Be Something
By: Duke Rohe drohe@att.net
The very last presentation at our professional conference will be a ‘Dare to Share’ panel of natural networkers dialoguing about the tips, the tricks, the lessons in leveraging your ability to your organization, community, even your profession. The following might be teasers, but you will have to attend to find out. Like on the billboard sign, ‘This ain’t advertizin! It’s just directions to Hickory Hollow Bar B Q’.
Be an explorer: This is an ever learning, ever growing passion discover the unknown. All available time migrates to finding what’s new or interesting. Even a common phenomenon is a discovery if few know why or how it works. In knowledge, pondering why and how can be a trip across the unknown or undiscovered. Explorers gain more satisfaction that they are the first or the most knowledgeable than being well known among their peers.
Be distinctive: Take a skill others have yet to delve into or find useful and become the best at it. Understand it, research it, practice it, apply it, help others discover it. Being distinctive is more of having a deep understanding around what others have heard about. Instead of a shallow knowledge of many, get a full knowledge of a few. In the knowledge business, people tend to outsource and rely on those that have distinctive experience.
Be useful: Tim Porter O’Grady said, “Where the organization touches the customer is where it has meaning. Everything else should know its relatedness to that point”. That was an ‘aha’ statement for me. At the time, I realized that my salary was twice that of a nurse and that if I didn’t provide the equivalent value of two nurses, the hospital ought to let me go (Can you imagine: they did!). This has been an internal conscience to vector every ounce of knowledge and inch of time toward the benefit of the ultimate customer.
Be known: Ability unknown tends to be unused. Market your services to those who need it. Nothing is more gratifying than to serve one who truly needs and appreciates your skills. This happens two ways. Being friendly with the ranks, socializing the leadership. And be relentless in showcasing the types of services and benefits you can provide.
Be humble: Humility doesn’t see itself as great; only as doing its part. Greatness is defined by others not by you. If you do great work, it applauds you. In fact, if you can shed the spotlight on the ones you served, you give them honor and you’re guilty by association.
Be friendly: If you smile at everyone wholeheartedly, you will eventually become friendly. Taking time to get to know folks actually gets you out of the way of you. Warning: If you are conditionally friendly or friendly for a purpose, then it is all about you. psst…and everyone can smell a salesman.
Be understanding: Before you act or speak, understand what you can about the one you are trying to relate to. What are their pressures, the past, their passions. When they know that you know where tyey are coming from, THEN you have permission to try to relate. It’s valuing them as important enough to understand before pushing your great ideas
Be open: Every mind should be permeable to new input, new possibilities. Often, new input is like a foreign matter to the acceptance immune system. Suspend judgment long enough to consider the value (even in part) of the input THEN decide what to do with it. Consider it for possible application. Some insights are like seeds; they take time before they sprout.
Be bold: It takes a pioneer mind to believe that what you have to share has benefit to those seasoned in the trail. But there are continually new folks entering the trail and they need your knowledge to be successful or keep from being unsuccessful. Even seasoned travelers haven’t traveled your path. If your insight was helpful for you, it will probably be helpful to others. Share it.
Be weird: Go out of your way to learn something perpendicular to what the mainstream is learning. Be willing to ‘look’ weird as you apply unconventional thought and make it…psst weird and normal is relative anyway. Learn what’s under everyone’s nose, but nobody knows it. Unless you do what you’ve never done, you won’t have what you’ve never had.
Be diligent: Many touch the fringes of new knowledge, yet few stay with it long enough to excavate its benefit. To really get it. Make it a challenge to stay with it until you’ve understood the clockwork behind its success. Some may take a decade to unlock or master. Diligence deliberately keeps seeking until the gold is found.
Be real: There is something magnetic about a person who is authentic. It’s refreshing to be around them. They have no pretense. It disarms the notion of trying to be anything more or less. You can be who you are and sharing then becomes enjoyable.
Be strategic: What is the key to success? Understand it. Begin working toward it. You don’t have to have all the resources nor know the exact path to start a climb. You can have the view of the summit and begin putting what you know in place to move that direction. You start the trek and keep marching toward the top. And you are changed along the way.