
Influential Executive Lesson #3: What’s Your Message?
With lesson #1 and lesson #2 on how to become an influential executive, you now know that your primary motivation shouldn’t be money, but that if you ignore the money you won’t go far spreading your message.
Lesson #3: What’s Your Message?
Your message comes before your audience or anything else because your message is your cause, your purpose, your goal, your objective, and it better be something you care about deeply, otherwise nothing else that follows will matter — there’s no tactic that can make up for you not caring. But if you care enough you will figure out everything else you need to do.
Your message is tied to your motivation, your “why.” My message is “If you become an influential executive then all your wildest dreams will come true.” Want to get paid more? Build your personal brand. Want to grow your business? Become a thought leader. Want to attract better talent to your company or department? Become an influencer. Want to get promoted, build a legacy, get paid to speak, land a book deal, travel the world, land consulting gigs, or pass on your experience? Influence can deliver it all.
Why do I care enough about this to invest my time in this cause? In part because I believe in what U2’s frontman Bono stated in 2013 and continues to say:
“Aid is just a stopgap. Commerce [and] entrepreneurial capitalism take more people out of poverty than aid.” — Bono
I also believe that most people, even executives, are good people. If I can help executives increase their influence, I believe they’ll use that influence to build their businesses, and that this will ultimately make the world a better place, including eradicating poverty, which Bill Gates claims we can do by 2030.
Your message doesn’t need to be tied to eradicating poverty, but it should be tied to making the world a better place, which your business does, right? (if not, maybe it’s time to find a new job) Like I said in Lesson #1, it can’t be about making money, whether it’s the money in your pocket or the top line revenue of your business, or you won’t have enough motivation to become truly influential.
So what’s your message? Tell me in the comments below. If you don’t know, stay tuned for tomorrow’s lesson on how to choose a message if you’re not sure exactly what it is.
