You Need to Know Thyself

First impressions matter a lot, but what do you want to say beyond the immediate first impressions your clothing, posture and non-verbal communications make on your behalf? Believe it or not, most people don’t have a clue.

In the context of a presentation, the most important thing you want to get across is a baseline level of trust, credibility and competency. You want people to feel like they can rely upon both your information and your intentions. The best way to create this impression is to let them know who you really are—and that means knowing yourself.

We have to acknowledge that truly knowing ourselves is the work of decades, and there are certainly limits to what your audience cares to know before you start speaking to them. But it’s fairly easy to know the basics about your professional self: the part they really need to know about.

There are three key elements, besides your basic bio or story, that you need to understand about yourself and share in a relatable way with others. They’re less about biography, have nothing to do with promises, and deal almost exclusively with inclinations and predilections. If you’re going to build personal trust and credibility with an audience, you need to know:

Your strengths: In a humble way, let them know what you’re good at (and what you’re not good at). This conveys honesty, accountability in future dealings, and informs the way they interact with you, protecting you from your own weaknesses. (Don’t know what your strengths are? Search “Strength Assessment test” and get started!)

Your personality: It’s easiest to share this with them in story form, using examples from your personal history that illustrate the way you react to certain situations and interactions. Husband/wife or boyfriend/girlfriend exchanges are especially relatable. (Don’t know what your personality type is? Try the “Meyers Briggs” or the “Predictive Index”).

Your IQ: Please, please do not share this directly with the audience! But you need to know it for yourself. Why? Because ability isn’t found in IQ so much as it is in the way you manage yourself, and you need to know whether to trust your own intellect on complicated issues or to focus on corralling a team of smart people to get the job done. There’s nothing good or bad about being “smart”—only good and bad ways of managing intellectual ability. (Don’t know your IQ? Try Wonderlic.)

Question: What tools do you rely upon for information about yourself?





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