Telos

At one of the largest business conferences I co-organized with the team at Finest Media Ph, SpeakersCon, feedback from over a thousand participants was both encouraging and insightful. Attendees praised the event’s theme, its relevance and the quality of the speakers. A recurring theme emerged: authenticity. Nearly every speaker addressed this concept directly.

A fellow speaker observed that Generation Z increasingly prefers to engage with companies that demonstrate clear values. The traditional approach of remaining neutral on social issues – attempting to appear concerned without taking a stand – is becoming ineffective. In today’s environment, attempts to avoid controversy are often met with criticism, frequently in public forums. Therefore, it is more effective to articulate one’s beliefs and build a brand around them. There is little reward for strategic ambiguity in today’s landscape.

That thought brought back my interest in philosophy.

As an amateur, I have always been fascinated by the ancient thinkers of Greece, by the way they processed reality and pursued truth with rigor and depth. And from there, my mind went straight to Aristotle. Yes, that Aristotle. The ancient Greek who has been dead for over two thousand years is still more useful than many modern influencers with perfect lighting and inspirational captions.

Long before social media, personal branding, or the idea of a content calendar, Aristotle argued that everything has a telos: a purpose. And a thing achieves its good by fulfilling that purpose well.

That idea is not as abstract as it sounds. In fact, it is intensely practical.

A compass is good not because it is polished or impressive, but because it points to true north. A person with a natural gift for music flourishes by developing that gift – not by ignoring it or trying to become something else out of insecurity, envy or pressure. A pen is better used to write something meaningful than to scrawl nonsense on a bathroom wall.

You do not arrive at your telos by becoming a slightly worse version of someone else. You get there by becoming a more complete version of yourself.

We recognize that instinctively. We admire it even in places we would normally ignore.

Think about the Olympics. People who never watch gymnastics or figure skating the rest of the year are suddenly glued to their screens. Part of that is spectacle. But a larger part is that we are watching people push toward the outer edge of what they were built, trained and disciplined to do. There is something compelling about that kind of alignment. It draws us because it feels true.

And that brings us to branding.

If you are building a personal brand or a company brand, the most persuasive signal you can send is not a polished LinkedIn headline suggesting you are “authentic.” Anyone can type that. In fact, the word has been used so often that it now risks inducing mild nausea in thoughtful readers.

The stronger signal is this: you understand your purpose, and you are actually pursuing it.

That does not mean everyone will agree with you. They will not. Some will scroll past. Some will object loudly. Some will misunderstand. That comes with the territory.

But what rarely works is trying to be broadly acceptable while standing for nothing. That usually lands nowhere. It is the branding equivalent of a restaurant proudly offering Asian-Mediterranean-Mexican fusion – and somehow managing to insult all three.

I have spoken with respected HR leaders who all agree: it is difficult to find a trainer who can deliver with depth and credibility. But it is very easy to decide who never to hire – the speaker who claims expertise in leadership, entrepreneurship, finance, marketing and investments all at once. That person gets no callback.

The most memorable brands and the most compelling people feel aligned. They are not trying to be everything to everyone. They are trying to be something specific – and to do it well. With conviction. With consistency. With enough courage to lose some people in order to truly reach the right ones.

Know your purpose. Pursue it fully. Stop apologizing for it.

People are drawn not only to competence but to congruence. They trust what feels integrated. They remember what feels true.

Long before anyone imagined the internet or the personal-branding industrial complex, Aristotle was already working this out. It turns out he still has something useful to say about digital media and branding – 2,400 years later.

He did not have Wi-Fi, but the man understood the signal.

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