, I promise

5. Stimulate the context

3Minute Strong Moment Stimulation Checklist

1. 2GO In 60 seconds use ‘5 why’ approach and iterate back and forth between Goal and Outcome until you have 1 Outcome and 2 Goals
2. +-S In 60 seconds define 2 signs you’re on the right track (+S) and 2 signs you’re on the wrong track (-S).
3. ?Q In 60 seconds come up with 2 or 3 questions you want to ask when you are in the middle of the challenge

6. 30 second score – After the challenge is over quickly write all the salient points you can think of in 30 seconds

Excellent Performance = [(Talent)**(Skills*Knowledge)]/[(Fear)**threat]

The Power of Checklists

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A small hospital in Austria saves a 3 year old hypothermia/drowning victim who had stopped breathing for over 6 hours.

An airline experiences severe engine throttle back due to sudden loss in fuel, the pilot recovers the engine by throttling back even more despite his intuition screaming at him to throttle up.

A hospital reduces central line infection rates from 11% to zero, resulting in saving 8 lives and two million dollars.

A 49 year old man burns 10% more calories than his personal best immediately after writing down 5 items on a piece of paper.

Although the last example (mine) is not as powerful as the other three, all four have one thing in common. They unlock the power of a checklist. The first three examples are from an excellent book called ‘Checklist Manifesto’ by Atul Gawande.

You may be thinking one of two things; either ‘I love checklists’ or ‘what’s the difference between a checklist and a to-do list’.

A to-do list is like a laundry list or a grocery list. A checklist pushes you to peak performance.

Checklists work in  life or death situations – and let’s face it – we’re all in a life or death situation as long as you expand or contract the timeline accordingly.

In the case of the Austrian hospital, the 911 operator followed a checklist immediately after taking the call and dispatching rescue operations. The checklist allowed the operator to ensure every single expert needed was ready and waiting at the hospital with complex equipment that was in perfect working order. If any one of those people were not there or piece of equipment malfunctioning, the little girl would have stayed dead.

Dr. Peter Pronovost created a simple checklist for performing the central line insertion procedure. Five simple yet powerful steps –  1. Wash Hands 2. Use Antiseptic 3. Wear a mask, gown and gloves 4. Drape the patient 5. Use sterilized dressing on the site. At least one of these steps was being missed at least thirty percent of the time. Nurses had the authority to halt the procedure if all 5 steps were not being followed.

An investigation revealed that a plane which had followed the polar flight path had developed ice crystals in the fuel. These crystals bunched together and clogged the engine’s fuel intake. If you’re a pilot and your plane experiences sudden power loss, you don’t want to read about polar flight path ice crystal investigation findings. You want to read: THROTTLE BACK.

If you can order a book from Amazon, you can execute a checklist. You don’t need ‘Amazon book ordering’ training. Now, imagine if you do have specific skills. A unique checklist designed to call on your specialized skills in a specific situation is like having super powers.

My exercise bike checklist pushes me like a personal trainer.

  1. 00:00 – 07:00 – Take-off – Set Working Load (12-13)@95 RPM – MAX HR 150
  2. 07:00 – 30:00 – Oscillate – [(15-16) – (10-11)]@95 RPM – MAX HR 160
  3. 30:00 – 32:00 – Tumble – (10-11)@85 RPM
  4. 32:00 – 35:00 – Approach – (11-12-13)@90 RPM – MAX HR 150
  5. 35:00 – 40:00 – Land – (10-11)@85 RPM – READ CALS
After a   while this checklist will become a specialized skill called 40 Minute TOTAL Cals

Welcome to the nerd side, we have pi.

List Syntropy – Count your strong moments

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Happiness is filling your life with strong moments

Consider the following two laws of physics and math

  1. A closed system becomes more disordered over time (2nd law of thermodynamics)
  2. A system cannot demonstrate its own consistency (Gödel’s  2nd incompleteness theorem)

The fact that both of these laws are ‘2nd s’ reminds me of factory seconds. Those jeans with the funny stitching and lopsided pockets are a result of a system disordering over time and proof that the procedure to make those pants cannot be proven to be inextricably perfect.

Ignoring these natural laws can result in having a ‘factory seconds’ kind of day.

There is a cure; it involves measuring and analyzing your strong moments.

What is a strong moment you ask?

A strong moment is any experience that gives you an emotional high or a jolt of energy.

I decided to list my strong moments over the course of 6 months. Every few days I would send myself an email listing all of the strong moments I could think of. I predicted what kinds of strong moments I’d have.

My Prediction 

  • Hedonistic fun – 30%
  • Enjoyable interaction with 5 or 6 strong people – 30%
  • Flow experience – 30%
  • Unknown – 10%

The Results – based on a representative sample of 336 moments

  • Inspired and motivated by ideas – 40%
  • Enjoyable interaction with 25 strong people – 25%
  • Accomplishment euphoria – 25%
  • Fun – 10%

I found this to be an eye-opening experience, here’s what I learned.

