A view from the interviewer’s side.  Ms. Ryan writes “Want to hire good people, Stop asking stupid Interview Questions!”

Want to Hire Great People? Stop Asking Stupid Interview Questions!

Measurable Health improvements by Thinking Positively – Dr. Bradberry from Emotional Intelligence 2.o

How Positivity Makes You Healthy and Successful

When faced with setbacks and challenges, we’ve all received the well-meaning advice to “stay positive.” The greater the challenge, the more this glass-half-full wisdom can come across as Pollyannaish and unrealistic. It’s hard to find the motivation to focus on the positive when positivity seems like nothing more than wishful thinking.

The real obstacle to positivity is that our brains are hard-wired to look for and focus on threats. This survival mechanism served humankind well back when we were hunters and gatherers, living each day with the very real threat of being killed by someone or something in our immediate surroundings.

That was eons ago. Today, this mechanism breeds pessimism and negativity through the mind’s tendency to wander until it finds a threat. These “threats” magnify the perceived likelihood that things are going—and/or are going to go—poorly. When the threat is real and lurking in the bushes down the path, this mechanism serves you well. When the threat is imagined and you spend two months convinced the project you’re working on is going to flop, this mechanism leaves you with a soured view of reality that wreaks havoc in your life.

Related: 7 Challenges Successful People Overcome

Positivity and Your Health

Pessimism is trouble because it’s bad for your health. Numerous studies have shown that optimists are physically and psychologically healthier than pessimists.

To examine physical health, Seligman worked with researchers from Dartmouth and the University of Michigan on a study that followed people from age 25 to 65 to see how their levels of pessimism or optimism influenced or correlated with their overall health. The researchers found that pessimists’ health deteriorated far more rapidly as they aged.

Seligman’s findings are similar to research conducted by the Mayo Clinic that found optimists have lower levels of cardiovascular disease and longer life-spans. Although the exact mechanism through which pessimism affects health hasn’t been identified, researchers at Yale and the University of Colorado found that pessimism is associated with a weakened immune response to tumors and infection.

Researchers from the Universities of Kentucky and Louisville went so far as to inject optimists and pessimists with a virus to measure their immune response. The researchers found optimists had a significantly stronger immune response than pessimists.

Positivity and Performance

Keeping a positive attitude isn’t just good for your health. Martin Seligman has also studied the connection between positivity and performance. In one study in particular, he measured the degree to which insurance salespeople were optimistic or pessimistic in their work, including whether they attributed failed sales to personal deficits beyond their control or circumstances they could improve with effort. Optimistic salespeople sold 37% more policies than pessimists, who were twice as likely to leave the company during their first year of employment.

Seligman has studied positivity more than anyone, and he believes in the ability to turn pessimistic thoughts and tendencies around with simple effort and know-how. But Seligman doesn’t just believe this. His research shows that people can transform a tendency toward pessimistic thinking into positive thinking through simple techniques that create lasting changes in behavior long after they are discovered.

Your brain just needs a little help to defeat its negative inner voice. Here are two simple steps you can take that will train your brain to focus on the positive.

Step 1. Separate Fact from Fiction

The first step in learning to focus on the positive requires knowing how to stop negative self-talk in its tracks. The more you ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them. Most of our negative thoughts are just that—thoughts, not facts.

When you find yourself believing the negative and pessimistic things your inner voice says, it’s time to stop and write them down. Literally stop what you’re doing and write down what you’re thinking. Once you’ve taken a moment to slow down the negative momentum of your thoughts, you will be more rational and clear-headed in evaluating their veracity. Evaluate these statements to see if they’re factual. You can bet the statements aren’t true any time you see words like never, always, worst, ever, etc.

Related: 15 Habits of Mentally Tough People

Do you really always lose your keys? Of course not. Perhaps you forget them frequently, but most days you do remember them. Are you never going to find a solution to your problem? If you really are that stuck, maybe you’ve been resisting asking for help. Or if it really is an intractable problem, then why are you wasting your time beating your head against the wall? If your statements still look like facts once they’re on paper, take them to a friend or colleague you can trust, and see if he or she agrees with you. Then the truth will surely come out.

When it feels like something always or never happens, this is just your brain’s natural threat tendency inflating the perceived frequency or severity of an event. Identifying and labeling your thoughts asthoughts by separating them from the facts will help you escape the cycle of negativity and move toward a positive new outlook.

Step 2. Identify a Positive

Now that you have a tool to snap yourself out of self-defeating, negative thoughts, it’s time to help your brain learn what you want it to focus on—the positive.

