Why we find it difficult to self-promote

July 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment
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  Let’s admit it most of us shy away from self-promotion – and there are good reasons for this! The iconic Australian is humble and self-deprecating, not given to self-promotion, gloating or “big-noting” – self-promotion doesn’t sit well in our culture. Many people are introverted and by nature not comfortable with conversations about themselves. And others would be happy to self-promote but are not good at presenting a story about themselves that is of interest to their audience. And despite these quite legitimate reasons for not self-promoting knowing how to skilfully talk about your accomplishments is important in career management! In many cases if you can’t communicate and market yourself, you won’t be on the radar for new opportunities, projects or promotions. Being able to build relationships and keep people meaningfully informed about what you are doing can be the difference between staying put and moving forward in your career. So let me share … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Expressing Your Brand, Personal Branding for Careers, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

Who’s LinkedIn is it anyway?

June 8, 2012 by Leave a Comment
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I have had two interesting conversations recently with respect to the right balance between personal and organizational content in a LinkedIn profile.  The first conversation was with a client who was under pressure from his employer to add corporate content into his profile summary.  The employer wanted to convince my client that this would be good to show his alignment to the organizational brand and values.  My client was uncomfortable with this idea and, while not anti-company, was protective of his personal brand. My second conversation was with a person considering a Personal Branding Program.  In preparation for meeting this person I checked his LinkedIn site.  To my surprise I found that his LinkedIn profile contained only one line about him!  The rest of the profile was about the organisation he worked for and included a number of corporate blogs and presentations.  This person had lost almost all of his own professional identity.  When I told him what I had … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Executive Branding, Expressing Your Brand, Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding Trends Tagged With: ,

A step too far

April 19, 2012 by 2 Comments
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People who are building their Personal Brand focus on the strengths that are necessary and appealing to attain their desired career goals. And with authenticity to the fore we build a compelling brand that projects both confidence and capability. We have all heard of the saying “An overused strength can become a weakness” and in branding this is something we all need to be very aware of as we communicate our message. In Australian corporate circles recently there was a very public demonstration of this phenomenon. A successful CEO who had built his brand, and business, around being edgy, controversial, entrepreneurial and flamboyant went too far. On his Facebook site he had posted rants that were racist, sexist and highly offensive both to the business community and public in general. (Note the general public is his client base.) When someone leaked this to the national media the backlash was instant. No amount of apology or justification could defuse the situation. Several … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Expressing Your Brand, Exuding Your Brand Tagged With: ,

Is there a real You?

February 1, 2012 by 1 Comment
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I watched an interesting video presentation the other day by Julian Baggini on TED. (Baggini is the author of several books about philosophy written for a general audience. He is the author of The Pig that Wants to be Eaten and 99 other thought experiments (2005) and is co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Philosophers' Magazine. TEDxYouth@Manchester 2011 - Julian Baggini - Is There A Real You? He promotes the concept that there is no ‘real You’ He says we have no binding core or essence but are made up of Memories, Desires, Beliefs, Knowledge, Sensations and Experiences and it is these that make us who we are. This counters the thought that there is a core You that gets modified in some way by beliefs, desires, experiences and the like. Baggini posits that we are ever-changing and require direction. He says that having no permanent being is a great opportunity to expand that which is You. This fits well with how I work with Personal Branding. My work with hundreds of … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Discovering Your Brand Tagged With:

It is easy to damage your brand.

November 4, 2011 by 1 Comment
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There have been two well publicized national incidents in Australia this week that have the potential to cause major brand damage to the large corporations at the center of them. Qantas, the national airline, grounded all flights across the globe in response to ongoing labor contract disputes with three major unions. This act left 60,000 passengers stranded around the world for two to four days and for all those concerned this resulted in stress, missed flights, additional cost and a burning desire not to fly with Qantas again. The second incident was the National Australia Bank who decided not to pass on all of the Reserve Banks latest interest rate decrease in spite of announcing a record profit for the year (19% up on last year). This same bank had spent millions building a brand about being different than the other three major banks and caring for its clients. For all of .05% or $68 million a year they have hurt their brand by showing they are just a callous as the others and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Exuding Your Brand, Personal Branding Quick Tips, Strong Personal Brands Tagged With: , , ,

Is the art of good conversation missing from your brand?

October 6, 2011 by 1 Comment
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I got into a good debate with my business partners last week regarding the difference between communication and conversation and whether good conversation is a dying art. We looked up the meaning of conversation and it is quoted as: A talk between two or more people in which thoughts, feelings and ideas are expressed, questions are asked and answered, or news and information are exchanged. An oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas. Based on the above we determined that conversation has been replaced with communication and that in the process it has become more a one way process than the two way art of good conversation. Too much today we communicate our thoughts, decisions and instructions to our wider world (family, work and non-work network) with the intention of not receiving feedback and or debate on the subject. At the same time we still relate this to 'good communication’ because we are getting the message out and letting people know what we … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Expressing Your Brand, Exuding Your Brand, Strong Personal Brands Tagged With: ,