My Mother and I had a deal. Every year I was allowed a limited number of sick days off school. I could choose the days so long as I stayed in bed until lunchtime with no TV, radio or books i.e. complete bed rest.

Needless to say this was a pretty unappealing prospect for an active child and I took very few days off sick. On the rare occasions when I did, you could guarantee I’d worn myself out and was in need of complete rest.

As an adult I haven’t been so rigorous in applying this policy and my own energy management strategies are somewhat more evolved. I am still, however, in favour of encouraging the occasional use of leave passes.

Over the past two months I have given myself a leave pass from blogging. This has enabled me to re-charge as well as creating the headspace necessary to plan future ventures.

The lesson in relation to personal branding is that while it is important to be vigilant in the ongoing management of one’s brand sometimes its necessary to take a break to reconnect with what’s most important.  Ultimately this can help ensure that you are building a brand that is consistent with who you are and not just building a brand for the sake of it.

Rules for the Use of Leave Passes

1. Every use must be the result of conscious assessment and decision-making. (Leave passes cannot be awarded after the fact.)
2. A decision must be taken as to how the leave pass would best be spent and how long the leave pass should be to ensure optimum benefit e.g. a break form a specific activity for a specified period of time, time out for reflection, spending time alone or conversing with a trusted friend or mentor.
3. Responsibility must be taken to ensure that the use of the leave pass does not seriously inconvenience others (unless absolutely necessary for sanity’s sake).
4. Wherever possible reasonable notice of the use of a leave pass should be given along with specifics of the length of time it will be employed for and in relation to which activities.
5. Explanation must be given to others that a leave pass is being employed and for what purpose e.g. as an act of self-care.
6. Every leave pass must be enjoyed without guilt or apology.

If you’ve given yourself a leave pass recently I’d love to hear about it – leave a comment and share your experience.

1. Do one small thing: respond to one email, write a single email, raise one dumb bell but do something.

2. Chunk it: even if you don’t do anything make a list of the component parts of the activity you need to complete – and then put numbers next to them so you know what order you need to do them in.

3. Deal with the overwhelm: Sometimes not starting happens because you’re just so overwhelmed with the sheer amount there is to do you’re like the shipwrecked sailor from AA Milne who sits on the beach until he is rescued. Putting everything you need to do on paper at least gets it out of your head. If you then find the energy to take it one step further and decide what is urgent and what is important (or both) so much the better.

4. Don’t do it: Sometimes we realise that the task we thought was so critical actually is not that important. If you make the decision not to do something then you need to let it go and not longer dwell on it.

5. Delegate it: If the task you’ve set yourself could appropriately be done by someone else or you could pay someone else to do it for you and this then frees you up to do more important work then delegate it.

6. Schedule it: even if you can’t bring yourself to start now decide when you will start and schedule enough time in your calendar to make a start.

7. Estimate first: Most of us are not very good at accurately assessing how long it will take to complete a task. Taking the time to think through what is involved and how long it will take can help in making the decision about what’s involved and what you can reasonably do at this time.

8. Declutter: Sometimes not starting is about the fact that your workspace is in such a clutter you can’t think straight – start by taking the time to tidy up. This may feel like further procrastination but sometimes it is the first thing you need to do to get started.

9. Bargain with yourself: Tell yourself that you will just do this one bit, or you’ll just spend 10 minutes rather than doing the complete task. Chances are when you get started you’ll carry on but bargain with yourself about how little you are actually prepared to commit to.

10. Assemble the tools: Do you have the right tools, the right information, or the right environment to start? Sometimes step one is gathering the tools you need to do what you need to do.

11. Do it badly: Sometimes our need to do something perfectly prevents us from even beginning. Giving ourselves permission to do something really badly and then going all out to do exactly that can be fun and also give us a wakeup call that our need to do everything perfectly is sabotaging our success.

12. Commit to 80%: a variation on doing it badly is committing to the outset to doing whatever it is “well enough” – whether that means 80% of the task finished or to an 80% standard – from most tasks 80% is usually all that is required.

13. Change your physical position: stand up, walk around the room, open a window, change your physical state and then resettle yourself in the posture you would need to be in to start the task and see what it feels like.

14. Change your environment: sometimes changing your environment can make starting less daunting. Take your laptop and go and sit in a café or put on some music or sit in front of the TV so it feels like you’re not really working.

15. Engage in time-limited procrastination: Commit to procrastinating for a limited time – go for a walk, do something else, go and sit in a café give yourself a break for a specified time and then come back and get into it.

