It’s all about the frame
Lets take the interview as our example, but see if you can think of other areas this might be useful.
When we talk about interviews, generally people associate a lot of negative words with them. The feel like they’re going to be grilled, they might dry up, that it’s a thing to be feared. I once worked with someone who was so terrified that the first time we talked about interviews she went physically white.
So obviously there’s a lot of preparation to do for answering questions and in how you present yourself, but one of the key things to do is to frame it realistically. You can either think of it as a scary experience or you could...
- Understand that the interviewer already thinks you can do the job (that’s why they invited you in).
- The interviewer really wants you to talk about how good you are and how you’ve contributed. If you do that you are helping them to make a good business decision.
- We call it an interview, but it’s just another business meeting (and you’ve done loads of them). As with all the other business meetings there’s a purpose, there’s some stuff to talk about and there are some actions/outcomes at the end. The purpose is to discuss how you can help them solve their problem (i.e. do the job) and whether they can offer work and an environment that meets what you want. It's a meeting of equals to discover whether you're right for each other.
So, by reframing the interview it becomes less scary and you give yourself permission to talk comfortably about yourself. Where else in your work or your life are you seeing problems that, if you looked at them differently, might not be problems at all?
Until next month I wish you success and happiness.
Dave
P.S. The lady I mentioned who went white at the thought of the interview: she reframed it (and we worked on how to answer questions, what to ask and how to feel confident) and she came back from her first interview saying "I really enjoyed that". ...and she got the job.
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