The Most Underrated Secret for Success

That one, subtle, often underrated and overlooked secret of success is far simpler than what you think. But before we dive into it, take a moment to think to yourself, what is success? And more importantly, what is success to you?

If you ask people this question the replies you will receive vary most of the time. That is because success is generally viewed as one’s achievement of their own set objective/s, and such objectives are different from one person to another. It could be of monetary value, career progress or being the best in what you do. No matter how small or big, your goals will define your success.

Successful people are resilient, hardworking, disciplined and creative. They are passionate about what they do and have a positive mindset. They are result oriented and focused. They are humble and continuous learners with growth mindset, and they have excellent networking skills. I cannot sum up all the success qualities in one paragraph and there are certainly other traits that I did not mention. Nevertheless, that is not what this article is about.

This article is about genuineness, the quality of being sincere, authentic and true to yourself and others. None of the aforementioned traits would matter without this one fairly simple trait. You cannot build a network without trust and you cannot be trusted if you are not genuine. You cannot grow your career with dishonest and fraudulent acts; sooner or later you will hit a dead end. And certainly, you cannot grow your company with lies and deception. Remember Enron Corp? a company that fraudulently inflated their earnings and ultimately declared bankruptcy due to this fraudulent act? Or Volkswagen’s emission’s scandal which cost them billions of dollars? And what did their CEO say at the time? “We have broken the trust of our customers and the public" and what was his priority? To regain that “trust”! If you are not familiar with these examples of how dishonesty will almost always lead to huge losses, I suggest you search and read about both cases. There are ton of other examples on how being ingenuine can be severely damaging to a business or a person.

On the other hand, genuineness can be tremendously rewarding. The most successful people I have met in my career have all shared this quality. From VPs to Presidents and Global Management I could clearly spot the resemblance and tell that they all believed in this value. Moreover, the most successful organizations in the world have incorporated this trait in their core values whether directly as authenticity or in some other forms such as integrity or trust. Even when it comes to marketing, branding and content creation, people feel more connected to genuine and trustworthy content or brands. This is also one of the reasons successful organizations take compliance very seriously. Think to yourself, who is the most successful person you know? do they embody this trait?

To sum up, no matter what your goals are and what success means to you, if you want to achieve them you need to ensure you do it genuinely. There are many qualities and contributing factors to achieve success, and it will certainly take time and effort to reach your goals, but most importantly make sure you are authentic in your approach and are true to yourself and others. This will come a long way in becoming successful. And at the end, remember, it’s not just important to achieve success but also how you achieve it.

#success #authenticity #genuineness