Moving Yourself into the Front Row

“I know what it’s like to be challenged, to have self-doubting thoughts,” admitted Marilyn Sherman in the closing CAMEX22 keynote in Louisville, KY. “Sometimes you can do everything right and still fall short.”

It can be easy to sink into self-pity, give into fear and negativity, and ultimately unplug altogether. That’s when you find yourself sitting in the balcony, Sherman said.

Her keynote, Front Row Leadership: How Top Performers Never Settle for Balcony Seats, used theater seating as an analogy for identifying your level of engagement and satisfaction in various aspects of life, including work.

Situated far back from the action on stage, “balcony seats are when you’re disengaged. You buy a ticket the day of the event,” Sherman explained. “General admission seats are what you call the comfort zone.” Comfort might seem like a pretty good place to be “but you can’t stay in bed all day.”

The front row, on the other hand, holds the best seats in the house. “The front row means it doesn’t get any better,” Sherman said. A “front row moment,” she added, “is any moment where you feel good about yourself.”

She encouraged the audience to start keeping track of their front row moments, because doing so reinforces the positive. “You can create more front row moments if you’re looking for them,” Sherman noted.

So which seats do you occupy? Sherman recommended this exercise: Create a chart with the column headers Chair, Front Row, General Admission, and Balcony. In the Chart column, write Work, Attitude, Friendships, Relationships, Faith, and Health. For each of those items, mark your current seat location in the other columns.

“Chances are, your check marks are all over,” Sherman said. Choose one in the balcony or general admission that could be moved up—if you work on it. Only pick one, she said, to avoid getting overwhelmed and giving up.

“Over the next 20-21 days, be cognizant of this chair,” she said. “When you feel good about it, choose another.”

The Work seat is not the only one that affects your responsibilities at the campus store. Each seat has some impact on all the others.

Sherman also suggested writing out a vision for yourself. “If you were to see yourself one year from today, what does that look like? Jot it down,” she said. She writes a letter to herself each year and packs it away with her Christmas tree. The following year, when she unpacks the tree, she reviews the letter to see how she’s doing and writes a new one.

She uses a four-pronged approach called the SEAT of Success:

• See the outcome you desire.
• Energy focused toward your vision.
• Choose your attitude.
• Tenacity.

That last prong will come in handy in overcoming obstacles along the way to the front row. It also helps to have compassion, she said, especially when you’re not making the progress you’d hoped for. “Give yourself some grace. We all need a little bit more grace in this world today,” Sherman said.

“Every single day you have an opportunity to make a difference with students,” she noted. “Your job is to notice when they’re off their game” and reach out to them. Like an usher who knows the seats and has a flashlight to guide people to the right spot, “illuminate the path for your students, your vendor partners, your president,” Sherman said.