Tips You Need to Follow to Create Your Unique Brand Equity - Your Career Intel

Tips You Need to Follow to Create Yur Unique Brand Equity - Your Career IntelYou dont have to be an expert on personal brand equity to recognize people who have a strong brand.Take Richard Branson, a self-proclaimed tie-loathing adventurer, philanthropist and troublemaker who believes in turning ideas into reality. The glass-half-full leader of Virgin Group, Branson is according to his Twitter bio otherwise known as Dr. Yes.Other examplesSheryl Sandberg is an iron leader with a soft heart.Warren Buffet makes money by doing the right thing.Elon Musk uses technology to move us forward.Oprah Winfrey understands people, embraces them, and empathizes with them.Steve Jobs embodied the mantra Think Different.Personal branding is what sets you apart from the competition. The key is to discover and express authentically who you are, and to own it.How do you build your personal brand equity? Here are a few thoughtsKnow yourself. A friend of mine was a vice president of marketing and sale at IBM. She paused her career to stay home with her children, and when she wanted to return to work years later, she struggled with how to position herself. I encouraged her to think about what she brings to the marketplace, what separates her from her peers.Early in my own career, I was fortunate to have a boss who challenged me to think about what differentiated me from others in the office. He told me, You can do what they do, but they cant do what you do. His question launched a journey to discover my unique brand. I learned that I am a change agent and work well with others thats my unique personal brand. When I was assigned choice projects, colleagues would ask why the answer was my brand.Questions for you to considerWhy are you doing what you are doing?What do you do better than anyone else?What are your top values, your operating principles?What do people frequently compliment you on? What do colleagues, friends, and clients come to you for?What are your core strengths techni cally and interpersonally?What adjectives do people consistently use to describe you when they introduce you to others?What energizes and ignites you?What are your true passions?Figure out who your stakeholders are current employer, prospective employers or employees, clients and determine whats important to them. What do they talk about? What are they looking for? Understand what you offer that will address these urgent needs.Craft a personal brand position statement.Similar to an elevator pitch, a personal brand statement encompasses who you are and what you stand for. Its clear, concise and should make people who hear it feel something about you. Be intentional when creating your brand to be effective, it needs to resonate with your audience.William Arruda, author ofDitch, Dare, Do 3D Personal Branding for Executives, recommends asking yourself What am I passionate about? What are my values? What makes me great? We all have super powers things we do better than anyone else. He suggests asking someone else what your talents are These things often feel natural to us, but its important to see them as being special.When youre ready to write, Arruda offers a template that links together three elements The value you create + who youre creating it for + the expected outcome. For example I use my passion and expertise in technology to inspire researchers to create drugs to cure rare diseases.Each piece is helpful to create the complete puzzle, but Arruda says the most important is first, your value. This is your core DNA your operating principles, he says. These are the things that inspire and energize you.Other questions to consider when crafting your statementWhat is your niche?What changes are happening in your niche that you can use to your advantage or need to be aware of?Who already has a personal brand in your niche?Who needs to know about you? Who can share your personal brand with others?How do your influencers currently perceive you?What is your brand voice? Think about your persona.Commit. Building brand equity is a lifelong endeavor that requires commitment and consistency. Think of any iconic brand a history of actions taken by that brand built your perception. The same is true with personal branding.Its important to make career choices that are in line with your values and strengthen your brand. For example, choose jobs at companies you respect, rather than settling for a subpar company. You need to be passionate about your role and you will if you make career moves that are in line with your brand equity.Richard Branson has stayed true to his core values of adventure, excitement, and risk-taking. Brand clarity and consistency is a choice, and you need to embed the things that make you unique into specific behaviors. Bransons trademark playful wit is a great example of a brand behavior that is consistently part of every brand performance.Sell yourself.Sometimes I meet good candidates, but I dont get a real feel for who they are they dont sell themselves. Its clear they have never considered their own personal brand equity. I encourage them to think about what sets them apart.Your resume should be accomplishment-focused. It should differentiate you what do you bring to the table? Before you interview, prepare your elevator speech your brand equity statement. In three to four sentences, who are you and how do you want to be perceived? Also think about supporting statements.Edith Cooper, international Head of Human Capital Management for Goldman Sachs, advocates telling your story during the interview. As she explained to Business Insider, Your resume was strong enough to get you to the interview now its time to bring it to life. Avoid walking through every bullet point, but instead, turn your experiences into a compelling story that reflects who you are, what you have done and how you have made an impact. Craft a clear and concise message that demonstrates you have the skills, judgment and drive to do the job. Interviewers are looking for a pattern of behavior to support your narrative, provide specific examples from your past. Share an experience that demonstrates how youve overcome adversity or a challenge and what you learned from the process.From your interview story to your LinkedIn profile to your email signature, I recommend tying together and reinforcing your accomplishments. Be koranvers to include your personal brand statement and sell yourself consistently in every medium, such asCorporate bioSocial media profiles you use professionally (and any of your personal social media profiles that accessible to the general public)Personal web site or blogEmail signatureBusiness cardAs Tom Peters wrote in Fast Company, All of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.Connect with me on LinkedIn

