Marketing Influence: Being an Influencer

I just spent the last week serving as an assistant faculty (AF) member for the NUS MBA Management Communication Camp, a one-week intensive course designed to brainwash instruct incoming MBA candidates in our special brand of leadership and prepare them for the rest of the MBA program.

AF work is grueling. My fellow AFs and I started each day at 7am, and ended most days past 8pm. Each day begins and ends with a huddle, a meeting to discuss the day’s events and align everyone to the objectives. In these meetings we trade stories and boast about how little sleep we are getting. Throughout the week, I observed how much the AFs enjoyed the demanding work and the sense of pride it gave them; and it makes me feel honoured to be a part of the program. #seewhatididthere #feedbackformat

Rewind back one year and I was on the other side of the camp, a freshly re-matriculated MBA candidate. Bright-eyed and eager to begin my MBA journey with the promise of a better career on the other side. I thought I knew how to communicate, I have afterall been doing it since age 2. I was skeptical, I was dismissive. I thought this was gonna be a fluffy waste of time, a week-long program to endure and get through. The best thing about it is going to be the freeflow coffee and the catered lunch.

I was wrong.

That week turned out to be so much more. By the end of the week, I felt that I had become suddenly aware of a whole different side of myself as a professional, and I remember being moved to tears at the revelation. I had not been a very good leader, to my colleagues, and to my sisters, which hurt something really deep inside me. I had been too selfish, too focused on myself. It had never occured to me before then that great leaders support others who in turn supported them.

And that is why I choose to serve as an AF...

Leadership is difficult for me. My nature is to want to take cover in a crowd and be as much of a wallflower as I possibly can. People who do not know me very well do not believe this; but when I was a kid, I was so painfully shy in school, my mother had to make introductions so I could have people to talk to. I have since learned to act more like an extrovert, but I still feel my heart quicken when I get called up in class, or am asked to speak impromptu.

I know I am not a perfect practitioner of the leadership principles we teach. So I am grateful chance to practise and get feedback for my understanding. Stephen Covey calls it sharpening the saw. I have many rough edges still in need of polish, especially in stressful situations. When I feel stressed, I have a tendency to lash out, sometimes at innocent bystanders. My family can definitely attest to that. And because of that, I would rather push people away when I should be needing them most. I am humbled to think that the people who love me, love me enough to tolerate this.

Now, instead of running away and abandoning people when I am stressed, I look for people that I can trust and rely on for help. It feels good to know that I have people on my side and love me whatever the outcome; and I would do the same for them in a heartbeat. 

This is what I mean about influence. I have seen the birth of influencer marketing and used to trade in the value of celebrity, but I do not believe that these have anything to do with real human connection.

Instead, I believe in the power of influence, as the power to motivate and inspire others. Without influence, you can be a manager, but not a leader. You can make a change, but you cannot change the world.

You can make a change, but you cannot change the world.