If You Only Had 20 Seconds to Make An Impression, What Would You Do?

I have a friend who runs a theater company here in the Bay Area. He said when actors are looking for their next job (which is pretty much always), they typically have one minute to audition. One minute! I asked how quickly he knows if a candidate will fit for the show they’re doing. He said, “No more than 20 seconds.”

What if the interview for your next job was only 20 seconds long? What would you do? What would you focus on? How would you tell your story?

Occasionally, my friend teaches classes for actors on how to audition. So, I asked him, “What do you tell actors to do to handle the stress and pressure of those 20 seconds, and how do you help them connect?” He said, “It’s really pretty simple. With that little of time, your first few moments mean everything, so making some form of empathetic connection with the people holding the audition is really key. It can help convert what is, under ordinary circumstances, a somewhat cautious and awkward social situation, into one that is filled with human connection, meaning and portent for the future of your relationship.”

This empathetic connection with people is so important in everything we do. Without it, we have nothing meaningful or substantial in our relationships. It leaves just two people with opinions but no common ground where they can forge a bond and agree to do something together. If I can show you quickly that I understand what is happening right here and now for you, then maybe we can agree we are both human beings who share something in common. Maybe we can figure out a way to do something together that is powerful.

For many actors, this is stunning. The idea of maybe taking a few precious seconds from the audition they may have spent weeks preparing for to consciously, warmly and respectfully greet their audience and connect personally is terrifying. Although the reality for the people in the audition room is they’re looking at the candidate and asking themselves, “Can I really spend the next two to three months (or more if it is a truly successful production) working with this person?” There is something so fundamental to those first few moments with someone that can either connect us or push us apart. It is definitely worth spending time on.

This is a worthy analogy for how we connect in business. Certainly, in interviews, I know we all consider how this relationship will play out over time. What will it look like? Is this someone I can grow with? The reality is our brain just naturally starts considering things like this very quickly.

The point is how we connect with people matters! I’ve interviewed hundreds of executive candidates who quickly want to jump from the handshake to their story, which leaves no time to establish who we are together, and it quickly becomes apparent that their interest is not in building a relationship, but more about telling me how great they are or asking about what I can do for them.

I often think back to my earlier years and the start of my career. Building a name for myself this way was not intentional or deliberate by any means. When calling on a new or potential client, I would show up to the meeting with nothing. No fancy PowerPoint deck or a folder filled with collateral (yes, there used to be a thing called a collateral folder), but just me!

I distinctly remember some executives being disturbed my bag was empty. One gentleman even said to me, “I was hoping you would not waste our time and would just get to the point.” “The point?” I asked myself. “How would I know the point if I had not taken an ounce of time to get to know you?” I know that my approach had many believing they were not important to me or that I thought I was some young hotshot who knew more than they did.

Truth be told, it was quite the opposite. I did not have the arrogance to assume they needed my services. I really needed to know and understand their needs as both individuals and their company’s values. Who were they?  What problems were they trying to solve? What were some of the things keeping them up at night? What risks were they trying to mitigate?

To show up at the first meeting well prepared with an unoriginal presentation would show them I sold that one thing to everyone. I would show them they were not unique or special, and that I somehow knew what they needed even before sitting down and discussing their current pain points. By showing up with a deck or collateral, I would have assumed that I had it all figured out and that I was merely there to present a canned solution, nonspecific to their current needs. This, to me, would have showed arrogance, selfishness and more than anything, a presumptive behavior that no matter what, they needed me.

Not behaving in this manner was not a sales ploy, but purely intuitive, coming from a place of respect and wanting to add value before asking for anything in return. This was, in fact, my one-minute audition!

So, the next time you have an interview or a meeting with someone new to your team or someone you need to forge a relationship with going forward, remember, you sometimes only have 20 seconds. Ask yourself, “What do I really want them to know about me?” Maybe it’s that you can see a little bit of the world through their eyes and that your ability to do that is what is going to make this a powerful relationship based on mutual understanding and the development of common ground. It’s through this self-awareness and the mastery of it that you will go on to produce meaningful, impactful and long-lasting relationships.