The Career Story That Commands Attention

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today, we're delighted to be speaking with Joe McCormack. Joe is an experienced marketing executive, successful entrepreneur and author. His new book is called Breathe. Make a bigger impact by saying there's something we all can learn a great deal about. He is the managing director and president of the Sheffield Group, and he founded the Brief Lab in 2003.

He actively counsels military leaders and senior executives on key messaging and strategy initiatives at places such as Granger, Harley-Davidson, BMO Harris Bank and Jones Lang LaSalle, and has broad international experiences, which Joe, it's wonderful because our audience is quite global. Thank you for bringing all that to us today.

Joe McCormack: You're welcome. Great to be on.

Anita Brick: First of all, I would love to know, from your perspective, it seems that people have a really challenging time telling their career story. So I know in brief you talk a lot about making it both compelling and having that conciseness. We find that it's so important for them to get that hook and capture attention. How does someone build real interest?

Joe McCormack: I think if you look at storytelling, one of the best ways of doing it is to look at conflict. You think about people, hold attention to stories because there's a conflict in many stories, and there's resolution when you're thinking about your career story. Think about a problem or some aspect of conflict that you had an active role in resolving.

What that does, is it kills two birds with one stone. Number one is it holds the person you're talking to more attentively. They're very interested in how that issue was resolved. And then secondly, they understand that your character in that story that you put in an active role with others in order to make that happen, you're using basic storytelling techniques to hold people's attention, but also to frame the things that you've accomplished in your career front and center. So, you know, people get clarity around not only the why, but also the how and the what in the where.

Anita Brick: In the win. I've heard some great stories, some great career stories with a framing that starts with this macro theme, and then the specific examples that have that conflict roll into that. Do you find that theme is an important element of the story as well?

Joe McCormack: Yeah, the theme could be, you know, I really excel working with companies that struggle with inserting the blank page, struggle with growth, or they struggle with alignment, or you find this common theme that can be framed as a conflict. And then if you can share that across things that you've done in your career, then people start to understand, okay, these are the things that you've done and how this all connects.

I worked with a friend of mine. His narrative was framed as, you know, helping companies that have grown really, really quickly take it to the next level in terms of revenue and size. Every example he has is consistent with that struggle or that theme, or that could obviously change from person to person. You make everything connected or somehow ladder up to that master theme.

Anita Brick: I think it keeps people listening. Not a surprise, probably to you, and certainly not a surprise to me either. A lot of the questions that came in today were around not necessarily a conflict that they resolve, but a conflict that they're having a barrier to actually getting that narrative, that story across. First of all, there was an alum who said, I believe I have a story that is compelling and brief, and I'm able to convey it well to people who know me. That said, when I meet someone new, they seem confused and the conversation ends. How do I make my message clearer for those who don't know my backstory?

Joe McCormack: If you look at storytelling in narratives, what that person is really saying is the people that know me already know my background. They know the context, the norm from what I've all that dimension has already painted for them. So what you need to do with people that don't know you is to create the background. Give them the setting.

You don't have to do that in full dimension, but set up the background early on so they have a better understanding of who you are and where you sit in the story. So if you look at storytelling, it might be, you know, the setting is the background. Well, everybody that knows you already knows the setting. They know that you grew up in, you know, the West Coast and went to these kinds of schools and you have this career, but people that don't know you need to set it.

So like in the setting, like here's where I was this time in my life and this is the circumstances. You could paint that in broad brush strokes, but at least you give people a backdrop in. When you do that a little bit, then it makes it easier for them. Understand? Okay, well, now I understand you know what you're doing and how you did it and how you succeeded in that particular field or whatnot.

Anita Brick: So how much do you tell them? I think it relates to a student question from an evening student. He said in a resume or bio, how do you tell a meaningful story in a very small amount of space, especially if you're moving like I am from the technical side to strategy consulting.

