Warning: this article contains some sweeping generalisations and stereotyping.  Enjoy!

In the UK, many people hold the view that there is a big difference in the culture between the North of England and the South. Sometimes Scotland is included in ‘the North’ but mostly it keeps its own cultural counsel.

The nature of this difference in culture is expressed in a wide range of insults and stereotypes but none so eloquent as a simple, ‘Northerner’ or ‘Southerner’.

For example, those of us who grew up in the North think we’re friendlier than our counterparts in the South. It’s not uncommon in the North for people to chat to total strangers on the bus, in the bank or supermarket or when sharing a table in a busy café or bar.

In the South, people are much less likely to even make eye contact, let alone speak to someone they don’t know. For my overseas readers, if you’ve visited London and wondered why everyone on the Underground looks so grim, it’s because they’re trying to avoid the gaze of all the other people around them.

With my NLP Trainer head on, I started wondering whether there were patterns of language or behaviour that matched this North-South divide…

 

This is what I noticed.

[Please share your thoughts and observations too]

In the North, when people make conversation they ask questions and invite each other to speak.  It’s usual to be asked questions such as,

“How are you?”

“I like your coat. Is it new?”

“What are you doing at the weekend?”

“Did you get your car/fridge/tv fixed?”

“Why did you leave your job?” and so on.

Northerners don’t volunteer information. They wait to be asked. And they expect to be asked. There’s an underlying belief that it’s a bit rude to talk about yourself unless someone asks.

 

In the South, the reverse is true. When people make conversation they share a little bit of information about themselves and wait for others to reciprocate. You might hear…

“I’ve got next week off work”

“My new car has been delivered”

“I saw a great movie last weekend”

“I bumped into your neighbour when I was in town”

“The supermarket didn’t have any avocadoes”

Southerners volunteer information and they expect others in the conversation to do the same. They don’t want appear nosey so they don’t ask many questions. The underlying belief is that it’s rude to pry into your life.

 

This is all fine as long as you’re talking to someone from the same part of the country as you.

 

But…

Put a Northerner in a group of Southerners and they will not say much. They’re waiting to be asked a question and instead they’re listening to people talking about themselves. They might find an opportunity to ask a question but they won’t volunteer information.

Result:  the Southerners think the Northerner is unsociable, taciturn or just rude.

 

Conversely, put a Southerner in a group of Northerners and they will be bombarded with questions about anything and everything. They will reply, to be polite, even if they’re a bit uncomfortable will some of the questions. They wouldn’t dream of doing the same.

Result: The Northerner thinks the Southerner is ‘full of themselves’, ‘not interested in anybody else’ or just rude.

I’m not joking about this. My Mum fell and broke her arm. She also banged her forehead and ended up with two black eyes and some truly awful swelling across half of her face. She was staying with my sister while she recuperated. One day my sister took her out for a walk around the village. They crossed paths with a number of neighbours who stopped to say hello. Not one of them commented on the state of my Mum’s face or asked her what had happened to her.

Do I have to tell you that my sister lives in the South?

 

The fact that my sister lives in the South, despite growing up in the North, has afforded me a few memorable demonstrations of the North-South divide, none more so than this one…

 

Some years ago when I lived ‘up North’ I went to visit my sister and she took me to her local gym. She worked out while I retreated to the sauna/steam room/jacuzzi.

Later that evening I told her I’d been uncomfortable in the jacuzzi because there was a strange man there who wouldn’t look at me or make conversation even though we were the only two people there.

She looked at me in complete confusion. “What do you mean, he wouldn’t talk to you?”

“Well, exactly that. When he got into the jacuzzi I looked over at him to say hello and he looked away”

“What did you expect him to do????”

The health club I frequented near my home had a small jacuzzi and sauna. It was the social centre of the club and everyone would spend a few minutes there, chatting to whomever else showed up. There would be good-natured teasing about the cold plunge pool and questions about your workout.

That was what I was used to.

