Five Essential Personas for Growing Your Career
Who you should be, to be who you want to be
“Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.” - Dale Carnegie
Business is all about people, which is great because I love people. Especially those that want to do things for, or with, money. Success in business the best kind is thus determined by how you take advantage of deal with people.
But sadly, we’re also people - stupid, irrational, beautifully imperfect. To deal with other people, and overcome these limitations, we must stop being ourselves. We need to become chameleons whose camouflage glands intake context from Office 365 and can make convincing disguises through light blue button downs, behind clean white tables, and over Zoom.
If the key step to find success in love is to erase your parents’ influence, then the key step to find success in business is to erase yourself. Embrace these forms, for otherwise ye’ be lost in a sea of humans dwelling beneath the ruling class of elite persona-changing octopi.
1. The Automator
Leaders in business love automation. If automation isn’t a personal life value, you have little hope of success. You must settle for nothing less than beautiful, repetitive execution of all tasks to free-up time for leveled-up, business value generating activities.
“The human element isn’t on the periodic table, but Al is.”
You can’t just advocate for how much you want it; you must also be a practitioner.
Few things carry as much cachet in company leadership circles as mentioning off-hand how you automated a task. Find something to automate - whether you use ChatGPT to write a script to send an email, copy an Excel macro from Stack Overflow, or get someone in a different time zone to do it as a growth opportunity - anything works.
2. The Productivity Guru
Successful leaders know it’s easy to talk, and much harder to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty in a flow state while putting your nose to the grindstone to build something in the trenches.
Thankfully everyone is so focused around the ideal of work that you simply need to appear to know how to get things done. It’s also much easier to write about doing things than actually doing them, so there’s a wealth of knowledge available. To assume this persona, you’ll need to become familiar with the canonical productivity concepts:
In one-on-ones with your manager, find opportunities to connect things you observed in meetings with concepts in these books. Bring a few ideas for how they could be applied to your team. No need to follow through, but your manager will be left with the impression you really know how to get things done and help the team - a.k.a. promotion material.
3. The Typical Person
“It’s people that make the difference. Little people like you” - Mr. Frank Shirley
Most people don’t care that much about business, but they do care about living good lives, having fun, and buying nice things. Unfortunately, most people are also your customers, team members, and investors. To work with them, and win them over, you need to create a bond through shared experience with the world around us. Most people care about trivial things like fishing, sports, and their family. In order to create bonds and win their hearts it’s critical to become adept in a folksy demeanor. Become fluent in discussions on topics like:
Frustrations of married life
Struggles of economy-class air travel
Kids returning home for the holidays
Long commutes
Chronic injuries
Fantasy football
It may be necessary to fully commit and acquire a spouse, children, and/or traditional hobbies. If you do, be mindful of the risks involved.
4. The Success Celebrator
Wow team, I can’t believe we’re here. You’ve We’ve done so much hard work, but it’s important we take time to celebrate. There’s still a lot of work ahead for you us, but we can’t lose sight of our values and goals - those that keep me us here day over day.
I’d like to thank each and every person who has contributed to what’s been the most successful time of our company, and for making my job so easy this truly and amazing best place to work.
5. The Thought Leader
You have thoughts. You probably think most of them suck. Good news: they do, and it doesn’t matter one bit. All that matters is that you signal their value.
Orally, it’s all about style over substance. Enjoy the comfort that, in the business world nobody will fact check you because things just move so darn fast. (What about last quarter’s numbers? Who cares!). If anyone calls you out, they’re obviously not busy enough and thus not important.
The writing part is even easier. Most people are too busy to accurately determine the quality of writing. They click, skim, and go on with their lives feeling as if they’ve consumed their quota of knowledge for the day. Deep thinking is optional; nothing in business is that important! Do now. Fix later. The business world moves so quickly after all! Focus on signaling the value of your thoughts. Add hyperlinks for credibility. Post on LinkedIn, Medium, Substack, X, Mastodon, Facebook. The more link icons the better!