Career Chats with LaKeisha
Career Chats with LaKeisha
Defining Your Professional Brand
In this episode, I share 5 tips on Defining Your Professional Brand. I want you to learn how to effectively articulate your value so that you can navigate to your desired career goals.
Please visit my LinkedIn page Career Chats with LaKeisha using the following link to download a free worksheet to help you define your Professional Brand Statement and follow my page: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6985463620184788993
Music:
Song: Sun Never Sets
Music by: CreatorMix.com
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Hello and welcome to Career Chats with Lakeisha, the podcast that's all about providing you with quick and to-the-point career advice that you can listen to in between meetings or whenever you need some quick tips. The title of this episode is Defining Your Professional Brand. But before I jump in, let me tell you a story. A few years back in a one-on-one with my senior leader, he asked me, what's your personal brand? I'll admit this question caught me by surprise and was very triggering because I had interpreted it to me that he had no idea who I was or my hard work, not to mention at the time I was dealing with a lot of challenges with some difficult personalities at work and was experiencing some challenges in my personal life. All I could think was, here we go again, a person has to play some game and market themselves just to get ahead. Needless to say, I blew that feedback completely off. Well, fast forward a few years later, I was in a one-on-one with another leader and she asked me, what's your personal brand? I'll admit I was triggered again and even more so because I worked very closely with this leader and she had witnessed my hard work and even given me accolades on the impacts I was making. This time though, I was vulnerable enough to admit that I didn't understand the purpose of creating a brand statement at work. And she broke it down for me and said, what do you want to be known for? Over the course of the next few weeks, I iterated on my personal brand statement and got her feedback. When I steered too much into listing out accomplishments or got too wordy, she asked me, what are the things you do behind the scenes to create the environment that enables these impacts? So back to the drawing board I went. As I continued to iterate on my brand statement, I realized that this activity was less about me marketing myself at work and more about me being clear on my strengths and how I use them to deliver value and impact at work. After realizing all of this, I came full circle back to what my senior leader was trying to tell me years back. and promised myself that the next time I felt triggered by advice or feedback, that I would lean into that feeling and ask the person giving me the advice or feedback for clarity. I wouldn't allow myself to walk away, internalize, or make assumptions about what the person means. Now, hopefully that's a compelling enough story for you to lean into the five steps I'll share in this episode on defining your personal brand. I want you to learn how to effectively articulate your value so that you can navigate to your desired career goals. So let's get into it. Step one, define your career goals. I had a leader once recommend preparing for the role that is two levels ahead of your current role. Whatever role that is for you, align the opportunities you seek, to it so that you get the exposure and experiences that will prepare you for that role. However, if you're focused on growing in your current role, that's completely fair. But get specific on what it is you want to master in your current role and set that as your goal so that you're able to create a measurable growth plan. The sooner you are clear on your career goals, the more equipped you are to build your brand around those competencies needed to be successful in that role. Have you ever heard of stories of people feeling unfulfilled in their careers despite having measurable success or stories of people becoming lawyers or doctors because they did not want to disappoint their parents? Whatever your career goals are, be clear on why you want to achieve these goals and go after what feels authentic to you. Step number two, list out your strengths. Think about the times where your coworkers or leaders have given you compliments. What are the topics that people seek you out for, for mentorship or advice? What accolades or recognition have you received at work? Was it for driving results or coming up with a strategic plan that enabled your company to meet revenue goals? Have you been told you have executive presence or are a great collaborator? Does instilling trust or building great work relationships come naturally to you? If you're a people leader, have your direct reports told you that you inspire them? Whatever these things are, list them out as your strengths. If you're at a loss for what your strengths are, then think about the things that come naturally to you or the work activities that you feel most confident doing. Maybe you're great at project management or planning. If you're still unsure, And try sending out a feedback survey to those that you work closely with, asking them what they believe your strengths and weaknesses are. Several years ago, I was so unsure of what others thought of me. So one of my coworkers recommended I send out a feedback survey to those I worked closely with, peers and leaders included. I allowed them to respond anonymously. Once I got the feedback, this coworker recommended that I look for themes in the responses and use this information as data points about how I am perceived. Now, if you happen to be in a situation where you have a manager that doesn't give much feedback, I recommend you be bold and ask them for feedback. on what you do well and where you have development opportunities so that you can use that information to help inform your brand statement and a growth plan for yourself. You can also consider taking personality assessments such as the Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, the DISC assessment, or the StrengthFinders assessment, to name a few. Bottom line, step one to defining your personal brand is self-awareness and being clear on how others perceive you. From there, you can either choose to own your current strengths as part of your brand or identify new strengths that you want to be known for and do the work and get the exposure and get to be known for those new strengths. Step three, identify what sets you apart. Pay attention to your peers. What's the perception of their strengths and weaknesses? Have you achieved a unique accomplishment? What sets you apart from them and makes you unique? Are you more experienced? Have you invested in yourself and earned a master's degree or additional training to hone your craft? Do you lead team building or community outreach initiatives? If there isn't anything that sets you apart, then identify unaddressed opportunities that exist in your department. Which of those align to your current strengths or desired strengths? Pick one and take initiative to gain alignment with your leaders, letting them know you'd like to take on addressing these opportunities as a stretch assignment. Step four, create your brand statement. I recommend using a framework that is somewhat like an elevator pitch in the sense that it needs to be a short and memorable statement. The goal of the brand statement is to articulate your strengths and accomplishments such that you leave a positive impression and listeners walk away perceiving value in your efforts. To craft your brand statement, you'll want to start with a succinct summary of your strengths, years of experience and accomplishments, and how they tie back to your organization's goals, values, mission, and or strategies. For example, if you're a user experience designer working for a software company and your strengths are in understanding user needs and your accomplishments are in designing software that is easy for users to complete their desired tasks, which makes the software easy to sell, then your brand statement might sound something like, I'm a user experience designer with five years of experience. I'm passionate about understanding user needs and designing simplified software. This has led to increases in sales and user adoption. To help you even more, I've created a post on my LinkedIn page called Career Chats with Lakeisha. This post contains a free worksheet to guide you on defining your professional brand. I'll include a direct link to the post in this week's episode's notes. Step five. Put your brand to use. Once you have a brand statement, put it on your LinkedIn summary and somewhere on your resume. And in one-on-ones or in passing with leaders or peers, when you're asked, what have you been up to lately? Or how are you? Instead of saying, everything's going good, try using parts of your brand statement to answer the question. For example, using the user experience designer example again, when someone asks, what have you been up to? A response to that question could be, I want an award for making the workflows in the software easier to use, which has led to a 30% increase in user adoption. You may not always need to articulate your brand statement verbatim in all situations, but the purpose of a professional brand statement is so that you have a go-to phrase that highlights your value and unique accomplishments. So to recap this week's episode on how to define your personal brand, the five steps were step one, define your career goals. Step two, list out your strengths. Step three, identify what sets you apart. Step four, create your professional brand statement. Step five, put your professional brand statement to use. So before I go, I want to leave you with this. Once you are clear on what you bring to the table, then you can be intentional about the opportunities you seek and how to speak to the impacts and value you bring. Now, don't forget to check the episode notes for a link to download the free Defining Your Personal Brain Statement Worksheet so that you can use it to help guide and prepare you. Well, thanks for listening. I look forward to having you join me next time. Don't forget to subscribe to my podcast and follow me on Instagram at Career Chats with LaKeisha or find me on LinkedIn as Career Chats with LaKeisha. Thank you. Bye-bye.