git:20260514.d63cd2f to git:20260514.f5e2df1

16 added, 16 removed. Audit A to A.

---

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 the six model bios taught in Glenn Kramon's *Winning Writing* class (Conrad Legendy, Gabrielle Scrimshaw, Jen McPhillips, Ryan Houston, Adam Hanno, Rish Gupta).

+ 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. The Scrimshaw card-counter opening (*"We won in Vegas. Our game: exploiting biases."*) is a movie scene.

+ 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. Kramon's example for himself: *"My biggest concern for the next day was beating Chris, my biggest frenemy, in foursquare during recess."* Specific, quoted, alive.

+ 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. *"My word is my bond. I came to appreciate the beauty of imperfect solutions, because we never had all the resources we wanted, and you can't call 'time out!' in war to get everything neat and pretty. Sometimes you just gotta get shit done."* (Conrad Legendy) — that last sentence is a smile, and it lands the credibility of the paragraph above it.

+ 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 Jen McPhillips ending: *"I was voted homecoming queen — something that still embarrasses me, but encapsulates how far I came."* The trouble (loner kid, no friends, social anxiety) is real; the ending (homecoming queen, growth, leadership through empathy) is earned. Don't end on the trouble alone.

+ 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. The Scrimshaw rewrite is the canonical example.

+ 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. Ryan Houston: *"I'm diving into computer science courses at Stanford instead of leisurely finishing my MBA."* Rish Gupta: *"I know all my energy can go to waste, if I am not in the right ocean riding the biggest waves."* Both signal you're still hungry. Both leave the reader curious.

+ 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. What qualities do you admire and appreciate most in a manager and leader?

14. What qualities do you despise most in a manager and leader?

Bryant's claim: half the candidates who answer these find their story. The other half realize they need to live more before they have one.

- ## Six structural patterns (from the Kramon model bios)

+ ## Six structural patterns (from class-taught model bios)

- Different bios use different shapes. Pick the one that fits your material.

+ Different bios use different shapes. Pick the one that fits your material. Below: the shape, what kind of writer it's for, and how to spot when it's working.

### Pattern A — Open in scene, then arc

- Scrimshaw: open at the casino table, then arc back to Poland at 10, then forward to Bain and Stanford. The scene anchors; the chronology supports.

+ Open inside a specific moment with sensory detail (a place, a year, two characters, an action). After the scene lands, arc back to chronology and supporting biography. The scene anchors; the dates support. Best when you have one story so cinematic it has to be the lede.

### Pattern B — Provocative thesis, then evidence

- Conrad Legendy: *"You may think I'm throwing everything away by going into the cannabis industry after graduating from Stanford Business School. Hell, you might be right."* — opens by naming the reader's likely objection. Then disarms with the Red Cross story.

+ Open by naming the reader's likely objection to your choices — a sentence that begins something like *"You may think I'm wasting [my training / my talent / this path]"* — then earn the right to disagree with the rest of the bio. Best when your career choice is unconventional and you want to address it head-on instead of pretending it isn't.

### Pattern C — Alliterative opening (high-risk)

- Gabrielle Scrimshaw (the second example): *"Ambitious. Aboriginal. Adventurer. Fond of alliteration and passionate about ideas that make the world a bit better."* — works only if you can sustain the wit through three more clauses. Most attempts at this pattern die in the second clause.

+ A staccato adjective list ("[Quality]. [Quality]. [Quality].") followed by an aside that wittily punctures it. Works only if the wit holds for two more clauses. Most attempts die in the second clause. If you're not sure your version is funny, it isn't.

### Pattern D — Childhood frame

- Jen McPhillips: *"As a kid I was a loner."* — uses the early-self frame to show a journey. Works when the journey itself is the story.

+ Open at age 8 or 10, in a specific room or scene, with a quality the reader will recognize developing. Use the early-self frame to show a journey. Works when the journey itself is the story — when *how you got here* is more interesting than *where you ended up*.

### Pattern E — Aspiration declared early

- Ryan Houston: *"I dreamed of going to Stanford since I was 12."* — opens with what you wanted, then shows what you did about it.

+ Open with what you wanted at age 12, then show what you did about it. Works when your story is one of stubborn execution rather than discovery — the reader gets to watch you bend reality to a target you set years ago.

