The Art of Dominance

They say that to be a king one must behave like a king. I'm not sure how useful this statement would have been to the warriors and rulers of the past but yes, a mindset similar to this does make a lot of difference when it comes to making a mark in today's ultra-competitive age. These days when you have people breathing down each other's neck, trying to create a space for themselves, itself really important to hold fort. The moment you let your guards down, you would end up losing your identity. So how exactly do you dominate when you actually need to?

On a personal level, a couple of strategies that have always helped me at crucial junctures are:

(1) The Art of Selective Dominance
(2) Unpredictability Quotient

Dominate, but only when its worth it!

Imagine being in a situation wherein the stakes are extremely high, competition is really tough and performance is the only way out. How do you handle the pressure of such a must win situation? The answer lies in a single phrase, "Ruthless Dominance". Think of yourself as being the "all powerful leader" of the pack, irrespective of what the reality is. Once you get into the mindset of being better than the best, you would automatically start feeling a sense of endless confidence, something that would help you cross any mental hurdle (nervousness, anxiety, poor self-esteem) that might creep up from time to time. However, this is just one aspect of the story. To be really successful at dominance, one must know when to utilize this trick. As is the case with all strategies, overuse of one renders it useless. All the cards you play should come in as a surprise to the rest.

On a personal level, I normally tend to reserve all my energy and aggression for just the day it matters the most. For the rest of the time, I absolutely don't mind being lost in the crowd. Moreover, its real fun watching people react when they get to see some of your personality traits they had least expected.

Predictability is equivalent to non-existence

Adding to the dominance aspect is the invaluable trait of being unpredictable. In short, one must keep on honing new skills on an almost regular basis so that every single encounter with competition is met with a force least expected by the crowd. On the contrary, once you start getting predictable, its very easy for people to work out your strengths and weaknesses, something they can easily take care of at crucial junctures. Probably, this is why they say that someone who's an open book can never make a good leader. So the next time you are working on a certain skillset, make sure you don't end up on a self-promotion spree for just those couple of seconds of fame. Rather reserve the art of marketing your skills for the crucial moments.

Although the effectiveness of such tricks is bound to vary from person to person, depending on his/her inherent traits, successful mastery of these does provide you an edge over the rest. At the end of the day something that does command tremendous significance these days is the attitude of "You might not be the best but you can certainly be different from the rest."