16. Get help: usually when we’re stuck we try to figure it all out our own. Asking for help may be what’s required to get you moving. This may just be someone to brainstorm ideas with or it maybe input from someone who has more experience doing what you’re about to do.

17. Make a public commitment: Most of us are better at keeping our commitments to others than we are at keeping our commitments to ourselves. Announce to the office or the world online what you are committed to doing, by when and invite them to keep you honest.

18. Get a coach: if you need help not just starting but staying on track – find someone to coach you or a buddy to keep you honest.

19. Get clear: sometimes we don’t start because we either don’t know clearly what we’re trying to achieve or we don’t know what we need to do. Taking the time to scope the task or project might be the best place to begin.

21. Understand your motivation: Often times a project is something we feel we ought to do rather than something we want to do. Figuring out what your motivation is for doing a task and whether that is valid is a good place to start.

22. Ask “why?”: Getting to the bottom of why we are having a hard time starting something is the question most of us don’t like to answer as it can lead us to come face to face with our fears and insecurities. If you can figure out the reason e.g. too much, too big, too hard, you may then be able to figure out the best way to address it i.e. start small, or get help. By understanding whats blocking us we are better placed to remove it or minimize it (if we choose to).

23. Understand the consequences: What are the consequences of not starting? Will anyone notice? Will anything bad happen? Extrapolating out from where you are now to the end of the week, the end of the year or five years hence may help you put the importance of taking action in context.

24. Reward yourself: If you make a start, complete this much or spend this much time what will you reward yourself with? Adults are not much different to kids – the difference is we have to be the ones who do the work and provide the reward.

25. Re-frame it: Another way adults are no different from kids is in our response to tasks being reframed (like kids we often spot when this is happening but respond never the less) Reframing doing your monthly expenses as a break from heavy duty thinking can make the exercise more appealing.

26. Turn it into a game: Make up your own rules and then consider selling the idea to the rest of us who have trouble starting!

27. Make it a competition: either with yourself or someone else – how fast can you do it? How accurate can you be? How much better can you do this than the last thing you started?

28. Make it a learning project: For those of us that are forever curious about our internal workings what can we learn about our thinking around our inability to start and how can we do this differently and take the learning so we have less difficulty making a start on tasks in the future.

29. Teach others: They say we teach what we most need to learn. Is there an opportunity here to widen out your experience so that others learn too. Taking your own personal learning project one step further what if you approach what you need to do from the perspective of learning how to start so you can teach others how to do it more effectively?

30. Understand the context: For those of us who are big picture thinkers sometimes we get paralysed when we don’t understand the bigger picture context for what we’re trying to do. Asking for more information about how the task we’re doing fits into the bigger picture or contributes to a longer term goal or vision can be the knowledge required to get us moving again.

31. Just do it: sometimes toughing it out is the only solution.

32. Pretend you’re someone else: Do what you need to do as you imagine Oprah would or your favourite sports star, or you business mentor. Play at being someone else you admire and see what is different about your approach to what you need to do as a result?

Have another tactic that works for you? – leave a comment.

My reaction was predictable – it’s what the majority of us do when we’re under pressure. We become so focused on our own problems and issues we lose our capacity to see the world from someone else’s point of view or to be kind and courteous.

The predictability of the common response is what makes those who demonstrate grace under pressure so remarkable – their reaction is uncommon.

Being gracious involves:

• going out of your way to raise others up by noticing the good in them and making a point of acknowledging it
• accepting praise when it is given without diminishing or deflecting it
• avoiding embarrassing or humiliating others and in the presence of this happening finding a way to diffuse the situation without belittling anyone
• giving others your full attention so they feel like they are the most important person in the room
• allowing others to lead the conversation and when you contribute doing so thoughtfully
• not needing the conversation to focus on you and listening without interrupting
• being aware of other’s physical needs and seeking to make them comfortable

People remember how we make them feel. When we are gracious we leave others feeling cared about, respected and raised up.

The ability to do this hinges on what Stephen Covey talks about as exercising integrity in the moment of choice. This requires us to make a conscious choice about how to react in the moment between stimulus (something happening) and response (how you choose to react).

Being gracious as a way of being is often remarkable in and of itself. Demonstrating grace under pressure marks you out from the crowd simply because it’s not what people are expecting.

1. Review regularly

Your personal brand is no different in many respects from a product or company brand. Corporate brand managers are employed to ensure that the value of the brands they manage increase year on year. To ensure this they undertake regular reviews of their brand’s equity.

