people

Mixing It Up

When you have a great meal, do you tell your friends about it? When you see a great movie, or hear a great CD, are you someone who recommends it to others?

Word of mouth is the most trusted recommendation factor around. We trust our friends, our families, our connections. We?d rather go with their advertising than some stranger that?s being paid to recommend something.

So how often do you use your word of mouth to highlight unsung heroes, or new connections, or new people?

We?re all connected in numerous ways ? some purely online, some physically. Whatever way it is, the connection is there. It may have different levels of connection, but the one thing that?s constant is the trust factor.

Say someone I respect points me in someone?s direction, I?ll check that person out. Or if they say I should be reading a certain blog, I?ll take the time to have a look through it and either add it to my reader, recommend it to others, or move on. Even if I move on, if I know someone that would get a kick out of that particular blog, I?ll recommend it to them.

This is something we all can do.

There?s a huge amount of great information and people that go unnoticed, simply because they?re lost in the noise of our online conversations. So let?s be cause champions.

But let?s be slightly different cause champions.

If you recommend a blogger, make it one that isn’t from the norm. While the A-listers like Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse and Seth Godin all offer great information, I?m sure none of them would begrudge you recommending other bloggers over them. People like Gini Dietrich, Mark W. Schaefer and Jim Connolly are coming out with some amazing stuff ? you really should check them out.

Same goes for Twitter and the #followfriday recommendations. We all know that the “big guys” are usually worth following. So how about other guys? Recommend people outside your normal niche as well. If we all just recommended PR or marketing users, it?d get to be a pretty predictable Friday.

Or in your business or job – if you can’t handle a project, but know someone that could, recommend them for the job. The client or customer wins, because the work is still being done; your recommendation wins as they get extra recognition; and you win, because you’ve connected two needs to each another and made yourself look unselfish in the process.

There are some great people out there. We know that ? don?t others deserve to know it too?

image: camil tulcan

Everyone Is Someone’s Child

Sometimes, through anger, we see our own frailties. Or maybe not frailties – but definitely nuances that could be shared better.

The last few days has taught me that, as I’ve been pretty angry on this blog. Although, to be honest, I don’t see it as much anger as it is passion.

I’m passionate about how business should be run; how people should be treated; how ideas should be received. But that passion can sometimes blinker my view, and that can then be mistaken (rightly or wrongly) for anger.

But… passion and anger can tread a very fine line with each other, and that then leads to possibly hurting others. Which goes against everything I believe in to start with.

Today, a couple of posts made me realize that my passion may have overstepped the line and molded into anger instead.

Critic or Caustic

Someone I admire a lot is Jennifer Fong, and she posted her take on my recent post about bloggers not being able to stand the heat. In Jen’s post, she recalls the sage words that if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it at all.

While I might not agree with that completely – sometimes we have to say things that won’t be liked – Jen makes a great point about how these things could be said. Part of Jen’s post that stood out to me was this statement:

I think we sometimes forget that whether you?re an A-lister or a D-lister, we?re all still people. People with feelings.

If I’ve written something that resulted in someone like Jen writing something like that, that makes me stop and think on how I’ve portrayed something.

The other post was from Chris Brogan, who responded to some criticism he’s had in the last few days (one of which came from my blogger and heat post). Chris makes some valid points about criticism, and why some matters and some doesn’t. But what stood out for me from Chris’s post was this comment from his wife, Kat:

In the end guys, it’s just a job. We all go home at the end of the day. We hold our kids and/or our partner and smile and relax. It reminds us why we work hard and why it matters.

There’s more to Kat’s comment, but that part stopped me dead. Because I’m a father, and a husband, and it made me remember a simple thing.

Everyone is Someone’s Child

Or father. Or husband. Or wife, or daughter, or son. And sometimes we forget that. When we criticize, we forget that it’s not just the person we’re criticizing, but everyone around them.

Sure, a blogger has their community to rally around them when the shit hits the fan, and that’s great – that’s what a great blog should have. That tells you you’re doing it right.

But behind the scenes, a wife or a little kid is watching their loved one take heat. It may well be justified heat, but how it’s given can mean the difference between, “Oh, another one of your readers complaining – ah well” to actually upsetting the people behind the blogger. And that’s wrong.

So.

Like I say. I’m a passionate person, and I can’t – won’t – change that. It’s how I was brought up, and it’s how I (mostly) am away from here. If I see something – or someone – I disagree with, I’ll continue to offer an opposing view, and the reasons why. Any other approach would be cheating both myself and you.

But how I share my opposition?

I’ll be remembering that everyone is someone’s child. And I’ll be trying not to upset the parent from now on. If I slip up, feel free to be the first to remind me of this post.

Sound fair?

image: paloetic

The Problem with Thought Leadership

I have a problem with the term “thought leader”.

According to Dictionary.com, “leader” is described this way:

– noun
a person or thing that leads.
a guiding or directing head, as of an army, movement, or political group.

We all know what a thought is, so no real need to go to a dictionary for that. So, put the two of them together to get thought leader, and we’re basically saying someone that leads an army just by their thoughts alone.

Since we’re not living in The Matrix yet, this is where my problem with the term thought leader comes in, and offering someone that title.

