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When people tell stories about themselves, you can discern a lot about how they interact with the world, and, in particular, its challenges. Although far from providing a complete picture, I would like to first mention four main types that I have met over the course of 16,000+ interviews during my recruitment career:

 

The passive floaters portray themselves as victims of circumstance, especially with negative connotations: “The company was downsizing, so I lost my job” or “I left because I didn’t get on with my boss.” Irrespective of seniority or career success, almost all have a downtrodden air, beaten up by life and fatalistic about their future perspectives or lack of them.

 

The frightened runners have had bad experiences that have scarred their attitude. Whenever a difficult situation appears on the horizon, they will often take evasive action. They see this as being the “intelligent thing to do” and almost never consider the possibility that they might be able to overcome the obstacle. When emotions take over, they fall back on their flawed logic: “it would never have worked out – it didn’t before, so why should it be different this time?”

 

The negative blamers have almost all been dealt a rough hand at certain times in their life. Rather than seek to change it, they make sense of the situation by finding someone to blame. Even if there is no one to blame but themselves, they will inevitably find someone to carry the can. Because they are never “at fault”, they don’t see what they should change about themselves. They are the toxic heart of any organisation and should be avoided at all cost.

 

The positive strivers are the ones that everyone wants to work with. They have an ability to overcome challenges, change their attitude or influence the attitudes of others. No matter how their stories start, you are certain that they will have made the best of it, even if they ultimately failed. No one can be successful all the time, but they never play the victim, they never run away, and they never blame others for their situation. They play the hand that they are given with the best possible cards that they have.

 

It is easy to tell after the first five minutes of a conversation which category someone belongs to. The “positive strivers” are the ones who light up the room; they leave you eager to hear more and you get the impression that they have not complained once in their lives. They are the people that you want next to you in the trenches, and they are the ones who will rise up to meet the challenges when times get hard.

 

I learned a simple lesson quite early on in my career, and practice it to this day: When things are going well in someone’s life, it is hard to tell if they are a floater, runner, blamer or a striver because they are content with their lot. If you really want to see what someone is made of, get them to talk about the difficult times in their lives.

 

It is only in adversity that we can see what people are truly made of.

 

Over a career spanning 21 years, Greg Tanna has established himself as an executive recruitment leader in the APAC Customer Contact/BPO/ICT/Consulting domain.