Your job as your personal brand strategist is to review the equity of your personal brand and make adjustments as necessary. I’d recommend that you undertake a review of your personal brand equity every six months.

Ask yourself:

• Are more of my target audience aware of my brand now than this time six months ago?
• How is my brand more readily distinguishable from others who do what I do now than it was six months ago?
• What evidence is there that my brand’s reputation has improved in the last six months?
• What evidence is there that the quality of what I deliver has improved over the past six months?
• What evidence is there that my target audience will remain loyal to my brand?

Answering these questions for yourself can help you determine what you need to work on to grow you brand in the coming six months.

2. Stay relevant

Nothing is static. Personal brands, like everything else, need to evolve if they are to stay relevant. This means you need to spot and respond to unmet needs in your field of expertise ahead of everyone else.

You can do this by up to date with latest thinking in your field, hanging out with mavericks who are fascinated by pushing the edges and offer different ways to look at things, or borrowing successful ideas from other industries or fields and applying them to what you do. Staying relevant doesn’t mean you always have to be the source of original ideas – it does mean that you need to be able to put a new spin on things to keep your brand fresh.

3. Have a plan.

Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice in Wonderland “If you don’t know where you’re going any road will take you there”. The same is true for your personal brand. You need to have a vision for where you want to get to and a plan for how you’re going to get there.

Having a plan and reviewing and updating it regularly will help you keep your brand top of mind and as a consequence keep it fresh. Your personal brand plan doesn’t need to be complicated, or long – simply an outline of your vision, the goals you want to achieve in working towards it for the next six or twelve months and the actions you will take to achieve them.

4. Manage your business

Your personal brand might look impressive on the surface but if you brand is only skin deep it won’t hold up for very long. For example, if your personal presentation and linked in profile look great but in reality you can’t organise yourself to turn up on time your glossy image will soon become tarnished.

Managing the business aspects of your personal brand means taking care of not only the marketing but also your ability to deliver on your brand promise. This means taking care of the backroom work of staying relevant and having a plan.

In practice it might involve, staying up to date with your industry reading, maintaining your networks, developing and writing articles or presentations, and reponsibly managing your personal finances, (including insurance) information (read files) and your time.

While these aspects may not be the most glamorous aspects of keeping your brand fresh they are nevertheless critical to your success.

5. Invest in yourself

Tom Peters quotes a colleague of his Molly Sargent who is known for asking people whether they have invested as much this year in their career as they have in their car. This strikes me as a great rule of thumb. I’m not just talking about the investment your company may have made in you but time and money you have consciously expended to up-skill yourself.

In these tough times there may not be as much money available for discretionary spending on work related courses or resources but there are plenty of other ways to ensure you keep growing:

• learn from your existing role or identify or volunteer for new projects
• ask for feedback on what you do well and what you could do better from colleagues and mentors whose opinions you trust (and then act on what they tell you)
• check out books in your field available from your local library
• establish a mentoring relationship with someone in your field you can learn from
• set up a mastermind group for similar level professionals in your field and use this learning group to hold each other accountable for getting better at what you do
• set up your own Personal Rebranding Group and work through the Personal Branding @ Work Program™ with others – you’ll find instructions for doing so in the Bonus workbook that comes with the program.

The message from all this – be accountable for your brand and its ongoing development – no-one else is going to do it for you and you owe it to yourself to be the best you can be.

The secret? World class performers dedicate themselves to being the best in the world at what they do. This means:

1. Understand what class you‘re in

World class performers don’t compare themselves to everyone else who does what they do. They compare themselves to others in their particular niche who are the very best in the world at what they do.

For an amateur golfer committed to being world class, aiming to be as good as Tiger Woods may be unrealistic. However, if the same golfer compares himself to others of a similar age and fitness level, with similar constraints on their time, who play in similar environmental conditions, then the picture changes. To be world class in this group becomes a possibility.

2. Figure out what it takes to be best in class

Once you are clear on the class you’re in identify those who are currently at the top of that class. What have they done to get this good? What habits and routines have they adopted? What do they know that you don’t? What can they do that you can’t? How is their attitude different?

Start by benchmarking your performance against those who are currently best in class and then work tirelessly to bring yourself up to their level.

3. Adopt a professional mindset

World class performers think differently: they are obsessed about being the best; they are totally committed to mastering their craft; they are in it for the long haul, they assess set backs in a detached manner and then self correct and get back on track.

To be world class you need to think about yourself and your work differently, you need to start acting like a pro.

4. Innovate

World class performers are not just at the top of their class – they are best in class. This requires something extra – the capacity to be remarkable i.e. to do something so uncommon or extraordinary that others notice.

