Call me an old, sentimental fool, but It's a Wonderful Life may be my favorite movie of all time. It is a classic story that has a timeless message for each of us. In the movie, there's a pivotal scene in which Clarence the angel utters the line that brings the entire movie to a point: "Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"
Each Christmas when I watch this movie it serves as a reminder to me that I need to be focused on people - not on things. It helps me to focus my gaze on those things that really matter and to gain perspective on everything else.
While during Christmas my focus is decidedly non-business, the fundamental principle applies to all areas of our lives - including our work.
Have you ever taken a moment to think about who your professional life touches? It is probably a lot more people than you think.
We spend a lot of our professional lives thinking and talking about "what we do." It is the most common question that you ask when you meet someone new. We spend our entire careers filling resume pages about what we have done. We obsess about what we will do next and we reminisce about what we did in the "old days."
But the message of It's a Wonderful Life is that it isn't what we do that matters as much as who we touch. If what we do isn't impacting someone's life in a positive way, then does it matter?
IS IT TIME FOR A DIFFERENT QUESTION?
So rather than asking "What do you do?" I think that we should start asking a different question: "Who do you influence?"
I think that it is an interesting way to look at our professional lives: What we do is less important than who we influence. Who we influence can create significant and lasting impact on what we do to a much greater degree than by merely doing it.
Perhaps most interesting, by shifting your focus from doing to influencing you create a fundamental shift in the way you look at both your job and your career.
While it may not seem it at first glance, it is actually a lot harder to influence than it is to simple do something. It requires that you understand someone else's point of view and that you develop empathy for their situation. It requires that you understand motivators and why people resist change. Most importantly, it means that we must go into each day with a purpose - some vision, whether big or small, that we want to see become reality and which requires others to share in it.
Above all else, influencing others means first caring about them. It is only once they believe that you care that you will be able to have any influence over them at all.
What you do may be important. But who you influence is vital.
So, who do you influence?
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