Have you drifted into your career?

Our culture values planning, strategising and taking action. This is as applicable to our careers as it is to other aspects of our lives. Goal setting and goal achievement are king. As a result, many of us who have seemingly drifted into our current careers can feel a little sheepish about telling our story.

I think the career drifter approach needs re-framing. My experience of working and coaching many talented people and leaders over the years is that often our seemingly un-orchestrated drifting brings us closer to doing the kind of work we are most suited to than we might think. Intuitively we move into fields and professions that align with our natural strengths i.e. things we’re both good at and enjoy.

Let me test this theory by inviting you to reflect on a series of questions:

1. What activities did you most enjoy as a child? e.g. Reading? Sports? Crafts? Hanging out with your friends? Now think about what it was about those activities that you liked e.g. The stimulation of new ideas? Achieving a personal best? Planning and executing a project? Being “in the know” about what was going on around the place?

2. Now do the same exercise for your leisure activities as an adult (those you engage in or those you aspire to engage in when you have more time!) What is it about these activities that you’re attracted to? Is this the same as what was true for you in childhood?

3. Now think about your current work. How does what you do now reflect the qualities of those activities you were drawn to as a child or continue to be drawn to in your leisure pursuits as an adult? Is there a correlation?

Often our seemingly accidental career choices have been an unconscious attempt to follow our bliss (as Joseph Campbell recommended). A key part of claiming our personal brand involves having a deep understanding of our strengths. Tracing our experiences backwards to activities that through our lives have been those we both enjoyed and excelled at give valuable clues to what our strengths are.

I’d welcome your thoughts on this – what has your experience been? Does this theory fit for you? Leave a comment.

7 ways to behave like an expert

In the last post I talked abut the importance of becoming an expert. That is, being someone who continuously acquires and displays knowledge about a particular subject. But knowing your stuff simply isn’t sufficient to be recognized as an expert. You also need to behave like one. In this post I outline the seven behaviors of the true expert.

1. Be a specialist not a generalist
Tempting as it is for those of us with magpie minds to dip into all sorts of things, to be an expert you need to become known for one thing and one thing only. Choose your area of expertise carefully as building a reputation as an expert takes time so if it’s not an area that will hold your attention it’s unlikely you’ll be able to stick with it and come across as passionate about your subject to others.

2. Become a resource
One of the biggest challenges if you have expert knowledge is to get others to see you as an expert. Be generous with what you know. Rather than looking for opportunities to showcase your knowledge – look for opportunities to help others solve their problems – recommend books or websites, write an article, provide an answer to someone’s question or share a model or an approach that they might find helpful. Over time you will get to be the “go to” person in your area of expertise.

3. Act responsibly
Understand that once you are perceived as an expert others will take what you say seriously and likely apply your advice. Make sure that any advice you give is accurate and proven to work. Also make sure you can back up your advice with evidence from your own or others experience or cite the source of your information.

4. Think before you speak
As an expert, everything you say or do either reinforces or detracts from your expert status. Making glib comments, acting in a patronizing or arrogant manner or dissing the competition will not show you in a good light and likely make others avoid you rather than seek you out. Graciousness and humility (when it’s authentic) go a long way to endearing you to others.

5. Have an opinion
Being an expert requires you to take a position. People can get the facts from many sources, what is not so easy to come across is well thought out analysis based on those facts. Don’t be scared to share your opinion and why you hold it.

Inevitably from time to time others, especially other experts (or wannabes), will disagree with you. Providing you have thought through your position and are comfortable with what you’re saying it’s okay. Be open to dialogue and work to add to the conversation. Having the confidence to admit you were wrong and that you have learned something helpful in the process can also work to your advantage. Any expert worth their salt will tell you there is always much more to learn.

6. Join the conversation
Being known and recognized by other experts helps you raise the bar on your own knowledge and also helps others to perceive you as an expert. Being seen to contribute to your field of interest whether that is through writing, speaking or being involved in relevant forums helps others to see and appreciate what you have to offer.

7. Share your enthusiasm
Share your enthusiasm for your area of expertise with others. Learn to explain complex ideas simply, find opportunities to teach and engage others with what fascinates you. Passion is both appealing and contagious – spread it around.

Lesson Five: Get the word out about yourself

Lesson Four in this series was all about how to make your packaging an accurate and appealing reflection of your personal brand. This lesson is about how you promote your brand to those who don’t have the benefit of meeting you person.

