We swim in the flood of knowledge these days. We learn as much as possible and try to do even more than possible. We are distracted from daily activities by notifications, news, messages, blogs, publications that we constantly put to the ‘to read’ list that is incrementally growing and growing every day. We analyse people’s behaviour, check and discuss companies indices and performance, we follow our favourite VCs, investors, founders. But how about focusing on yourself? Let’s take some time to notice what you feel, where it’s good and when it’s uncomfortable. How we feel and what we truly enjoy. Take some distance and look at yourself as if you were looking at someone else and analyse, discuss, observe.
I was inspired to do so by Lily Lyman’s Medium post titled:
’Don’t Hire For Culture Fit’. She likes asking people the following questions:
- “What’s something you’re working on in yourself?”
- “What is a difficult piece of feedback you’ve received and how did you respond?”
- “What was your most negative reference?”
- “What part of this role will be most outside your comfort zone?”
- “What feedback have you recently received and did you agree with it?”
- “Tell me about a conflict you had with a person and how did you manage it?”
I feel like I’m pretty well self aware and know myself to quite far extent but I had some struggle to verbalize some of the answers to the above questions. Do you as well? Maybe, in fact, it’s not always about knowledge and hard skills we constantly acquiring but it’s our way of thinking, our experience, empathy, ability to embrace emergency situations makes us valuable in the eyes of our role models and people we care about.
When I had a chance to participate in the interview as an interviewer, I used to ask one question that is very often left unanswered: ‘What would you like to tell us about you and we did not ask you this question?’. It’s open question but people sometimes don’t see that their daily, regular life is important and interesting. Their family life, pets, friends, travels make the full picture of them as an individual we talk to and we want to hear what they care about apart from business related matters. It’s not about valuation method you would use to price the company, sometimes it’s all about the way you approach the founders and what relationship you would build with them.
I remember, I was hired for the position that was open more than 6 months and even if it was urgent it was not filled in until the right person was found. Once I joined the company, I could really notice the difference and how unique, interesting and like-minded people they’ve collected so far. All by not agreeing on ‘almost matching our values’ and not letting the timing and stress determine the decision.
As an end note, think of what your superpower is, what drives you and where you shine.
