Are you cool? Not temperature, mind you. I am speaking of the revelation that you are young, invincible, in charge and beyond reproach. I was cool once. Of course the immediate response from the gallery filled with twenty-something’s may be “yeah, but that was the eighties.” Yep, it was. There were leg warmers and word processors. Neon was actually a color choice by some (Good God, I am ecstatic that one never took hold – Google Wham). Then before I knew it, by 1987, I embarked on a journey into fashion. I had an amazing experience working in a very recognizable fashion house. Holy crud, what an experience! The nineties exploded into my actually being cool…relatively speaking mind you. Although, without trying to sound arrogant, I was cooler then than now. I had degrees of reputation. By that I mean in my profession and personal life and so on. But I digress.
At some point in your life you a have a cool factor. I suggest this may happen more so than not when you are a manager or involved in a growing professional thing. You are twenty-ish or maybe even thirty-ish (my coolness was definitely after thirty) and you have a team of three or ten or eighteen. You have some clout and you have…an ego. Do not dismiss this. I am very serious. While the first response may be, “Oh, he said ego, so he is trying to trap us into feeling bad about having one”; that is not my objective. I am not suggesting that at all. You have one. You need one. It is what distinguishes you. Please allow yourself to have what you have as a billboard to who you are. That is authenticity. No trap. OK.
I am exploring how someone takes their own “being-ness” and turns it into “being cool”. And then how that looks when you manage a team of people. You are the boss, making some money, starting out, dating a very nice girl, looking at starting a portfolio of some such or the other. You are living a fast paced life and like the idea of image. Maybe you have a thought that you are so much cooler than your dad or mom. Guess what, they were as cool as you are right now way before you even had a thought about it. Trust me about that one. Maybe your time is 2011. Mine was 1993. My dad’s was ’75 or ’76. And his dad’s was…Do you get it yet? When we are at this point, we make decisions about how we act when we are at work and how we interact when we are with others.
Let’s say you have a team of five. You just bought a cool car. You embellished it with a thing or two. You are playing the music you love on the way to work. Maybe driving a bit over the speed limit. You look in the rear view mirror and feel like you are having a good hair day (haven’t had one of those in fifteen years). You open the door into the store and work happens. How do you act and interact? Does your ability, personality, ego and your hair day play at part? I say yes. And not to condemn. Only to embrace a little bit of reality. Being cool doesn’t make you a bad manager. Being cool may make to approachable or popular or attractive to others – it does not guarantee you are a good manager. So…
Not everyone feels cool. They have the ability, but may not feel it or be there just yet. Do not flaunt yours. Respect others in how you interact with them.
Be OK with being cool, but don’t make it a focal point or what defines you. Make others important. Learn what drives others and use that knowledge to encourage and influence them.
Know your job and the job of those around you. Do those things exceedingly well and use what makes you cool as an amplifier for those things.
Be authentic. Today and always. Just don’t make being authentic a barrier to growing someone else. We need each other.
Some may say this is superficial post. I disagree. I choose to look at the inevitable and embrace “being real”. I look at young managers and I like them all. They are who I was at that time in my life. They are our future; whether we agree with their actions or not, whether we embrace their beliefs or ethical decision making. They are cool – relatively speaking. Not cool by 1990’s standards, but still incredibly cool. I just hope they see their ability to make an impact on others. That they see how being cool is a state of mind (or ego) and not what makes people follow you. I will follow someone who is assertive, but less likely to follow someone who is arrogant. Do you see the difference? Or is your ego getting in the way?
Cheers