How to Be Indispensable

Are you an integral part of your team?

Do you contribute something essential to the projects you work on?

Do your friends have more fun when you’re around?

Are you a linchpin?

According to Seth Godin, author of this month’s Science of People book club selection, Linchpin, just being someone who shows up, follows directions and works hard isn’t enough to get ahead anymore; it can be a recipe for disaster. 

Instead, Godin argues that we all have tremendous untapped potential. In fact, the very first sentence of the book highlights it:

“You Are a Genius.”

This is the basis of Linchpin. Godin tells us to focus on finding the artist inside us all, the genius that’s been tamped down and hidden away and to become someone who is utterly indispensable: a linchpin.

Godin argues that everyone, me and you (not just the Einsteins of the world), have a genius inside of them that needs to be unleashed. Someone who can solve a problem, create a positive change and get people unstuck.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at the markers that Godin believes we need to explore in order to become a linchpin in our own lives and jobs:

• Make great art
• Tame the resistance
• Nurture tribes and give gifts
• Ship

So how can you find your own genius? How can you be a linchpin? Check out the things Godin feels we need to embrace in order to do it:

Step #1: Make Great Art

Art isn’t always just what we think it is in the conventional sense. Yes, paintings, sculptures, movies, plays, songs and books are all art.

But so is anything brought on by passion, creativity and personality. 

I want you to think about what you loved to do when you were a kid:

• Designing new outfits for your Barbie
• Building castles out of Legos
• Selling lemonade at your corner stand
• Studying all the stats on the back of your baseball card collection

As Godin points out, all of that is art because it was based on passion. 

When we’re children, we follow our passions and we were incredible fashion designers, architects, entrepreneurs and statisticians without even realizing it. 

We did it because we loved it, it felt natural, but somewhere along the way, that got lost. The dresses, Legos, baseball cards got tucked away in the attic, the lemonade stand came down and we were told to focus on fitting in, following directions, going to school and going to work. 

And even in this world of automation and production lines, remember, a machine is something that can’t make art.

Here are some of the “unconventional” things Godin cites as art:

• Tony Hsieh created a company focused on providing incredible customer service
• Jonathan Ive designed the iPod
• Ed Sutt created a nail that would make homes stronger

So think about the work you do now. Are you doing it because you have to do it or because you’re passionate about it? 

If you find that passion or direct yourself towards it, you have given yourself the opportunity to really create art.

#2: Tame the Resistance

“The lizard brain is the reason you’re afraid, the reason you don’t do all the art you can, the reason you don’t ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.” –Seth Godin, Linchpin 

For a quick primer on your lizard brain (and some advice on how you can overcome it), check out this video:

The lizard brain is the first part of our brain. It’s the part of us that is in charge of those biological impulses that have helped us survive in the form of homo sapiens for the last 200,000 years: fight or flight, fear, anger, lust and arousal.

This part of our brain is very hard to beat. The cerebrum, where we find reasoning, recognition, problem solving, speech, vision and memory is pretty much always going to lose to the amygdala (the lizard brain) as it’s been created to take over in order to protect us.

So the key, as Godin puts it, is not to try to beat it, but to “seduce it.”

What the lizard brain absolutely loves more than anything is the old system. Because that means you don’t have to do anything besides put your head down, follow directions and do the work.

When you start to move outside that, to think, question, ship; the lizard brain jumps into action and fires out all sorts of defenses to make sure you fall back into line.

Any of these feel familiar:

• Procrastination
• Perfectionism
• Missing deadlines
• Making excuses
• Feeling “not good enough”
• Feeling like “you should just give up”
• Worry about what other people will think

These are all examples of the resistance and the lizard brain at work. 

What can you do to battle the lizard brain?

Learn from failure.

That doesn’t mean learn that failure is bad, or learn that you never should have tried in the first place. Nope, instead take lessons, understand why something didn’t work, challenge yourself to embrace failure and use it as something that will take you to the next step.

One of the very best examples on how an artist can struggle with the lizard brain and find the art within it is a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love at TED:

I want you to think about ways you can both recognize and overcome your lizard brain:

• Embrace your imperfections
• Ship before you’re ready
• Determine if your rationalizations are legit or just excuses
• Push yourself through procrastination
• Find uncomfortable situations and put yourself in them
• Don’t always ask for permission

#3: Nurture Tribes and Give Gifts

The concept of the gift culture built within tribes as a basis for their economies has been around for a very long time (Godin cites it at 50,000 years). Yet all too often that has been lost today, where the main outcome of most actions revolves around how much we can charge and make.

In ancient tribes, those who had the most power, the Kings and Queens and Chiefs were those who gave the most gifts.

Their power was nestled in their ability to give it all away.

After a while, that concept was flipped, the powerful were those who got the most gifts.

Now, Godin argues, the advent of the internet has given us the ability to go back to the original tribal view of the giving economy. In the digital world, we can give more than ever and create tribes of people who connect with both the artists and each other.

Here are some examples:

• Creative Commons for images
• Gutenberg Project for books
• NoiseTrade for music
• Ramit Sethi who says he gives away “98% of his material free.”

All of these gifts are something that builds tribes of people who are connected through the genuine and authentic art of the person who has created that gift and is giving it away.

That’s powerful stuff!

Where Godin thinks you can become a linchpin is by giving away your art for free. That might be your best ideas as blog posts, your incredible photos as free images or open sourcing that amazing software you designed.  

The key here though is to lose the conventional wisdom that gifts must be reciprocated. Instead, don’t concern yourself with the idea that any repayment is going to come your way, do the art for art’s sake.

Here, Godin explains the connection between art, gift giving and tribes:

“One reason that art has so much power is that it represents the most precious gift we can deliver. And delivering it to people we work with or connect with strengthens our bond with them. It strengthens the tribal connection.”

Consider some of the gifts you can give to build your tribe.

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