We don’t lead people’s thoughts.

People aren’t so dumb that they need someone to lead the way to have a thought. People don’t need to be taken by the hand and led to a big Thought River where they’re then instructed to drink from it by the almighty Leader.

No. People have their own thoughts every single day. Some make it into an action stage. Some don’t.

But they’re not led to that place, or that revelation. They’re not waiting in a holding pattern until the next megastar blogger or speaker or author or celebrity comes along and leads the way.

To lead is to direct. How do you direct any thoughts but your own? Besides, thoughts are intangible until put into action. If there is any reaction from someone else’s thoughts, then it’s after the intangible has become tangible.

A reaction to an action. So it’s more thought reaction than thought leadership.

I read two great posts today about “thought leadership”. Both spoke about some of the people and thoughts that are meant to have us nod sagely and proclaim them as thought leaders.

Geoff and Doug both make bang-on points about why this type of thinking is bogus, and why thought leadership is a conflict in terms just waiting to happen.

You don’t need to be led. No-one does. At least, not when it comes to thoughts. You might need to be led in a new job until you’re familiar with the set-up, or how to please your new partner in bed until you know what makes them tick.

But thought leadership? Something doesn’t sit right with that term.

If anything, it should be thought breedership. There’s a ton of folks offering their thoughts on a variety of topics, and they (rightly so) inspire you to action.

But they don’t lead you to action.

Maybe we should be talking thought breedership instead. I guess the problem is, because everyone can breed thoughts in others, it might just upset those that want to be known as thought leaders.

And we couldn’t have that now, could we?

image: AsGood

What I’m Thankful For

Here in Canada, it’s Thanksgiving weekend.

Coming from the U.K. originally, I was always aware of the Thanksgiving holiday, but we don’t celebrate it. I didn’t even know Canada had its own Thanksgiving – I always thought it was just a U.S. holiday.

Having experienced it for the last four years now, I have to say it’s one of my favorite times of the year.

It’s a time that we can let all the crap in the world disappear, if just for a weekend, and look back at everything we have to be thankful for. We don’t do that often enough, in my opinion. So it’s great to be able to take dedicated time and really appreciate how lucky we are (even if we think we aren’t).

So I’d just like to share some of the things I’m thankful for this year, if that’s okay with you.

I’m thankful for having my health after a bit of a scare earlier this year. Good always comes from bad, though, and it made me realize that we only have one shot at what we do; we can’t afford to waste it.

I’m thankful for having the opportunity to do a job I love with a business partner I trust implicitly. It’s not often you get both of these together; the fact I’m lucky enough to enjoy both means it doesn’t feel like going into work. For that, I’m gratefully lucky.

I’m thankful for knowing that, as much as the world can be a bad place, it’s also full of people who believe in change. That individually, we can be strong; together, we’re a force to be reckoned with.

I’m thankful for having the most amazing blog community. Yes, I know every blogger says it, and they probably do – but I sincerely think you are one of the best period, and you prove that day in and day out. For that, I thank you.

I’m thankful for knowing you on all of your online and offline places. People say you can’t make true friends on the Internet – I say bullcrap. Knowing you, and interacting with you on a daily basis, just keeps proving me right.

I’m thankful for living in a country that offers so much. Much of what’s made me who I might be today has happened in the last four years; living in a country like Canada has been a huge part of that, despite some trials and tribulations along the way.

Most of all, I’m thankful for having three amazing women in my life.

I’m thankful for my wife’s grandmother, Ann, who’s been my unofficial mother since I arrived in Canada.

I’m thankful for my wife’s mum, Traci, who’s helped in ways she can never know when the chips have been down.

And I’m thankful for my wife Jacki, who’s been the rock behind everything I do and given me more than I could ever ask for. I’ve not always been the husband I should be; I’ve not always been “there” when I needed to be. But through it all, Jacki has been, and for that I can never be thankful enough.

To my Canadian friends, have a safe and very Happy Thanksgiving with you and yours.

To my other friends, here’s to this weekend being one of your best. I’m signing off for a couple of days; I’ll see you after my turkey fix.

Slainte!

image: sebastien.b

Why This Blog’s Community Rocks

A blog’s community can be many things.

It can be long-term subscribers; it can be first time visitors. It can be “only” readers; it can be regular commenters. It can be every day attendees; it can be folks that visit once then read every other post from a feed, never to visit the actual blog again.

One thing that every single member of a blog community has in common, though, is the connection to each other through the blog (and vice versa).

And that connection can be the very heartbeat that keeps a blog alive.

If a blog’s community is the heartbeat then you, the folks that make up this blog’s community, must have one of the strongest communal beats around, because you have some of the biggest hearts.

You showed that yesterday when I asked for a “birthday wish” to celebrate this blog’s two-year anniversary. You showed it when you granted that wish and visited the blog of a girl called Stacey Monk and showed her she wasn’t alone in her sadness, and that you were there with support if and when she needed it.

When people ask why I blog, the answer I give more than any is this: because of the community.

I already considered myself hugely fortunate to have you here, to have you read my thoughts and share yours in the comments afterward.

I can safely replace “hugely fortunate” with “full-on blessed”.

Thank you for being you.

image: himmelskratzer