Apparently, in the South, it’s completely inappropriate to speak to another person in the sauna or steam room or jacuzzi. Whoops!

 

I’ve done my best to be impartial about this. It is, however, true that I come from the North and I start most of my conversations with questions.

I would love to hear your thoughts and observations. Am I right about this? Is it a North-South thing or just another way that people can be different from each other?

I recently heard about a junior member of staff who hadn’t been to work for ten days. She cited ‘mental health issues’. Her boyfriend had called time on their relationship and she wasn’t coping well. It’s one more in number of similar occurrences across a number of different organisations that have been mentioned to me by clients and colleagues.

I’m sure we can all sympathise with the distress a young person experiences when a romantic relationship ends. I’m struggling to sympathise with the need for ten days off. One of the senior HR Professionals who confided in me is herself in the throes of ending her 38-year marriage. She hasn’t taken any time off, but it doesn’t mean she’s any less affected by her situation. Another has just had a traumatic accident to a family member whilst on holiday. She hasn’t taken any time off either.

No doubt I am the product of a very different era of work. I laid the foundations of my career in a time when allowing your personal life to affect your work was regarded as unprofessional. Perhaps more so in the service sector, where I began my working life.

When you’re faced with an endless stream of customers the key is to focus on what they want and to deliver it efficiently. It’s not about me, it’s about them. And that can be very useful…

I remember, many years ago, going to work with my personal finances weighing on my mind (In the late 1980s I had my first mortgage and within months the interest rate had gone up to 13%). It had been an effort to get going that morning, to put on my make-up and paste on a smile for the customers. When I stopped at lunchtime, I was pleasantly surprised to realise that I felt better. I’d been busy.  I’d been focusing on other people. I’d been solving other problems. As I sat in the staff room eating my lunch, I realised that my financial issues could be resolved. I knew what to do.

Looking back, I can see that I was taking advantage of the great power of the unconscious mind. It never stops. The unconscious part of your mind is the repository of everything you know, all your memories and all your ideas. Learning to harness the power of the unconscious mind can be transformational. Set it a task before you go to sleep at night and wake up to the answers.

I’m digressing slightly, but only slightly. The unconscious mind is also the source of emotions, which in turn are related to our deeply-held values. Values provide the motivation to act.

When life throws up an unexpected and unpleasant surprise, the conscious mind goes into a spin. Shock, denial, paralysis, anger…. Emotions flood the conscious awareness and the brain goes into Threat mode, making it hard to think clearly and productively. The temptation is to wallow in the emotion.

The unconscious mind gets to work when the conscious mind is either distracted or asleep. When the conscious mind focuses on the problem, in an endless loop of anxiety and stress, the unconscious mind can’t process the issue, can’t accept what’s going on, can’t heal and can’t plan for the future.

We need to create mental space for the unconscious mind to do its job.  Going to work can be enough.

The same can apply to physical problems. Actors sometimes refer to ‘Doctor Theatre’, meaning that if they make the effort to go on stage and perform despite a headache, a head cold or a pulled muscle, they come off stage feeling much better.  The change of state is powerful. When you act the part of a character who is fit and well and full of life, your body responds accordingly.

I’ve had a similar experience as a trainer. When people have paid fees for a training course, they expect you to deliver. There’s very little room for being ‘under the weather’ or ‘not at my best’. At the end of a day’s workshop I’ve often felt as though I’ve shaken off my niggling health issues and I feel at my best again.

Now, I’m not saying we should ignore our problems, physical or mental.

It’s also true that I’ve battled through a two-day course as my voice diminished to a croak and my energy gradually drained away. It doesn’t ALWAYS create a miraculous healing!

And I’ve seen the damage done to people who try to work through increasing stress and find themselves in a downward spiral of anxiety and overwhelm.

So no, I’m not saying we should ignore our problems. What I’m suggesting is that we have choices. No matter what is going on in your life, you can’t feel bad about it every second of the day. Emotions just don’t work like that. They come and go, in waves. Ask anyone who is handling a bereavement. People laugh at funerals as well as crying.

