Stripping yourself of your labels and titles

Stripping yourself of your labels and titles

Had a great conversation with my friend, Daniel Cerventus, who is also one of my mentors when it comes to personal growth, curiosity, experimentations and community building. He is the curator of TEDxKL, one of the largest TEDxs in the world, and over the years have involved himself in many other community initiatives too.

One thing I respect most about him, is also his level of self-reflection and his love for deep, thought-provoking questions.

"I'm trying to introduce myself without the Curator of TEDxKL label."

Essentially, what he's saying is when he meets someone new, someone who doesn't know what he does for a living, he would like to not have the TEDxKL label to start the conversation.

"But isn't that a great conversation piece? I'm sure it sparks great conversation."

"Yes it does, but it's about me and what I've done. It doesn't allow me to have great conversations about the other party."

That's when it kinda hit me.

Over the years, I have used my labels to introduce myself too - co-founder of KICKSTART, host of Fuckupnights, marketing consultant - and because I think those activities seemed interesting (or the marketer in me just naturally sexify it without me realising), the other party immediate asked me to talk more about what I've done.

Imagine if the conversation had gone like this,

New friend: "Hi, I'm Mike."

Mav: "Hi Mike, I'm Mav. What do you do?"

Mike: "Oh, I'm a banker by day, community builder at night."

Mav: "Community building? Wow! Tell me more about it."

So now the conversation will be about Mike, and as long as I keep asking the questions and listening, I don't really have to mention about what I do.

You may ask, "But won't Mike be interested in you if he doesn't know anything about you?"

Well, he knows I'm a good listener (which I'm striving to be), and that I ask good questions. The interesting play on psychology? Mike may end the conversation feeling like he talked too much, didn't know much about me, and research about me.

Which I hope he found the better things about me on Google. :)

But that's besides the point.

Because the challenge is to strip myself off my labels. They can discover my labels later over my web presence, but in the conversation, I'm labelless. :)

Wanna try the labelless way of introducing yourself? Let me know in the comments how it goes.

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