Being remarkable is the final step in being world class. Once you have put in the practice and mastered your craft you have a platform on which to innovate. Here you can be fitter, faster, more eloquent, or whatever it is that sets you apart from even the others who are best in your class.

Here you have earned your stripes and the world opens up. And the very best news is that who you will have become on your journey to being world class is a reward in itself.

Sometimes this type of humor can be used to great effect as a leveling device to help others feel more at ease with you or to avoid seeming arrogant. Many comics use it to great effect to help their audiences identify with them by sharing stories or experiences that reflect badly on them – the “how dumb am I?” kind of routine.

If combined with self-assurance, self-deprecating humor can diffuse conflict, help you connect more quickly with people and increase your likeability. When used effectively it communicates that someone is sufficiently confident to risk making a fool of themselves. Using it well, however, requires you to be both conscious of what you are doing and why.

For many self-deprecating humor can have the opposite effect – signaling to others low self-esteem and making them feel as if they have a responsibility to build you up by reassuring you or paying you compliments.

Self-deprecating humor along with putting yourself down is really unattractive if it is an habitual practice and comes form a place of not feeling good enough. It can make your audience feel ill at ease and over the long term less attractive to be around. If you’re not sure whether you use self-deprecating humor too often or for the wrong reasons ask for some feedback from those you live and work closely with. They will soon tell you whether your use of this humor makes them feel uncomfortable.

Some suggestions on using self-deprecating humor effectively:

A little goes a long way – used consciously and deliberately a sprinkle of self-effacing humor can be a positive addition to your repertoire. Unfortunately if you make the same type of negative comment about your self too often people might start to believe you. Make sure it is part of your repertoire for connecting with others no the whole shebang.

Understand your motives – if you are a serial self-deprector ask yourself why you are doing this – is it to make others feel at ease or is it because you are looking for reassurance?

Choose your audience – self-deprecating humor tends to work best when you are with people who are at the same or a similar level to you. Be wary of using it with those more senior than you are, especially if you are trying to impress them with your knowledge as it can easily be read as deferential and lacking confidence if they don’t know you already.

Be especially careful if you’re a woman – unfortunately many of us women have a bad habit of putting ourselves down. As a result we need to be particularly thoughtful when using self-deprecating humor least it be interpreted as lack of self-belief.

Watch the cultural context – in my experience self-deprecating humor is generally more acceptable with Brits or New Zealanders where personal put downs are standard fare. Similarly self-deprecating humor is more acceptable in some organisational cultures than others. You will need to vary the frequency and use of this type of humor depending on the cultural context.

Used effectively self-deprecating humor can be a useful addition to your communication skills tool kit.  Over time you’ll become accomplished at choosing both the audience and the situation to use it to best effect and increase your likeability in the process.

Thoughts on this post or an example to share? Leave a comment.

Lesson Seven

Regardless of how much you believe your results should speak for themselves the reality is your personal brand stands or fall as much on the quality and strength of your relationships as our results. The three steps below are key to strengthening your personal brand.

1. Build your network

The very idea of networking turns many people off. The prospect of turning up at large impersonal meetings, forcing ourselves to work the room so we can have superficial conversations and tell as many people as we can what we do and what we have to offer in the hope that the interaction might end up being mutually beneficial can be a real turn off.

This old style networking is a world away from the newer style networking which is taking its place. New networking is about being strategic about who you choose to connect with, networking with a purpose in mind and going for quality rather than quantity. It results in fewer, deeper and more varied connections. The emphasis is on what you can do for others and looking to build long-term relationships.

Identify those you want to build relationships with based on how you respond to them initially. For example, if you see an article, or read a blog post that makes you go wow! Then take the time to leave a comment, send them an email or invite them to lunch.

2. Cultivate your brand champions

Brand champions are your personal cheer leading squad. These are people who know you, know your work and ‘get’ your brand’. They are impressed by you and what you are capable of, believe in you and genuinely want you to succeed.

Brand champions can come from any level inside your organization and include professional colleagues or customers outside your organization. These people will represent you when you are not present and fight your corner if you make a mistake, helping others to see it for what it is and in the context of your track record of success.

You cultivate brand champions by doing great work and making them aware of your achievements and where you would like to go. It is also important to help your brand champions by giving them the information they need to tell your story in a way that reflects your brand.

You need to have sufficient brand champions to you continue to stay in favor and have your brand well represented even when power within your organization, industry or professional organization shifts from one group to another.