This will come naturally after some practice, but first you have to give your wandering brain a little help by consciously selecting something positive to think about. Any positive thought will do to refocus your brain’s attention. When things are going well, and your mood is good, this is relatively easy. When things are going poorly, and your mind is flooded with negative thoughts, this can be a challenge. In these moments, think about your day and identify one positive thing that happened, no matter how small. If you can’t think of something from the current day, reflect on the previous day or even the previous week. Or perhaps there is an exciting event you are looking forward to that you can focus your attention on.

The point here is you must have something positive that you’re ready to shift your attention to when your thoughts turn negative. In step one, you learned how to strip the power from negative thoughts by separating fact from fiction. Step two is to replace the negative with a positive. Once you have identified a positive thought, draw your attention to that thought each time you find yourself dwelling on the negative. If that proves difficult, you can repeat the process of writing down the negative thoughts to discredit their validity, and then allow yourself to freely enjoy positive thoughts.

Bringing It All Together

I realize these two steps sound incredibly basic, but they have tremendous power because they retrain your brain to have a positive focus. These steps break old habits, if you force yourself to use them. Given the mind’s natural tendency to wander toward negative thoughts, we can all use a little help with staying positive. Put these steps to use, and you’ll reap the physical, mental, and performance benefits that come with a positive frame of mind.

By Liz Wainger, CPF
PR/Communications Strategist, Speaker and Trainer

4 Secrets to Communicating Value

One of the secrets of successful people is that they make lists of things they want to accomplish. Then they march along their to-do list to accomplishment nirvana.  While that may work for productivity, it’s a terrible technique for communicating.  Yet too often, people suffer from what I call the list-maker syndrome.  Instead of talking about problems they solve and the ways they help enterprises move the needle, businesses and organizations offer lists of products, services, and attributes. And because they fail to insert themselves into the context of what matters most to their audiences, they miss the big chance to communicate true value.

Are you valuable?

This issue came into clear focus recently when working with two very different clients.  One was trying to articulate the differentiating qualities for a new business pitch; the other was drafting marketing content.  In both cases, they talked about “deep experience,” being “expert” and “strategic,”  “caring about clients,” and “offering a wide array of services.”  Almost the exact same words appeared, even though the clients were in completely different business sectors.

The attributes they used to describe themselves are wonderful. But think about it.  Who in their right minds would say that they are inexperienced, have no expertise, and are not strategic? What was missing in each case was a storyline that lets  audience members see themselves in a relationship with these enterprises.  What’s needed are messages that not only communicate value, but compel the target audience to become more engaged—that is, buy something, endorse something, feel the need to patronize and support.

Here are a few tips for how to overcome the list-maker syndrome.

Get out of your own head.  You can be justifiably proud if you have worked with firms in 20 industries, or if your list of services fills up an entire web page. But while you’re demonstrating how busy you are, you may be the only one who cares.  What really counts is how the world around you has been transformed by all that activity and what your clients, customers, or supporters realize as a result of what you do.

Adjust your mindset to see the sphere in which you operate through your client or customer’s lens. If in doubt, apply the “so that” rule, as in “I do this, so that you can achieve that.” For example, “We offer a suite of services so that you can maximize productivity and build your bottom line.”

Get a handle on the problems your clients want to solve.  Value is created when you increase the things that people want—profits, talent, productivity—and reduce or eliminate the things they don’t want—stress, hassles, excess spending, and time-wasting projects and processes. Learn the things that keep prospects and clients up at night. Talk to your customers and clients, not about what you can provide, but what they want to achieve and what’s holding them back. Then target those needs.

In action, it looks like this:  “The ability to provide social media and marketing communications support” is list-maker-speak. “Putting your products, services, and opportunities in front of motivated buyers or donors” is value-speak.  “Providing intellectual property legal services” is list-maker-speak.  “Protecting the earnings of musicians, artists, and writers so their work product is not stolen” is value-speak.  “Providing team building workshops” is list-maker-speak.  “Bringing dysfunctional teams together to stop a costly talent drain” is value-speak.

Use storytelling to demonstrate how you deliver value.  Storytelling isn’t just communications-industry buzz. Significant published research over the past couple of decades suggests that narratives light up certain parts of our brains, so hearing or reading stories make us feel not just more alive, but closer to the storyteller.

After you’ve piqued audience interest by promising to reduce or eliminate a vexing problem or save time or money, it’s a great idea to demonstrate how you accomplish that by telling a success story.  If you are an accounting firm providing tax advice, you might say, “We help small businesses thrive by navigating the complexity of IRS rules. Just last week we worked with a company that had been overpaying because they didn’t know about a deduction that could save them $100,000. Our expertise helped the firm recover enough money to buy a new software system that had been put on hold.”

