Be Unique And Get With The Program

"We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people."
   --Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)

Teenagers are my favorite people to watch. Their crusade to be different leads them to dress alike, talk alike, and act alike. They are uniquely the same. It's also a survival

mechanism that leads to acceptance as well as the avoidance of getting whupped for standing out in a crowd and being too different.

I'm not sure that this phenomenon is any different in organizations. Let's face it: if expectations include cookie-cutter behavior, who wants to be the first to respond to a call for innovation, creativity, and risk-taking? In fact, it's probably difficult for people to believe that the request is even genuine.

How to Be Unique At Work--And Thrive

Your boss is looking for "better." Better methods, better revenue, better savings, better results, better quality. These give you two meaningful ways to show off your individuality:

1. What you produce that is different from anyone else's output (see "better" above).

2. How you go about doing it using your own methodology.

Once you're successful at those two, feel free to spike your hair, put rings in places they shouldn't be, and invite your boss to sing with you on company Karaoke night. We'll upload the photos here.

photo attribution: http://www.aeropostale.com/home

Comments

[Denise Green]

You've brought back memories of a time I walked up to the Executive floor at Oracle, shocked to find a blurry photo of myself taped to a door: it was me on stage in a sequined Elvis jacked, dancing and singing at a recent welcome party for a group I'd just trained (as part of an M&A on-boarding). The caption said "To sign up for management training, write your name below." Worried that I'd embarrassed myself, my bosses told me, "Well done, we should send you to all the acquisitions."

Glad to have you back, Steve. Be well.
Denise

[Jacob Trowbridge]

Unique is appreciated. Weird? Not so much.

[essay writers]

Just some of peopletry to be unique person. It's very difficult tgo do today.

[Chip @ Home Remodeling]

Its not necessarily about being unique, its about being truthful to yourself and to others. Along the same lines, if you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life. That is the same for everything else. If you love dressing a certain way or acting a certain way and it doesn't hurt anyone, do it. Libertarians have a point. Falling into a trend is fine but conformity always sounds like a insult to me. Being a part of something is natural but rolling over or selling out is not any way to live or work.

[Jobs in healthcare]

Irm, interesting! I believe one being themselves as to trying to be unique to stand out.

[Tyler Murphy]

I think being unique at work is crucial, it's so refreshing to think un-like others think, to come up with weird and unusual ways of doing something that is not conformed to the norm.

Many managers appreciate this in business, it's a breath of fresh air to them!