Game Changer by Michael Solomon

Author:Michael Solomon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harpercollins Leadership
Published: 2020-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

7

THE THIRD PARTY EFFECT

He who represents himself has a fool for a client.

—ABRAHAM LINCOLN

In the 1979 French film L’associé (The Associate), a down-on-his-luck investor creates a make-believe business partner in a last-ditch attempt to save the biz. What happens next is as telling as it is hilarious: Playing the imaginary associate, the man finds “his voice,” business booms like crazy, new clients sign on in droves, and the man’s wife even announces that she’s fallen in love with the partner—all despite the fact that he doesn’t exist.

As silly as it sounds, the movie is a perfect illustration of what we call the Third Party Effect.

Imagine telling someone that you’re amazing at what you do. Now imagine someone else, someone credible, saying the same thing about you. The message is always stronger coming from a third party. When you say, “I went to Harvard, worked in senior management at Facebook, and created the open-source language that runs half the internet,” you sound like a conceited jerk.

If someone else says those very same words about you, you sound like a unicorn.

In a court of law, it’s never advisable to represent yourself, and the same goes for talent. The tendency will always be to oversell or undersell, and either way, there is virtually no credibility where there is no objectivity. The Third Party Effect removes your ego, high and low, and shows the listener that someone else out there believes in you enough to put their own reputation on the line.

One other thing to keep in mind: Most people don’t have great management and struggle to get it. While most companies in the industry are desperate to find and work with great tech talent, as of this writing, our own company has a five-thousand-person-plus waiting list of tech talent hoping to engage our management services. This is because the talent knows if they work with us, they get people with skin in their game who can give them the benefit of the Third Party Effect. The recommendation of a third party (and especially one who has skin in the game) automatically implies value and is one of the few ways to rise above the din.

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