Your Employee Brand is in Your Hands

Yur Employee Brand is in Your HandsYour Employee Brand is in Your HandsYour Employee Brand is in Your HandsYour Employee Brand is in Your Hands PDFNote Youll need Adobe Reader to view the PDF file above. Download Adobe Reader.Wednesday, May 8, 2013Highly successful business professionals unanimously agree that a key component for achieving extreme career success is to create, manage, and promote your own Personal Leadership Brand at work and within your industryand its never too soon or too late to abflugBut how do you create one to stand out? And what does Personal Branding even mean? Lisa knows She is hired by well-known global corporations to conduct workshops about this for employees of all ages and at all levels.This info-packed webinar is targeted at business professionals who aspire to be effective, respected, leaders in the workforce, regardless of your current status/position. So if you want to excel professionally fartherbei than you thought possible, and possibly even feel stuck in your career growth, dont miss Lisas webinarOverview of What You Will LearnWhat Personal Branding IS and is NOTWhat a Personal Brand impacts (inside of work, outside of work, and online)Why defining a Personal Leadership Brand can improve your career successWhat true leadership is (ANY position level at work is a leadership role)Key differences between a leadership mindset and a management mindset, and why understanding that is important to creating your Personal BrandHow developing a Personal Brand will improve your communication relationships with others in the workplacePresented ByLisa OrrellThe Generations Relations ExpertLisa Orrell, The Generations Relations Expert, is an author, in-demand speaker, and Leadership Coach for Millennials (aka Gen Y). Lisa helps organizations better engage with Millennial talent and improve the generational dynamics within their workforce. She also conducts popular seminars workshops for Millennial employees and college students on how to be effective young leaders at work and create a Personal Leadership Brand for career success.Webinar Transcript Your Employee Brand is in Your HandsGood afternoon, Im Jim Thompson, senior writer with Monster. I would like to thank you for joining us today for this exclusive webinar hosted by Intelligence. Todays webinar is entitled Your Employee Brand Is In Your Hands. Author Lisa Orrell will be presenting this afternoon. This info-packed webinar is targeted at business professionals who aspire to be effective and respected leaders in the workforce. Before we get departureed, I would like to mention a few housekeeping items. Todays presentation and a copy of the recording will be posted on hiring.monster.com within the next two to three business days. Please click on the resources tab and navigate to HR events to obtain your copy. All registered participants will also receive an email with a direct link to todays materials. Intelligence helps HR professionals improve worker perfo rmance, retain top talent, and enhance recruiting strategies. We analyze and collect data from over 4 million unique job searches performed on each day. We invite you to visit hiring.monster.com and read our in-depth reports and analysis. For our latest materials, click on the resources center tab when you visit the website. After the presentation, there will be time for questions. Our meeting manager will help facilitate the QA. Please feel free to type your questions into the available space during the event and we will make every effort to include them in todays QA. If youre listening todays presentation via telephone, youll be placed on mute until the QA session begins.I would like to provide some hintergrund on todays speaker, Lisa Orrell. Lisa is globally recognized as the generations, relations and leadership expert. She is the author of four top-selling books, a certified leadership coach, and sought after speaker and thought leader. Lisas popular presentation topics include , understanding generational dynamics in the workplace, improving the recruitment, management, and retention of millennial talent, educating millennial employees on how to be effective young leaders at work, and personal branding for career success. Based on her expertise she has been interviewed by numerous media outlets including NPR, CNBC, ABC, The New York Times, as well as the Wall Street Journal. Please welcome Lisa Orrell. Lisa, I will now turn the webinar over to you.Great thank you, Jim. I really appreciate that and its good to be back. Ive done quite a few webinars over the years for and I appreciate your support in allowing me to bring some hopefully helpful information to everybody here on the call today. This typically is a three-hour workshop and Ive conducted it over 17 times for ewestindischer lorbeer. Theyve thought so much of it that theyve added it to their corporate course catalog. So attendees when they come binnensee me at eBay actually get credit for it in the ir employee files. I have done it for Johnson Johnson, Wells Fargo, all kinds of companies and the main reason that employers are interested in having to come and discuss this topic is theres really no downside to getting mora self awareness about yourself as well as your co-workers.What youre about? What makes you tick? Because you cant departure developing your personal brand identity at work for career success if you dont take care of those things and youre okay with personal growth and self awareness, quite honestly. You know what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Who do you aspire to be? What are the things that you need to work on? What are things possibly that are holding you back from moving up the ladder or getting the type of career success that you are looking, for whatever that might mean to you? So if you take a look at that quote right there just in front of you from a chief operations officer, the reason I put that quote in there is to let people on the c all know that if people at that level are talking about their personal leadership brand and why its important, then anybody at any level as far as Im concerned should certainly be looking at it as well. You take a look at this quote, globalization business manager at a Fortune 500 company.Personal branding is very serious, serious topic and most of the highly successful people whom I know in the corporate world have been focusing on it for quite a while. One of the things I will share with you as well is that you have to be like I said you have to have your self awareness, but then you also have to manage it and you also have to be aware of it on a daily basis. And theres one of the main reasons that its important and here it is. Wherever you go and whatever you do, bedrngnis only are you an ambassador for yourself, but youre also an ambassador for the