If you make the effort to focus on something else, you can. If you make the effort to talk about other things, you can breathe through the wave of emotion and surf it to safer waters. If you hold the intention to get some work done, despite the distractions of your anxieties, you can probably achieve something. Maybe not as much as you would on a ‘good day’ but something nonetheless.

And having done that, you can go home at the end of your working day and think about what’s bothering you and express your feelings to your nearest and dearest, or your therapist or whoever, and know that you might be having a hard time, but you’re not completely broken.

Personal resilience is closely linked to self-esteem. If you feel good about yourself and your achievements in general, it’s easier to cope with the occasional set-back.

So, as we find ourselves in a world where corporate responsibility extends into the arena of mental health and well-being, I think there are some important skills that people can learn. Supporting mental health already means different things in different organisations.

Could it also mean helping people to compartmentalise their problems and use their work as therapy?

For my generation, that’s known as ‘professionalism’ – to act the role regardless of how you feel inside. The problems came when people tried to ignore the issues permanently. Good mental health practice is about creating a constructive way to address the problems at a planned time. (That could include Bridget Jones-style eating ice-cream in front of mindless TV for an evening or it could mean seeing therapist regularly)

Work is good for your mental health. I think work can even be regarded as a form of therapy.

Or am I just a dinosaur? What do you think? Would I be accused of bullying if I suggested that ‘get up, dress up and show up’ is what’s needed on the tough days?

It’s over three years since we were all required to work at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s easy to think, therefore, that the skills of leading a remote team would be completely integrated into the repertoire of every manager and leader by now.

Easy to think that. Less easy to find concrete evidence of it.

When everyone had to work from home, that was one challenge. Now that we’re free to choose and most organisations have embraced hybrid working to some degree, that’s a second challenge.

Here is my checklist for managing a hybrid-working team. It might not be exhaustive, but if you can say yes to everything on the list, you’re probably doing pretty well…

Do you…

• Know when people are in the office and when they’re not?
• Ensure you have a one-to-one with every member of your team at least monthly?
• Arrange opportunities for the whole team to come together regularly?
• Know what facilities each person has for working at home?
• Know what each person is working on each week?
• Build in time to circulate and chat every time you’re in the office?
• Feel confident you could spot it if someone in your team was struggling in some way?
• Celebrate successes as a team?
• Know what specifically motivates each person in your team?
• Believe that everyone is using the opportunity for hybrid working to their best advantage?

 

If you’d like to have a conversation with me about any of the items on the list or anything to do with your team and how to be the leader your team needs, click here to book a call with me.

If you’ve been reading my newsletters and blog for a while, you have probably spotted my love of cricket. I am indebted to my former partner, Phil, for introducing me to the 50-over World Cup in 2019, but that wasn’t my introduction to the sport…

I grew up in the Yorkshire Dales, where every village green is also a cricket pitch and despite attending a State School, cricket was played in the Summer. Just not by girls. It was a Boys’ Sport. Girls played rounders and netball. (Reluctantly in my case)

However, my Dad liked to watch all sports on TV and somewhere along the line I learned about cricket. So, when I started watching the World Cup in 2019 I did actually understand what was going on! And I got completely hooked.

Why do I love this weird sport so much?

Just for fun, here are some of my reasons why. This probably tells you more about me as a person than about cricket.

