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Digital mentors improve performance

It’s never been easier to surround yourself with thought leaders, experts, and virtual mentors to help you navigate a world you didn’t know exists

Front-loaded education creates a knowledge gap that widens over time as technology, exponential growth, and capabilities across different fields converge. In 1994 I conducted a survey that proves this point – a search for well-known consumer product companies including FORD dot com returned an error message. Their site didn’t exist. People preferred the Minnesota Gopher Network, data was still shared on paper, and pagers outnumbered mobile phones 10:1, and pay-phones were still ubiquitous.

In the mid-90’s devices were built for one purpose and many services we depend on today did not exist. Communicate, record, photograph, send, catalog, play music, and so on, all single function devices. As those machines merged, apps have exploded; review the catalog of software and services launched in the last decade: Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, Zoom, Dropbox, Uber, Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, Siri, Airbnb, Tic Toc, Instagram, YouTube, and countless social media apps.

This has created an impossible situation. People don’t have the bandwidth to sift through the data explosion around them. We all need teachers, guides, virtual mentors, actually “Digital Mentors” who can help us make sense out of the massive information cloud and explain it to us in simple terms. We need people who can teach us how to use it.

Experts have good instincts about what to keep and what to ignore in their domains. It’s easy to find opinions, but it’s difficult to uncover insights, since noise is increasing faster in our omni-connected world. This is a challenge.

Experts flag actionable insights, deliver them in a consumable way, and provide a framework to help us remember what they just taught us

How many devices have smart phones replaced? Pagers, address books, cameras, CD players; and all the physical devices and furniture they rendered obsolete – film, phone books, compact discs, the jewel cases that housed them, countless CD albums to hold discs, albums to hold photographs, and bookshelves to hold the albums. Smart phones vaporized entire industries. Here’s my digital mentor, Robert Tercek, explaining how everything that can be vaporized, will be. His trend-spotting work has enormous implications for companies that ignore innovation and the employees that choose to work for them.

Tercek

Consider the CEO’s of major corporations. They are supported by executives who lead armies of people and systems committed to solving enormous problems. The leader has predictable data streams flowing to them and people to focus attention on specific signals. They also have a Board of Directors – a team to coach the CEO and executives who manage the financial markets, strategic risk, innovation, talent, and new products and services.

Individuals advisers too – experts in different domains who provide new ideas, new methods, and new fundamentals to keep a CEO relevant. Digital mentorship democratizes knowledge since ambitious young leaders no longer need to invite an executive or thought leader to lunch to collect wisdom and hope senior leaders can coach them from the minors to the big leagues. Insights are accessible to anyone. Technology changed the world – and a little planning can help you uncover the contemporary experts all around you. Google’s and LinkedIn’s algorithms offer a great starting point.

The recipe:

Create a knowledge framework that bins insights among a few domains. Broadly speaking consider: People, Process, and Technology. Then add a few layers – including a “future” component – combine trends, and convergence, and call it Innovation. Then sprinkle in thought leaders in your industry and your profession to end up with about ten categories.

Your list provides a solid starting point. Begin to identify a few people in each category through google searches for each domain you selected. Capture their names from keynote speeches, Ted Talks, interviews, books, and other sources; then examine their work, follow their blogs, their LinkedIn articles and their Twitter feeds. You’ll uncover excellent work – papers, talks, books, and posts. As you learn more from your digital mentors you’ll become their digital protégés.

Here’s a simple vetting process:

  1. Is your prospective digital mentor an expert?
  2. Do they provide sufficient evidence to support their beliefs and insights?
  3. Do they share knowledge freely?
  4. Are their ideas original?
  5. Do they curate content from many sources?
  6. Are they good story tellers?
  7. Can their observations and ideas be applied to your situation?
  8. Is their material helpful and actionable for other people?

Life is short and the world is big – if you can’t answer “Yes” to every question keep looking – the rewards are great once you do, and every leader in the list below passes my test.

  1. People & Leadership: James Citrin, Amy Cuddy, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Matthew Syed, and Bob Sutton
  2. Process: Alan Weiss, Charles Duhigg, Jason Womack, Keith Ferrazzi, and Larry Keeley
  3. Technology & Innovation: Peter Diamandis, Robert Tercek, and Brian Krebs
  4. Sales & Marketing: Tony J. Hughes, Craig Elias, David Meerman Scott, Bryan Eisenberg, Jim Stengel, Robert Cialdini
  5. Economics: Kyle Bass, James Rickards, and Nassim Taleb

Check them out and let me know who you’ve picked to be your Digital Mentors.