companys brand as well and people going to evaluate you on a regular basis. And its going to affect their relationship with you as well as the relationship that they have with your company. And one thing you have to realize too, is that it follows you wherever you go and well get into that a little bit mora as we dive into it. So, on that bedrngnise, this is what were going to be talking about today. These are five main areas again, this is typically about a three-hour workshop that I normally do live, so were going to be cramming a lot of information into a short period of time here and there will be QA at the end.The Basics of Personal BrandingSo lets get into the basics of personal branding the basics, what it is, what its not, because some people tend to have a little bit of confusion around this. One of the main things before we get started into all of this is this quote. If you dont get anything else from this webinar, but this, then I will consider I have done a successful job with this. You are being watched by what you say and what you dont say, what you do and what you dont do, every single day tha t youre at work as well as at home. Again this is from somebody you might know personally, who is highly-respected and focuses on the building and management of her personal brand on a daily basis. Its not your title, its not your business card, its not your job description, its not anything that you see on here. All of those things are the things that support your personal brand.Almost think of it like product branding. Prior to getting involved in what I do now in leadership and generational dynamic, I owned a very large marketing agency in the San Francisco Bay Area for 20 years. Now that Im in this career path, the merger of leadership and how it combines and maps into branding ties together beautifully.So when youre in a leadership mindset regardless of what role you have at the company, whether youre entry level or youve been there for 30 or 40 years and youre a senior vice president, it all maps back into your branding. And something to think about, Ive done this presentation , as I said, many many times. I cant tell you how many people I have come up to me afterwards that are in their 40s or 50s and say that they wished that something like this welches being discussed back in their 20s, because it certainly would have helped them with their career path. We get into this, as what it is. This is the essence of what personal branding is. Its all about how people feel about you. How youre perceived. How do you perceive yourself? Can people rely on you under all kinds of different circumstances to behave in a certain way? Are you known as a hothead? Do you have a temper at work? All of those things reflect on your personal brand. So again, it comes down to having total clarity about who you are, so that you can then start formulating your brand identity and start living it on a daily basis. Heres another key point, this will be key point number two that if you get nothing else from this webinar together today, you get this. This is key. Because, thats about everything you say, everything you dont say, everything you do, everything you dont do.The Leadership MindsetI know leaders, people that are in management roles and I consider a management you know, thats actually a leadership role, whether its a senior vice president or a director, or whether its a junior account manager, or whether its the receptionist. I consider everybody is in a leadership role, and should be in a leadership mindset. With everything that you say or do, one of two things is going to happen. Your personal brand is either going to be strengthened and reinforced, or its going to be weakened. So, it gives you that barometer. Is what Im about ready to say to this person in this meeting, or to this group of people, or this email that Im about ready to send, how is this reflecting on my personal brand? Is it going to strengthen it, or is it going to weaken it?So, lets talk about this a little bit, about a leadership versus a management type of mindset. My goal is to ha ve every single person on this call as well as across the world, quite honestly, kind of get into the role that theyre everything thats going to be on the left hand-side that youre going to see here. These are the differences. I would imagine as Im going through this here, that some of you can identify with everything on the right-hand side of the list and you probably worked for people or you might even work for someone right now who is everything on the right-hand side of the list. We dont want you to be everything on the right-hand side of the list. This is the stuff that damages your personal brand. This is the stuff that weakens it.Theres a huge uptake right now in management training because of the fact that were dealing with a labor shortage thats going to be going on for the next 20 years, and then about 18-24 months and its starting a little bit right now, even though were still in recession mode is companies are going out of their way to deal with firing mediocre employe es. They want to get rid of them, and the reason for that is because mediocre employees especially when they start getting into leadership, management-type roles where theyre responsible for people theyre affecting the retention. A lot of companies didnt used to do that, people could punkt through the cracks in a big company get lost in the gray world. They didnt want you to hassle with HR having to let somebody go because of the legalities around it. Well, Ive got a lot of clients now who are going out of their way to clean house, and theyre concentrating on getting top people who have mora of a mindset a personal brand and leadership mindset of everything on the list, because they cannot afford to lose talent due to an ineffective leader. Or ineffective like I said, leaders even in junior entry-level management positions.Understands What Motivates Each Team MemberSo lets talk about the attributes of an effective leader here for a second. And again heres another big title, seni or VP of global HR at a Fortune 500 company, Managing yourself and how you manage people, because it all boils down to people. And a lot of executives will say, as you can see with this quote here, Most people dont understand others. Ive been asked to do this personal leadership branding workshop for departments to help the team-building, so that people can have a better understanding of each other, not just themselves. So that they can enhance the employee engagement process and reduce the friction that they have within their departments.Weve spent so much time, focused a lot of time on ourselves what we want, what we need, all of that. We get out of that human being mode, and were in human doing mode, which are two totally different mindsets. And we lose sight of who people