Presence & Substance.
The other day, I had a conversation with a taxi driver that i thought everyone could probably benefit from because, lets be honest, taxi drivers are pretty wise - given the volume of different people they meet and interact with. It started off with the usual pleasantries - hello, where are you from, what do you do, so on and so on but soon led to him giving me some advice about work. He shared with me his idea of how there are generally two types of people in the work place. Those with presence and those with substance. Those with presence generally have a limited understanding or interest in what they do but are quickly promoted and easily recognised because they understand that people's perception of them can either make their job really easy and they are willing and able to sell their own brand. Those with substance are those that can do the job and can sometimes do better than the person with presence but are often over looked when it comes to promotions and new opportunities because the person with presence has already got their foot in the door while the person with substance has been working at their desk. The taxi driver also noted to me how "a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet", referring to how he believes you cant teach someone with substance how to operate with presence as the fundamental traits such as overwhelming confidence is not there and vice versa, someone with presence cant pick up the same amount of substance because their interest isn't in the work but is in the reward of work which they see in their bank account every fortnight. Its a pretty realist way of looking at things but what i took away from this is that if you want to get somewhere at work and you don't have presence then you wont get far because no matter how much substance you have, no matter how many sales targets you can hit, if you cant sell your own brand then your opposition has the head start. Key take out: what people think of you at work is important and can be the difference between your job or your managers. **This is my first post, any tips are welcome.