Simply the best?

If you're a frequent flyer aboard online social networking sites, you'll often 'meet' people who are keen to tell you how wonderful they are. They're number one. They're the top 1%. They're the best.

Their confidence levels are so high that they probably don't even realise - let alone care - that the majority of other people viewing their profiles and posts think they're a bit of a knob. Nobody can write a better testimonial about those people than they can do on their own. My god, they are good, if they do say so themselves.

I'm not 100% against this method of self-promotion, because to a point, confidence is key in business. We should all love what we do, feel proud of our work, and want to shout from the rooftops about our success. After all, if we don't have the confidence in our own brand to tell people about it, then it's going to be pretty tricky to make our businesses do anything for us, isn't it?

But, as well as being brilliant at business, I think there's an equally large space in self-promotion for people to show that they're human, flawed and fallible. There's a space to show that they're approachable and open to a conversation, rather than some kind of almighty force that can neither be questioned nor reckoned with. Don't we want to do business with people who care about what they can do for us, rather than where this is going to place them in the ratings?

I know, I know... people can promote themselves however they wish, and that's the beauty of social media. We can love people, we can hate people, and we can be irritated by people to the point of not wanting to block or disconnect from them simply because we perversely want to see what complete bollocks they come out with next... I'm not the only one who does that, admit it.

However, I do start getting a bit annoyed when people start giving themselves the label of 'The Best' or 'Number One' or similar. My main problem is all in the semantics, and comes down to one of only two lessons I ever took an interest in during Year 9 Double Science at high school...

I remember the stoney-faced Mr Poole taking time to make us all think carefully about our hypothesiseses (spelling?) during a Physics or Chemistry lesson on materials. Pretty much everyone had written something about finding out which was 'the best' fabric in their investigation ('experiment', if you're old school like me). Mr Poole pointed out that stating 'the best' on its own had no meaning or measurable impact. The best at what? The best fabric for keeping you warm? The best fabric for not bursting into flames and killing you? The best fabric to fashion into a snazzy jumpsuit that the bitch in Year 10 said you were too chubby to pull off?

I think that last bit might be more me than Mr Poole, to be fair to him...

Heralding something as 'the best' is a very vague phrase, and so when people make such a bold claim, I need something measurable or something that holds it to account. I want to know which independent body authorised the title, against which standards they were benchmarked, and exactly which element of their work they're the 'best' at? If you can't specify that, and it's clear you're not just having a laugh with the title, then it really just comes across as arrogant.

The thing these days with giving yourself your own title, is that you truly are free to say what you like. You can use any words, you can cobble together any phrases, and you can make any stats say exactly what you need them to say. There's a thought process that it doesn't matter if you can prove it or not, because you're sitting pretty until someone comes along to disprove what you've claimed. All that this self-imposed and unclarified label proves to me, however, is a level of being stuck so far up your own arse you can see the moon, and so even if that person happened to be the best at bloody everything, I personally wouldn't want to work with them. I don't assume I'm the only one, either.

So, here's to those who nail the specifics and show us exactly why and in what capacity they are the best. But, more importantly, here's to those who market themselves with a hint of humility or a whole lot of humour, as they self-deprecatingly show us that, yeah, they might just be really quite good at what they do - and that's enough to know.

The other Science lesson of interest was about pressure, by the way, where Mr Poole told us that the best way to stop your ears blocking/painfully popping when taking a flight somewhere was to have a gin or three, and, I quote, "hold the tonic". I imagine that was his remedy for having to deal with teaching me Science, as well.

This post was brought to you by agoodwriteup. Not the best one, or a great one, but a good one.