How to be influential by simply being yourself

The philosophy behind our projects

Today, I made a video sharing the thinking behind my approach to the two projects you may have seen here. It is drawn from a talk I have given about our individual sources of powerfulness and how we create influence.

I hope it offers context for my work – and, more importantly – something you can use for your own ability to influence and move the projects that matter to you forward.

TRANSCRIPT

Hi. I’m back again today with a video. Every time I look at what content I want to develop for the next week or the following week, I always ask myself, what’s the next conversation or what’s the next topic that needs to come forward now?

And some of them, when I look at them, I think, well, that’s not really a written piece. It really is a conversation or it’s an interaction. There are just some things that are better in a two-way dialogue. And in this particular case, I decided that I would pull exactly a bit of that from a talk I have given called How to be Wildly Successful (Simply) Being Yourself.

It’s all about powerfulness and where we find our individual sources of powerfulness, especially in an organization.

There’s one little bit of it that I’m pulling from here, really sort of from the middle of it. It’s normally about 20 minutes, a bit interactive. And it says this: what can you do to accelerate your powerfulness? It says, point blank, and this is what I really believe: be interested in having a business perspective about the future.

Not just an interest in your business or your topic (if it’s not business), but actually a perspective about the future. You might be right or wrong about the perspective, but at least be interested and have it. And you can build that perspective through your conversations through sort of throwing that in.

And then also, of course, do your research. And these days, we have so many great tools to bring information to us to help us develop that point of view, though there is nothing that substitutes for actually getting out there and taking a look in your own observation.

And then what I further say here is don’t wait for your opportunity to present it or make it perfect or make it beautiful. You see me doing that in these videos. I just do them. I don’t over-present them. And the thing is, you don’t have to be a perfect communicator.

The point is to get your ideas out there and find out where they’re going to go and help drive an agenda. So this is something that I talk about. And then the other thing I came into with this speech that I have given is that I say here: look for the job that needs doing that nobody wants to do, and then go do it yourself, or make sure it gets done.

And that’s, that’s exactly what I’m doing now with the two projects that you see and that you’re kindly following on my various channels or wherever I’m putting them.

And that is basically a point of view about age. I had to take that point of view about age. This is a topic none of us really, at least most of us, don’t look at with great fun and proactivity. We look at it when we have to and often too late.

And in my last role, I I had to look at it really directly for years. And at first that wasn’t so comfortable and easy, but guess what? I figured out that by being involved, I actually did have a point of view, even a point of view about the future.

And now the project I’m leading called Age and Grace is trying to step-by-step conversationally and lightly and with a little bit of humor, make that topic more approachable, make that point of view approachable. And the same with Fresh Connections that we’ve just also rolled out. These are the two projects that I’m working on right now.

And with Fresh Connections, we’re going to have longer careers. And I’m looking to bring us into that in a way that we can do something with it and that we have an influence on the agenda that affects us in the future.

And so I just wanted to bring this in because this is a philosophy that I… I want to follow. And the reason I bring it in is you can do it too. You can absolutely do it too. The reason I gave this talk was to help other people do it. It had nothing to do with my projects.

And what I said here, and this is what I want to say, your perspective is your best source of power. And what I want to say to you right now is in the world of AI and everything going on around that seems chaotic at the moment, your perspective is still your best source of power.

And it is your unique combination of talents, whatever your talents are, and your willingness to have a perspective combined with your experience, because believe me, that changes over time with your good experiences and your more difficult experiences.

And the point is, and as I say it right here, and I want to say it to you now:

put it to work for something you find meaningful. And build your own powerfulness. And that’s what I’m doing with Age and Grace and Fresh Connections. And that’s what I hope that you will do with your topic as well.