Actively promoting your brand means that you don’t have to explain yourself and what you offer over and over again. Your brand goes ahead of you acting as a shortcut to answer the questions people ask most often – i.e. “What do you do?” and “How can that help me?”

The three suggestions below are intended to help you get the word out about yourself.

1. Become an expert

Definition of an expert: someone who continuously acquires and displays knowledge about a particular subject.

Becoming an expert doesn’t mean you need to know everything about your area – it means that you need to know more than 80% of your target market.

To establish yourself as an expert in your field you first need to decide what you need to know to be considered an expert. Once you’ve done that you need to write your own study plan. What do you need to read, listen to, or experience to be able to talk about with authority on your subject of choice?

Once you’ve acquired this knowledge you need you need to learn how to behave like an expert – more on this in a later post.

2. Brag gracefully

Those of us who were brought up to believe that humility was something to aspire to may have a particularly hard time with the idea of self-promotion, let alone doing it. But the reality these days (if it was ever any different) is that our managers and seniors are generally too busy to notice, let alone go out of their way to deliberately represent our efforts favorably to others except in passing.

Peggy Klaus author of The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn with out Blowing It defines bragging as talking “about your best self (interests, ideas and accomplishments) with pride and passion in a conversational manner intended to excite admiration, interest and wonder, without pretense or overstatement – in other words without being obnoxious.”

This means you need to ensure that those that need to know are aware of your experience and achievements and how having you working for them adds value.

Learning to weave stories and examples of what you have done into conversation without looking like a big-noter is an art from that is well worth the practice.

3. Choose the best channels for you

The generally accepted rule of thumb is that a potential purchaser needs to be exposed to a new brand at least three to five times before they will buy. This is as true for personal brands as it is for products or services.

There are many ways to get the word out about your brand but it is important to choose the channels that work best for you and your brand. For example if you’re an introvert forcing your self to become the busiest public speaker in your area may not be the right choice for you.

Equally you need to start where you are – this might mean ensuring you speak up in internal meetings or taking the initiative to present your team’s learning from a recent project. Over time you might seek to challenge yourself by publishing, volunteering for formal positions in your industry’s professional group or becoming a commentator in the media.

Whatever you decide upon you need to make sure it is something that works for who you are and what you’re best at and succeeds in showcasing your brand to your target audience.

The bottom line of all these suggestions is that it pays to have a plan for increasing your brand visibility that plays to your strengths and also doesn’t make promoting yourself a full time job.

Lesson Six moves this focus another step forward by looking at the skills it takes to communicate effectively.

Lesson Four: Are you an appealing package?

Lesson Three in this series was all about how to stand out from the crowd, this lesson deals with packaging.

Seth Godin’s blog post today talked about beauty as a signaling strategy and highlighted the fact that it takes time to make something beautiful. Being an appealing package means that you take time and effort in what you signal about your personal brand to others.

Take this pop quiz and see how you currently score in the appealing package stakes:

1. The first impressions you make are consistent with your brand. Yes/No
2. You apply the principles of good design to everything you do. Yes/No
3. Your external appearance is consistent with your brand. Yes/No
4. You have a signature style that makes you positively memorable. Yes/No
5. Your work environment is consistent with your brand. Yes/No

If you answered yes to everything you can stop reading now. If not, read on.

1. First Impressions

Whether we mean to or not we all make judgments about people based on our first impressions. We can’t help it. That being the case, its worth taking the time to create a first impression that is an authentic reflection of you and your brand.

It’s hard to get accurate feedback on this – unless you’re comfortable asking complete strangers what they think of you after they’ve just met you. So give yourself an audit – what do you think your appearance, clothing, voice, writing or choice of tools say about you? Is this what you want to communicate?

2. Give good design

Great design = utility + simplicity + beauty

This formula can be applied to everything you create: tonight’s dinner, the annual budget report, the way you handle the constructive feedback you need to give a colleague. How often do you apply, let alone think about, design principles when you’re creating?

3. Do you take time?

How we look – a touchy subject for most of us at some level. But, if we go back to the assumption that beauty signals that time has been taken then you don’t have to be a size 6 or the most buff person at the gym to be beautiful.

What is important is taking time with your appearance to ensure that it tallies with your personal brand. This communicates to others that you believe you are worthy of time and effort. What does how your current appearance communicate about your brand?

