Be A Little Imperfect to be Popular

My son and I recently saw the show STOMP in London. Friends who've never heard of it asked me what it's about and I summarized: "Some people get together and bang on garbage can lids."
"Oh."
.... and SO much more.
It's the best show in London, if you ask us. (You can check out excerpts on YouTube.)
While I was watching, I pondered some of the reasons that it's so lovable, and how we can do the same things to be lovable and popular at work or with our friends.

1. Awesome skills.

Having skills is always great. Everybody enjoys seeing people do cool stuff. The show Stomp is all about how awesome you can be with common trash -- paint cans, grocery carts, your own two hands, a pair of drum sticks, rubber pipes... if you have skills, and you don't need fancy equipment, that's even more awesome.
Think of it this way: If you're in the field with a fancy contractor with all the latest equipment to do a job, and they do a good job of it, that's all well and good. But aren't you so much more stirred when you're in the field with an old guy and he does the same job on minimal equipment and a whole lot of know-how?
Skills are more exciting than equipment.

2. Be unique

Stomp's crew with their hands and feet and a variety of trash, clearly a show that grew up on a street somewhere, is ten times more exciting than yet another orchestra or ballet performance. Don't get me wrong. Orchestra and ballet, with everyone beautifully dressed and perfectly practiced, is moving too. But when you've seen it all your life, it can become repetitive. You expect perfection, and anything less would be a disappointment.
But Stomp is something new and different. You spend the show being so busy marvelling at the novelty that you probably wouldn't notice if they did make a mistake following the score (not that they did -- their coordination is part of the magic that makes us marvel at their skills.)

3. Be a little less than perfect.

I never mean to be less than perfect in a way that is going to inconvenience your clients or colleagues, but a little mussed hair isn't the end of the world. Psychology and relationship studies have proved that it's the imperfections that we often love the most about our favourite people. Think of that.
It's the imperfections that we love the most.
At the orchestra or the ballet, you don't have a chance to love imperfections. The dancers don't have an ounce of fat. The orchestra is all perfectly turned out in starched white and impeccable black. At Stomp, while the dancers are deliberately a little grungily dressed, you can admire the beauty of their muscles, their movements, their... humanity. More than one of the eight dancers had some jiggles around their middle -- jiggles that were not hidden, but just there. Human. Lovable. Not detracting from the individual awesomeness of each performer at all.

4. Invite participation

Stomp draws the audience in to the show early on by inviting the audience to play. It's only simple clapping, but it's powerful energy. It's the same thing if you're building a new relationship, whether it's business or personal: are you awed by your own incredibleness, or do you invite the other(s) to play and participate in what you're doing? It might be as simple as asking "what do you think?" Or perhaps it's that all-important conversational pause, where you stop your own stories and leave some room for the other to get a word in edgewise.

5. Laugh at yourself: remember the value of the fool.

One of the elements that had us riveted early on in the show was a tall man with a meek posture and goofy facial expressions. He was clearly the low man on the totem pole, his ineptitude illustrating all the more the awesomeness of the other players. As the show progressed, the role of the fool occasionally passed to another player, and it always highlighted the actual difficulty of the feats the others were performing.
The fool, however, was the most loveable of all the players. He always had the smallest little instrument (no less perfectly played than the others), and yet, his self-effacing ways and goofy faces made him the one that drew all eyes. Though we marvelled at the acrobat, we adored the clown.
Some people have the ability to be eternally elegant and suave. Their voices are always perfectly modulated, their faces are patrician, their bodies move perfectly within their clothes. Their manners are utterly impeccable at all times.
That's not most of us, though. So to make your blunders more excusable, be funny. Only the truly confident can laugh at themselves, and people enjoy confidence. Trust me, it'll be fine.
To recap:

Laugh at yourself, and don't mind being the clown. But be skilled! It's worth it to develop your juggling, writing, math, whatever! Be unique, and be humble. It's fine not to be perfect all the time -- in fact, people will like you better for it. Invite them to play along with you. It's the way to make friends -- and colleagues -- for life.