Lesson Five focused on how to promote your brand to those who don’t have the benefit of meeting you person. Choosing the right channels and having a plan to raise your profile are important. Equally important, however, is developing your communication skills so that your message gets heard.
For most of us communicating effectively is at the core of what we’re employed to do. Despite this, few of us actively invest time and effort to become as truly skilled communicator. This post focuses on two areas that are worthy of attention if you’re serious about getting heard.
1. Strengthen your personal presence
Personal presence is an elusive thing. It’s mostly a case of knowing it when you see it. Obama’s got it, Clinton has it, Bush not so much.
It’s that capacity to take hold of a room, forging quick personal connections and making the person you’re talking with feel like they are the most interesting person in the room. Those with strong personal presence communicate that they are knowledgeable and can be trusted to take charge.
Personal presence is a combination of sincerity, presence, self-assurance and skilful communication. It’s rooted in a keen self-awareness about how you come across. Personal presence cannot be faked but it can be strengthened over time. All of us have the same tools for communicating personal presence – facial expressions, body and voice. Some of us have just learned to use these tools more effectively than others.
Out-take: become aware of what your presence communicates to others and consider how you could be more effective at ensuring your personal presence reflects what your brand is about.
(Of course if you want to know how it’d pay to invest in Workbook 6 of Personal Rebranding @ Work!)
2. Craft your Message
Most of us, at some point in our careers, have been exposed to presentation skills training. The problem with much of this is that it adopts a “one-size fits all” approach – i.e. stand in this way, use gestures like this, project your voice etc. While this is all potentially good advice it can also make people so self-conscious that they lose themselves.
But people connect with people – not automated versions of people.
This focus also means that less emphasis gets placed on the really important part of your presentation – what you are trying to say. Crafting your message so that it is clear and easily understood is critical to being heard. If you then deliver your message with flair so much the better. But a strong message delivered authentically beats a weak message delivered slickly every time.
Out-take: next time you have a presentation to make put the bulk of your time into constructing your message so you have something really worth listening to.
Lesson Seven moves on to the final stage of Rebranding Yourself – managing your brand.
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