Use verbs first—and then nouns—to describe what you can do.  Verbs communicate movement and create momentum.  Nouns are actors, but not active.  Good verbs to use:  “reducing,” “eliminating,” “increasing,” “improving,” “growing,” and “creating.”  Good nouns to use when discussing increases and supplements are “growth,” “return on investment,” “efficiency,” “productivity,” and “stability.”  When you talk about soothing a client’s headaches, use nouns like “burnout,” “strife,”  “stress,”  “waste,” and “inefficiency.”

To move from list-speak to value-speak requires stepping back and thinking through, not what you do, but why what you do matters to someone else. The why is what fuels demand, drives loyalty, and achieves results. It may not always be easy. But the returns are priceless.

This Post originally appeared in Huffington Post Business.

Harvard Business Review article with additional references <– click to go to article

How to turn a Bad Day Around

Let’s face it. Life can be full of frustrations—an argument with your teenager over breakfast, a missed train, or even just a spilled coffee can make you wish you could crawl back into bed. How can you change your mood when you’ve started your day off on the wrong foot? How do you stop annoyances from dragging you down and killing your productivity?

What the Experts Say
The good news is you can turn a bad day into a good one. “Happiness is a choice,” says Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage. Even when something objectively negative happens—your star employee gives notice or you’re late to an important meeting with the CEO—it’s important to focus on the positive things that are also happening. “Studies show that when you’re positive, you’re 31% more productive, you’re 40% more likely to receive a promotion, you have 23% fewer health-related effects from stress, and your creativity rates triple,” he explains. Discontent is also contagious, adds Annie McKee, founder of the Teleos Leadership Institute and coauthor of Primal Leadership. “Your negative emotions spread like wildfire,” she explains. “It’s worth changing your mood, not just to make your day more pleasant and productive but to spare those around you.” So what can you do when you’re in a downward spiral? Here are some ideas:

Pinpoint the problem
The earlier you catch your bad mood, the easier it will be to do something about it. “We have to have early warning signals that tell us that our resilience is dwindling,” says McKee. She recommends pausing regularly to check your emotional state. “Perhaps you’re being snappy with people, you’re not smiling as much, or you have a headache,” she says. It’s also important to pinpoint and name what’s going on. It’s better to say, “I’m upset because I’m behind on an important project and traffic was terrible today,” rather than the over-simplified, “I feel awful,” McKee says. Having a concrete reason for your unhappiness gives you something to work on.

Take a moment to be grateful
One of the simplest ways to focus on the positive is to think about what you’re grateful for, whether it’s your job, your kids, or the clothes on your back. “There are neuroimaging studies that show it’s almost impossible to be in a depressed state and grateful at the same time,” explains Achor. McKee agrees that gratitude is “a powerful antidote to the urgent feeling of stress and lack of control.” So as soon as you start to feel negative, short circuit your mood by asking yourself, What are three good things that are going on right now? Consider saying them out loud or writing them down. This will help you get some perspective on the bad day. Sure, you may have had a fender bender or missed an appointment, but there are other, perhaps more important, things in your life that are going well.

Take action
Another way to stop yourself from “trending negative” is to “take a single concrete action,” Achor says. Send that email that you’ve been meaning to get to or make a phone call you’ve been dreading. Even choosing a healthier snack, a piece of fruit over a candy bar, can create a positive “mental avalanche” for the rest of the day. “Your brain records a victory,” Achor explains. The effect is even stronger if the action you take benefits someone else. You might be buried in your inbox, but if you take two minutes to send an email praising or thanking someone else, you’ll actually feel like you’ve gained time.

Change your routine
If you’re feeling miserable, don’t hunker down at your desk for the rest of the day. A change of scenery often helps signal to your brain that the current mood doesn’t need to be sustained. “Drive around, take a walk, or just go to a different floor. The key is to put yourself in a different physical location,” McKee advises. And once you’re there, take a few deep breaths. “If you’re heading for or already in an amygdala hijack, you have to do something to get control of your frontal lobe and breathing does that physiologically,” she explains.

You can also do something you enjoy, like listening to music or a podcast or catching up on news. Just be careful about the content you choose! A recent study by Achor in partnership with Arianna Huffington showed that just a few minutes of consuming negative news can cause a bad day. “Try to find a news outlet that focuses on solutions. Or at least create a different ratio. If you’re going to read a negative piece, read two positive ones as well, about medical breakthroughs or someone helping others,” says Achor.

