If you want to make a lasting impression it’s all about being memorable ; here’s some tips on how to do that
This week I’ve referenced the great Maya Angelou a lot, in particular her fabulous quote:
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
It was a key reference for the personal impact training I ran for clients — both in terms of a mindset for the participants to think about when they interact with people and also as a consideration for how I ran the session.
It was also relevant for the pitch competition I went to as the founders of start-ups were eager to leave a lasting impression with the investors in the room.
It was certainly a discussion point raised by the successful start-up founder I went to hear share some nuggets of wisdom and the amazing Sandi Toksvig definitely oozed memorability.
Memorability is certainly the reason why a former co-worker I worked with for a couple of months 8 years ago reached out to meet for coffee after all these years.
Being memorable is at the core of my mantra for LinkedIn and all the sessions I run.
It’s also what made pizza night at my friend’s house so amazing.
How do you make yourself or a situation more memorable?
Fundamentally there are two things to keep in mind if you want to be more memorable:
- Create positive memorable aspects
- Limit/Ensure there are no negative memorable elements
Under step 1, a good way to create memorability is to do something that makes you stand out — like the debt company in Japan that sent debt letters in pink envelopes which created a massive increase in people paying their debts or how about this trick or this trick that I use at conferences that generated more conversations.
You might also want to check out this interview I did where I talk about how you can create the “thud factor” to stand out in a crowd.
The other side of the coin is one people often forget about: how do we minimise negative experiences?
I’ve often spoken about the level of detail that I put into the sessions and events I run where I really think through every element to identify where things might go wrong.
When I run an event, sure I want to make sure my content is good (what do we need to cover, how will we deliver it) but I also focus on the flow of the event (how much talking at vs talking with participants), the agenda (what order, how will one activity set up the next), the activities I will be running (what will they achieve, what resources do we need), the tech (how do we connect to the screen, does sound system work), access to supplies (will participants need pen, paper, post its), the lunch (what time, what quality, will people sit or stand to eat, will it smell too much), the coffees (how frequently, what time, what’s the coffee machines to people ratio, the seats (are they comfy, can they be moved around), the temperature of the room (it can’t be too hot or too cold, there can’t be microclimates), the layout of the room (is there space for people to move around, are there tables, are seats in a row or a circle), who sits next to who (what politics work or don’t work, which silos do we want to break down), the toilets (how many are there, how clean are they, is there enough toilet paper), and so on and so forth.
Often people forget about these negative experiences in a virtual world (like your connection being slow, the picture not clear or the audio not being clear) and this can lead to a cognitive stumble.
Using Pre-mortems and stimulating your creativity
An incredibly useful technique to tease out these potential slip ups is a pre-mortem; something we do a lot with clients.
It’s where you anticipate things going wrong and try to identify why this might happen.
A key component of this is being able to be highly creative.
The better your creativity the more you will identify potential slip ups and to also come up with positive ways to be memorable.
What’s the ballet got to do with this?
I had the pleasure of going to the ballet this week.
The tickets I got hold of were worth hundreds of pounds so you would expect a high level of positive experience.
Well, the performance itself was excellent and highly memorable… But all me and my guests could talk about afterwards were the terrible levels of service that we experienced.
We were shown to the wrong seats, over-charged on the refreshments we bought and then rushed to finish our food and drink (having been told we had plenty of time when we bought it).
Definitely the ballet has attained memorable status but I’m sure we may not rush back as quickly as we might have because of those small points.
Go forth and be memorable
If you only take one thing from this blog, it’s about being even more memorable than you already are.
It’s something I remind myself of everyday in everything I do.
If you want some help on creating more positive memorable touches and limiting the negative memorable elements that may plague you the drop me a line 🙂
Faris
Faris is the CEO and Founder of Shiageto Consulting, an innovative consultancy that helps firms and individuals sharpen their effectiveness. Connect with him here
Success = IQ x EQ x FQ
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