DON’T CORRECT THAT QUIRK!

When it comes to building a sticky personal brand, one ‘questionable' habit is all you need.

If you were pitching an idea to Microsoft honcho Bill Gates, you would have done your homework. So one can assume that you would be in full control of your response mechanisms (in particular, your urge to WTF!) when things get to the most interesting bit. The part, of course, where Bill suddenly starts rocking his chair (and no doesn’t stop ‘immediately after realizing his error’) - completely oblivious of both social mores and your presence. The act is so unexpected, the conduct so arresting in its freshness, that it threatens to steal what was squarely meant to be ‘your show’. Yes, Bill is known to do that frequently in his meetings. And after the 3rd rendezvous - congratulations for having crossed the first two, btw – it WILL grow on you albeit, admittedly, in an uncanny kind of way.

Mr Gates, who incidentally has a second ‘fixation’ – that of keeping his left hand inside his pocket, something that landed him in a bit of a soup with the media while shaking the hands of South Korean President Park Geun-Hye in 2013 - isn’t alone when it comes to the quirk department. Steve Jobs used to break down into a sob whenever he came across an especially peachy idea. The reverse was true too – if he was particularly cross at a concept, you literally ran the risk of losing your shirt because Steve would rest his shaking head on your shoulder and let the tears rip.

Turn to showbiz and there’s more idiosyn-craziness. You realize that Cameron Diaz has been opening doors with her elbows for the longest time – she nurtures an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) about keeping her palms germ free after all (we can all assume her transition into the ‘New Normal’ has been slightly less frictious than ours). Closer home, Amitabh Bachchan loves wearing two watches. His habit started when his son was studying abroad and the legend wanted to keep track of both the time zones at the same time.

What about politics? Well, Donald Trump is apparently a germophobe who hates handshakes and made hand sanitizers fashionable long before corona made it compulsory. And who can forget those dramatic, pregnant pauses from the pulpit whenever India’s former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee rose to address a crowd? In fact, the statesman cum orator made his ‘signature hiatus’ as eloquent and famous as his poetic flourish. While on the subject of Heads of State, did you know that Shri Narendra Modi has this habit of playfully tugging at children's ears (he recently pulled the loveable schtick on Akshay Kumar’s son)? And as for me, I know people who pick their nose, especially when they are deeply engrossed in something. Somehow, with some really jarring exceptions, this hasn’t made them any less endearing in my book. 

‘UNCOMMON QUIRKS’ ARE MORE COMMON THAN YOU THINK

There are over 14,00,000 results for ‘weird habits of famous personalities’ on Google as on the 5th of July 2020. If you try other keyword and synonym combinations, you should stumble upon many more. But are these just weird habits? While some can be quite charming when viewed in context, some of them flout the norms of accepted social behavior with an insouciance that multiplies their ‘IQ’ (Irritation Quotient) significantly.

Some – while inadvertent – can be interpreted as downright scandalous. American President Benjamin Franklin would open all windows and stay nude for an hour or two every morning. Megan Fox, they say, doesn’t flush after she’s done with her ‘job’. Mozart’s passion for music was perhaps only rivalled by his obsession for saucy humor, with jokes replete with fart and other unmentionables amongst his favourite diet. 

When you look through the conventional lens, aren’t a lot of these just plain bad habits? So have our teachers in primary school and mentors at Etiquette / Finishing School been wrong all along? I went back to Google to find a reasonable repartee to this question which was growing louder and louder in my mind. The verdict is in. Apparently…

THE BRAIN LOVES BAD

As it turns out, it all boils down to a simple case of biology. Here’s what I dug up in 11 minutes.

There is solid scientific evidence that Amygdala – a structure in our brain responsible for adding emotional content to it – is activated more strongly by emotions we tend to categorize as ‘negative’. Memory Medic William R. Klemm builds on the narrative: “Memories that stick with us for a lifetime are those that fit other things we remember—but have a slightly weird twist”. Per Sederberg, professor of psychology at The Ohio State University, on his part, has this to say: “You have to build a memory on the scaffolding of what you already know, but then you have to violate the expectations somewhat. It has to be a little bit weird."

I raided Quora next for more light, and found D.S.Yvon’s (Neuroscience researcher at Reprogrammingmind.com) explanation rather candid: “(The) brain has a negativity bias to ensure survival. This way we avoid danger and live and make babies. If you fuck up, we hate you and keep away and remember it very easily because of the strong negative emotion attached to the bad thing.”

Finally, Wikipedia confirmed the existence of something called the Negativity Bias : The notion that, even when of equal intensity, negative things - such as unpleasant emotions or traumatic moments - leave a greater imprint on our mind than events that are positive or neutral.

IT’S (KINDA) OFFICIAL THEREFORE: BEING A (BIT OF A) WHACKJOB CAN TURN US INTO AN ATTENTION MAGNET

The good news? There are other - more pleasant - ways to underline presence. You see, it’s not the negativity per se that our brain seeks. It’s the change. The departure from the drudgery of the ‘Daily S***’. THAT is what we really crave. THAT is what our minds actually register. Amazon India’s campaign tagline sometime back went, “Aur Dikhao!” (Show me more). No wonder they nailed it. We always want ‘something else’; We adore ‘something different’. Marketers have known this since the beginning of, well, marketing. Differentiation is, after all, the holy grail of all brand and communication strategy.

My simple point, after reeling you through over a thousand words (for which I’ll seek a valuable feedback, btw:)? The above hypothesis applies to your personal brand, too!

So if you have an ‘odd habit’ or two - like flailing your hands around to drive home a point, wearing too much jewelery or after-shave, or chewing gum a-la-VivianRichards, I’d say run with it. DON’T CORRECT YOUR QUIRK. No matter what the protocol police says. It’s your unique ‘thing’. The entirely incorruptible USP of your very own Personal Brand.

As a leader, you’ll do yourself a bunch of favors if you stand by your ‘eccentricities’. Leaders who embrace their ‘inner weirdness’ encourage authenticity and D&I (diversity and inclusion) in their teams, leading to a happier and more innovative workplace. That’s not just a great penultimate paragraph, that’s actually true…

There’s another way to look at it: In the age of funnel optimization and paid media, you are getting free eyeballs here. Can you really afford to ignore it? Much more significantly, do you really want to let go of an opportunity that lets you BE UNFORGETTABLE with your markets, fans and audiences by simply being…

QUIRKY OLD YOU? :)