When you’re looking to add new members to your organization, be it a business, an association, a club – anything, really – you want to find people who have the right vibe. Vibe is a strange thing, it’s not easily or neatly definable, but you want to find someone who you feel will fit in with the overall culture of your organization. When your organization is very relaxed, seeing someone who is a bit stiff and formal, you might feel they aren’t the right fit. Conversely, if you value a high level of decorum, someone showing up for an interview in a shirt that hasn’t been ironed might send the message that they’re not quite who you’re looking for. Vibe has so many elements; how a person looks, how they talk, all the nonverbal cues, the energy they give off. What matters most is that they will fit in with the rest of your organization, that they’ll click with other members.

When you’re looking to hire event speakers, vibe matters just as much. You want to find a speaker whose words and experiences will resonate with your audience. There’s a tricky balance to draw up here, because while you want their experiences to be relatable, you also want them to be different enough to shift people’s perception. We tend to be able to shift our thinking more easily when we encounter someone similar, but slightly different; someone who feels completely alien to us won’t be relatable, and experiences and lessons might not transfer appropriately.

We live in a world of connection; you’re reading this on an online blog right now, and if you wanted to, you could share the article on social media. When your organization is holding an event, the best way to advertise it is usually on one of the plethoras of social networks, and how you manage your presence on those networks is a huge part of your public image – your public vibe. When you’re looking for someone to speak at your event, you want someone with a social media presence that jives with your own, in the same way, you want the speaker themselves to be relatable to your employee. The speaker will have followers of their own in your city, so them advertising an appearance at your event will attract a certain crowd, and you want that crowd to mesh well with the members of your own organization.

Running a successful event once means that you’ll want to do it again, so pay close attention to the signals your event is sending off and the type of people it’s attracting. There will be a positive feedback loop where more people start to show up who have heard of your event, and what they’ll have heard is other people’s emotional experiences – in short, the vibe they got. Carefully curating who speaks at the event will ensure that the positive feedback loop continues to bring in the people who you want to see, generating the feelings and ideas you think will be beneficial to your organization, and the world.