Reset realistic expectations
“Expectations can have a huge impact on mood,” says Achor. “If I expect my flight to be canceled and it’s only three hours delayed, then I’m going to be thrilled. But if I expect it to be on time and then it’s delayed, then I’m going to be upset.” A lot of bad days start when you have unrealistic expectations about what you can accomplish. If your mood is deteriorating because it’s after lunch and you feel behind, don’t despair. “You can rewrite the narrative on the day,” he says. Highlight what progress you have made. “Write down two or three things you’ve already done. You woke up, you had breakfast with your kid, you drove to work, you even wrote a checklist. That way you’re starting at 25% progress.” And then make a list of “short, attainable goals” for the rest of the day.

Learn from your bad days to prevent future ones
When you do have a bad day, it’s important to reflect on them before you put them behind you. By taking note of what went wrong—and then right—you can “learn what your triggers are so you stay away from those particular stimuli or at least know how you’re likely to react if you’re triggered,” McKee says. If you’ve tried the above strategies, make a note of what works for you and what doesn’t, and “be more precise in the future in how you turn things around.” And definitely pay attention when bad days pile up. Is there something bigger going on that you need to address? Is there some broader action you need to take? “We’re seeing a movement toward higher workloads and longer work hours and there’s lots of research that shows that when people work more than 55 hours a week, engagement and happiness levels plummet,” says Achor. Consider whether you need to fundamentally rethink the way you do your job or balance your work and family life.

Principles to Remember

Do:

• Think of three things that you’re grateful for
• Consider what you’ve already accomplished even if it’s minor
• Reflect on what triggers your bad days and which tactics help to turn them around

• Believe that you are a victim of your circumstances—you choose whether to be negative or positive
• Hunker down at your desk—change scenery and take a few deep breaths
• Set unrealistic expectations for your day

Case study #1: Focus on opportunities not problems
Kate Hanley, a mindset coach and the author of A Year of Daily Calm, often helps her clients develop strategies to get out of their bad days. “People come to me because they’re feeling stuck and they’ve tried everything they know how to try,” she says.

She usually starts by asking them what triggered their negative mood. “I try to get them to pinpoint where it started to go bad,” she says. “Naming it can be really helpful.”

Then she advises her clients to “get curious” and ask a lot of questions about what is going on. Is this a one-time event or an ongoing trend? Have I felt like this before? What caused it last time? “We’ve evolved to scan for danger so once you’re in a bad mood, it can be hard to get out,” she says.

She also tries to get people to reframe problems as opportunities. If an important client meeting gets canceled, what can you do with that free hour? If a direct report doesn’t do a good job on a presentation, how can you help her learn from the situation?

Kate uses these same tactics when she’s having her own bad days. A few weeks back, she noticed she was in an awful mood around lunchtime and quickly identified the cause: two clients had canceled on her that morning. “I don’t like when my appointments get moved a lot because it screws up the rhythm of my day,” she says.

“My mind quickly made a trend out of it but I pulled back and asked myself, ‘Do clients cancel a lot or is it just today?’” With that perspective, she was able to think more positively. She also took a few moments to get out of the office and do something she enjoys—listen to music. “If you ever see me driving around in my car listening to classical, you know it’s been a crazy day.”

Case study #2: Remember it’s just one day
Darin Freitag, who manages residential and commercial projects at the general contractor RYAN Associates says that he can usually tell early on in a day when things are going wrong. “It starts when I receive a phone call from an angry client or I realize that an important project isn’t going to be done on time,” he says. Then “I’m distracted so I’m not thinking clearly and I make more mistakes, like speeding into work and getting a ticket or even backing my car into something.”

That’s when he takes a step back. “I tell myself, ‘OK, something’s going on here. I’m just not in a place where I’m going to win today.” To get himself back into the right frame of mind, his first step is to get some perspective. “I think about how this is just one day in the long haul of a career, or a project, or the business,” he explains.

He reminds himself that it’s normal to have a rough patch here and there and that he can’t solve every problem. “Like many people, I often have this grandiose idea that I’m so important that I can fix anything. But that’s just not true. And if I try to fix it all, it’s just going to get worse,” he says. So he temporarily resets his expectations for the day. “Sometimes I need to lower my standards and be more realistic,” he says.

He remembers one day when he had to give a presentation. Not only did he feel unprepared but there were also technical problems with the projector. But instead of getting frustrated, he took a deep breath and told himself, “OK, this is not going to go as well as I hoped or planned.”