Joe McCormack: What people have is there's so much to say in that moment. You're answering a lot of questions and it can go almost anywhere as an outline. That's a logical progression of job to job or project to project or achievement to achievement. That gives you a path to get from the beginning to the middle to the end. These are things that you lay out explicitly so that when a person asks you that you're not struggling for something, well, I'm going to dive into one topic and then they're completely lost.

It gives them, I think, a clear frame of reference to be able to answer the question and paint a clear picture for them. So outlines for me are key things for people to be really, really consistent and clear in answering questions like that.

Anita Brick: That's great. But how do you make it because I've seen people who have a Roman numeral one, a capital A, one small A, it's so detailed. How do you take an outline and then craft a message that is brief, as you would put it over and over again in your book.

Joe McCormack: So there are two different kinds of loans. There's traditional linear outlines that describe Roman numerals, subset, subset. Those are very hard to use in a conversational setting. And the ones that I think are much more powerful are visual outlines that are nonlinear. So imagine a piece of paper where you've got bubbles, one at the center of the map.

Some people call these message maps or visual maps or mind maps, but in the middle you've got a central message, an idea, and then around them you've got supporting things with lines that go to the middle. And then off of each one of those bubbles you might have subsets in. It allows you to visually go in and out of these messages and to tell your story to be brief, but also to create a context.

Anita Brick: Well, I would agree, and I'm glad you clarified, because I know our audience would have thought the linear outline. It's good and in fact, I pulled up from your book the visual map that you mentioned. It helps you then pull different examples depending on who your audience is. Here's a question. You know, we talked about some crucial events.

What if the crucial event is really negative? There was an alum who said, I worked in investment management and was terminated after making a mistake that cost the firm millions of dollars. Given the enormity of the loss and the bad blood that now exists between me and my former employer, how do I tell a compelling story? If I have a significant black mark on my record.

Joe McCormack: A person can look at that and think that mistake is career ending. But even then, and I think that in this particular case is that change of a person real? Is it authentic? Was there something that they really learned, like they're not the same person? And how credible is that answer to overcome that objection is, I think the difference between that is not only a clear, limiting, you know, mistake, it's a career stopping mistake.

Anita Brick: Oh, absolutely. So here's a slight variation of that in this case, the weekend student. He didn't do anything, but his company did. So here's what he said: I recently left a company because they were doing things which were bordering on illegal. But this information is certainly not public. How do I tell this story? My biggest concern is sounding like I'm badmouthing my former employer, but the only reason I left was because of what I consider to be unethical practices.

Joe McCormack: Because it's not public information. In that particular case, I would advise that person that don't get into too many details. I wouldn't get into the deeper, darker story. I would leave it at a high level. I recognized it was not a good fit for me. To go into any more detail is to disparage the company, and to turn the conversation into that sub story for the sake of an interview.

I'm looking for an opportunity which is a better fit for me with a company that shares my same values and then turn it into what I'm looking for, not the sub-story of, you know, how unethical and tainted my former employer was. I think that's a different story. And that's a dark alley that if I were that person, I would just avoid it.

Anita Brick: I agree, it's really tricky. How do you show that you made a decision based on what you believe in, your values, etc., taking full responsibility so we could switch gears a little bit. There was an alum who took some time off, she said. I spent the last four years at home taking care of my kids while my partner was establishing an accounting practice. How can I best create a solid story so as not to appear out of date?

Joe McCormack: That's a sacrifice that that person made to take four years away from your career, to help your partner set their career up. As a person who's making sacrifices, I would as authentic as possible talk about why I made that sacrifice and what that person's success meant to me. There's a lot of good things in that story. I would tell that story about why you're motivated to do that.

That would be one track. Another track I would do is take the things that you've been doing for years, and how is that making you a stronger person and how those skills are absolutely relevant and transferable to her next career or his career opportunity?

Anita Brick: Great, an executive MBA student said. And I think this is very representative of this population across the globe. I am seriously pursuing a new career after more than 20 years, I seem to be leaving my audience with the impression that I am only my past. How do I convey a desire and ability to change without belaboring or disowning my past?

