Did you build a Personal Brand to advance your career goals ?

Going to school on a Sunday morning didn’t sound like a good plan but the seminar on “Personal Branding” as part of Leadership Development series at UC Berkeley was very intriguing so I finally decided to go. I wasn’t disappointed as the speaker William Arruda gave a bunch of good tips on building a personal brand and using it to achieve our career goals.

Recently, the topic of “personal branding” is inviting lot of debate as some are taking a fanatical approach to it and on the other side we have people completely discounting it as another fad. I believe that there is a middle ground that we need to work towards and when rightly used – our personal brand can help us grow in our career as well as open up new opportunities.

I wanted to share the tips (again credit to William) that I gained from this seminar.

Stand out

Peer comparison is something that cannot be avoided in an organization and as we grow up further in our career the competition gets intense so it’s important to distinguish ourselves and show or bring that additional value to our organization. I can give few examples that I am following in my work activity – “proactive in communication rather than reactive”, “build networks outside the organization and leverage the network to get things done“, “speak up more”, “contribute to strategic goals rather than just being in an project execution role”. You need to take a close look at the things that you can do to provide additional value to the organization and then work on it.

Be your own boss

This is taking your career management into your own hands as Meg said in “Are you fully utilizing your potential?”

Forget the ladder

We see the career progression as a ladder where we move up one step at a time and at the moment of taking the next step we get into a frenzy of activity like activating our professional network, brushing up our resume / skills and pulling in recommendations etc. Once we move up to the next step – we kind of settle into ease till we start the process all over again.

So, instead of treating the career progression as a ladder, let’s look it as a “ramp” – so that we are continuously engaged in activities that are geared towards our career progression. The projects we are involved in, the new connections we build – let’s look at them as helping us to move forward in our career and at the same time let’s not forget – we also have to “GIVE” back to our network and help our network achieve their own career goals as well.

Build your brand

This is a 3-step process – Extract, Express and Exude.

1) Extract – this step involves looking at your career goals, values, passions and see if we can align them. We can use Strengths Finder test to know our strengths and then do a 360 Feedback to really know the kind of image we are projecting and whether they are matching with our strengths. If they don’t match – we need to work on addressing them.

2) Express – Evaluate our communication skills and focus on the strengths as well as areas of improvement and communicate them to the people that we interact with. Key thing is that when we are expressing our strengths / values, they  should be CLEAR, CONSISTENT and CONSTANT

3) Exude – this involves creating an environment which represents our brand and this can be your communication, actions, one’s appearance, online profiles, blogs, newsletters and even simple stationary items.

I have definitely started to take the steps towards building my brand and use it for achieving my career goals and blogging is definitely one part of the plan 🙂

I will appreciate if you have anything to share on how you are building your personal brand and how that’s contributing to your career !!

A dose of truth – what does your non-verbal language say about you?

No... This is not the blog author

I took a personal development class last night as part of my ongoing effort to upgrade myself.

The instructor got us to do a fun exercise to get to know each other, and more importantly, ourselves.

The first part of the exercise was for each student to stand in front of the class and do a quick self-introduction. Piece of cake.

The second part of the exercise was way more fun. Each of us had to stand in front of the class again, and tell the class what first impressions we think we had left on others, and then we had to stand there and hear the brutal and honest truth from everyone in the class. (We were not allowed to justify ourselves or argue with the feedback – we just had to listen.)

Words that were used to describe individuals were: confident, attractive, engaging, arrogant, shy, fun, funny, sweet, friendly, aggressive, smart, nice, professional, comfortable, stylish, good looking, snobbish, present (live-in-the-moment), pretty, open, carefree, fashionable, self-conscious, nervous, well dressed, nerdy, honest and… bitchy.

Impressions were clearly formed by examining a speaker’s overall appearance and non-verbal language that includes style, expression, physical attributes in addition to hearing what the speaker had to say.

When it was my turn to stand up in front of 15 new faces, I was nervous and hoped that they’d use words like open and friendly.

I got way more than I had bargained for: friendly, confident, smiles a lot, smart, mature, interesting accent, stylish, accomplished, driven etc. (Boss, I think these guys need to be included in my next 360 review 😉 ).  My head started to swell until someone said: “You remind me of my aunt!” (I sure hope her aunt isn’t too mean or too old for what it’s worth.)

It turns out that the first impression I left on my fellow classmates was NOT based on my self-introduction in front of the class – it was mostly formed when others saw me walking into the lobby to talk with the receptionist (as it turns out, she was actually our instructor).

The first impression is often long lasting and you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. The first impression isn’t always formed when you stand in front of your audience, it happens much earlier than that.

So… what impressions do you THINK you leave on your interviewers, interviewees, employees, managers, colleagues, employers, customers, suppliers, friends and strangers?

What impressions do you WANT to leave on people?

Is there a difference? If so, can you or would you do something about it?