Over time, he’s learned that, while he can’t stop bad things from happening, he can control how he responds to them. “I know I’m going to be miserable until I change my perspective, or accept the situation,” he explains.  “I can wallow for a while but it’s not fun and it just leads to depression. I eventually realize that I’m swimming upstream and that I need to stop swimming and just float. And then usually it doesn’t take long for the situation to change.”

Dr. Bradberry describes techniques that improve the way you connect with people (networking)

How to Instantly Connect with Anyone

Too many people succumb to the mistaken belief that the ability to connect with others is a natural, unteachable trait that belongs to only a lucky few. It’s easy to fall prey to this misconception. In reality, this ability is under your control, and it’s a matter of emotional intelligence (EQ).

Research conducted by Matthew Lieberman at UCLA shows that being social and connecting with others is as fundamental a human need as food, shelter, and water. For example, Lieberman discovered that we feel social pain, such as the loss of a relationship, in the same part of the brain that we feel physical pain.

The primary function of this brain area is to alert us to threats to our survival. It makes you realize how powerful and important social connection is. We’re hard wired to be social creatures.

“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood.” -Ralph Nichols

MRIs of the brain show that social thinking and analytical thinking involve entirely different neural networks and that they operate something like a seesaw. When you engage in analytical thinking, the social part of your brain quiets down, but as soon as you’re finished, the social network springs back to life.

The social brain is the end of the seesaw where the fat kid sits; it’s our brain’s default setting.

Given that social connection is such a fundamental human need, you’d think that it would be easy to connect with everyone we meet. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Against our own self-interest, we get bogged down by shyness, self-consciousness, cynicism, pride, competitiveness, jealousy, and arrogance.

If you can get that baggage out of the way, you can connect with anyone—even those who are still holding on to their own. Here are some tips that will help you to connect instantly with everyone you meet.

Leave a strong first impression. Research shows that most people decide whether or not they like you within the first seven seconds of meeting you. They then spend the rest of the conversation internally justifying their initial reaction. This may sound terrifying, but by knowing this, you can take advantage of it to connect with anyone.

First impressions are tied intimately to positive body language. Becoming cognizant of your gestures, expressions, and tone of voice (and making certain they’re positive) will draw people to you like ants to a picnic. Using an enthusiastic tone, uncrossing your arms, maintaining eye contact, and leaning towards the person who’s speaking are all forms of positive body language that high-EQ people use to draw others in. Positive body language can make all the difference in a conversation. It’s true that how you say something can be more important than what you say.

Be the first to venture beyond the superficial. Our first conversation or two with a new acquaintance tends to be pretty superficial. We portray a careful picture of ourselves, and we stick to nice, safe topics. We talk about the weather and people we know in common and share the most basic details about ourselves. But if you really want to connect with somebody, try upping the ante and revealing the real you. You don’t need to get too personal, but it’s important to let the other person know what you’re passionate about. Most of the time, if you open up, the other person will follow your lead and do the same.

Ask good questions. If the other person seems hesitant to open up, encourage them to do so by asking substantial questions. “What do you do?” doesn’t further the relationship nearly as much as, “Why did you choose your profession?” Search for questions that will help you to understand what makes the other person tick, without getting too personal.

Learn from them. In the course of his research, Lieberman concluded that our educational system would be much more effective if we tapped into the social side of learning, rather than trying to squash it. For example, the best way to help an eighth-grader struggling with math would be to have him get help from another student. Apply that same principle to your life, and be willing to learn from the person you’re trying to connect with. Not only does that make them feel more bonded to you, it makes them feel important. It also shows that you’re willing to be vulnerable and aren’t too proud to admit that you have much to learn.

Don’t make them regret removing the mask. If your new acquaintance does you the honor of opening up, don’t make them regret it. Sarcasm, criticism, or jokes that might make the other person feel judged for what they’ve shared are major faux paus. Instead, empathize with their approach to life, which you can do even if you don’t agree with their beliefs, and then reciprocate by revealing more about yourself.

Look for the good in them. Our culture can often predispose us toward cynicism. We seem to focus on finding reasons not to like people instead of reasons to like them. Shut that cynical voice off, and concentrate on looking for the good in a new acquaintance. For one thing, that keeps you from writing someone off too soon, but more importantly, when you expect the best from people, they’re likely to deliver it.

Smile. People naturally (and unconsciously) mirror the body language of the person they’re talking to. If you want people to like you, smile at them during a conversation and they will unconsciously return the favor and feel good about you as a result.

