Showing Off Is The Fools Idea Of Glory

One place you would not find me on a late Saturday afternoon is watching a Bruce Lee matinee movie. I was never a fan of Martial Arts movies as a kid and never really understood the passion people had for them. After all these years I can honestly say I don't really have an opinion on them, good, bad or indifferent, however, I do like Bruce Lee, more for his dedication to his sport of Jeet Kune Do than his acting ability and movies. To me he was the epitome of a devoted savant of martial arts. And incredible at that.

In spite of my opinion, and this is MY opinion, I would have never thought he could predict one of the most annoying elements of LinkedIn - the Serial Social Boaster (SSB).

I call them social-boasters because these people flood my news feed with their own accolades or those of their company. What is beginning to dominate my news feed is a post about every award, every project win, every personal gain even if it is not in anyway related to their career or their professional standing. In most cases it adds no value to my perception of their business or themselves and it genuinely does not drive quality business leads in the most part. If anything it makes the individual look more narcissistic than valued.

To me this is a pure form of Showing Off. And Bruce Lee said it best when he said;

"Showing Off is the Fools Idea of Glory"

And I could not agree more. What I thought I was getting when I signed up to LinkedIn was valued discussion and knowledge sharing around topics that people wanted to share. I did not buy into a platform where people get to tell me how fantastic they are constantly, to the point where that seems to be all I am getting.

As proof of the volume of these types of posts I decided to do a little study and I counted how many self congratulation posts have appeared in my feed in the last 7 days. The count showed well over half, 58% to be exact, had some form of self glory. That is an absurd percentage in my humble opinion.

That is not to say you should not celebrate your wins and successes, however how and when is more important than just jumping on LinkedIn and letting EVERYONE know whether it is relevant to them or not.

I know this will be a topical post and it is not intended to insult or point any particular person or business out, so let me put some context around this. Constant posts of this nature;

• Will not get me to use your business on that point alone. I don't want a business who targets awards, I want one that can meet my needs the best. If I have never engaged you in a discussion about your business and what it has to offer, how can this be relevant?
• Will not get me to click to find out more about you or the award, as at this point neither has relevance to me or my challenges.
• Will not make you more attractive to work with if that's the only thing I know about you or the awards. What if you were the only person who entered the awards in your category?
• Tells me nothing about your business other than you can apply for awards.

However before you decide to post a comment, be aware that I do think there is value in the right situation to present your awards and successes. I am just not sure a blanket post to everyone you have connected with on LinkedIn builds the right impression or delivers the results we all may think.

So maybe it is worth reconsidering posting self congratulations and rather, just maybe, post and share content that gives people deep insight into your business, into the individuals who work for you, the projects you have worked on and finally how you might be able to add value to what your network does (the basics of networking).

Bruce Lee's real name was in fact Lee Jun-Fan and unlike Bruce I am not a Fan of this content clogging up my news feed. Rather I would prefer to get to know you, your business and how we can help each other. Now there is a challenge.