Speak Slowly and Carry a Good Story

Sister played by Whoppi Goldberg 

In 5th grade, Sr. Mary Armond taught us about President Teddy Roosevelt and I remember learning about his foreign policy that was encapsulated in the quotation: "Speak softly and carry a big stick...” However, there was more to this quotation. He added, “...you will go far." 

This worked for Teddy and it can also work for someone who’s looking for a new job. For interviews, Teddy might have made a little tweak to his trademark phrase: “speak slowly and carry a good story, you will go far.” This is really an important consideration in communicating your value to an interviewer. If you have any kind of speech issue this is even more important. I have clients who were not born in this country and have an accent. When they talk to someone who isn’t used to their accent, they are hard to understand. Additionally, when we are nervous we have the tendency to speak faster than normal. Added to an accent, you could lose an opportunity that is a perfect fit because the interviewer doesn’t know what you’re saying. 

Slowing down is a technique I use when I deliver a presentation. I’ll slow down the pace of my speech when I come to a key point I want to impress on my audience. You can also do this in an interview. Having a well practiced and rehearsed set of stories will help you slow down your speech. I recommend using a S-A-R format. Delivering the key point of a story without a lot of extra talking is the best reason to tell stories this way. Situation (what was the problem you fixed), Action you took and Results that you obtained. This format also promotes conversation with the interviewer rather than you carrying on a monologue.  

A good story really needs a good ending more than it need a lot of detail. Think about how an interview works. Most people want to tell all the facts of what the problem or situation was and then move into lots of complicated actions they took. Often people will completely forget to state the end of the story and fail to relate the results.
 

Being too specific in telling a success story forces the listener to picture the exact situation you’re describing. But isn’t that want you want to do? Not really. You really want to tell a story in a way that gets the interviewer to see you doing the same thing for their company. If you leave out the detail, the interviewer will interject his or her own environment into your story. So leave out the name of the companies in your stories. Leave out names of proprietary tools, specific cities, total numbers of lines of code, color of people’s clothes or the name of the divisional VP. If you drop a name, they cannot picture themselves in the story.  

So speak slowly and carry a good story and you’ll be successful.