4. Do you have a signature style?

Most of us miss an opportunity to brand ourselves here. Dressing in a particular color, shaving your head, wearing a distinctive style of eye glasses are all examples of signature styles. Do you have one? If not, what might yours be?

5. Does you environment reinforce your brand?

Who you work with and what your work environment is like also impacts on your brand. If you’re presenting yourself as a professional who can be trusted and your office is a tip then the leap of faith others have to make gets bigger. Sell others on your innovation and then work with a team that could be described as pedestrian at best – the leap is bigger again.

What does your current work environment and team say about your personal brand?

Lots of questions to ponder here. The take home message, however, is that everything about your packaging needs to be designed to help others answer the questions “Are you a professional? Can you do the job they need done? Can they trust you?”

Lesson Five considers how to promote yourself once you’ve claimed and packaged a brand you want to let others know about.

Lesson Three: How to stand out from the crowd

Lesson Two in this series was all about finding your niche. This lesson is about how to distinguish yourself from others who also do what you do. Here are four suggestions for making yourself distinctive:

1. Learn to say ‘no’

When you think about people you admire chances are that one of the things that makes them enviable is their capacity to say ‘no’. Whether that is ‘no’ to the tempting dessert or the request to take on just one more project or to working with someone they don’t respect, or simply ‘no’ to answering their emails till they are ready.

Ironically learning to say “no” makes you attractive.

What could you say ‘no’ to that would reinforce what you want to be known for? Leave a comment and tell us all!

2. Decide what you want to be known for

Standing out from the crowd (in a positive way) is generally a marathon not a sprint. It takes time to establish a reputation but first you must decide what it is you want to be known for:

• the quality of your work
• the speed with which you turn stuff around
• having a distinctive offering
• having a distinctive style
• being the first, newest, or challenger of the status quo in your field of expertise

Any decision about what you will be known for needs to be made in the context of your overall personal brand. There’s no point being known for turning stuff around really, really fast if you’re trying to establish a brand based around quality – unless of course you are fast and can guarantee a high standard!

3. Tell them about it

If what you’re committing to is a change from how you’ve been, make sure others know. This can be especially tricky if you’re changing your brand but staying in the same job. A bit like a presentation: tell them what you’re going to do, tell them while you’re doing it and tell them when you’ve done it. Not in an in your face way, but if you don’t signal to people that you’re making a change they won’t know to look for it. And, unless it’s immediately obvious to them they probably won’t notice.

4. Don’t deviate

Deviations do you damage, so take your time and think carefully before you commit to anything. Once you’ve decided what your standards are and what you want to be known for you need to make sure that you reinforce this at every opportunity.

Promise quality, give quality. Promise speed, do it fast.

You know the adage: “Under-promise and over-deliver!” I think it’s even simpler than that. Do what you’re say you’re going to do – always. Make sure that your word is your bond and don’t give your word unless you’re sure you can do it. On the rare occasion you’re not able to do what you said you would – renegotiate as soon as you think there might be a problem. And, if you do it with a smile you will have over delivered anyway.

Lesson Four in this series asks are you an appealing package? which obviously you’ll want to know the answer to.

By the way, I’d still like to know what you’re going to say ‘no’ to – leave a comment below and tell us.

Are you ready for the small steps challenge?

Tony Robbins is quoted as saying that “Most people overestimate what they can do in a year, and underestimate what they can do in a decade!”

If you’ve been following the lessons in the Rebranding 101 series you’ll have figured out that the path to rebranding yourself requires work – both thinking and action.

At this time of year with New Year’s Goals and Visions still fresh on the page it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount there is to do to get what we want.

While maintaining a long-term view is critical it’s equally important to take action in the short term. Focusing on the most important thing to do today to move us towards our goals – and doing it! – even if progress seems miniscule.

When they were marketing the original Chicken Soup for the Soul book, authors Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen committed to contacting just five people per day, whether that was making a phone call to a radio station to set up an interview or emailing a bookstore about a signing. Success was built on just five actions a day – in between everything else they were then doing to earn a living.

Perhaps what is even more important is pause and acknowledge the progress these seemingly small action represents. Keeping a tally of the actions you’ve taken towards a goal can be cathartic, especially when the end result still seems like a long way off. Stick it up on a wall (or inside a cupboard door if you don’t want it on display for all to see). Look at it when you’re feeling discouraged.

If you were to commit to just one activity per day to strengthen your personal brand by the end of the 2009 you would be 50 steps closer to building a strong and enduring personal brand.