 

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Self-Confident Networking

Successful people are self-confident. Confidence alone doesn’t make you successful, but it’s so important it’s worth studying in detail.

Confidence has several ingredients – how we act, look, feel, what we say, and how we say it. Our body language, speech, and delivery influence people around us.  Amy Cuddy taught the world how “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are” in a TED speech watched more than twenty-million times. We convey a lot of information about ourselves, our status, and how we’re feeling through our posture, body language, and how we move to establish personal space.

How do confident people act, walk, and talk? You know it when you see it. Let’s look at an effective teacher – the Military. Drill and ceremony rehearsals, confidence courses, the “gas chamber,” where Soldiers and Marines are inoculated against the fear of being hit with “tear gas” through the experience of being exposed to it. On demolition ranges where they learn how to throw live hand-grenades – safely. Airborne school, where Soldiers are turned into Paratroopers, and on countless missions, deployments and real emergencies that challenge participants to control their emotions to keep fear in check.

Early in my Military Police career I witnessed how attitudes affected preparation, readiness, and performance. I watched a five foot three inch, hundred and ten pound women control her fear to subdue a violent man twice her size. Phrases I half-believed then I embrace completely now – “fake it till you make it”, “when in charge, take charge, and when you’re not, act as if you are.” Confidence is not a substitute for competence, but it trumps alternative ways to approach life.

Training can be designed to teach tasks that together form skills that Soldiers or business-people master before they are qualified. Drown Proofing is a good example. It begins as a series of easy-to-achieve tasks. Soldiers are taught how to stay afloat and to make a flotation device from their clothing. The training culminates with a fully-clothed soldier, complete with kevlar vest, helmet, rifle, and boots thrown into the water. To pass, they need to stay afloat, no style points – as long as they don’t panic, they’ll get through it. And that’s true for anything you do in life – don’t panic.  More dramatic than conventional drown-proofing, this image shows Marines inside a helicopter mock-up as it rotates into water – you can watch the entire video on youtube here. This specialized training increased the survival rate for helicopter passengers caught in a forced-landing on water by several hundred percent.

Marines a modular Amphibious Egress Tank

Lessons learned in the Military can be applied to business. Networking is to business what drown-proofing is to Marines. Research on networking conducted at Harvard University adds evidence on this topic.

“Basically, the more “powerful” the person, the less they view “networking” as a “Dirty” activity. The lower power the person, the more they view it as a shameful chore. One implication for practice is that, to foster the advancement and effectiveness of professionals at low hierarchical levels, organizations need to create opportunities for emergent forms of networking, as those who need instrumental  networking the most are the least likely to engage in it.”

People I work with don’t need to do more good things better, they need to stop doing one thing poorly or step-up in situations where senior leaders wouldn’t hesitate. Usually it’s a single self-defeating inaction, or belief that stops them from moving forward. Self-confidence is the most common element their focus can fix to achieve the results they want. Think about how this could apply to you.

Gavin de Becker points out that young circus elephants are tied to a post with heavy chains they can’t break. Over time, they learn to stop trying, and eventually, as adults, they can be restrained with the flimsiest rope. What ropes are holding you back? Are you afraid, or lack confidence, or self-worth? Learn to be fearless.

Please “Like” and share if you found this useful!

Paul’s talk – “Personal Branding and Digital Footprints” is a discussion about how people connect, learn, and grow. He introduces ideas and techniques you can apply to achieve your goals, enhance your career, and help other people along the way.

Paul Laherty leads Deloitte’s relationship with several major airlines. Over the past fifteen years he’s led teams in Sales, Marketing, and Finance at American Airlines, Advito, Travelocity, Diio, and Cornerstone Information Systems. Paul’s an instrument-rated pilot, writer, speaker, world-traveler, former Army Officer, a husband, and father.  He helps people and organizations achieve significance, travel safely, and think differently. Paul publishes at paullaherty.com, and is open to connecting on LinkedIn at LinkedIn/paullaherty, or twitter @paul_laherty.

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