/yourself-story

name: yourself-story
description: Drafts and critiques bios, LinkedIn About sections, intro slides, "tell me about yourself" interview answers, and personal-essay openers using Adam Bryant's 500-CEO research and Lauren Weinstein's warmth+competence frame. Different from pitch-coach (which is product-shaped) and cold-email-coach (which is recipient-shaped). This skill is for the format where you ARE the subject. Use when writing a bio for a website, a LinkedIn About paragraph, the first slide of a deck about yourself, the opening of an application essay, or rehearsing the "tell me about yourself" interview answer. Triggers on "tell me about yourself," "write my bio," "LinkedIn About," "about me page," "intro slide," "personal essay," "self-introduction."

Yourself story

Source: Adam Bryant's *Corner Office* column (NYT) interviews with 500+ CEOs on what they look for in candidates, plus Lauren Weinstein's GSB research on the two-axis model of social judgment, plus a set of model bios taught in Glenn Kramon's *Winning Writing* class.

The goal

Bryant's rule for any "about you" piece:

> *"Make the CEO want to have a beer with you — and hire you."*

The two halves of the sentence are not the same thing. *Beer* is warmth; *hire* is competence. A bio that nails one and misses the other fails. Aim for ~50/50 word-count split between the two.

The two-axis bar (Weinstein / Fiske)

Weinstein's GSB research, building on Susan Fiske's Princeton work on social judgment: **two qualities account for more than 90% of the first impression you form of a person.**

• **Warmth** — the ability to create an authentic connection and create trust
• **Competence** — the ability to inspire confidence in you

A first impression made in roughly one second sticks. The bio is the first impression you control. Score high on both axes or don't ship.

The 10 rules (Bryant + Kramon + Roizen + Weinstein)

1. Know your audience

Same rule, every skill. A bio for a VC is not a bio for a hiring manager. Customize. The phrase *"I'm building a tactile-sensor company"* is the right opener for the right reader; the wrong opener for the wrong one.

2. Be vivid

Picture your favorite movie scene. Describe it in words. That's the texture you want in a bio. Bring it to life. Make it memorable. A bio that opens with sensory detail (a place, a date, an action, an image) lands; one that opens with summary doesn't.

3. Quotes enliven

A line of dialogue from your mother, your mentor, your boss the day you got fired — the quote is a free dose of warmth. One specific quoted line, properly placed, is worth a paragraph of description. Use sparingly: one quote per piece is enough.

4. Humor is non-negotiable (Kramon's class rule)

Dry humor. Not slapstick. A line that makes the reader smile is the difference between memorable and forgettable. The best version of this is a single observational aside dropped after a serious claim — the seriousness earns the credibility, the aside earns the warmth.

5. CEOs prefer "we" over "I"

Bryant's empirical finding across 500 interviews: when CEOs ask about accomplishments, they like to hear *we* more than *I*. It signals team player. It signals you appreciate the contributions of others. Even when you did the bulk of the work, *we* is the right pronoun for the bio.

6. Happy endings beat unresolved trouble

Better to show yourself overcoming something than still mired in it. The trouble — loner childhood, family struggle, professional failure — can be real and named. But the ending has to land somewhere the reader can root for. Don't close on the wound; close on the scar that became useful.

7. Tell the messiest situation and what you learned (Roizen)

Heidi Roizen's tip: skip the polished accomplishments and tell the time you lost the deal, fired the wrong person, or shipped the broken product. The messy story shows judgment in a way the success story can't. *And what you learned* is the load-bearing clause — without it, the messy story is just a confession.

8. Pick a lane (Konrad / Bryant)

See `pick-a-lane` skill. One story, told fully, beats five stories told shallowly.

9. Warmth + competence in one sentence

See `warmth-and-competence` skill. The load-bearing sentence — the one that proves both axes — belongs in paragraph 1 or 2.

10. End with what you're still curious about

The strongest bios close with a question or a frontier, not a victory lap. The closing line should signal you're still hungry, still learning, still pointed at something larger than your resume. Reader's reaction: *"I want to know how that turns out."* Not: *"impressive."*

Bryant's 14 prompt questions (use these to find your story)

If you don't know what to write about, answer these on paper first. The story you want to tell is somewhere in the answers.

1. What were some important early influences for you? 2. Tell me about your parents, and how they influenced you? 3. What were some core values in your family? Were there certain expressions that your parents would repeat often around the dinner table? 4. Who has been your most important mentor and what did you learn? 5. What are one or two experiences in your life that, looking back, were inflection points in shaping who you are as a person? 6. What is your natural strength? What skill or ability comes so easily to you that it's as natural as breathing? 7. Your colleagues put three words on your tombstone — what will they be? 8. If you had to choose just one word to describe who you are in the core of your DNA, what word would you choose? 9. What are you doing when you are in a state of "flow" — when you are at your best, when you are on fire? 10. What does success mean to you? 11. If you could create any job for yourself, regardless of what already exists on the org chart of a company, that would make the best and highest use of all your skills and abilities, what would that job be? 12. Do you feel lucky? Why? 13. W