  1. Reflective perspective is different than anticipatory – how you feel after something can be much better than how you feel going into it
  2. Smashing through a painful task makes you stronger
  3. Schedule time with strong people, don’t limit yourself to just a few
  4. You can have a strong moment with almost anyone
  5. Pondering strong moments has a positive effect on your physiology
  6. Patterns start to emerge, these patterns are your strength statements

Inject positivity in your mindspace so you can look at the right things the right way

Mastering yourself is true power – Lao Tzu

Turbo-charge your memory

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Did you know there are only ten independent consonant sounds in the English alphabet?
See for yourself, say ‘tah’ out loud and then say ‘dah’. Notice the configuration of your mouth is identical in both cases.
 
We can leverage this quirk of the English language to create a powerful memory technique.
 
There are two parts to this technique, once you grasp them, the learning possibilities are limitless.
 
Part 1 – Associate a number to each consonant sound
 
1 – ‘t’ or ‘d’  – Hold up one finger, notice it looks like a t without the dash.
2 – ‘n’  – Hold up two fingers and then turn them upside down, looks like an ‘n’
3 – ‘m’  – Now hold down three fingers, looks like an ‘m’
4 – ‘r’  – Say the number four out loud and roll the ‘r’
5 – ‘L’  – Hold up your hand, notice the shape of your forefinger and thumb
6 – ‘sh’ or soft ‘g’ – Notice 6 looks like an upside down ‘g’.
7 – ‘k’ or hard ‘g’ – If you write the number 7 with a cross, it looks like a written ‘k’.
8 – ‘f’ or ‘v’ –  Handwritten small ‘f’ looks like a ‘figure 8’.
9 – ‘p’ or ‘b’ – 9 looks like a mirror image of a ‘p’.
0 – ‘zzzzzzero’ or ‘ssssss’.
 
Part 2 – Picture an object with each number
 
1 – ‘t’ or ‘d’ – tie  (a necktie)
2 – ‘n’ – noah (old man with a long white beard, over time you can just picture the white beard)
3 – ‘m’ – ma  (picture a mom)
4 – ‘r’ –  row  (oars representing rowing)
5 – ‘l’ – law  (picture a policeman’s hat)
6 – ‘sh’ or soft ‘g’ – shoe
7 – ‘k’ – key
8 – ‘f’ or ‘v’ – ivy 
9 – ‘p’ or ‘b’ – pie
0 – ‘z’ or ‘s’ – ice
 

You can use this list and create objects for numbers 10 to 99 as well. For example, the number 14 can be ‘tire’. Say you’re memorizing a list and the 14th object is ‘front closet’ just picture a tire in the front closet and you’re locked and loaded

Let’s bring this home with an example. Pretend you’re giving a talk on turbo-charging your memory and your speech is made up of 7 talk points.

1. Introduce yourself (Picture yourself wearing a funny looking tie)
2. Quirk of the english language (Picture William Shatner – Captain ‘Kirk’ is a reminder for ‘quirk’ – with a long white beard)
3. Ten independent consonant sounds (Picture your ma dancing on a sound speaker)
4. Technique has two parts to it (Picture ‘ying-yang’ symbol – represents two parts of a whole – rowing across the water)
5. Part 1 – Association (Picture a parent-teacher association meeting happening inside a gigantic policeman’s hat)
6. Part 2 – Object (Picture a lawyer in a courtroom standing up and saying, ‘I object’ and the judge has a huge shoe instead of a gavel)
7. Let’s bring this home with an example (Picture a huge key laying on the roof of a big home)

 
If you read this every day for a couple of weeks, not only will you be comfortable with the technique, but you’ll be able to explain it to others from memory. 

You may even start to believe you have tires in your front closet

Seven Bad Habits of Successful People?

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As contrasted to Stephen Covey’s book – ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, do successful people do things that get in their own way at times? 

Marshall Goldsmith is an executive performance coach and he has written a book called ‘What Got You Here Won’t Get You There’. 

He’s called in when a company is considering promoting someone to CEO or one of the ‘C’ level positions but for some reason they have a reservation. The executive seems to be ‘stuck’ in some form of bad behavior. 

What Marshall found is that successful people tend to think that their constructive behavior contributed to their success (a reasonable assumption), but they also make the mistake of thinking their destructive behavior also contributed to their success. They also tend to overlook the contribution dumb luck may have had. 

He names 20 bad habits in the book and says they seem to be rooted in 4 common urges. The urge to; win, ‘show what I know’, rationalize or disengage due to lack of personal gain. 

Seven Bad Habits

I’ve distilled these from the 20 Marshall outlines in his book. 

  1. L’il Ole Me – Rationalize that a negative attribute is a ‘virtue’
  2. The Punisher – Blame others including the messenger
  3. Interupty –  ‘listening’ is just an impatient pause for the other person to finish
  4. Possessed – acting out of anger or another negative emotion
  5. Clinger – going backwards to the past to explain why things are and can’t change
  6. Smarty  – have the last word or withhold useful information  
  7. Perfecto – don’t admit to mistakes or a willingness to learn & grow 

My smile – as I thought of others who display these habits – went to a frown – as I thought about the times I’ve demonstrated these same bad habits.

