Threshold Consulting: It's Your Life, Own It!

The Public Life of Your Personal Brand

Most people would readily agree they have a personal life, but few would describe themselves as having a “public life.” Sure, we have our work life and our home life. Yet, we don’t usually think about having a “public” dimension to our lives. Politicians and celebrities have public lives. We do not. We are apt to believe our careers are part of a daily blur of activities and don’t really stand out.

Yet, to a large degree, professional success has always been driven by the positive regard of others. It shapes our reputation. And although we might not consciously make the connection, reputation exists by virtue of a public life. Sure, many of us have tended to be conscious of making the right “career moves.” Still, we’ve not usually thought of proactively managing our success in a “public life” context. The advent, and virtual explosion of social media, has changed that. Forever. 

Today, if you want to be successful, you need to respond to the incessant demand to have a public life, especially as defined by the strength of your web presence. In fact, with 79% of US hiring managers and recruiters reviewing online information about job applicants, it means if you are not digitally visible, you don’t exist. So, the link between career success and showing up online is becoming stronger. 

Fortunately, people are recognizing the need to anchor their careers (and lives) on the web. Just witness the explosive growth of professional networking site, LinkedIn, which has grown to over 50 million business users worldwide. Further evidence of the explosive growth of social media is reflected in Facebook’s average daily growth of 600 thousand new users, and Twitter’s 1,382% year-over-year growth rate as of February 2010.

Of course, today, web presence requires more than the static or passive web page. Sure, you’ll need to post profiles in online communities you join; and ideally, these will capture you in terms of unique attributes, motivated skills, and even proof of performance to demonstrate your value. But that’s just for starters. Especially since your personal brand truly comes alive in the way you engage others – both online and in face-to-face situations. So, you also need to think about your brand as conversation and not as pre-scripted messages! 

Fortunately, the key to managing your public life is relatively simple. First, you need to show up in a way that is authentic; in other words, be yourself.  Second, you need to take a genuine interest in others. After all, that’s what drives conversation! Yet, while the formula is simple, it helps to find and integrate the good advice and perspectives or others. And while there is lots of advice out there, I think you’d do well to take a look a terrific Chris Brogan post, Be Sexier in Person. It’s a great read, with great comments, and lessons you can apply across your entire public life! 

Light at the End of the Tunnel?

This is another post in a series of monthly advice in association with the Career Collective, a group of professionals who collaborate to provide guidance for job seekers and careerists. The questions this month are: What do you do when you're really, really, really discouraged about your unsuccessful job search? How do you overcome the negative aspects of job search?

A pessimistic view says the light at the end of the tunnel is probably an oncoming train. I think there’s something to that, especially when you consider job search. Let’s face it, with a real unemployment rate between 16 – 18%, as of the start of February 2010, the likelihood is that looking for a job will take a very long time. Indeed, as the deterioration of the economy has unfolded, since late 2007, the average lengths of job searches have increased dramatically. Today, it is not uncommon to see folks take 12 to 18 months to find new jobs.

This is clearly discouraging! Yet, when you ask these folks why it took so long, many will frankly own up to their over reliance on traditional job search approaches; namely resumes, cover letters, and job boards.  While the occasional job seeker may find a job the “old-fashioned” way, by applying for it, the majority achieved success when they stepped up their efforts to network. So, the lesson seems to be to make networking a key part of your overall search strategy. Well, make that effective networking. Frankly, pushing resumes and asking for job leads is common, but not the best way to network. It keeps you in the tunnel, wondering about the oncoming light, and becoming increasingly fearful.

So, what to do?

In a recent, Reach Interview, Pam Slim, author of Escape From Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur, made the point that even if you’re planning to continue working in an organization, it’s critical to develop the mindset and skills of an entrepreneur. Essentially, running your career is like running a business, and requires taking a much more strategic view. As well, it means taking the time to figure out how your offering fits the needs of your target audience, understanding how you are differentiated from your competitors, and determining how best to communicate your value. 

Conceptually, it makes sense. Yet, it doesn’t mean you won’t face fear and uncertainty as you proceed. It’s a journey and it requires support, which brings up probably the next best part of Pam’s advice: start hanging out with “your people.” Use your networking efforts to find and connect with people who know the space you’re attempting to move into, including customers/employers and competitors. Take a genuine interest in these folks. Be prepared to listen and learn, as well as to help and share. Over time, three important things can happen: (1) you form a developmental network that supports your forward progress; (2) you gain visibility and credibility among people who you need to know and who need to know about you; (3) you set the stage for connecting with relevant opportunities for productive work.