And the really sobering thought: if you don’t it will be the end of 2009 anyway!

Lesson Two: Find Your Niche

Lesson One in this series was all about getting clear about what your brand is. When you think of people who are truly successful, chances are they are absolutely clear about what they are great at and how what they do is of value to others – think Donald Trump, Oprah or Jay Leno. Lesson Two in this series of Rebranding 101 is all about helping you figure out what you are really great at and who this might be useful to.

The three steps below will help you achieve this:

1. Claim your Strengths

Sometimes how others perceive us doesn’t tally with how we’d like to be perceived. Unfortunately who we have been has created the brand we’ve currently got so if it doesn’t fit who we think we really are then its up to us to change it. As always we can blame our childhoods, however, part of the work of being a grown up is to claim and articulate and focus on our strengths and stop castigating ourselves for our weaknesses (they’re only relevant if they keep getting in the way of what we do well anyway).

According to Marcus Buckingham, the guru of the strengths movement, you demonstrate a strength when you engage in an activity:

• at which you are successful;
• to which you feel instinctively drawn;
• that feels easy and absorbs your attention;
• that makes you feel capable ad confident.

Learning to observe when you are experiencing these attributes in your day-to-day work will help guide you towards identifying your strengths. Learning how to articulate precisely what your strengths are in terms that others can understand is the next step. To found out more I’d recommend reading Marcus’s book Go Put Your Strengths to Work.

2. Articulate how you add value

It’s no use being great at something if someone is not prepared to pay you for it. Most of us do ourselves a great disservice because we are working too hard to figure out or take the time to explain how what we do adds value to those we work for. This is not a one-off event. While you need to be able to articulate and provide evidence of the value you can add to convince someone to hire you, you also need to be able to keep reinforcing this in order to build your brand.

So we’re back to that age old marketing question What’s in it for them? How can you make or save someone else time or money? And what evidence do you have that supports your claims? Finally who needs to know and most importantly have you told them?!

3. Know what business you are in

The third step that helps you find your niche is getting clear, for yourself, as much as anyone else what business you are in. Successful businesses understand that the business they are actually in may not be the same as the one they appear to be in. For example, Southwest Airlines and Nordstrom might appear to be in the transportation and retail business respectively, but both companies see themselves as being primarily in the business of customer service.

When asked what we do, as individuals it is easy to respond by defaulting either to the industry or the profession we are in e.g. financial services or attorney. But all of us, regardless of our profession, are actually in the business of meeting a fundamental human need e.g. the need of certainty.

Knowing what business you’re in, or what need you meet can help you identify whom and how you can help others in ways that they will be willing to pay you for.

By the time you’ve claimed your strengths, articulated your value add and figured out what business you are actually in you should be well on your way to finding your niche. That said for a more comprehensive process you can always check out Workbook 2 of the Personal Rebranding Program.

Lesson Three in this series will introduce you to some ideas for standing out from the crowd. By the way, if these lessons are making you wonder what state your brand is actually in take the Personal Brand Evaluation™ and find out.

Lesson One: What’s Your Brand?

Quite simply, your personal brand is the perception others have of who you are and what you’re capable of. But do you really know what your brand is? Because your brand is a perception that exists in other people’s heads often its difficult to be sure.

Let me give you an example. As an executive coach I was under the impression that my brand was based on being seen by those I work with as kind and respectful. One day a coaching client of mine was explaining to a group we were both in how she had met me. She explained that she’d been given the names of two executive coaches; one had been described to her as nice and the other as more challenging. I was stunned when she then went on to say that she had chosen to work with me because she felt she was at a place in her career where she needed to work with someone who would really challenge her.

While I still consider myself to be kind, feedback on my brand from a range of people indicates that I’m better known for my directness and willingness to hold people to account. A colleague recently described the Personal Rebranding @ Work™ program, as being written as if I was the voice of someone’s conscience sitting on their shoulder and encouraging them to do better! Watch out, gentle reader!

So … the first lesson in rebranding yourself is to get a really clear picture of what your brand actually is. The three steps below will help you achieve this:

1. Uncover Your Brand

Before you start to get a feel for what others think your brand is you need to get clear about what you think it is. Your brand is a combination of three types of attributes:

Abilities – what makes you really good at what you do, for example, being good with numbers or having a capacity to calm down even the most irate customer or colleague;

Assets – any unique life experiences that contribute to making you good at what you do, for example, growing up in different countries around the world may enable you to be readily understood by a wide range of people or speak a number of languages;

Style – the attitude and quality you bring to what you do, for example, being very thorough in your approach or being known for your child-like enthusiasm.

