In an increasingly competitive business world and talent pool, Business Acumen skills are a key differentiator and help build the brand of YOU.
In an increasingly competitive business world and talent pool, Business Acumen skills are a key differentiator and help build the brand of YOU.
By Robert S. Brodo, Executive Vice President, Advantexe Learning Solutions
December, 2011
During a recent Business Acumen for High Potential Leaders learning engagement, I facilitated a rich discussion of how individuals in the session were going to leverage their new skills. Some said that they felt more confident pursuing internal promotions because senior leadership now sees them as having an enhanced skill set, while others said that they felt more comfortable selling solutions to their customers as business people, not just sales people. I challenged them to think about both sides of the conversation and develop a plan to enhance their own brands and get the message out there both internally and externally.
Social Networking tools such as LinkedIn, facebook, and Twitter provide users with the opportunity to create a personal “brand.” Many people call this phenomenon the “Brand of You.” The brand of You is a virtual 24/7 broadcast of who you are, what you are doing, where you are going, and how you are getting there. In the business world, in particular, it can also serve as a valuable tool for creating awareness about what you can achieve; our discussion in the High Potential Leader program centered on creating awareness in terms of skills, capabilities, and potential for future roles.
This month’s AdvantEdge shares ideas and tools for building the brand of You based on research, insights, and business dialogues with customers, academics, and consultants.
Step One – Decide: One Total Brand or Separate Brands?
Before you get started building the brand of You, it’s critical to determine whether your private and professional selves will be branded differently, or if you want others to see a consistent persona in all areas of your life. This distinction is an important one, as you are creating the blueprint for your overall brand and setting a strategic direction for yourself.
While we recommend that you keep your personal and business brands separate, the choice is really up to you. The most important thing is that you make a decision and stick with it – consistency in this chaotic world is a key to success.
Some may argue that creating silos for your personal and professional lives takes away from a cohesive, total brand of You, but we believe there should be boundaries. If you create the boundaries, then you can make exceptions to them at your discretion. For example, you may choose to invite close business contacts into your social world, but the boundary is like a one-way mirror – once they cross the line, they are permanent residents with access to the more private side of your life. Maintaining consistency of character and integrity in personal and professional relationships makes this an easier transition, but it may not always be the right thing to do.
Competitive organizations do whatever it takes to find, recruit, and maintain a stellar talent pool. If your comprehensive brand happens to include a tipsy facebook photo of you from last year’s holiday party, that can do more harm than good. Creating barriers between your personal and professional lives helps mitigate this type of risk.
Step Two – Have a Plan
Like any company with a good business strategy, you need a plan for developing and maintaining the brand of You. A simple way to do this is to ask yourself the same questions those organizations ask when setting a strategic direction:
Where are you now?
Take time to really understand your current brand and how other people perceive you. Ask for volunteers from different areas of your life to sit down and be open and honest as they help you assess where you are right now.
Where are you going?
What is your plan? What are your goals? Where do you see yourself in 5, 10, 15 and 20 years? Be specific – the more details you commit to now, the more likely you are to take action to reach them!
How are you going to get there?
Now that you know what you want your brand to be and where you see yourself in the future, create a plan to make it happen. What is your strategy? What skills do you need? What experiences do you need?
Take a blank piece of paper and go through this exercise. It may take some time, but the insights will be very powerful. Not only will you have a greater awareness of where you are right now, but establishing a plan for getting to your ideal future can really mobilize you to take action and get there.
When participants in our Business Acumen programs engage in similar exercises, we always find that new or enhanced business acumen skills are high on the list of needs for those wishing to grow their careers and establish a strong professional brand.
Step Three – Build Your Network
Building a large network of contacts takes time and effort, but is critical to your long-term success. However, the worst thing you can do is go on a LinkedIn and facebook binge and try to build a network without earning the right to do so. So how do you earn the right? Here are a few ideas:
- Pick up the phone and personally connect/reconnect with a potential addition to your network.
- Send a personal note with a meaningfulDo not just send the generic LinkedIn template note!
- Go to networking events inIndustry events, business conferences, Alumni events from your school, and social events that you target to optimize your network are just a few ideas.
- Follow-up with people! Once they are in your network, keep up withCall them, meet them for a drink, and just stay in touch with them.
- Leverage your existing network to open doors for future networking opportunities.