1. It’s quintessentially English. I associate cricket with the village greens of my childhood, the history of our country and traditions like ‘afternoon tea’. What other sport has tea and buns built into the fabric of the game?
2. It’s complicated. The rules – or rather, laws of the game are complex and regularly get amended, clarified or changed. I love the complexity and the details. I’m blessed with a good memory and I squirrel away details for future use in this as much as every other area of my life.
3. The stats. When Phil suggested I watch in 2019, he accurately predicted that I would love the numbers. I think he was referring to runs needed vs balls left in a run chase. Being a statistician I also love the batting and bowling averages, strikes rates and records. Run rates, over rates, career best scores and ‘manhattans’ all make me smile and I love the way that the commentary teams can find a stat on practically anything! For example, when England beat Ireland at Lord’s last week, Ben Stokes became the first Test Captain to win a match without batting, bowling or keeping.
4. The environment makes a difference. It’s a different game when it’s played in different countries (remember those flat pitches in Pakistan?) and in different weather conditions. Our grey and grim English summers can be a real advantage at times! Perhaps not as a spectator, though. I’ve only been rained off once – on all other occasions I’ve been sitting in the sunshine that befits a Summer sport.
5. The balls. Is there another sport where the deterioration of a key piece of equipment during the course of a game is an integral part of the players’ skills? I’m referring to the hand-made red Dukes ball used in Test matches, of course, rather than its close cousin the white ball used in limited overs cricket. The careful tending of ball to make it ‘reverse swing’ fascinates me.
6. The atmosphere. The first time I attended a Test match live was in 2021, just after the long periods of lockdown and it was the first time that crowds had been allowed back to sporting events. I don’t normally like crowds. In fact, I had a bit of trepidation about the whole experience, but I absolutely loved it. Everyone was so happy to be there. Everyone was friendly and keen to chat. I came home feeling as though I’d rejoined the human race. (NLP-ers – people ask whether anchors really work!!)
7. The Barmy Army. I’d never want to sit in the designated ‘party stand’ at any of the grounds I’ve visited but when the Barmy Army start singing the players’ songs it often makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. This is what loyalty looks like – they support England whether they win, lose, draw (not that England ‘do’ draws any more) or get rained off. Whatever happens, the Barmy Army support. You might even call it unconditional love.
8. The history. Cricket has been played in England since the dawn of time. Well, not quite, but at least for a few hundred years. (That’s a lot of stats!)
9. The kit. No hairy legs or knobbly knees on display in this most civilized of games. Long trousers are probably a nuisance on hot days, but I think they look good. And who doesn’t love a cable-knit sweater? Come to think of it, is there any other summer sport that includes a thick sweater in the kit? Players from hotter climes are probably very glad they have both a long-sleeved and sleeveless version to put on when they’re playing in the North of England early in the season.
10. On roughly 50% of occasions I’ve gone to a live match, I’ve met someone I know, whom I didn’t know was going to be there and didn’t know to be a cricket fan. This reassures me that it’s not weird to love cricket. I’m in good company.

What’s your favourite sport and why do you love it?

I’ve been thinking a lot about teams and why we need to work in teams. It’s a common feature of most workplaces, that each person has a role and also belongs to a team. Sometimes we refer to all the people who report to one manager as being a team, even if their work doesn’t overlap. However, most teams involve working together to some extent.

I’ve previously defined leadership as

“Uniting people in service of a common goal”

It would follow logically then, to say,

“A team is a group of people united in service of a common goal”

The assumption is that achieving the goal is too big a task for one person and a team can succeed where an individual can’t. That may be true most of the time, but if time is not limited, one person working alone can achieve a great deal.

There is a principle in project management that adding more people to a team will invariably slow down progress! This is because of the time it takes for people to agree goals and objectives, to allocate tasks and to communicate with each other about progress. And that’s just when it’s going well! If there are problems, the more people involved the more unwieldy it becomes because there are more people to consult and to convince.

So why do we work in teams?

I believe that it’s partly because we think the job requires it, and partly because human beings are social creatures and do most things more effectively with other people around.

For a start, it gets lonely and dull if you work alone all the time (remember lockdown?). Secondly, everyone experiences an ebb and flow of energy and motivation. When you work in a team you can be uplifted by someone else’s energy and carried along on the wave of a colleague’s enthusiasm. Some of us hate the idea of letting other people down, so we sustain our motivation by focusing on supporting others or simply keeping our promises.