Clearly, this is not your Father’s job search; but then, this is not your Father’s economy. It's time to get out of the narrow confines and dispiriting mechanics of traditional job search. Getting out of the tunnel probably means taking the mountain path. But you don’t need to worry about the oncoming light, and you get a better look at the horizon!

Read other great advice posted by Career Collective members.

Wherever. Whatever.

For years, it’s been said that the only constant is change, an idea that goes way back to Greek philosopher Heraclitus. And while it may be true that change is always with us, there is a truer idea that has even more relevance to our lives and careers: “No matter where you go, there you are.”

The title of a mediation book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, and variously used and attributed as a quote, this idea came to mind, today, as I watched this great video, by William Arruda  at personalbranding.TV.

Why Personal Branding? from William Arruda on Vimeo.

Sure, the opening seconds highlight the profound changes that are affecting our lives and careers. Yet, as you watch, it becomes clear that you can take control of your future by taking responsibility for your personal brand. You can extract, express, and exude the unique value that you bring to your brand community, and that sets you apart from the competition. By attaining this kind of personal clarity, you are better positioned to weather change and move forward in your career. Wherever you are and whatever is happening around you.

Cross-posted at William Arruda's Personal Branding Blog

Starting Anew: Tips for (Truly) Managing Your Career!

This is the first post in a series of monthly advice in association with the Career Collective, a group of professionals who collaborate to provide guidance for job seekers and careerists. This month we advise job seekers on how to make the most of the new year.

A New Year brings new resolutions, and experts in a wide variety of areas offer up their advice for how to have a better life starting this year. My expertise centers on career development, which, in many people’s minds suggests I’d be offering advice on how to land that dream job...or, in this economy, a job! But that’s not what I want to do. Instead, I want to get you thinking about and taking steps to truly manage your career – for the long run.

From what I’ve seen, too many people approach career management and transition from a purely job search perspective. This means they tend to focus on short-term tactics: pull together a resume and cover letter, get business cards, surf the job boards, “apply” for jobs, and attend career fairs and networking events. Goals in this process can often be very limited, and often revolve around getting a position similar to a recent one, but maybe with more responsibility and better pay and working conditions. Well, or so it seems. In fact, without managing your career, you can really get stuck in “same old, same old,” and be looking again.

Of course, adding to the challenge is the fact that the world has changed – and stubbornly continues to do so. For starters, technology has brought big disruptive changes to the way companies get work done – and to the way they source talent. Add to that the competition brought on a deep recession and “jobless” recovery, and you begin to see why using a job search model of change just won’t do.

To succeed in this new environment, you need to have great personal clarity about what you want, what you offer, and who needs to know about it. Said another way, it’s all about cultivating a personal brand and gaining visibility as well as credibility. It also means having the ability to build trust, in communities of shared interest with people who matter to you and for whom you’re relevant!

Surround Yourself with Smart People

Recently, my friend, mentor, and colleague Carol Ross pointed me to a blog post about the advantages of surrounding yourself with smart people. Certainly, Carol is a very smart person and I am fortunate to have her in my circle of friends and colleagues. Yet, in stepping back and looking at the bigger picture, I realize that I’ve made it a good habit to connect with and be surrounded by smart people – and from a wide variety of backgrounds.

Of course, I’ve connected with lots of career professionals who bring lots of smarts to what they do. Interestingly, I’ve meet many of them online – mostly on Twitter. Over time, I’ve learned what they do for their clients and valued their shared expertise. In many respects, they have stimulated my own thinking and contributed to my own professional grow. That’s the value smart people bring to you, they help you grow.

So, imagine my pleasure in learning that several of these great folks have formed a group and asked me to join. Called the The Career Collective, this group of 21 professionals:  “…help job seekers via a new online community …[by using]… his or her own blog to respond to a timely question that vexes many job seekers. Career Collective participants will then link to other members’ responses so readers will have easy access to a variety of viewpoints.”

