What is your value as a person?

Have you ever tried to measure your value as a person? The fact that you are present does not mean you are valuable. Value is determined not by being present but by making your presence positively significant. This is the game changer. If your presence in an organization or in your world for that matter does not amount to positive significance then you are not only a waste of space but in actual fact an obstruction. This is because it means you are seated in the space where someone else could have sat and made positive significance. Every agent of mediocrity is an obstruction to agents of transformation. Every organization has two kinds of people – the value adders and the parasites. Parasites do not add value but live off the value added by others and the parasites are always the first to complain about what is not working! What determines which you will be is a choice that you will have to make by yourself. No one can do it for you.

The first question that needs to come to mind in determining the value that you add is to simply ask yourself the effect of your not being there. Author and speaker Robin Sharma wrote a book with an interesting title. It was titled ‘When you die who will cry? Frankly speaking there is no point in dying if you never lived. The fact that you breathe does not mean that you live. The fact that you move around does not mean you are progressing. The fact that you are making noise does not mean you are being heard. Life is measured by impact and not by being present. You need to have your trademark signature on everything you do. In essence you may do what everyone does but you do it in a way that no one else does it. This becomes your signature and this is what people will remember. What will differentiate you from the masses is your uniqueness.

Ironically uniqueness is one of the greatest things that has been fought by many and indeed by society. (Yet when it thrives they claim it and celebrate it). No one wants to be different. Everyone wants to take solace in the fact that it was once done like this by someone else. Everyone wants to hide behind the uniqueness of others. The difference between an ordinary stone and a precious stone is rarity. Value is always tied to uniqueness.

I cannot but talk about this wonderful staff of Kenya Airways that I met once at the airport. It was one of those days when the traffic on Mombasa road was hellish. I got to the airport late. Unlike the normal treatment where the person at the counter begins to give a lecture on how you are supposed to be at the airport an hour before and all that, this one spared me. She empathized and made me relax and then went out of her way to help me. She differentiated herself by her uniqueness.

Uniqueness is not hard to come by. The problem is that we have copied people so much that we have forgotten our true identity. When mediocrity becomes so entrenched to the point of being cultural then creativity will appear to be the odd one out. Remember, in a world dominated by fools, the wise appear to the majority as being the fools.

You can find your true self again. The value that you may bring – just like that wonderful airline staff may be a smile to brighten up someone’s already frustrated morning. The airline that can constantly give me people like this lady will surely be the airline of choice not just for me but for many. By her unique smile and sense of service she added value. She was not just present. Her presence was positively significant. The next time I travel if she is not there and the person that attends to me does not add to me, I will truly miss that other lady. When absence is unfelt, presence was unnecessary.

Your absence will either create a vacuum or create joy. If it creates joy then your presence was merely tolerated and not celebrated.

Wale Akinyemi