Some people enjoy working alone some of the time, but everyone needs to bring their work to other people at some point. A very small interaction between two people can provide the impetus for large volumes of work…

…or it can set things back for days!

The real value of working as a team is often seen in teams that have a diverse make-up. Teams of people with similar skills, attitudes and approaches aren’t always the most productive. Teams where there is a variety of skills and attitudes may initially find it harder to figure out how to get along, but when they succeed in communicating across the divide of difference styles, they become much more successful.

Let’s take a simple example. Imagine a team working on a new project. It’s something the team hasn’t done before, but they have run projects together before. The team is likely to have tried-and-tested methods and best practices they can use. But this is something completely new. Does it call for a new approach?

Within the team there may be a majority of people who are keen to stick with what they know and to get started so they can quickly show some progress.

What if there is a lone voice who advocates exploring a new approach to this new project?

The chances are, the lone voice will be drowned out and the team will do what the team usually does.

A more aware team, one where people have spent time getting to know each other’s strengths, might come to different conclusion. The majority might turn to the one person who advocates something new. Why? Because everyone knows that this person’s strength is in breaking new ground, exploring possibilities and experimenting with different options. They take the lead when something fresh is required. They take a back seat when it’s a case of following established processes.

Essentially, the value of a team is that nobody has to be good at everything. Each person is allowed their strengths and can rely on others to pick up the responsibility for everything else. It does mean that a successful team will cover all bases, but that’s a question for another day.

In summary, here’s why I think we work in teams:

• To get the job done quicker
• To motivate and encourage each other
• To allow individuals to focus on their strengths

Have I missed anything?

At the Association for NLP Conference in 2019, a woman approached our stand. She paused for a moment to read our banner, then looked me in the eye and said, “I didn’t realise NLP could be used in business”.

It’s difficult to say which of us was most surprised!

I quickly recovered my state (of course!) and we had a brief conversation. The woman actually wasn’t greatly interested in how NLP is used in business because she was a therapist. Fair enough. She made me think, though. I couldn’t help wondering how many people had learned NLP as a personal development tool and hadn’t realised how valuable it is in business.

Start with the basics…

If business needs people to be focused and productive, needs employees to put their energy into achieving goals, what better tool than the Well-formed Outcomes pattern? It’s far superior to SMART goals, because it flushes out the secondary gains and focuses our attention on what is under our control. If you manage other people, ensuring they have well-formed outcomes will make a big difference.

Most people have to interact with others as part of the working day, so everyone can benefit from learning about Rapport, Pacing and Leading. Actually, let’s go right back to the most fundamental principle – the map is not the territory. Respect for alternative maps of the world is vital in a diverse workforce. It’s all very well having an exemplary Diversity and Inclusion policy but if nobody knows how to communicate with people who think differently from themselves, you’ll never see any real benefit from the diversity.

Becoming more sophisticated…

Even a rudimentary knowledge of the Meta Model can be an asset for anyone at work. Just recognising the extent of deletion, distortion and generalisation that goes on in an average business meeting and being able to intervene with a well-chosen question can defuse disagreements, avoid misunderstandings or even save money. And knowing something about the Milton model can help you avoid putting your audience to sleep in an important presentation!

I could go on. And on. Every time I teach NLP Practitioner to the kind of senior business leaders that are my audience, I’m delighted to hear how they take the tools and apply them in their own environment. Often the applications are completely new and go beyond the examples given in the classes.

The reality is, a lot of business leaders are using NLP. But now I think of it, it’s not really surprising that people don’t know about it. They tend not to talk about it and when it’s done well, it’s practically invisible.

If you’re interested in finding out more about all these techniques – and the tremendous benefits they can bring to your working life and career – you might like to take a look at the Brilliant Minds Executive NLP Practitioner Training.
You’ll find all the details here: https://www.brilliantminds.co.uk/executive-nlp-practitioner/

Why do you need to blow your own trumpet?

