Who Do People Think You Are?
By leadership author and keynote speaker Ross Shafer
Thanks for finding the Relevant Leaders Club, this is a resource for leaders who want to take away new ideas to boost your business and your career. It’s also a forum to help make everyone a better leader.
Today’s focus is all about YOU. I want to talk about your personality. How do suppose other people think of you based upon your personality? Are you approachable or are you shy? Are you likeable or are you standoffish? Let’s say you just got a big promotion and you have to give a public presentation of some kind. Are you expected to be grateful? Or Commanding? Are you supposed to be persuasive? Or, do you think you should demonstrate fearlessness?
I can tell you exactly how you’re supposed to act. Act like YOU! Almost every time I’ve been hired as an executive speech coach the first question from the executive is… “How can I be as impressive as my successor.” The answer is DON’T TRY TO behave like your successor. Just because you have seen somebody you admire as a powerful speaker, you can’t be that person. You can only be YOU. If you try to be somebody else it won’t be authentic and your audience won’t believe anything you say. Too often we don’t think we are good enough the way we are. Certainly you can improve certain performance techniques and I can show you how to do that but I want you to believe that you’ve gotten this far in life being YOU. You have developed a personality that your friends and family like. And if you’ve had any success in your career it’s because your personality and values were a good match for your skills. People trust you the way you are. People take advice from you as you are…not because you are trying to emulate a persona that belongs to somebody else.
I’ll give you an example. I auditioned for a job to be the TV host for the revival of a popular game show called The Match Game. The audition was fun and the producer was the famous game show genius Mark Goodson. Growing up, I loved game shows (and ironically) my favorites were produced by the famous Goodson/Toddman team. When I got the job I couldn’t wait to show Mr. Goodson what I could do. So, after the first taping I went to Mark and asked him, “How do you think it went?” He said, “We finished on time and somebody won a prize but I thought we had hired Ross Shafer to host the show…but somebody else got in here.” Mark Goodson was telling me that he had hired ME to be the host of his show based upon MY personality…not MY vision of what I thought a game show host should behave.
Remember it’s your own character and behavior that got you where you are today. We can always evolve as leaders but don’t change your personality because you think someone has a better one. There is one exception. The only reason you should change your personality is if you’re a complete jerk and you got the promotion because nobody else wanted the job. If that happened, then we should talk and I’ll coach you through a personality change.
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