What’s Your Personal Shark Week?
“What’s this year’s Shark Week?”
This used to be the question we’d ask ourselves in our planning meetings when, back in the days before my BBC stint, I was head of programmes at Rapture TV. We used to call any big, eye-catching set piece the ‘Shark Week strategy’. If you’ve ever watched the Discovery Channel you’ll know how it works. They go SHARK-mad once a year. You know, a whole week full of sharks: shark films, JAWS (again), shark docs, shark adverts. And they tell you about it… all year. We all know sharks attract big audiences, they are easy to market and you can ‘hook’ people in. So shark week for them was like clickbait.
Shark Week is the one time you get all your big guns out, show your best assets, and direct your audience to them!
At Rapture, our version of ‘Shark Week’ was Ibiza club nights LIVE. Yes, we’d broadcast live from super clubs like Manumission or Pacha (OMG that’s a whole other story which I will share another time). We’d advertise this from January to September and big up “The only LIVE clubbing night on TV”.
So the big question for you is, what’s YOUR personal Shark Week? You know, the one big eye-catching project you can talk about and which will make you shine. It’s what you can bring to dinner parties, appraisals, networking events, and client meetings.
A shining example of this is my short book (yes it is short but perfectly formed. Well almost)
In 2019 my book ‘Goodbye Glossophobia – banish your fear of public speaking’ was my personal Shark Week.
It came out in September that year and I was able to talk about it ALL YEAR , plus the year running up to the release and the year after, because it won an award….the highly commended “Business Book of the Year Award 2020”. A double whammy. It became my 2020 shark week too.
The short book was something big, new, different, and a tiny bit brilliant. It was my shark bait! I hit my annual targets on Nov 1st in 2019 because I’d created a buzz around the book before the launch date.
In 2020 I had the award, and the audiobook came out. And even though COVID hit in March 2020, I still had my Shark Week, my talk-about-factor project. The Pandemic didn’t spoil that!
The big tip I share with my clients is this: get yourself a personal Shark Week. You need to rise above the daily grind, the noise, and the reassurance that you’re great at your job. Performing well and just getting on with the job will not help you to shine or stand out. You need one big thing per year to help you raise your profile.
I was running a leadership programme in a global bank recently and one of my very talented delegates, Belle, was struggling to ‘get noticed’. I could tell she needed a personal Shark Week.
She’s a typical case of someone who undersells themselves and doesn’t know how to be visible without showing off. You can probably relate to Belle.
She’s talented and really brilliant at her day job. She’s loyal and on the leadership track but NOT getting paid as much as she should. She even confided that she’d stepped up for her boss’s maternity leave, held the team together, stepped in for management meetings, and did a magnificent job.
She gave everything every day and asked for nothing in return. She shared her ideas with the management which they loved. They used her ideas, actioned them, and she asked for nothing in return. She wasn’t getting noticed or paid extra for her efforts. So I suggested we think about Shark Week.
Rather than get resentful, it was time to ACT. She was doing a good job, but not selling herself as an expert or a senior player. She’d made the classic mistake of expecting people around her to congratulate her on how brilliant she was and NOTICE how much she was contributing, and therefore how much MORE MONEY she deserved.
But NO, in return for her daily hard work, long hours and loyalty, she got… silence.
She had NO IDEA how to position herself and use her amazing talents to optimise her career.
Belle’s Shark Week for that year was a ‘brand new’ project - let’s call it ‘Project Sharky’. (We secretly knew it wasn’t brand spanking new, LOL, but it was re-packaged and felt fresh… why not?)
Staying up until 10 pm finishing emails and taking calls isn’t going to help you shine.
So I suggested she make a shark-style story, a big deal out of just one of her many project ideas. Her idea was all about efficiency and better communication. Trouble is she was so busy doing it well, she had no time, energy or fuel to give it some buzz.
I suggested she create a “more formal” presentation to share with her management team rather than a quick round the table update where her ideas were getting stolen and her voice wasn’t being heard.
She was terrified and her first reaction was, “Do you think I’ll be allowed to take over a section of the Exco meeting?”
Well, if you don’t ask, you don’t get. And yes, she did ask to have a 5-minute slot in the ExCo (exec committee) meeting and, yes, she did blow them away by bigging up one of her brilliant cost-saving, people-motivating schemes and, yes, she did get a round of applause.
Belle’s Shark Week for 2020 is a ‘brand new’ project - let’s call it ‘Project Sharky’. (We knew it wasn’t new, LOL, but now it’s been packaged up… why not?)
What’s your personal Shark Week this year? It doesn’t have to be massive, you don’t have to write a book. But you might as well choose one thing to big up. Go on, please do share your ideas and let me big you up some more!
#SharkWeek #Leadership #GetPromoted #EyesAndTeeth #MakeAnImpact #BeMoreVisible #Presence #PublicSpeaking