In most social situations, blowing your own trumpet is thought inappropriate. It may be a British disease, but most of us don’t like hearing other people talking about how good they are. We call it ‘bragging’ or ‘showing off’. It’s as offensive to our ears as if someone were to blow a loud, harsh note on a trumpet. So, as a consequence most of us are careful to avoid doing it.

In social situations that may be appropriate. It may be the best thing to be modest and give the glory for your achievements to an excellent team or to play down the significance of what you’ve done. But when it comes to securing the job you’ve always wanted or a prestigious contract, it’s important that you are the star of the show and that your value is easy to communicate. It’s also relevant for performance reviews and any kind of audit.

The problem is, if you don’t do it very often, you’re probably not comfortable blowing your own trumpet. It might not be easy. There is a very real danger that you just sound like you’re bragging and end up alienating your audience. Blowing your own trumpet without sounding big-headed can be done, but there is an art to it.  A subtle art, that’s all to do with use of language.

So where do you start?

First of all, it’s important to identify what you want to blow your trumpet about. Simply telling people ‘I’m wonderful’ isn’t going to do any good. You’ve got to know why you’re wonderful. If you like, you’ve got to decide what tune you’re going to play.

Depending on the context, you might want to talk about your skills, your achievements, your personality or maybe your network.

 

Let’s look at each of these in turn, starting with:

Skills

Think of something that you know you can do well. In my case, as a trainer of NLP, I know I’m good at teaching NLP, in particular to Senior Executives. If I simply say, “I’m really good at teaching NLP to Senior Executives” that sounds bigheaded. I feel uncomfortable saying it and so the temptation is to lessen the discomfort by playing down the skill. So I might say “I’m quite good at teaching NLP”. That won’t impress you if you’re an HR Director looking for someone to hire to work with your Board. So what’s the alternative?

The reason why the first statement sounds bigheaded and slightly offensive is because it’s an unsubstantiated claim. Why should anyone believe me? So the key is to explain how the skill has been developed and what evidence you have that what you do is successful.

So I might say something like:

“In the 25 years I’ve been working with NLP I’ve concentrated on how it can be applied at senior level in business. Through working with Directors and Senior Managers in organisations across a variety of industries I’ve discovered some key strategies that make sense to experienced, commercially-minded people and that can be relied on to deliver a tangible difference to business performance.”

By providing the extra detail about how I acquired the skill, how I’ve applied it and the results that I’ve achieved, my claim that ‘I’m good at teaching NLP to senior business leaders’ has much more credibility.

Also by providing the extra detail, I can slip in other relevant facts. Did you notice me saying I’ve got 25 years experience?

One of the skill areas that is relevant to almost any job is that of communications. If you say at interview, “I’m a good communicator” that’s going to sound big-headed. And if you’re a bit nervous and not as fluent as usual, you might feel particularly foolish saying it.

Consider instead how it sounds if you say something like, “I’ve learned how important it is to communicate well and consistently. My most recent manager was very good at keeping everyone informed, at having one-to-one meetings and giving people feedback. He coached me to do the same and I’ve really seen the difference it can make to the morale and productivity of a team.”

This works on a number of levels, first it doesn’t sound arrogant! Also, it provides the information about HOW you developed the skill and at the same time demonstrates that you had a relationship of mutual respect with your previous boss. There’s also the covert message that you recognise that communication affects productivity and you’re not just paying lip-service to the idea that it’s important.

Practice:  choose one of your skills and work out how you can present it:  how did you acquire the skill, how have you applied it, what results did you achieve?

 

So let’s move on to:

Achievements

If you want to impress someone with your achievements, it’s not usually enough to talk about results. It’s much more impressive if you can explain something about the journey and the challenges along the way.

For example, if I tell you that one of my client organisations increased their business by 20% in 12 months; you probably won’t be very impressed.

