Why Gaining Traction Starts with Showing Up

I have a career-making question for you: Do you have high agency?

If you haven’t heard, the idea of “high agency”—where your superpower is shaping any situation as you wish it to be—is taking over conversations with Hiring Managers and Team Leads. High agency isn’t new—decades of people have used their smarts to move fast and break things. And although bending life to your will sounds cool, high agency can have a sinister underbelly.

You’ve probably already seen high agency go wrong, such as people who:

1. Think they’re an iconoclastic risk taker, but everyone else sees them as reckless.
2. Like to make demands, then try to rebrand their forcefulness as leadership; or
3. Over-index on getting their way and under-index on collaboration.

The alternative to these extremes is to design your own type of high agency. The kind where your achievements aren’t at the expense of others. And where you stop propping up your ego and start beefing up with people skill traits like poise and judgment. In the March series, 4 Simple Ways to Excel at High Agency, we’ll discuss actionable principles to help you boss up.

Let’s begin by running straight at a controversial topic: Showing up.

Success is Closer Than You Think

I went for a haircut a few weeks ago, and my stylist shook his head about some of the new hires. He told me, “I skipped college and started at the salon full-time after high school. It’s common knowledge I was pretty successful by the time I was about 25. People have asked for my secrets, and I’ve been happy to share the hard knocks I took along the way.”

“But now?” I asked.

“Now I skip those long conversations,” he laughed. “I’ve got the secret sauce boiled down to two words: Show. Up.”

“C’mon—it can’t be that easy.”

“Yeah—a lot of times it is. That’s what I suggested to someone who clubs so hard on Friday nights that they call in sick on Saturdays, one of the busiest days at the salon. Then there was the person who only wanted to do high-ticket jobs. I told them building a steady book can mean starting small. Substitute for someone who goes home sick. Help the person with a late client by doing a blow dry or bang trim. And always say yes to walk-in customers. That’s how you wind up with a client waitlist.”

Easy Ways to Show Up on the Daily

You may think, Nice story, but I work in an office. Before you click away, take 30 seconds to replay all the gems demonstrating why showing up is part of high agency.

Did you catch the ability to see and take advantage of raw opportunities? How he channeled ambition into daily action? And how he constantly partnered with the rest of the team? You can use the same techniques to build a killer skill set and deep network.

Now, let’s get personal and define some simple starter tactics. Here are three ways showing up will benefit your high agency portfolio:

1. Chat people up every day. Networks don’t happen automagically—they start in the kitchen, hallway, or the elevator after a meeting. So, kickstart your circle by being the fun person with something interesting to say.
2. Selectively show your homework. Everyone loves to hear the TL;DR version, but always have a quick “how I built this” slide in your back pocket. Be ready to showcase your skills like critical thinking, one-of-a-kind insights, and diligence.
3. Volunteer for a cross-group team. You’ll learn whether you’re a match for certain types of work, and you might meet your next Hiring Manager.

In the past, showing up used to mean puttering around with a coffee cup in your hand, but face time alone won’t take you places. Flip the old, boring script and replace it with your best people skills like curiosity, generosity, and a willingness to proactively engage. Increase your status by doing what seems simple with excellence: Show. Up.