So, once a month, I’ll be addressing career management questions here on my blog, and linking to colleagues’ posts. I think this is important and timely. In the words of The Career Collective: “It’s not a “come as you are” job market. Today’s successful job hunters must be armed with information and the ability to use tools that may not have existed the last time they were vying for a new opportunity. The news reports that there are anywhere from four to six people for each job and the Bureau of Labor Statistics marks the average job hunt at 25 weeks, with many highly qualified professionals in much longer searches.”

So, yes, timely and critically important. I hope you will join us for great career advice from some of the smartest folks you can surround yourself with.

Self Absorbed is Not a Personal Brand

Recently, I happened upon a Twitter conversation in which there seemed to be agreement that personal branding is flawed and self-centered. Since there were resume writers in the conversation, I wanted to add my view that obsessing about getting one’s resume right can also be self-centered. But I didn’t. The fact is, I could actually see their point. When personal branding is used merely as a self-promotional tool, it does come across as egotistic.

 It is an unfortunate misconception that personal branding is “all about me,” when virtually all brands put emphasis on some promise of value delivered to a target audience. As I observed in a prior post, if you work at defining your brand without considering the people to whom you can deliver some clear benefit, you don’t really have a brand. Put another way, if you promote yourself in ways that don’t show your relevance to a specific brand community, then you’re simply being narcissistic.

My reading over the past year, has clearly reinforced the idea of community:

• Seth Godin, in his book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, discusses the importance of being “part of a tribe [where you] ...contribute to (and take from) a group of like-minded people.”

• Pam Slim, author of Escape From Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur, makes the point that to be successful in business, it’s critical to identify “your people.”

• Chris Brogan and Julien Smith have pointed out in Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, one of the characteristics of a trust agent is to be seen as "one of us," - that is, as belonging and therefore credible. 

Clearly, these thought leaders see relevance and belonging as key to success. As I see it, if you want to be able to point to your personal brand, you need to mention the people for whom you matter.

Cross-posted at The Personal Branding Blog

 

Are You A Trust Agent?

In a recent interview with Mohammed Al-Taee, I made the point that career management is already personal brand management, but that the next challenge is that “each of us needs to become, as Chris Brogan and Julien Smith have pointed out, a trust agent." But what exactly does it take to be a trust agent?

In their brilliant book, Brogan and Smith have established a framework for building trust that is comprised of the following six constellations of behaviors:

• Make Your Own Game. Trust agents are typically "gate jumpers" or "hackers" who are able to find ways be original and to stand out.

• One of Us. They are able to relate to a specific community that comes to see them as belonging, and therefore more credible. 


• The Archimedes Effect. They know how to leverage relationships and resources to expand opportunities and influence. 


• Agent Zero. They are typically at the center of wide and powerful networks, and often use their influence to help others connect. 


• Human Artist. Trust agents have polished interpersonal skills and understand people; they know how to work well with, and empower others. 


• Build Armies. They also know how to bring people together to accomplish more than they could possibly do alone.

In that interview, I also noted that increasingly success will not be based on one-way communications about one’s brand, but two-way conversations inside communities of shared interest, i.e., brand communities – both online and in person-to-person situations.

Fortunately, many of the behaviors that Brogan and Smith describe are consistent with what we typically recommend for extracting, expressing, and exuding one’s brand. Yet, it’s clear that building trust requires ongoing engagement. So much so that it seems to me that having a clear brand with solid messages is baseline. Taking steps to establish your reputation as a trust agent takes you to the next level.

What do you think?

Cross-posted at The Personal Branding Blog

Of course, there's no “I” in “TEAM”

Following two seemingly random events, I started giving some attention to the saying “There’s no ‘I’ in Team.” The first event was seeing this clip from The Wyans Brothers’ comedy, Dance Flick. The second event was a conversation with my colleague, Harry Rodenhi, who shared his view that most people are so imbued with the idea that there is no “I” in team that they tend to lose touch with what they offer and exactly how they make a difference for others.

In elaborating, Harry noted that self-knowledge is critical to successfully finding work through networking. As he sees it, knowing what value you create, and how you create it, is fundamental to creating professional presence and being considered for new opportunities. Coupled with that, Harry believes people need to have points of view that become the basis for engagement with others in their communities of practice. According to Harry, conversations generated by shared points of view not only help you establish credibility, but also make you memorable and increase your attractiveness to an organization. So, stand for something!