Hint: If you click on the “View a Sample Section” link on the program page of the Personal Rebranding website you can download this section of the workbook for free.

2. Get Feedback

Once you are clear about out what you think your brand is you need to get feedback from others whose opinions you respect to see if your actual brand matches what you think it is. Remember in branding terms – it’s what other people think that matters.

Inviting feedback can be a scary prospect for most of us (we’re generally more sensitive about other people’ opinions of us than we like to admit!) The reality, however, is that most people, on reflection, are pleasantly surprised by what they hear.

In terms of a process for getting feedback, Personal Rebranding @ Work provides a detailed outline for getting feedback, including whom to invite feedback from, how to approach them (including a template for an email requesting feedback), what questions to ask, along with a method for processing the feedback once you have it all.

3. Understand Your Motivation

Getting a handle on your brand does not stop with finding out how you are currently perceived. There’s no point having a solid brand if doing what you do bores you senseless. Those who have successful careers generally have a clear and compelling reason for doing what they do.

Knowing what motivates you to work, be that income so you can support those that you love, stimulation because of the mental challenge and variety work provides or as a way to express your creativity, is crucial to making informed decisions about your career. This is important, as much in helping you decide what projects and career opportunities not to pursue as it is in choosing those to take.

For example, if you’re motivated entirely by the money then having a brand that is all about getting the job done at whatever the personal cost to you is probably just fine, but if you’re not and you have no passion for what you do then its probably time to look again.

4. Get the Complete Picture

A great framework for making sense of all of the information you’ve uncovered so far is to write up your own Personal Brand SWOT Analysis. Use this framework to list your brand’s strengths and weaknesses as well as any opportunities you could capitalize on and any potential threats you need to take action to minimize.

By the time you’ve done this you should have a really good handle on what your brand is and be well positioned to embark on Lesson Two which is all about finding a niche where you can put your brand to work for best effect.

If you found this post useful and you’d like to get the future lessons delivered by email subscribe by email or rss.

Rebranding 101: An Introduction to Rebranding Yourself

What is Personal Rebranding?

Personal Rebranding is one of the most essential elements of career success. The art and science of personal rebranding involves consciously claiming, communicating and managing your brand with the ultimate aim of ensuring you get the financial rewards and professional respect you deserve.

So, whether you’re looking to tweak your brand so you stand out positively in the minds of those you already work for or you want to conduct a complete overhaul of your brand so you’re ready to step up and make the remarkable contribution you know you’re capable of, you’ll need to conduct your own personal rebranding exercise.

A Ten-Step Personal Rebranding Tutorial

This tutorial is designed to get you up and running with the basics of personal rebranding in ten easy lessons. Afterwards, you’ll also get recommendations for some of the best resources to support your rebranding exercise, plus additional information on more specific issues relating to keeping your brand fresh.

1. What’s your brand?

2. Find your niche!

3. How to stand out from the crowd

4. Are you an appealing package?

5. Get the word out about yourself

6. The Art of Getting Heard

7. How good are you at self-management?

8. Mange your relationships in all directions

9. The #1 secret of being world class at what you do

10. The 5 essential tasks for keeping your brand fresh

Subscribe to the Personal Rebranding Blog to get more ideas and resources on claiming, communicating and managing your brand.

Reinvent or Rebrand?

The act of rebranding ourselves gives us the opportunity to get really honest about who we are and what we have to offer. If you’re serious about rebranding yourself then you have to start by owning who you are – warts and all.

If you’re known for being a talker don’t try and rebrand yourself as the silent brooding type. If you’ve been a talker all your life chances are that’s who you are. Equally if you’re known as the serious one then be the best serious version of yourself you can be.

This same approach also applies to what you have to offer. Not everyone is cut out to be a corporate CEO, but some people have what it takes to be a stunning Second-in-Charge because they see the stuff that leaders miss and have the capacity to take ideas and make them real.

Get honest with yourself about where your real strengths lie instead of constantly trying to live up to what you think you “ought” to be. For fun, one of my coaching clients recently printed a t-shirt proclaiming his brand: “Introvert – loud and proud!”

We all owe it to ourselves to be “loud and proud” even if that means some of us do that relatively quietly and from the chair next to the CEO.