Step Four – Build Your Message
Perhaps the most critical step in this process is deciding on the actual message you want to broadcast to the world through your brand. Like we teach in our Business Acumen learning engagements, you are creating the “Value Proposition” of YOU. You don’t just want to be known – you want to be known for something that has real and measureable value. Based on our years of experience, we propose that the Value Proposition of your brand can be illustrated on a dashboard. The dashboard measures where you are now in relation to where you want to be, and includes the following elements:
- Education – What is your level of education and how much do you need?
- Performer – What type of performer are you? Do you achieve your objectives? Over-achieve?
- Potential – What is your potential and how does your organization see your potential?
- Motivation – What is your motivation level and how is that level seen by your company?
- Competencies – What are your competencies and how are they seen within your company?
- Experience – How much experience do you have and is it of value to your company?
- Team Orientation – Do you have a team orientation and is it of value to your company?
- Global Orientation - Do you have a global orientation and is it of value to your company?
- Customer Orientation - Do you have a customer orientation and is it of value to your company?
Step Five – Build Your Brand by Executing Your Message
Building your message and determining how you measure up on the dashboard should be relatively simple. The hard part of this process is executing the plan and delivering the message of your brand. This is where we believe that Business Acumen becomes important and touches every element of the dashboard. In effect, stronger business acumen skills allow you to create a better, more dynamic brand of You.
As a performer and leader, you can leverage business acumen to create awareness of your brand! Here are some ideas for broadcasting your message and creating buzz:
- Perform – Work hard, achieve your objectives, create success.
- Illustrate and share success, achievements, knowledge, and skills through social networking.
- Provide value to others within your social network by sharing thoughts, ideas, and insights.
- Focus on positive messaging and not negativeDon’t put others down to create advantage for yourself.
- Be consistent; like any good advertising campaign, you have to keep atYou can’t do it a few times and then forget about it.
Step Six – Don’t forget to pick up the phone…or go to a happy hour!
It’s easy to sit back and rely just on LinkedIn or other social networking tools to build relationships and keep in touch with people, but that’s nowhere near as effective as being among your colleagues in person. Be seen and heard delivering your message as often as you can. Get together with influencers within your network, go to happy hours, or set up meetings for the sole purpose of maintaining and enhancing your relationships. These small gestures can reap you great rewards down the road.
Step Seven – Assess and Evaluate
The final step – just like we teach in strategic business planning – it to assess and evaluate your performance as you build the brand of YOU. In the most open and honest way – maybe by leveraging other tools like 360’s, etc. – determine how well you are doing in creating your brand.
- What’s working?
- What’s not working?
- What do you need more of?
- What do you need less of?
Summary
Building the brand of YOU takes energy, time, commitment, and strong Business Acumen. A good strategy is a multi-phased process that provides you with the opportunity to understand where you are now and create a plan of action to develop the brand of YOU that you want. There are many tools available to you and one of the best is to leverage social networking to deliver the message and create the awareness that you desire.
Webinar
Please join me for a free Webinar on January 23, 2012 at 12:00 PM EST to learn more about this topic. I will provide a more detailed overview of the concepts presented in this document, some tools for you to use, an overview of Business Acumen concepts, and a lively questions and answer segment.
Please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for an instant invitation!
PRINT-OUT CHECKLIST
BUILDING THE BRAND OF YOU
ð Step One – Decide: One Total Brand or Separate Brands?
ð Step Two – Have a Plan
ð Step Three – Build Your Network
ð Step Four – Build Your Message
ð Step Five – Build Your Brand by Executing Your Message
ð Step Six – Don’t forget to pick up the phone…or go to a happy hour!
ð Step Seven – Assess and Evaluate
Advantexe Learning Solutions is an award winning training and development firm specializing in Business Acumen, Business Leadership, and Strategic Business Selling.
Please let me know if you would like any more information about the findings of this article. It would be my pleasure to expand on the research and share with you Advantexe’s learning solutions in the top areas of:
- Business Simulations
- Leadership Simulations
- High Potential Leader Engagement
- Virtual Teams
- Strategic Business Selling
FOR MORE INORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Robert S. Brodo
Executive Vice President
Advantexe Learning Solutions
A Division of Executive Edge, Inc.
100 Four Falls Corporate Center - Suite 303
1001 Conshohocken State Road
West Conshohocken, PA 19428
Mobile: 215-805-5380
Office: 610-828-8707
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