Developing your Brand

As we follow our own career paths whether they’re as an individual contributor or in a Leadership capacity it’s important that we’re aware of our brand and how we’re coming across to others.

If you haven’t already, you know what to do:

One thing that can really make you stand out is by contributing to others.

Contributing to something or to someone gives us purpose.

By focusing on giving more, we naturally develop our own personal brand which helps extend the work we’re doing and opens up other opportunities.

There are plenty of lists and things you can do to increase your presence and build your personal brand, but they all come down to this single strategy.

Be significantly intentional and deliberate about adding value and helping others to be successful.

How do you do this?

Here are 6 ideas on how you can achieve this goal every day, which will result in people wanting to work with you, you becoming the go-to, and naturally becoming “easier to lift” when people think of recognizing, considering you for promotion or giving you more responsibility.

1) 110% Rule -over-deliver within reason. If you want to stand out and open up more opportunities, do more than what is expected of you. If your colleague or a customer asks you to complete task 1 and task 2, could you stretch or identify other tasks that could provide additional value to the first 2 tasks you have completed? Think outside the box, what’s their goal? If you don’t know, ask. Don’t complete things blindly, be curious. Give them an exceptional experience.

2) Manage Up - just as you manage your people, you have to manage your Manager. How do they like to receive communication? What format do they like? Think about if something occurs, is their manager going to ask them, could you pro-actively provide your Manager with an update? So if they get asked, they can provide a quick response, and you have then made them look good.

3) Your Peers - what can you do to help your colleagues and peers to be successful? Don’t just focus on resolving your own challenges, help people and other departments resolve their ones too.

4) Champion - be the champion, raise the flag and rally the troops around. Spot an issue or a crack? What can you do to fix it or notify someone to resolve it? Don’t walk around issues or resolve symptoms. Get to the heart of the issue and resolve the root cause. If you keep fixing symptoms rather than root causes, the issues will keep coming back.

5) Hand up or Ask - if opportunities are offered, put your hand up and grab them. Initiatives or cross-functional projects feel daunting at first but are great growth and relationship-building opportunities, so get uncomfortable and put yourself forward. If opportunities are not being offered, then you need to ask and continue to knock on people’s doors or find problems that need solving. “Hey Mrs Leader, I am looking to develop my project management skills and work with people across the business to nurture new relationships, are there any opportunities to get involved in cross-functional projects this quarter please?”

6) Speak up - whether in meetings, Slack channels, Emails, or on LinkedIn. Start speaking up, contributing, and adding value to others. Some people have a habit of reading but not responding or recognising your comments. That doesn’t mean they don’t see value in it or appreciate it. Speaking up also positions you as someone who is giving and is happy putting themselves out there, you may also notice it’s a great way to develop more confidence in yourself.

As we all progress in our careers and move forward, building a Personal Brand based on the goal of adding value to others will accelerate our journey significantly.

As I say to my daughter to instil the right behaviours: The secret of living is giving.

When your spirit and intent are to help others get ahead, with no expectation of receiving something back, you know you won’t go far wrong in life. It also has a funny way of coming back and helping you unexpectedly.

All the best

David

Resources Of The Week

• Daily Management Tip - Harvard Business Review has a distribution list that sends out a great Management Tip every day Monday through to Friday. Highly recommend you sign up here.

• YouTube - Kim Scott - Radical Candor. A consolidated version of Kim Scott’s great book Radical Candor. Radical Candor is about providing guidance, which involves a mix of praise as well as criticism – delivered to produce better results and help your employees develop their skills and increase success.

• Book - Eat That Frog by Brian Tracey - great book with 21 ideas on how to overcome procrastination and get more things done.

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Quote of the Week

Last week’s issue: The Journey

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