Fears for Peers

“I like their work, but I dare not tell them.”

As I sat there looking at a great piece of design work in my Facebook stream, my pointer hovered over the like button and my finger sat poised over my mouse. Do I like it? Should i validate their hard work? Aren’t they a possible competitor?

We live in an extremely connected world. We can find and befriend people from all over the world in an instant. Some of these relationships become close and others are just surface acquaintances.

As we continue connecting, liking and engaging we start seeing more and more content "tailored" to our likes, interest, and desires.

We find ourselves connecting with not only people with similar interests but people that do the same kinds of things as we do.

Then things get interesting.

We start evaluating these connections-are they behind where I'm at? instep? or one step ahead? Are they inspiration or aspirational? and that's where things get complicated.

It's easy for our lizard brain to kick in and we start to fear.

Our self-preservation instinct goes into high alert and we evaluate our relationship as either a thread to our survival or a tribe to be a part of.

It’s an emotional battle sometimes. I recently saw an influencer post about two designers they recommended and said there’s no need to look anywhere else! I thought to myself, “There’s plenty of great designers out there to consider, INCLUDING MYSELF! My entire 23-year career has been about design and branding!!!”

But I didn’t respond, I let the fleeting thought flutter away. The croc brain was not going to dominate my thought patterns.

We need to realize that the smart internet will make a big world smaller. By tracking our behavior it custom delivers the content it believes we care about. But it can be deceptive.

Kind of like the early internet. Remember AOL and the endless CDs you’d get from them? You would sign up to the internet, but it was this AOL managed dashboard. You thought that was THE internet, but it was the curated web. I remember when I got Earthlink and the entire web opened up to me. It was way bigger and more amazing then my managed experience led me to believe.

It’s a little like that now. The cookied, pixeled, algorithmed web makes the world wide web smaller.

We see the King of _____ or the Queen of ______ and we don’t realize their kingdom is actually pretty small. Maybe it’s big in the world the smart web has created for us, but it’s just a pixel in a high-def world. Or the Blah Blah Guru that seems to be everywhere in our cookied world, but they are a crumb and that most of the real world doesn’t even know they exist. This filtered world can lead us into a scarcity mindset. Does the world need another person with my talents and passions? Or we let jealousy set in and say I’m not going to validate others, because they are a challenge to my existence.

So where is your mind right now?

I’ve decided that I’m going to continue celebrating great work, helping and connecting with designers and providing value and insight wherever I can. I’ll have to fight my croc brain ALWAYS, but I won’t let it dominate my engagement choices.

I’m 49, I’ve learned some things.

I’ve been leading creatives for 23 years. My role has been Creative Director, not Creative Dictator. In my last position, I hired and led a brilliant team of creative millennials. I understood that not every great idea has to come from me, that just because it wasn’t how I would do it that it wasn’t a smart solution. I led designers that in some ways were far better than me. I’ve seen the culture a prima-done leader can create in a company. Where their ideas reigned and the minions just executed them.

It’s hard to lead with a self-preservation mindset. It’s also hard to be a part of a community or build friendships that way.

Maybe it’s bad strategy to you and you think I’m crazy, but I’m going to give kudos, thumbs up and attaboys to things I like. Even from people that are competing in the same space as I am.

Why?

1. Because the world is bigger then the curated web would lead us to believe

2. There’s enough out there for everyone. 

3. You are unique and can relate to people on a different level then someone else in your category.

4. You are a culmination of experiences and that gives you the framework to provide bespoke solutions

5. Most problems have more then one equally valid solution.