Use their name. Your name is an essential part of your identity, and it feels terrific when people use it. You shouldn’t use someone’s name only when you greet them. Research shows that people feel validated when the person they’re speaking with refers to them by name during a conversation. When you meet someone, don’t be afraid to ask their name a second time if you forget it right after you hear it. You’ll need to keep their name handy if you’re going to remember it the next time you see them.

Follow the platinum rule. We all know the golden rule, and it’s pretty easy to follow. The platinum rule is harder to follow because it requires us to treat people the way they want to be treated. Not only does doing so make the other person more comfortable—and therefore more likely to open up—but it also proves that you’ve been listening and have really heard what they’ve been telling you. And that shows extra effort on your part.

Don’t make it a contest. We’ve all seen the stereotypical sit-com scene where two guys in a bar spend the night trying to one-up each other. The same thing happens when you meet someone new. Their accomplishments and life experience sneak up on you and make you feel the urge to make yourself look just as good (if not better). Doing so may stroke your ego, but it doesn’t help you to connect with them. It keeps you focused on yourself when you should be trying to learn about them and find common ground.

Turn off your inner voice. One giant thing that keeps us from connecting with other people is that we don’t really listen. Instead, we’re thinking while the other person is talking. We’re so focused on what we’re going to say next or how what the other person is saying is going to affect us down the road that we fail to hear what’s really being said. The words come through loud and clear, but the meaning is lost.

You must turn off this inner voice if you want to connect deeply with people. So what if you forget what you were going to say or if the conversation moves in a different direction before you have a chance to make your point. If your real goal is to connect with a person, you have to shut off your own soundtrack long enough to focus on what they’re telling you.

Bringing It All Together

The good news is that we’re programmed to connect with each other; we just keep getting in our own way. Try these tips the next time you meet someone new, and watch a superficial conversation turn into a real connection.

How do you connect with people? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

Dr. Bradberry talks about being genuine in the context of Emotional Intelligence

The Importance of Being Genuine

There’s an enormous amount of research suggesting that emotional intelligence (EQ) is critical to your performance at work. TalentSmart has tested the EQ of more than a million people and found that it explains 58% of success in all types of jobs.

People with high EQs make $29,000 more annually than people with low EQs. Ninety percent of top performers have high EQs, and a single-point increase in your EQ adds $1,300 to your salary. I could go on and on.

Suffice it to say, emotional intelligence is a powerful way to focus your energy in one direction with tremendous results.

But there’s a catch. Emotional intelligence won’t do a thing for you if you aren’t genuine.

A recent study from the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington found that people don’t accept demonstrations of emotional intelligence at face value. They’re too skeptical for that. They don’t just want to see signs of emotional intelligence. They want to know that it’s genuine—that your emotions are authentic.

According to lead researcher Christina Fong, when it comes to your coworkers,

“They are not just mindless automatons. They think about the emotions they see and care whether they are sincere or manipulative.”

The same study found that sincere leaders are far more effective at motivating people because they inspire trust and admiration through their actions, not just their words. Many leaders say that authenticity is important to them, but genuine leaders walk their talk every day.

It’s not enough to just go through the motions, trying to demonstrate qualities that are associated with emotional intelligence. You have to be genuine.

You can do a gut check to find out how genuine you are by comparing your own behavior to that of people who are highly genuine. Consider the hallmarks of genuine people and see how you stack up.

“Authenticity requires a certain measure of vulnerability, transparency, and integrity,” -Janet Louise Stephenson

Genuine people don’t try to make people like them. Genuine people are who they are. They know that some people will like them, and some won’t. And they’re okay with that. It’s not that they don’t care whether or not other people will like them but simply that they’re not going to let that get in the way of doing the right thing. They’re willing to make unpopular decisions and to take unpopular positions if that’s what needs to be done.

Since genuine people aren’t desperate for attention, they don’t try to show off. They know that when they speak in a friendly, confident, and concise manner, people are much more attentive to and interested in what they have to say than if they try to show that they’re important. People catch on to your attitude quickly and are more attracted to the right attitude than what or how many people you know.

They don’t pass judgment. Genuine people are open-minded, which makes them approachable and interesting to others. No one wants to have a conversation with someone who has already formed an opinion and is not willing to listen.

Having an open mind is crucial in the workplace, as approachability means access to new ideas and help. To eliminate preconceived notions and judgment, you need to see the world through other people’s eyes. This doesn’t require you to believe what they believe or condone their behavior; it simply means you quit passing judgment long enough to truly understand what makes them tick. Only then can you let them be who they are.