Fortunately for others, myself and maybe even you, there is a simple yet powerful cure.

The Cure

  1. Recognize ‘D=A’  – Identify which urge is at play (I call this ‘D=A’ because I’ve been told that when I’m Defensive, I tend to be an Ass)
  2. Pause
  3. Pick 1 of the following 3 options – Say Nothing or Thank-you or Sorry. 
  4. Make a weekly list of people you want to – 1. Thank 2. Apologize to and/or 3. Share information with.

If you don’t like this article, I won’t say anything (option 1).

If you do like it, I’d like to thank you (option 2).

I’d also like to say sorry –  just in case.

Self-esteem on one page – forging a strength by fire

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My (then 15 year-old) daughter phoned me to get something off her chest.

I was busting at the seams to tell her what was wrong with the way she was looking at things and I was frustrated because she wasn’t letting me tell her how to fix her problem. The call ended with my daughter feeling hurt and my feeling annoyed. My annoyance transformed into guilt as I realized this was not who I wanted to be.

I love my daughter with every fiber of my being. I needed to dig deep and find a healthy way forward.

Then it came to me.

I was reading ‘Six Pillars of Self-Esteem’ (by Nathaniel Branden); I challenged myself to capture the essence of the book on one page. If I wasn’t able to do this, I had no right explaining the concept to my daughter.

I spent 4 hours the next morning and studied the book with such intensity that when I finished I had ‘version 0.1’ of the one-pager. Although I’ve refined the original over the years, I think 95% of the essence was captured that Sunday morning.

Six Pillars of Self-Esteem – one pager by Omer Aziz

Definition – Trust in my mind to apprehend and deal with reality appropriately & confidence in my right to happiness

The Six Pillars

  1. Living consciously – Expand my awareness – A curiosity and desire to continually seek out salient points
  2. Self-acceptance – I am compassionate to myself
  3. Self-responsibility – I am responsible for the fulfillment of my goals
  4. Self-Assertiveness – Honor my needs, wants and values and find appropriate forms of their expression
  5. Living purposefully – Formulate goals, identify actions, monitor behavior and pay attention to outcomes
  6. Personal integrity – When my ideals and practice match

Good habits

Catch and observe negative feelings and thoughts without acting

Count strong moments

Identify and derive salient points

Set clear, demanding goals and persevere

Course correct – monitor and adjust behavior

Bad habits

Belief that feeling is fact

Fear-driven actions

Avoid, ignore or deny relevant facts

Blame my low self-esteem on external factors

Powerless over emotional pain (fear, anxiety, depression, rage, etc)

 

Knowing others is intelligence;

Knowing yourself is true wisdom.

Mastering others is strength;

Mastering yourself is true power

– Lao Tzu

I learned that it was not my daughter’s self-esteem we needed to focus on, it was mine.

Physics and Positive Psychology

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Maurice is one of the smartest most interesting people I’ve ever met. People have taken his courses on photonic propagation and come out feeling punch drunk.

I remember telling him once that I was going to be driving from Ottawa to New Brunswick and needed to wake up at 5am the day after I reached Fredericton. At 5 am (my time, not Ontario time) my cell phone rang. He’d gotten himself up and called me.

I told him I wanted to re-acquaint myself with the equations that describe a spring oscillating under a weight. He dropped by my office one day and derived the equations from scratch on my whiteboard. I remember he was tired that day and literally started to fall asleep standing up as he was writing the equations.

Our rapport created an unusual and powerful combination between Physics and Positive Psychology. I decided to leverage that combination one day be telling him about a concept called Flow.

Flow is a term coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a pioneer in the research of peak of performance and one of the most cited authors in the field of positive psychology.

Csikszentmihalyi describes Flow as; a unified flow from one moment to the next, in which we feel in control of our actions and in which there is little distinction between self and environment, stimulus and response, past, present and future.

I described the defining characteristics of Flow.
Through that dialogue Maurice distilled them down to 7 simple statements, I love the way his mind works.

1. Goal is clear
(outcome is not vague, you’ll know if you achieved it or not, outcome is dichotomous)

2. Challenge is slightly stretch
(Challenge is slightly greater than or equal to your peak skill – calls for your best).

3. Presence of Feedback loop
(You know how you’re doing at all times, allows you to continually course correct.)

4. You are your talents
(Engaged in the exclusive use of your talents)

5. You are fully concentrated on salient factors.
(No distractions, no extraneous inputs, no compromise of performance due to fear or worry.)

6. Time has no meaning
(time either flies or stands still)

7. You approach the upper limit of intrinsic satisfaction.
(You love doing it for the sake of doing it).

This conversation has kept me interested and excited about this concept for over  ten years.

I learned from Maurice that maybe there isn’t a big difference between physics and positive psychology after all.