You don’t need to change yourself in order to succeed, says Laura Huang. You can use everything about yourself (even the things you think are flaws!) to get a competitive advantage. A star business professor at Northeastern (previously at Harvard and Wharton), Laura has developed a unique four-step process to make your hard work work harder for you:
- Enrich: Providing value to others—and communicating that value to them too;
- Delight: Convincing others to take a step back and actually listen to you;
- Guide: Understanding and redirecting the perceptions that others have of you;
- Effort: Working hard—and putting that hard work into the right things.
In talks, she uses real-life examples from her own research to show you how you can flip negative perceptions and other obstacles on their head. For instance, she teaches you how to map your own “trajectory” instead of letting others assume your future potential, using examples like the non-native speaker who rose from receptionist to analyst at Goldman Sachs and the entrepreneur whose time spent in prison became the heart behind his business’s story.
“Guide the perceptions that others have of you. Make your own privilege,” Laura says. “That is ultimately how you get more out of your hard work.”