Compare that with, “One of my client organisations is in the automotive sector, which was very badly affected at the start of a recession in the sector. But through a very carefully targeted executive development programme followed by a leadership programme for supervisors and team leaders, they went from working a 4-day week to a 7-day week and grew their business by 20% against the trend in their industry. The training I delivered for them won a National Training Award.”

By giving details of where you started as well as where you finished, you can create a much better impression.

In one company I worked with a project manager told me that his annual review had been disappointing and he’d only received an average rating despite delivering a very challenging project to a tight schedule. He had a colleague who had delivered a much smaller and less demanding project who had received a high rating. His colleague had been very vocal about every problem encountered in his project and had taken up time in meetings discussing the ways to solve his problems.

The result was that the Programme Manager knew that one of the project managers had had a lot of problems and had still delivered. He didn’t know that the other project manager had also had a lot of problems but had solved them himself, without complaining or taking up other people’s time. He told me ‘I thought that was my job and I did it as well as I could, but it didn’t get me the reward I think I deserve.’

People can’t be impressed if you don’t tell them what to be impressed about.

Let’s do another example:

“In 2009 I achieved certification as a Master Trainer of NLP”

You don’t know whether that’s impressive or not, unless you know something about the qualification and what it takes to achieve it. It will also help if you know something about me.  So I might say:

“I’m fortunate that academic qualifications came fairly easily to me.  I’ve got a good memory for facts and figures and I never suffered from exam nerves. But when I enrolled in the Master Trainer programme I knew it was going to be a challenge because it’s all about demonstrating competence and providing evidence of success. It was a lot of hard work over several years and I feel really honoured to have been awarded the qualification.”

It also helps if you mention how you feel about the achievement. It makes you more human and helps your interviewer or audience relate to you.

One other thing, if you’re going to talk about the obstacles you had to overcome to achieve your results, be careful about how you describe the obstacles – especially if they’re people! If you say, “it was a difficult project because most of the team weren’t up to the job and I didn’t get enough support from my manager” you’re just blaming everyone else for the problems.

Instead you might say, “It was a difficult project for me because I hadn’t worked with such an inexperienced team before and my manager was also under a lot of pressure with other projects at that time.”

Practice: think of one or two of your own achievements and consider what you would say about the journey and the challenges involved in getting the results.

 

If you’re in a job interview, you might also need to blow your own trumpet about your…

Personality

This can be tricky if you make it all about you.

Suppose I say, “I’m very approachable and trustworthy” I’m probably going to cringe as I say it because it sounds so bigheaded. I can immediately tone that down by focusing on other people’s reactions to me:

“I’m the kind of person that lots of people confide in”

That could still sound arrogant, so let’s apply the same principle as we have with skills and achievement and give some more detail to back up the statement:

“I’ve worked with people throughout my career and I’ve learned how to listen and how to make it safe for people to talk about the things that matter. It’s important to me that people feel valued as individuals and that they know their confidence will be respected.”

That gives you a picture of me as someone that people will trust and confide in, without me actually saying it in so many words.

Practice: which of your personality traits might you want to talk about?  How can you describe them through focusing on the responses of other people?

 

The final area you might need to impress someone with is your…

Network

Here’s how not to do it:

“I know anyone who’s anyone in this industry.” Not only does that sound bigheaded, but if you’re talking to someone you’ve only just met, you’re implying that they’re nobody.

So again, we need to add some background to back up the statement and find a better way of expressing it.

“I’ve been lucky enough to work with most of the major players in this industry and I’m in regular contact with a lot of people who can give me advice when I need it.”

 

…and that’s how

You blow your own trumpet without sounding big-headed when you explain – with relevant detail – how you know that you’re good at certain things. This comes from being able to cite specific results, examples of comments from other people or by sharing your personal experience of closing the gap between a difficulty and its resolution.

Finally, remember that your greatest areas of skill are likely to be those you take for granted. The things you can do easily – without even having to think too much about them – they’re the things that are worth blowing your own trumpet about. Especially if they’re things that other people find hard.

Think about it…