Making Your Star Turn Work

Most of us in the advisory professions get our moment(s) in the spotlight at some point.

Whether it’s because you’re leaving to try your chances with another team or you’re announcing a bold new adventure—you want to make sure your real message gets through.

Need some reminders for your star turn? America’s latest PR-spectacle—this time in sports—has given us a few.

Deliver the bad news—I don’t want to stay in Cleveland, come to New York, etc—personally. They’ll still hate your decision (maybe even you), but you’ll know you did your best to honor your relationships and your past work.

Praise in public, critique in private. Now is not the time to diss the losers publicly. Nerves are raw. Yes, you can let off steam with a few friends—that’s what they’re for after all. But with bloggers listening and cameras rolling? Not so much.

Keep great advisors, but ditch the entourage. Great advisors give solid advice that you can act on. An entourage tells you what you want to hear. They convince you to refer to yourself in the 3rd person. Before you know it, your true, irreplaceable audience starts to slip away.

At the end of the day, we all make decisions that are right for us—taking some slings and arrows comes with the territory. When it’s your star turn, HOW you deliver the news speaks volumes.