Joe McCormack: People get to be 15, 20, 25, 30 years into their career. I mean, I was talking to a woman this morning for a fortune 500 Manufacturing Company and after 30 years, this company is going into a completely different field. The first thing that I would tell a person is that you have to have the conviction that this is the next chapter.

Life has chapters. I closed chapters, so I will talk about them, but then I will also open a new one. So how convicted am I that I want to open a new chapter personally answering the questions not stuck in the past? I mean, certainly the person asking that question is going to be thinking about, can this person reinvent themselves or can this person take on a completely new environment and set of challenges?

But I think it starts with the person that's looking for new opportunities, new challenges. Are they convinced that they're excited about this new challenge in their life? People often gravitate back to what they're most comfortable with, and they talk about it a lot. And I think it talks about it. But I would bridge to what is this new chapter and why do I want it and why am I the right person. And I'm really focused more on the future as much as possible than just dwelling on the things that they've achieved in the past.

Anita Brick: So how do we do this? Because we can't disown the past. Because I want someone who brings skills and experiences that are relevant to me. So how do you take experiences from your past and make them relevant and accessible to your audience as you're making that transition?

Joe McCormack: What is it that I've done that's relevant to what I'm going to do? So what you're doing is making connections between the skills that I've developed in that past that are the most relevant to what I'm going to do, because the person who's interviewing you for that position wants to know how to select skills that you developed in past experience, connect to what I'm going to be asking you to do now, and then leave out the ones that are irrelevant.

Anita Brick: Okay, so here's another exact MBA student, a variation of that last question. Seven years ago, I launched a product that radically changed my company's competitive position. It was a really big deal at the time, but I have no more recent big time achievements. How do I craft a story without looking like I haven't done much since then?

Joe McCormack: That's a very tricky question. Think about it. The analogy of the music industry. People have hits, but that doesn't mean the rest of their songs are terrible. Some things are hits. Not everything's a hit. I would focus on how good the body of work is that I've done to that person's question, which is not everything was a big time achievement, but that doesn't mean that I don't have achievement and I can talk a lot about achievement. I've achieved a lot of things, put them into a body of work, which is what this person achieves.

Anita Brick: I love what you said. When you think about a body of work, you're thinking about a lot of different things, and it's the trajectory of achievement which is front and center. It sounds like that's what he was almost apologetic about.

Joe McCormack: People might be thinking, I'm a one hit wonder. And he or she probably was like, I had one success, and that's it. I think that you've had a lot of success. Some have been really off the charts, but you've had a lot of success, and then the listener is thinking, this person's going to cheat for me. And there's a possibility that there's another big achievement in this person as well. I'm thinking, you know what? What I'm getting is a high probability of achievement. And I have an X factor of this person might do it again.

Anita Brick: This makes me think of something that I believe students and alumni at Booth struggle with. And not just here, but I think people struggle with it. A lot of people recount the data, they tell you. I was actually working with someone yesterday and he said, here's where I was born, here's where I grew up. Here's what I did, almost like a recitation of the resume.

And you and I both know that a story is not a recitation of a bunch of data. It incorporates the emotional component. How have you seen that emotional component incorporated in ways that make stories compelling?

Joe McCormack: You're not a series of facts and figures. You're a person, you're human. You've had struggles. You've had success, you've had opportunities, you've had setbacks. Each of those facts and figures sits inside of you as a person. I'm not just a piece of paper. I mean, there were decisions in here and you have to humanize yourself. You're the narrator. You're narrating your story, the story of your career.

It's inherently interesting. The facts and figures should substantiate, but that shouldn't be the frame of the story. Those are just proof points to say that it's true and it's real. That emotional connection is that there's a story arc here. This person is growing, they're learning, they're discovering, they're having setbacks. And these facts and figures sit inside and they make it.