This, of course, makes great sense from a personal brand point of view. Not only does it take into consideration one’s distinctive talents and attributes, but also the broader context of professional community.

To be relevant to others you need to know what it is you bring them. Diminishing yourself in service to an organization doesn’t serve the needs of anyone. Indeed, in a competitive world, where diversity increasingly drives innovation, you need to be you! So, it’s critical to relate what you bring that makes a difference to the teams that are part of your brand community.

In retrospect, the idea that “there’s no ‘I’ in TEAM” seems pointless. In fact, it stands in contrast to a better idea: Together Each Achieves More. In short, it’s the combined talents of individuals that drives organizational success. So, figure out what you bring and seek out opportunities to share it!

Cross-posted at The Personal Branding Blog.

Yes, Your Brand Really Is About the Conversation

In my last post, I wrote about how my interview with my friend Carol Ross led to my insight that conversation drives brand evolution. My thinking in that post followed a certain logic; specifically: In uncovering our personal brands we work to synthesize introspective knowledge with feedback from others to arrive at our uniques promise for value; we then determine core messages to express our brand, with evolution coming as conversation drives fresh perspectives on our brand value. I’m now thinking, while others can provide fresh insights that are a catalyst for evolution, conversations continually drive our brands.

So, what’s changed?

First, at about the time I published my last post, I also wrote an Amazon book reviw of for Shel Israel’s  Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods. In that review, I noted Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group, alluded to The Cluetrain Manifesto and the Conversation Era ushered in by the internet and social media tools when she defined Twitter as a conversation. I also referenced Shel Israel’s notion of Twitter as a community. I now think of Twitter as a community comprised of multiple conversations. As such, it is fertile ground for connecting with the clients, colleagues, and key influencers that make up our brand communities.

Then, just today, I learned about a LiveWorld seminar, Social Media Everywhere 2010 - How Do Brands Cope?, being conducted by Jeremiah Owyang, well-know social media analyst, now with the Altimeter Group. Upon reading the opening paragraph of the registration page, I was struck by the pervasiveness of conversation in driving brand perceptions and loyalty. It said, “Content on corporate websites is becoming less relevant to customers. Instead they are immersing themselves in conversations about your brand all over the web.  These conversations flow across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a myriad of other sites – and even on your own brand website, perhaps managed by you or perhaps brought there by consumers themselves with tools like Google Sidewiki.” The next paragraph raised this question: “Does your company have a strategy for managing your brand when conversations are everywhere?”

In my last post, I concluded, “Clearly, our brands develop and become stronger as we engage others.” I’d now add this: with the power of the social web, your brand is as much about the conversations as it is about your client deliverables.

Conversation and Brand Evolution

Recently, I was interviewed by my friend Carol Ross, founder of Carol Ross & Associates, and prolific blogger at A Bigger Voice, and Ordinary Life, Extraordinary Living. The interview, done for members of her Networking Naturally community, focused on my experience in making powerful in-person connections as a result of online networking. Specifically, Carol wanted to explore more deeply some of my learnings as I went face to face with Twitterville.

It was a fun interview! Sure, it’s true that I always enjoy chatting with Carol. Yet, for this inteview, she did several things to make the experience even more engaing and powerful. Prior to the interview, she prepared and sent me a thoughtful and orderly series of questions – questions that helped me think more deeply about what I planned to say. During the interview, she drove the conversation forward with periodic summaries of her understanding, and she asked on-the-spot questions that made the information more nuanced and useful to the audience.

When we debriefed the interview, I shared with Carol that an unexpected result was how she had pushed my own thinking to a new level. My expectation had been to have a great time simply sharing my experiences for the benefit of the audience. Yet, our chat clearly generated new learning for me – including fresh perspectives on  the brand value I offer to others.

Yet, there’s an additional outcome: my heightened awareness of brand evolution. As a Personal Branding Strategist, I’m always focusing on the clarity, consistency, and constancy of messages that clients  deliver. And while I tell clients that brands evolve, I haven’t been particularly focused on what drives that evolution. It’s conversation. If brands rely on brand communities to exist, it’s the ongoing engagement of that community that helps refine and differentiate value. Clearly, our brands develop and become stronger as we engage others. So, who are you talking to? 

Cross-posted at The Personal Branding Blog.