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You do you.
It comes up over and over when people talk about speaking to groups. They wish they had more confidence. It’s entirely possible you’ve had the same desire.
That quest for confidence has also come up lately when clients wrote about the changes they made as a result of our work together.
Now I can “communicate with greater impact, intent, and confidence.” Catherine’s coaching “prepared me to more confidently engage with the audience.” Post-Catherine, “I feel more confident in my ability to speak in front of a virtual or live audience.”
And then there was the guy who just signed his email “President, Catherine Johns Fan Club.” I loved that!
Sadly, I can’t give anyone a confidence transplant. I do have a couple of keys, though, that clients find very valuable.
One of them is to ditch comparisons.
Corporate executives, independent professionals, non-profit leaders … they so often tell me they’re just not as good at speaking as their manager, or their best client, or some stranger they heard at a conference.
It’s a big mistake to measure our ability against someone else’s. Even if we could copy that fabulous speaker, our audience doesn’t want an imitation.
On the contrary, what your audience wants most from you is you.
They’re not looking for schtick or an act. They’re probably interested in what you have to say, the substance of your presentation or meeting. But even that falls flat if they don’t also get what’s most important to them. You. The real you.
Oddly enough, giving them the real you can be a challenge.
And don’t think for a minute that that only applies to speakers. Your clients and colleagues want the real you whether you’re a marketing director, a real estate agent, or a hair stylist. Or anything else.
You can probably tell I’ve been avoiding that overused buzzword. But the truth is, authenticity really is in demand everywhere. Nobody wants fake.
We need to know who we are, how we do, and how others see us.
No matter what we do for a living, a deep understanding of ourselves and how people perceive us helps us sort out who’s right for us, and who’s a better fit for somebody else. And that sorting sets us up to attract the clients or customers we can best support.
That’s the whole point of the Fascination Advantage System®. You might remember I’m certified in this approach developed by marketing expert Sally Hogshead.
The big idea is this. It’s a fool’s errand to compare ourselves to somebody else and count the ways we come up short. It wouldn’t even be useful to enumerate the ways we’re superior to someone else.
Bottom line: it’s better to be different than better. Embracing our difference helps us stand out and succeed in a world where nobody’s paying much attention for more than a minute.
When it comes to standing out, we face three big challenges.
Distraction makes it hard to connect with people who might desperately need what we have to offer, but don’t know we exist. They’re busy with meetings and emails and LinkedIn posts; it’s easy for them to overlook us.
Competition makes it tough to stand out enough to get our message across; we get lost in the shuffle of other people who offer services or products akin to ours. And no matter what we do, we know there are a lot of others doing the same kind of work.
Commoditization means people think we’re interchangeable with those others who do similar work. If one writer or accountant or physical therapist can be exchanged for another, why would someone choose us? And then, why would they stay with us?
Maybe you’ve been thinking you can beat back those three forces by being better than everyone else? Good luck with that.
What will help you overcome distraction, competition, and commoditization is being different from everyone else.
And the good news is, you already are different.
Your mission now is to go out and highlight that difference every time you talk about your work. And to get right to the point about your value. When you communicate clearly and deliberately, engaging your listener from the beginning, you cut through the distractions.
Focus on who you are rather than what you do and don’t try to be like anyone else in your field. You go right ahead and be different. (Did I mention it’s better than better?)
Infuse every interaction, every communication, with your particular Advantages. They separate you from people with similar titles or functions or businesses and they keep you from becoming a commodity.
The truth is that your personality is the antidote to distraction, competition, and commoditization. What you need to do now is learn how to make the best use of it. That will give you the confidence we all want.
I can help you with that when you join me for a Fascination Conversation.
Your Fascination Advantage® profile will give you a detailed analysis of how the world sees you as uniquely different.
Then when we talk, you’ll discover exactly how you can leverage your own highest value and captivate clients, prospects, employers, and colleagues.
Sounds fascinating, doesn’t it?
