Be Yourselves: Balancing Your Business Style

I’ve never been much of a salesman. Raised on a farm, my father instilled me with fairly humble values and a penchant for letting my work speak for itself. But my father never raised a boy intent on operating in an office environment and whether I’m pitching to a prospective client or trying to persuade a coworker to see things my way, salesmanship has to be a part of what I do. I’ve had to adapt my style at work to find a new balance somewhere between the humble farmer and the used car salesman. And perhaps more importantly, I’ve had to learn to be dynamic with my style and find the appropriate times to either stretch my overall straps or slick back my hair.

It may not be the most innovative topic in the world, however, beyond the quality of your work, your personal business style is perhaps one of the most integral elements of who you are in the office. Many would argue that how you act is even more important than what you do. Therefore, the question emerges, how should I act at work?

First, let’s get something out of the way. Anyone who answers this question with the sappy, age-old adage, “just be yourself” is wrong. Don’t be yourself. You’re an asshole. You’re shy. You talk too much. You’re too academic. You’re a control freak. You make people uncomfortable. You’re a doormat. And for god’s sake will you please stop forwarding joke emails and petitions; you’re not my Aunt.

I don’t care if you work on Wall Street or in a daycare; the business environment is a shark tank of political influence and jockeying for position (even if that position is avoiding the evening shift since there’s always one parent who is an hour late to pick up their kid and you don’t get paid overtime). If you remain naïve to the realities of your work environment, expect to get steamrolled and left behind.

This isn’t to say that you need to be a two-faced, back-stabbing, grinning sociopath; you simply need to be aware of the different ways that you interact with different individuals and how you should temper your style accordingly. Without getting too deep into social determinism – a theory that I have no business discussing or even uttering the very words – our personality, and by extension our style at work, cannot be considered in a vacuum. Social interactions are by definition a dialogue and who you are is defined differently for each individual dialogue you engage. You’re polite and pleasing to your customers. You’re submissive and attentive around your boss. You’re confident and alert with your peers. You’re formal and authoritative when speaking to subordinates.

I write all of this to help you realize that you’re already a two-faced sociopath or, as we better know the term: a person. You already adjust and tweak your style based on the people you speak with and the situations you encounter, partially because of a wonderful little thing we call empathy. This type of behavior isn’t fickle or false, it is simply part of being a social human being. As a matter of fact, if you didn’t adjust your personality and couldn’t be empathetic, then we would have true cause for concern and proper use of the word sociopath.

So back to the question of how you should act at work; you should act in whatever way is appropriate to the situation. Your business style should be a floating spectrum, not a fixed point. You should be the person that you need to be by crafting a context-sensitive balance of the most suitable pieces of yourself. Your subconscious is likely already doing this for you, so why not be aware of it and take a more active hand in how you present yourself at work? This doesn’t have to be disingenuous or inauthentic; it is still you in the conversation.

Give yourself some credit; your personality is a rich tapestry woven of countless experiences, emotions, and influences. Each interaction has the potential to surface different parts of ourselves to engage and connect with other individuals in a meaningful way. A CEO can be a humble follower. An apprentice can be a leader. An accountant can be an unpredictable maniac. A rock star can be tame recluse.

And yes, even a farm boy can be a salesman.

Technology's Shadow

How exactly does one “balance” technology? What is there to balance? More importantly, what would one even balance against? As a man of rigor, I performed an exhaustive, five minute scouring of the internet and as far as I can tell, there is no antonym for the word “technology”…and that’s just weird. If we trust the ol’ Oxford English (which, of course we do) technology is defined as “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry.”

I know…this feels like the start of a terrible high school humanities essay, but bear with me.

In the absence of a proper yin to technology’s yang, it can be helpful to break things down and study from the ground up. At a glance, this definition seems quite innocuous – we conjure images of early man bashing a wheel onto a cart or using fire to cook meat. Technology is our friend. Technology has made our lives easier. Technology has saved us all.

However, if we read the above definition closely, cross our eyes, hop on one foot, rub our bellies, pat our heads and let the gravity of these words sink in, we begin to visualize the grossly intimidating breadth of this word. From the tiniest microchip to the largest building, the fastest rocket to the slowest-motion camera, technology is no longer our harmless, quaint little friend; it has evolved into an intricate beast the likes of which no single human can comprehend in its entirety. Hundreds of years ago, technological innovators were diverse individuals who were able to span a number of different disciplines and create new discoveries from the comfort of their bathtubs. These days, the bleeding edge of most technological pursuits exists in state-of-the-art laboratories and the minds of only the top scholars in the world. Breakthroughs have dropped from the realm of popular noteworthiness because the common person can no longer comprehend the development of modern technology let alone play a role in it.

Dare I be so bold as to say that in this day and age, it is impossible to divorce the word technology from the word complexity?

Not so say that complexity is entirely a bad thing, however, it muddles the value of our scientific progress and makes advancements increasingly difficult for businesses to grasp and apply to their products. Yes, businesses can hire these top scholars to push the envelope of technological progress, however, until we also have applied design minds to understand the core value of scientific advancement, we stand to lose much of that value in translation to a consumer product.

While historically, technology has led to massive breakthroughs and steps forward in our societal and economic progress, recent years have felt a lot more like we’ve just been spinning our wheels. Granted this is a massive oversimplification of a complex ecosystem of gadgets, organizations and people, however, countless businesses seem to waste inordinate amounts of time and effort forcing cutting-edge technology into their products without first properly considering their end goal.

The hypocrisy of an individual such as myself - a former robotics engineer, gadget junkie and proud owner of more pieces of computational doohickery than I care to even count let alone admit to – writing this article is not lost on me. You may question the origins of this luddite-esque heresy. In fact, this rant is brought to you by one of the most important adages for all designers and engineers such as myself: K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid). A true designer knows the value of minimizing complication for the end-user and in a world where technology is increasingly becoming defined by complexity, the antonym to technology may just be simplicity.

This article is far from a cry to put a halt to the exploration and advancement of academic institutions and research labs around the world – those crazy technocrats may continue to lick batteries to their hearts content and concoct a world of increasingly superior mouse traps. However, to the designers and product developers of the world: get your heads out of your asses. The value of your work is defined not by your ability to incorporate the greatest amount of next-gen tech into your designs but instead by your ability to keep things simple enough for people to actually understand how to use it.