The Right Stuff: How to Differentiate Yourself in the New World of Work

Those of you who have been following me know that I love movies --- I find them to be a remarkable escape and a useful rejuvenating experience. For that reason I attend the Telluride Film Festival every year to binge on movies from all over. But I also find them to be powerful teachers, offering wonderful lessons that I can apply to numerous situations.

I've been focusing on designing and delivering a career development experience for a group of millennials at a client company recently. And we've reached the point in the experience where we are focusing on personal brand ---which is in some ways a difficult concept to teach. But a scene in The Right Stuff, the great film about the space race based on the book by Tom Wolfe, reminded me of its essence. If you remember the film, you know that the selection process for the original Astronauts was quite intensive --- all were expert pilots, fiercely competitive, and accomplished. They had one other thing in common ---they were all college graduates, which explains why Chuck Yeager, perhaps the greatest test pilot in US history, didn't make the cut. The original Gemini astronauts went on to fame and some fortune, while Chuck Yeager remains a hero only to those who had a fascination with flight or some experience in the field of aeronautics.

Anyway, the scene that sprung to mind as I was thinking on the essence of brand relates to authenticity and credibility ---two elements of brand that are central to success because they stem from performance.

It comes at the very end of the film, when Chuck Yeager steals the latest version of an experimental plane and attempts to break the altitude record. Yeager flies the plane to the very edge of space where the plane reaches its limit and its engines flame out. The plane then spins wildly toward the ground and ultimately crashes ---- with rescue vehicles and firetrucks speeding toward the crash site.

On board one of those vehicles was a friend of Yeager's, a man from whom Yeager had always bummed a stick of gum in advance of a test flight saying, "I'll pay you back later." It was their way of fighting the fates that had taken so many other pilots. Well, as the vehicle nears the crash site, the driver sees something, someone, off in the distance emerging from the crash and walking in the desert carrying a parachute. And he asks, "Is that a man?". And Yeager's friend answers, "you're damned right it is!", realizing that Yeager has in fact survived the crash.

This scene strikes me as instructive for a number of reasons. You see, the movie was called The Right Stuff. And it was about the Gemini astronauts, so it would be easy to conclude that the astronauts were the ones with the right stuff. But in numerous ways, Wolfe made clear in the book, and again in the film, that the title "astronaut" didn't mean "the right stuff" in and of itself. And in the corporate world right now due to many changes and shifts, titles and roles do not convey any more about whether or not you have the right stuff than did the title "astronaut".

Not taking anything away from the original Gemini astronauts, I'm saying that we know the right stuff when we see it. And in fact, so did they, as the story makes clear their respect and admiration for Yeager.

So my point is this --- your professional brand is built on authenticity and credibility, and neither is possible without performance. You can go around calling yourself whatever you want, claiming expertise in a vast array of areas, but if you don't perform consistently, doing the work of someone who claims the virtues of your brand, well, then, it just won't matter.

And that was the case with Yeager. He didn't have the title of astronaut, but when it came to mastering a difficult situation in the cockpit of an experimental plane, there was probably no one else in the world better at it. So there was never any doubt...Yeager had the right stuff. And he demonstrated it by performing at a high level whenever it was asked of him.

I recently read a fascinating book by Gino Wickman called Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business. And while introducing his framework for sustainable growth, Wickman points to the criticality of having the right people in the right seats. He argues persuasively that the right person is the who "GWC" the role --- gets it, wants it, and has the capability to do it.

And, again, Yeager was the perfect example of the person who got it, wanted it, and definitely had the capability to do it. So as business leaders we have to ask ourselves, "what are we doing to find our Yeagers"?

And for ourselves we must ask the question is, do we truly understand how our role contributes to the enterprise's success, do we really want this role, and are we performing at a level of excellence that would differentiate ourselves from others so easily, and with such authenticity and credibility, that it would cause someone to be able to see us through metaphorical clouds of smoke and distance? And say, "hey, isn't that.... [insert your name here]?"

If so, then there can be only one answer.

(I suppose a caveat is in order here --- with this story, rest assured, I'm not asking or encouraging you to steal government property, take crazy risks, and crash land in the desert. I'm asking you to identify the critical skills in your role, deliver on them consistently and allow the brand to emerge from the excellence.)