EYN#058: 3 Tips To Build Your Gravitas

We all love someone with a bit of gravitas. When it's something important.

I`m not talking about a Saturday night at a party. But what if you were about to undergo surgery. You'd want someone who knew what they were on about, that you could trust, that you felt would do a great job.

And that's the same in tech. People want to talk to people who have gravitas when it's something important.

But what does gravitas mean?

Well to me gravitas is just the posh word for being able to influence the decision makers. That the people who influence the decisions respect and trust your opinion.

But the great thing is, it's not something your born with. Babies don't pop out to a chorus of oh isn't she cute, look at those dimples and what wonderful gravitas she has. Like all skills it's something you can learn.

Let me break it apart. To me it's a combination of:

• Experience
• Respect For The Situation
• Effective Communication.

Experience

You don't need to be 50 to have experiences of value. But you do need to have knowledge and have applied it in real life. If you're earlier in career, remember tech changes so quickly. Think about generative AI. No-one's got more than 5 minutes experience in prompt engineering. So learn, build your knowledge and apply it in the real world with the latest tech. New tech is great place to build relevant experience quick.

And for those of you with loads of experience. Brilliant. Those gnarled battle scars really give you a great foundation for gravitas.

Respect For The Situation

There is a time for humour … and there is a time to shut up. I sometimes get that wrong.

It's something I have to work on.

Sometimes humour is brilliant way to engage people, to create a connection with people to explain complicated things.

But … no-one wants a joker when they're trying to fix a mission critical server that's down, or when they're about to drop millions on a risky cutting edge solution.

Learn when you need to dial the humour down, and dial the seriousness up. Respect the importance of the situation.

Effective Communication

Well I've got an entire course on this - Technical Storytelling.
TLDR: When you communicate be relevant to your audience,
When you communicate be clear, be concise and have purpose,
When you communicate give people confidence you know what you're doing without overwhelming them with how

Done.

Everyone can do "Gravitas".

Build your experience. Take the situation seriously. Effectively communicate. Combine these three and people will care what you say and act on your opinion.

Hope this helps

Ben