|
Hello
Eighty percent of success is
showing up. Woody Allen
I believe there are two ways in which you can participate in any business interaction:
Making an Appearance:
physically attending a meeting or logging on to a webcast/conference call.
Making an appearance puts you in a position to allow others to create their own perception of your personal brand.
Showing Up:
a powerful potion consisting of three ingredients:
1) Your physical presence
2) Your Non verbals : the way you dress, your body language, your punctuality
3) Your Personal engagement as manifested by bringing your intellect, your perspective, your intentions and energy through what you say and how you say it.
Showing up leaves not a trace of doubt in any other participant's mind that your attendance MATTERED.
Technology has given us a wide choice of ways in which we can make lots of appearances in a typical day with the very real option to not actually show up at any of them.
But, a word of caution:
Making appearances without actually showing up puts your personal brand in a precariously risky position.
For example, how many times have you been in a meeting where the guy next to you is glued to his blackberry and makes no integral contribution to the purpose of the meeting...he made an appearance, but that's about it? Or, have you ever participated on a conference call and you've heard the pecking sounds of someone typing away on their laptop and you knew for sure they weren't assigned the task of taking the meeting minutes?
Not only do the behaviors above reflect a careless risk of personal brand, but in a word, they are rude. They are the kinds of behavior that in my youth would have resulted in a slap up side the head by my father, which was his nonverbal for 'You're being rude, knock it off right now'.
Take a look at your calendar for today. Decide which meetings you are going to make an appearance at and which ones you will truly show up for.
Regardless of how you try to rationalize the reason for making an appearance at a meeting over actually showing up, I'm going to challenge you to consider this:
When you choose to make an appearance instead of showing up....
1. You are marginalizing the impact that you actually COULD have if you'd show up.
2. You are being disrespectful to anyone else who actually is showing up
3. You are taking a foolish risk with your own personal brand.
My advice: Show up or stay home...leave 'appearance-making' to celebrities and politicians.
Greetings!
Mike
ph: 215-341-9740
email: mmalinchok@verizon.net Follow the conversation with me on twitter @s2kconsulting | 