They give dimension to the story versus just being a laundry list of things that you've done, which are, I think, in and of themselves, not inherently interesting. One fact and figure tell the backstory to that one. So every bullet point on a resume, as I increased our market share in this product segment from 25 to 30. Give me the story behind that record, and.

Anita Brick: Let's make this real. If I come to you, I'm not going to share my resume with you. I really want to share a verbal exchange with you. Hopefully it will be a good story. How do I anchor it? How do I structure it? How do I think about starting with the pieces that make my human side the emotional component, sort of the wireframe? How would you coach me to start with that and then incorporate those examples?

Joe McCormack: The data people understand problems. If you can frame what you do in terms of resolving a certain problem that a person can easily understand, in some cases you might need to use an analogy or an illustration. If your initial setup or your initial comment is some type of a conflict or an issue or problem versus the things that you do, the things that you do would follow, but that the opening statement would be, I work with organizations that have this problem, and the problem exists because of this business and the person's like listening, like, okay, I understand that problem.

Now tell me, how do you help fix the problem? I think people skip that. And in the book, like start with why? Why do you do what you do not? How do you do what you do? I think the habit of starting with y means starting with the problem. I always found that it's most interesting to a person that they're like, oh, I'm intrigued now.

So yeah, that problem's got to be a big problem. So what do you do? How do you fit into the bigger picture? Makes it more human. I'm interested in actually wanting to hear more like, oh my gosh, I'd tell me, like, how big is this and where does it exist? And how long has it been around? And I think people can gravitate more readily to that versus the 5 or 10 things that you do every day.

Anita Brick: I agree with you. When you were talking about that, it reminded me I was at an event, an alumni event. This was several years ago, and I walked up to someone we hadn't met before, and we were talking a little chit chat when he was at Booth, and I said, well, what do you do? He used exactly that frame, and he said that he helps people face their biggest fear. And do you think I wanted to know more? Absolutely. I wanted to know more.

Joe McCormack: That was this headline in your listening as you trigger. The listening is like, what are people's biggest fears? I have big fears. Like what? And then you start a conversation when I talk to people that I wrote a book called briefly, I immediately start with the problem and I say, you know, I help people that deal in information, attention, economy, that cannot pay attention, stand out.

And that's why I wrote the book. And people go, you know, they're overloaded with information, they're highly inattentive, they're constantly interrupted, and brevity is the way for them to break through. So that's why I wrote this book. These are hooks that are very powerful and can, especially in social situations. So that makes it less awkward. Now all of a sudden you're the interesting person at the party to talk to.

Anita Brick: Yeah. Good point, good point. There was another exec MBA student and this is something that I see people face a lot, whether they're, you know, in the evening weekend program and have more experience or an exact MBA or an alum. They want to break into the executive ranks. And so this MBA student said she said, I want to break into the executive ranks, and yet I don't seem to be telling the story in a way that's compelling enough for someone to move past that objection. The hiring manager usually will say, we're looking for someone who's done X at the executive level for 5 to 10 years already. Any suggestions? Highly welcome. Thanks in advance to that question.

Joe McCormack: Is the question that when people are able to answer, they get to the next level and then the people that can't get stuck? And really, it's a question about becoming what I would suggest that person think if I'm already doing that job exhibit or show or explain in your story how you're already exhibiting the things that executives do.

So it's not convincing that I could do it someday. I'm already doing it. If you don't have an executive title, start acting like a high level manager and start showing it to people the things that you're already doing, how you manage your time, how you make decisions, how you're a leader. Like, I'm not a leader. When I get an executive title, I can start leading.

Now it's like baseball. If you're playing in the minor leagues and you want to play in the major leagues, the scouts are going and watching every game play like a major leaguer. Don't say, I'm going to start playing better when you make me a major leaguer.

Anita Brick: Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Joe McCormack: You show that behavior now and then. It's easier for them to make the leap, saying even though this person hasn't played in the major leagues for 5 to 10 years, he or she is already showing it to me and doing it now. And I have no reason to believe that if they're doing it now, why can't they do it later? And then that's where the advancement comes.