They forge their own paths. Genuine people don’t derive their sense of pleasure and satisfaction from the opinions of others. This frees them up to follow their own internal compasses. They know who they are and don’t pretend to be anything else. Their direction comes from within, from their own principles and values. They do what they believe to be the right thing, and they’re not swayed by the fact that somebody might not like it.

They are generous. We’ve all worked with people who constantly hold something back, whether it’s knowledge or resources. They act as if they’re afraid you’ll outshine them if they give you access to everything you need to do your job. Genuine people are unfailingly generous with whom they know, what they know, and the resources they have access to. They want you to do well more than anything else because they’re team players and they’re confident enough to never worry that your success might make them look bad. In fact, they believe that your success is their success.

They treat EVERYONE with respect. Whether interacting with their biggest clients or servers taking their drink orders, genuine people are unfailingly polite and respectful. They understand that no matter how nice they are to the people they have lunch with, it’s all for naught if those people witnesses them behaving badly toward others. Genuine people treat everyone with respect because they believe they’re no better than anyone else.

They aren’t motivated by material things. Genuine people don’t need shiny, fancy stuff in order to feel good. It’s not that they think it’s wrong to go out and buy the latest and greatest items to show off their status; they just don’t need to do this to be happy. Their happiness comes from within, as well as from the simpler pleasures—such as friends, family, and a sense of purpose—that make life rich.

They are trustworthy. People gravitate toward those who are genuine because they know they can trust them. It is difficult to like someone when you don’t know who they really are and how they really feel. Genuine people mean what they say, and if they make a commitment, they keep it. You’ll never hear a truly genuine person say, “Oh, I just said that to make the meeting end faster.” You know that if they say something, it’s because they believe it to be true.

They are thick-skinned. Genuine people have a strong enough sense of self that they don’t go around seeing offense that isn’t there. If somebody criticizes one of their ideas, they don’t treat this as a personal attack. There’s no need for them to jump to conclusions, feel insulted, and start plotting their revenge. They’re able to objectively evaluate negative and constructive feedback, accept what works, put it into practice, and leave the rest of it behind without developing hard feelings.

They put away their phones. Nothing turns someone off to you like a mid-conversation text message or even a quick glance at your phone. When genuine people commit to a conversation, they focus all of their energy on the conversation. You will find that conversations are more enjoyable and effective when you immerse yourself in them. When you robotically approach people with small talk and are tethered to your phone, this puts their brains on autopilot and prevents them from having any real affinity for you. Genuine people create connection and find depth even in short, everyday conversations. Their genuine interest in other people makes it easy for them to ask good questions and relate what they’re told to other important facets of the speaker’s life.

They aren’t driven by ego. Genuine people don’t make decisions based on their egos because they don’t need the admiration of others in order to feel good about themselves. Likewise, they don’t seek the limelight or try to take credit for other people’s accomplishments. They simply do what needs to be done without saying, “Hey, look at me!”

They aren’t hypocrites. Genuine people practice what they preach. They don’t tell you to do one thing and then do the opposite themselves. That’s largely due to their self-awareness. Many hypocrites don’t even recognize their mistakes. They’re blind to their own weaknesses. Genuine people, on the other hand, fix their own problems first.

They don’t brag. We’ve all worked with people who can’t stop talking about themselves and their accomplishments. Have you ever wondered why? They boast and brag because they’re insecure and worried that if they don’t point out their accomplishments, no one will notice. Genuine people don’t need to brag. They’re confident in their accomplishments, but they also realize that when you truly do something that matters, it stands on its own merits, regardless of how many people notice or appreciate it.

Bringing It All Together

Genuine people know who they are. They are confident enough to be comfortable in their own skin. They are firmly grounded in reality, and they’re truly present in each moment because they’re not trying to figure out someone else’s agenda or worrying about their own.

Author Liz Ryan describes how to answer the Question: “Tell me about  yourself”

How to Answer the Question “Tell Me About Yourself!”

Take a person out of the job-interview setting and the question “Tell me about yourself!” becomes very easy to answer.

In a social situation, most people would answer this way: “Well, I live here in Portsmouth with my family and I work at the bank” or “I grew up in Scotland and moved here four years ago to go to grad school.”

It’s not hard to answer the question “What’s your story?” outside of the formal, scripted job-interview setting.

The  problem is that when a job interviewer says “Tell me about yourself!” you have no idea what he or she wants to hear. You hope the interviewer has already read your resume before you walk  into the room, but you also know that it’s more likely s/he  hasn’t.

You show up as a blank slate. The interviewer knows exactly nothing about you. Where would you begin to explain who you are and what you do? You don’t have all day to lay out your background. How do you possibly begin?

