The Interview

I bombed an interview once. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

What is the hardest interview question you’ve ever been asked? Some people might respond with cliché questions like, “where do you want to be in five years?” or “what is your greatest weakness?”

Not me. My toughest question was, “I’ve made 12 critical decisions in my life... what are yours? What are the values that drove those decisions?”

Can you repeat that, please? Critical decisions? Personal values? I thought we were talking about situation, behavior, action, results questions... you want to know about me as a person?

In the moment, it was difficult to pinpoint and respond... I felt woefully unprepared. While I was certain that the interview was an unrecoverable failure, as I waited at the airport and flew home, I couldn’t help but recognize these were excellent questions and that I should know myself better than I did.

Well, no time like the present. I took the entire 3-hour flight home to map out my critical decisions and to identify my personal values based on my life so far.

I also took the bold move of responding to that interviewer with my assessment. If a company asked these kinds of questions, perhaps I could grow exponentially there. What was the risk?

Years before my Stoicism journey began, I faced this interview question, and it started me on a path of self-awareness.

Self-awareness is a first, critical step in a leader’s journey.

Being the first doesn’t mean it’s easy. It requires a self-examination, a willingness to see yourself clearly, and to challenge yourself to do better.

So, how do you get to know yourself better? Examine your path and your decisions. What drives you? What is important to you?

That reflection on the plane became something I’ve recommended to leaders ever since. I like to call it Life Story.

First, you consider your life as a whole. Map out all your life’s critical points both from a professional and personal standpoint. What are the significant events in your life? What was hard? What things are you proud of? Where were key transitions? These are the triumphs and the heartaches.

Now, once that is done, pretend this timeline belongs to someone else. What do you think of them? What risks did they take? What values do you notice? What patterns do you see? These are the things that drive them.

The beauty of this exercise is that you don’t have to share it. It is for you. It is a way to examine your life and understand what drives you and your decisions.

It is a way to understand who you are and who you aspire to be.

It sounds simple but few people examine their lives like this. They live reactively, buffeted by circumstances, opinions, setbacks. They’ve never done the work to understand what they value and why. And therefore, they can never begin to make choices that are aligned with who they actually are.

This was one moment in my life when I decided to be courageous. What happened next mattered far less than the fact that I chose to act in alignment with who I wanted to be.

What would you do?

“First, say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” Epictetus