3. Build relationships in all directions

One of the common themes that emerge when leaders complete 360 assessments is that they have done a better job of managing their relationships in one direction than others. For example, they are highly rated by their direct reports but poorly rated by their manager or peers. Alternatively they may have focused on building relationships with people outside their organization but not invested time building relationships internally.

Part of your responsibility as your own brand strategist is to ensure you build effective relationships in all directions. This is important because all of these people have an impact on how your brand is perceived. Your manager may influence how those above them see your brand. Your peers may influence how your manager and those at the same level elsewhere in your organization see you. Your customers outside your organization may influence how others in your field view you.

Managing in all directions means paying attention to your relationships at all levels and in all directions. It means treating everyone with the same level of respect and behaving in ways that are consistent with your brand in every situation you find yourself in.

How effective are you being at building your network, cultivating your brand champions and managing your relationships in all directions?

In Lesson Eight we’ll look at how to up your game so you can truly claim to be world class.

In the meantime if you found this post useful and you’d like to get the future lessons delivered by email subscribe to the personal rebranding blog.

Ridiculous right? Because:

a) you’ve been in your job/profession forever

b) you know, and other people tell you, you’re great at what you do

c) you have a track record of results you can point to if anybody asks

Then why do you sometimes catch yourself wondering why others seem to think you know what the hell you’re doing? Why do you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night worrying about whether you’ve done the right thing / are handling that tricky management issue the right way / have made the right call about X?

Impostor syndrome usually raises its ugly head when we’re faced with the unknown. It manifests as self-doubt and results in us questioning our competence and whether we really do have what it takes. Impostor syndrome is insidious and left without treatment it can lead to a real and lasting break down in confidence.

What can be done to combat an outbreak of impostor syndrome?

1. Marshall the evidence – and refer to it whenever you need to. Look back to examples where you have been in similar situations of having to do something new and been successful in doing so.

2. Accept it for what it is – a natural part of the human condition to doubt ourselves. Everyone does it. Some people are just better at hiding it accepting it for what it is. A New York Times article even made the point Impostor Syndrome has its uses – often helping us to not over-rate our abilities.

3. Feel the fear and do it anyway – we become stronger as we face up to and succeed at those things we’re unsure of. Each time we do something we don’t think we can we increase our self-belief.

Do you have any tips on handling impostor syndrome that have worked for you? Leave a comment.

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As a medieval catholic monk Thomas à Kempis put it so eloquently:

“If you can win complete mastery over self, you will easily master all else. To triumph over self is the perfect victory.”

In my executive coaching work I regularly come across clients who have issues with self-management. Their managers’ characterise them as having a reputation (read personal brand) associated with being hard to work with, “difficult” chaotic, undisciplined or unmotivated.

Effective self-management, in relation to brand includes:

• keeping your ego or negative self talk (whichever applies to you) in check so you maintain an accurate picture of yourself and your capabilities
• trusting and backing yourself and your ideas
• handling yourself gracefully under pressure
• managing your moods and the impact you have on others
• taking sustained and focused action to achieve your goals
• taking responsibility for your own self care so that you are able to perform at your best

At the core of effective self-management are the daily habits that enable you to be at your most calm and productive. These are different for everyone but may include: creating space in your day without interruptions so you can get important tasks completed, taking time out to do nothing for a few minutes every day to regroup and refocus, or counting to ten before responding in certain situations.

How effective are you at self-management? Better at some things than others? Need to develop some habits to better support you?

Different approaches to sorting out self-management work for different people. The three books below are a good place to start. All books are linked to Amazon with Affiliate links.

1. Hard Core Commitment

The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loer an Tony Schwartz. The authors come from the perspective of performance psychology and the book is based on a sporting model. They believe that managing energy not time should be the focus and have some practically suggestions for developing the daily rituals that support high energy.

Best suited for those familiar and comfortable with sports approaches.

2. Been there done that

The Power of Less by Leo Babuta is based on the author’s own experience of experimenting and applying his six principles to improve his own results. In many ways the recommendations are not new but the emphasis on paring down to the essential and then focusing on it are helpful.

Best suited for those looking for a gentler approach more philosophical approach.

3. Burned out and overloaded

One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer is a distillation of Maurer’s observations as a psychologist about why people do and don’t succeed at sustaining changes in their lives. The basic premise is that if you make the changes small enough you’ll fool yourself that you’re not changing and therefore be successful.

Best suited for those that just can’t handle anymore things to do.

If you’ve discovered a particularly effective approach to self-management leave a comment and share it with us so we might learn. ☺