### Pattern F — Sensory open

- Adam Hanno: *"My earliest memories involve sitting on my parents' bed watching surgical videos of radical prostatectomies."* — opens with a specific, slightly absurd image that proves the through-line (medicine) was always there.

+ Open with a specific, slightly absurd image from your earliest memory of the field you ended up in. Works when the field has visceral specifics (medicine, food, sport, mechanical work) and your relationship to it is older than the resume can show.

## What kills a yourself-story

- **Buzzword soup.** *"I'm passionate about complex problems and at the intersection of strategy, product, and execution."* Wall-of-shame stuff. Cut.

- **Resume regurgitation.** See `pick-a-lane`. Five jobs in one paragraph means none gets told.

- **Generic claims.** *"Hardworking, collaborative, results-oriented."* Means nothing. Replace with a specific scene that demonstrates the quality.

- - **Self-deprecation that begs for sympathy.** *"I'm just a humble student trying to learn."* The reader cringes. Self-deprecation works only when paired with quiet confidence (Legendy: *"Hell, you might be right."*).

+ - **Self-deprecation that begs for sympathy.** *"I'm just a humble student trying to learn."* The reader cringes. Self-deprecation works only when paired with quiet confidence — the *"you might be right, but here's why I did it anyway"* register, not the *"please don't expect much from me"* register.

- **Boasting without evidence.** *"I'm one of the top product managers of my generation."* Even if true, the reader will not believe you. Show it; don't claim it.

- **Resolution-free endings.** Ending on the trouble. See rule 6.

## How to run the pass

### Pass 1 — Generate material

Answer 5–7 of Bryant's 14 prompt questions on paper. Don't filter yet. The story is somewhere in the answers.

### Pass 2 — Pick the lane

Score each story candidate cinematic / you / ask (see `pick-a-lane` skill). The highest-scoring story is your lane.

### Pass 3 — Pick the pattern

Choose A–F above based on the lane.

### Pass 4 — Draft to ~50/50 warmth+competence split

For every competence claim, add a warmth move. For every warmth move, anchor it with a competence claim. Run the count after drafting:

- Warmth signals: shared experience, dialogue, humor, vulnerability, credit to others

- Competence signals: a number, a named outcome, a thesis you can defend, a specific scene

### Pass 5 — Audit

Run the following skills in order:

- `tell-them-something-new` — make sure the opener earns its place

- `warmth-and-competence` — find the load-bearing sentence

- `show-dont-tell` — turn any summary into a scene

- `jargon-killer` and `adverb-killer` — surface scrub

- `humanize` (optional, for casual contexts) — roughen slightly if too polished

## Output format

```

## Story inventory

[Answers to 3-5 Bryant prompts, brief]

## Picked lane

[Which story, why]

## Pattern

[A / B / C / D / E / F, why]

## Draft

[The full bio / about / intro, in the chosen pattern]

## Warmth + competence audit

- Warmth signals: [list]

- Competence signals: [list]

- Split estimate: X% warmth / X% competence

## The load-bearing sentence

[The single sentence that proves both axes]

## What's missing

[If the bio is thin on warmth or thin on competence, name what to add and where]

```

## When NOT to use

- **Resume / CV.** Multi-lane by design. Use a CV format guide instead.

- **Bio for a press release about a specific event.** Different genre — the event is the focus, you're the secondary.

- **Memorial / obituary.** Different stakes, different tone, different audience.

- **A formal academic-CV "research statement."** Conventions are stricter; pick-a-lane and yourself-story still apply but the form is more constrained.

## The Bryant test (run before shipping)

Read the bio aloud. Ask:

1. **Beer test:** would I want to have a beer with this person?

2. **Hire test:** would I want this person on my team?

If yes to both → ship.

If yes to one → you've leaned too far on one axis. Find the missing signals.

If no to either → start over. Probably the lane is wrong.

## The Konrad close

> *"Two qualities account for more than 90 percent of the impression others form of us. Warmth and competence. Hit them both, in the same paragraph if you can, in the same sentence if you're good."*

A great bio is rare. It's worth the time. Spend an afternoon on it. Use it for the next two years.