How do you stand out?
It is something I have been thinking a lot about recently on behalf of clients. And helping them do this in the right way too.
Mostly after being asked, “how do we do this differently?”
At the heart of this is a need people feel to be seen to be the first. They may be driven by business challenges or a desire for personal recognition – I often see a bit of both.
There are wonderful examples of people in history who thought outside the box, upset the apple cart, and shook things up amongst other cliches about disruption and doing things differently.
But for every Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, Henry Ford, Mahatma Ghandi, or Emeline Pankhurst who all successfully disrupted business or society there are many thousands who stood out by just being good.
Or even by being the best.
They did what everyone else in their business, sector or industry was doing, but better.
I see this in communications, the senior leaders I work with and the future leaders who do stand out because they are better than others.
Recently, attending an international conference, I saw two senior execs each lead an hour-long session. Both of identical seniority, similar experience, positive stories to tell the people that matter to their businesses and with an equal level of communication capability but with divergent styles.
One kept it simple, doing the basics very well, focusing on their audience, what messages needed to be communicated and how to bring these to life in a way that truly connected, then working carefully and diligently on a performance that was calm and confident.
The second, tried to do things differently and curated a session that didn’t connect with itself or the audience in the room. This leader was driven by a desire to stand out and that meant they focussed on style over substance including a half-scripted, poorly choreographed and barely rehearsed presentation.
The result being that they both stood out but for different reasons.