As professional service-providers, we are all doing everything we can to figure out how to make the most impact on our prospects and clients. In today’s post, Dean suggests that it the answer doesn’t have to be in the big picture, but sometimes in the smaller details.
There’s a question most of us carry, whether we say it out loud or not:
What impact am I actually making?
What difference have I created that justifies my time, my attention, my existence?
And when we ask that question, we usually look in the biggest places. We look for the major accomplishments. The visible wins. The milestones. The work that sounds important when we tell the story afterward.
But I think we often miss where a great deal of our impact actually lives.
It makes sense that we do this. We’re drawn to the obvious markers of meaning. We want to believe that impact has to be large, dramatic, measurable, and recognized. We want to point to the project, the promotion, the achievement, the headline moment.
And those things matter.
But in our leadership presence coaching and executive presence coaching work, we see over and over again that the most meaningful influence often happens in much smaller moments. Not in the grand gesture, but in the human interaction. Not in the achievement itself, but in the way you make someone feel while moving through ordinary life.
I remember standing in a gas station late at night. Everyone seemed irritated. The line felt tense. The person at the register looked worn down. The customers were impatient. It was one of those little environments where the mood had turned sour and everyone was reinforcing it for everyone else.
And in that moment, I made a very simple choice: I decided to bring warmth. I decided to really see the person helping me and to treat him with respect.
That was it.
No speech. No grand act. No performance.
Just warmth. Kindness. Genuine regard.
And I watched what happened next. He seemed to feel a little better. Then he treated the person behind me a little better. Then that person responded differently. And for the next few minutes, the emotional weather in that tiny corner of the world changed.
This is one of the things I most respect about confident presence and Presence Coaching: your presence is never neutral. The state you bring into an interaction affects the people around you. Your tone affects their tone. Your calm affects their nervous system. Your warmth affects what they pass on to the next person.
That’s true in a gas station. It’s true in a meeting. It’s true in business speaking, in group presentation coaching, in leadership conversations, and in everyday life.
We tend to underestimate the degree to which people are experiencing us all the time.
I’m not saying the larger things do not matter. Of course they do. The work matters. The projects matter. The goals matter. But I think there’s a real possibility that some of the most lasting good we do comes through the simple way we treat people while we are on the way to those larger accomplishments.
This is one reason leadership confidence training and Leadership Presentation Coaching matter so much to me. They are not just about helping someone look polished or speak more effectively. They are about helping someone show up in a way that elevates the experience of the people around them.
That is impact too. Maybe it’s impact in one of its purest forms.
We often think of “pay it forward” as some larger act of generosity. But maybe the simplest, least expensive, and most available version of it is this:
You may never fully see where it goes. That does not make it any less real.
In fact, this is often how influence works. Not through control. Not through force. But through transmission. You create a moment, and that moment keeps moving.
If you are measuring your impact only by the large things, you may miss a huge part of your actual contribution. The way you communicate with people, the emotional tone you set, the way you respond when others are tired, frustrated, or discouraged, all of that matters.
It matters in executive presentation coaching. It matters in client work. It matters in family life. It matters in every ordinary setting where human beings are trying to get through the day and find some sense that life is workable.
Sometimes the biggest difference you make is not the thing you built. It’s the dignity you gave someone while you were standing in line.
So if you’re asking yourself what impact you’re making, don’t only look at the giant moments. Look at the small interactions. Look at the invisible places. Look at how people feel after they have been with you.
That may tell you more about your influence than the biggest achievement on your résumé.
And if that’s true, then impact is much more available than we think. It’s not waiting for some future stage, some bigger platform, or some more impressive accomplishment.
It’s right here. In the way you treat people. In the warmth you bring. In the kindness you choose to extend.
That’s a form of impact worth taking seriously.
Receive weekly posts of insight and inspiration.
No Comments yet!