Here’s my recommendation. You can use the question “Tell me about yourself!” (not really a question,  but close enough) to shift the job interview off the traditional script and into more fertile conversational territory.

What is your goal in a job interview, after all? You want to learn as much as you can about the Business Pain confronting your hiring manager, and you want to let him or her know that you’ve dealt with that type of Business Pain before.

What is Business Pain?  It’s any problem that slows an organization down, and luckily for job-seekers there is Business Pain everywhere. You probably have some idea of the Business Pain a hiring manager is up against before you step into the interview.

You must! You’ve got to research any organization you’re going to be  interviewing with and think about the problems most likely to be vexing your manager.

You have to develop a Pain Hypothesis before you set foot in the building. You have to have an idea in your mind of what’s not working in the hiring manager’s department, such that the manager is willing to spend money (your salary) to fix the problem.

You can use the Pain Interviewing technique with your hiring manager, but don’t use it with an HR screener or recruiter. That person isn’t likely to be close to the Business Pain your hiring manager is experiencing, and your attempts to get off the script will  only frustrate and confuse him or her.

Here’s how you’ll use the question “Tell me about yourself!” to get your hiring manager off the script and to get into the meaty topic of your manager’s Business Pain:

MANAGER: Thanks for coming over today. So, Chris, tell me about yourself!

YOU (CHRIS): For sure. Well, I grew up here in the area and I went to State for my degree in Communications. I’ve been working in Sales Support for three years. Listen, I don’t want to keep you here all night listening to my story — can I ask you a quick question about the job, just to make sure I understand what you’re looking for?

MANAGER: Sure!

YOU: I saw in your job ad that you need someone to take care of your major accounts once they’ve placed an order, and keep them happy and up-to-date on new product releases. That makes perfect sense. My question is, who’s taking care of new customers now? Once your salesperson gets a purchase order, what happens?

MANAGER: Right now, our sales guy gets a PO and gives it to Order Fulfillment and that gets the ball rolling. The problem is that our salespeople have way too many other things to do. They don’t have time to check on every order and keep tabs on our new customers, who need the most support.

YOU: So is it fair to say that you’re losing sales because the new customers who need the most support are sucking up your salespeople’s time and keeping them from closing new orders?

MANAGER: Yes, and on top of that our customer service people are complaining that they’re spending thirty percent of their time on a handful  of new customers. The good news is that once a new customer gets into the stream and they understand our systems, things settle down, but then there are even newer customers coming right behind them.

YOU: So this position is a service position, but it’s a piece of the sales puzzle, also, if I understand. The more smoothly a new customer is brought on board, the more easily the salesperson who closed the deal can sail off to close another customer. So I’m guessing that your new hire will  be doing a fair amount of education — helping new customers understand how your systems work?

MANAGER: That’s it. Never thought about it that way before, but you’re right. Have you done that kind of work before?

YOU: At Angry Chocolates I started out as a customer service rep and worked my way into inside sales. Our inside salespeople, like me, do the same thing you’re talking about this National Accounts person doing here — they take the pressure off the outside salesperson, who has a big number to hit every month. I know my customers’ kids’ names and their dogs’ names. I got to know them really well and they know they can get anything they need from me. That way our outside salespeople can say with total confidence, “You’ll be dealing with Chris, our Inside Salesperson, now that you’re on board with Angry Chocolates, but of course I’ll be available if you need me.”

MANAGER: But the outside guy doesn’t really want to get a phone call from an existing customer.

YOU: Absolutely, and I don’t want him to get that call either. I want him or her to be able to focus on closing new accounts around the country.

What has Chris conveyed in this short exchange? Chris understands the hiring manager’s pain. Chris knows that pain very well and sees how the moving parts in a business fit together.

Sadly, most working people and job-seekers are somewhat asleep at the wheel. They can tell you “I know how to process invoices” or “I  know how to build a website.” They don’t see very far beyond their own desk. Success in the new-millennium workplace relies on being able to get altitude on your own job and whatever organization you work for (or want to work for).

You can spin the question “Tell me about yourself!” to convert any interview into a powerful Pain Interview the same way Chris did.

You only have to develop a Pain Hypothesis like Chris did when he thought “I’ll bet this company is creating this new position because their outside salespeople are squeezed between new customers and old ones, and it’s costing them money.”

It’s a new day, and the Human Workplace is already here. The people who can step outside the established frames and bring themselves to work all the way — beginning right in the job interview — will grow their flames. Other people won’t dare, and will sit in the interview chair and answer questions meekly and then fall silent and wait for the next question.

Which  group would you rather be part of?