Anita Brick: And I would agree. And I think that the decision fans that are more strategic and impact those big strategic objectives show that you can manage that. I think part of it and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you're also saying, don't apologize for what you haven't done in terms of the title yet. Lead with those strings, lead with those achievements.

Joe McCormack: I totally agree. I mean, the world is filled with people who are VPs that become CEOs. It's not just filled with people who are CEOs who become CEOs. I mean, that, right? Happens all the time. How do people make that leap? They're not apologizing for what they're doing. They're saying, I'm ready. Put me in. Coach. I'm ready to play.

How do you know I'm already playing? We wait for your permission to play. I'm already playing. So the bigger idea is, if I'm playing already, you choose me, I'm going to achieve. Or somebody else is going to choose me. I need to keep this person because this is my rising star. And if I don't bring this person in, put them in the executive ranks, somebody else is going to.

Anita Brick: You're right. And I think one of the things that I have found with whether students or alumni who are able to do what you're saying, is that they catalog what they do, what they achieve, the impact of the organization while they're doing it. So rather than having to go back and say, all right, what I did five years ago with the XYZ product, they keep some kind of log in, whatever form they do that allows them to have that top of mind with enough detail that they can bring it to the present.

Joe McCormack: Absolutely successful people keep score to your point. They have a log. They're accomplishments. They're not wondering, oh, I need to put my resume together. They keep score because accomplishment, achievement and goals are important to them because they take the cursor to see what companies are asking the data seriously. And that's the difference between a person who is ready for a person who might need to wait, you know, on the sidelines a bit longer.

Anita Brick: Fair enough. You've given us a lot of really good advice. Being brief, obviously, is at the core of all of it. Having that emotional component, the human side, be incorporated into the more evidential or the more data of, you know, how you've accomplished things. It also sounds like a lot of it is listening to what the other person needs so that you can respond, rather than having a canned story that you just share wherever you go.

Joe McCormack: Yes, know your audience and people's needs change and know who you're talking to and what they need from you. And when you do that, you can tailor your message very comfortably so that it fits the needs of the person that you're talking to, so you don't feel like you're reading from a script. There's a couple things that I've noticed. This tendency is that people have important things to keep in mind as they try to advance their career. One is the tendency to over-explain when people get nervous, especially with an interview, and they want to over-explain things and sell too hard. I think it's better for everybody to have dial it down just a bit. Second thing is the tendency sometimes to underprepared prepare for these conversations.

Know what people need. If everybody's needs are different, how do I know one person from the next? I have to prepare more. The final thing is to think, what's the key takeaway that I want them to walk away with? At the end of the day? We talked for five minutes. We talked for 50 minutes. What do I want them to be thinking about at the end of that conversation or that interview or that call?

Anita Brick: That's great. We like to end the calls with three brief, concise takeaways. When you think about how someone who wants to create a story that commands attention will go about developing and sharing that story. What are three things that you would advise someone to do beginning right now.

Joe McCormack: We think the first thing is to prepare an outline. Think of it as a storyline, so know your story lines. The second thing that they need to do is know the needs of their audience. Take the time to prepare. How can I adapt that storyline so that it's really relevant to the person that I'm talking to? And then the final thing is be yourself.

If you want to have a conversation with people, especially when you're talking about a job, obviously there's pressure. People are buying. You. They're buying who you are. Speak the way that you would speak. If you're having a conversation with somebody, you shouldn't radically change your voice and try to be somebody you're not. At that moment. You can give a person an opportunity to have a really good, you know, authentic conversation with you. So they really get to know you and see if it's a good fit for them.

Anita Brick: Well thank you. You are a treasure trove of ideas and insights around the story and thank you for writing briefly. It is a really interesting book. I wish you all the best with whatever is next and please will you keep us posted?

Joe McCormack: Absolutely. Thanks very, very much for having me.

Anita Brick: Thanks a lot, Joe and thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.