The 4 Career Lessons Most Women Learn Too Late, According to an Executive Coach

The 4 Career Lessons Most Women Learn Too Late, According to an Executive Coach Ah, the hard way.Why do we so often force ourselves to endure the mental and emotional cross-fit that is learning lessons the hard way? You can tell your toddler notlage to jump off the coffee table but only after doing it, crash landing and two scraped knees and a busted lip later will she believe that jumping off the coffee table is a bad idea. You can hear your friends tell you that your love interest is bad news, but only after being subjected to those consequences yourself, do you choose to believe it.Well, the saatkorn goes for your career. Working with extremely successful professional women, some of these same hard-won truths continually surface in sayings like, I just wish I had learned this 10 years ago, or If only someone had told me.So, herbeie you go This is your golden ticket to skip the line for some of the most expensive, heart-wrenchingly challenging life lessons, thanks to the experience s of top-performing senior executives.1. You do not and cannot control what others think or feel.Thank god, am I right? Thank god you dont have to be accountable for how your mom thinks and feels. Or your babo. Or your unstable coworker. You dont have any control of your spouses emotions. Even your kids thoughts are not your responsibility.You want people to behave a certain way and you may even try to persuade them to think one way, but heres the lesson The only thing you can control is how you think. Your thoughts determine your entire experience of every single situation.One of my clients tells the story of having a really hostile boss in her middle management days. This boss had a reputation for corporate backstabbing and political coercion. My client saw examples of this behavior, but felt fortunate that they had maintained a relatively peaceful relationship... until one fateful day when in the presence of the boss leadership team, my clients reporting indicated risk within her project (read her boss was ultimately responsible). Once they were alone, the boss began berating my client. She hammered at every mistake my client had ever made and questioned every decision shed made on her reporting and the work that led up to it.Is it my clients responsibility for her boss feeling angry? No, certainly not. This example is powerful because the boss is so clearly the antagonist. You may even feel some degree of defensiveness for my client.Now, lets consider the alternative What if the boss was kind and supportive? What if my clients analysis was faulty? What if my client had insinuated or outright accused her boss of negligence? Would she be responsible for her boss feelings? No. Regardless of precipitating circumstances, each of us is only ever responsible for our own feelings.2. You should question your own assumptions.The moment you know something with certainty, you become a liability, said my client, a founder and CEO of a telehealth startup.Certainty, of a nything, is built on assumptions and assumptions are risks. Raw data, even when analyzed by experts, is subjected to assumptions and variables. If gravity, ladies and gentlemen, is a theory, then how can we expect that we can divine any absolutes in our own circumstances.In your career and life, look for instances when you say I know and ask yourself What about this do I believe is true? and, Why? This does take extra work but it saves you effort, heartache, money, and time in the long run. Check your assumptions by doing the followingWhen you assume people understand instructions, verify by asking them, Can you please just recap what you heard to make sure I didnt leave anything out?When you assume you know what expectations someone has of you, restate back to them, So what Im hearing is Is that right?When you think you have an interview locked up, ask your interviewer, What remaining questions do you have?When someone mentions a current darbietung you know about, dig in a little, Thats so interesting. I was reading about that too. Tell me more about what you heard.3. Plan strategically, then be invested in the process not the result.My clients are high-achieving professionals who come to me when theyre not getting results that they want or, alternatively, when they are getting results they dont want.Ive found that your results always prove your thinking.Once you tischset your intention and mindfully curate your own thinking, you will be able to do anything you set your mind to. The concept of mindfulness and clean-thinking is simple enough, but doing it can be hard.Here are the steps my clients learnSet your intention. What result do you want?What action do you need to take to get that result?What feeling do you need to fuel you to take that action?What thought can you believably think that will generate that feeling?Continue focusing your thoughts as you set about taking the strategic action.For example, my client wants to exercise so that she can lose we ight and feel better.Her desired result is to lose weight and feel better.She needs to take the action of adhering to her intake and exercise plan.To eat right and exercise, she wants to feel capable, prepared, successful.She chooses to focus on the following thoughts I am capable of making the choice to eat this food and I know how to exercise. Shes also reminding herself that This is the action I want to take.She made a strategic plan for exercising and eating right. She knows the math of doing these things will produce weight loss and the results she wants. All she has to do now is work the process by focusing her thoughts, which will fuel her emotions and drive her to take the planned action.4. Confidence is your willingness to feel any feeling.Confidence doesnt mean youre braver, smarter or better than anyone else. Confidence is not the absence of feeling afraid. And its not certainty that you will succeed.Confidence is when you feel insert the feeling you most dread anxious, f ear, embarrassed and you decide to do insert the action youre avoiding anyway. Its when you feel stage-fright and you decide to sing on stage anyway. Its when you feel unsure but you go on that first date anyway. Its when you feel afraid of rejection but apply to the new job posting anyway.Master coach instructor Brooke Camucksmuschenstillo says that Discomfort is the currency to your success. If you have a goal, you have a plan and doing the next step of that plan is uncomfortable (e.g. like exercising is uncomfortable, or asking for the sale is uncomfortable), doing the uncomfortable thing is the key to achieving what you want.--With a Masters degree in Clinical Psychology and eight years as a consultant in Fortune 500, 100 and 30 organizations, Tarah Keech is the life Founder and CEO of Burnout Survival, a life coach specializing in helping high-achieving professionals and teams prevent, heal and thrive after burnout amidst todays ever evolving and high-demand corporate culture. Get The Busy Professionals Quick-Start Guide to Burnout Prevention (The Smart Way) to learn how to stop the burnout spiral while still maintaining your hectic schedule here BurnoutSurvival.com.