are, what we need to do. A lot of times with companies, Im even hired and even brought in as a job saver. And one of the first things I have to do is Im kind of the last realm before this person gets canned talk to them about their personal brand and help them re-work it so that they can potentially save their job. And I always start it by focusing on the development of their personal brand because a lot of times, smart people, even on this webinar right now, havent spent a whole lot of time thinking about their strengths, their weaknesses, admitting some of their weaknesses and getting the help that they might need. Whether thats therapy, whether thats a life coach, whatever it might be, but its about really starting to get real with yourself.I deal a lot of times with people, like I said, who dont understand who their key numbers are. Ive had executives where theyre like Im talking to this one gentleman and I said, So can you give me the last names of everybody that works for you? Had a trouble with that. Can you tell me whos married or in a serious relationship? Couldnt tell me that. Can you tell me who on your team has kids or doesnt have kids? Couldnt really tell me that. How can you possibly motivate, manage, and effectively retain people if you dont know who they are and what motivates them. Because Im a parent, what might motivate me is I want more time off or flexibility in my schedule so that I dont have to miss my sons 300 Little League game on a Thursday. Whereas one of my co-workers motivation might be being able to work from home on occasions, or another co-worker might be money. That quarterly bonus program is really what does motivate them. Its understanding what it is that makes people tick. And if you are known as someone cares at that level about your team, it reflects well in your personal brand and people will want to work for you.Strategists Beyond Core CompetencyNow Im not going to go through every single thing on this list, some of its self-explanatory. Some of this might even be a refresher course in Leadership 101. But Ill tell you right now, weve got a lot of mediocre people out there in the workforce and you might even be working for o ne of them. But do you want to be one of them or do you want to have a positive brand recognition that people are attracted to wanting to work for you and wanting to work with you. One of the things here down at the bullet where it say, Strategists beyond core competency. I can certainly ask it here, with a hand raised if we are all in person and with everybody welches sitting here in front of me, I certainly could. But who here just go ahead and ask yourself or answer it to yourself who here wants to have more recognition within the company, within your company? Who here wants to have more recognition perhaps in your industry to be known as an industry thought leaders so that youre asked to speak at conferences. Media in your industry wants to interview you because you have something interesting to say, and they know who you are.If any of that of what Ive just asked relates to you and your desires at all, becoming a strategist beyond your core competency is key. Its one of the ke y elements for promoting your personal brand, which we will be getting to later. Ill be providing strategies on how to actually promote your personal brand in the workforce, as well outside of your work. Dont just get stuck we all tend to get stuck in our little silos, especially in larger companies where you dont even know people on the floor, in the department right across from you, 15 feet away. But knowing more about whats going on in your industry, all of those things are a key element to understanding and being strategists beyond your core competency.Communicates Often and Listens MoreThe other thing to talk about is talking to people at any level, and not being a snob about, Oh, thats the receptionist or thats somebodys admin, but being willing to talk to everybody. Not only can you gain a lot of knowledge that you wouldnt have otherwise, but you also start building teams and you also start building more awareness for your brand. I work with a lot of executives who tend to n ot talk to other people except people on their level. Its ridiculous. Its a job killer. It can affect your growth over time.Another thing thats extremely key and reflects well on your personal brand and if you dont feel that youre good at it, then its certainly something you need to be aware of so you can work on it is being an exceptional communicator, and I dont just mean public speaking or a great presenter at work. Im talking about when you have one-on-one conversations with people and that gets into WIIFM. That acronym, WIIFM, stands for Whats In It For Me? A vast majority of us communicate with other people with the mindset of Whats In It For Me? Not just financial gain or moving up the ladder but what are they saying, what are they asking?So someone might say to you, Hey, John. I was wondering if you could help me out with this presentation I have, and you immediately just start, before you even hear the rest of what Don has to say youll immediately go into the mode of, Oh my gosh. Im already too busy. I already got too much to do. I cant believe he wants me help him with his presentation. How can I possibly do that? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the reality is that what John might be just wanting to say to you is, Can you help me with your presentation by providing me with the two slides from the presentation you recently did, because it contains some great information that I can utilize in the presentation Im putting together.We immediately go into that. We only hear 50% of what people are typically saying to us. I work a lot of times with people, one-on-one with teens, on how to be better listeners. I do seminars on how to provide effective feedback as well as how to listen actively. Its a skill and its something that needs to be worked on. I have clients who at one minute they start theyre in a meeting showing their hands, put a band around their wrist and start snapping their wrist under the table so that it keeps them focus, keeps them enga ged. If you can be known as a great listener, which is part of communication, that reflects hugely on your personal brands. I know that I have certain friends that I will go to if Im having an issue and I want to talk through something, or I need someone to really hear me because I need advice on something. I know exactly who I can contact, who will be an active listener as well as the people I know that I wouldnt go to in a heartbeat because theyre going to turn the whole thing around to make it about them and the whole conversation suddenly going to be like, Oh I know Ive been through that for blah, blah, blah. Who are you? Are you that? Im asking you, are you that person?Its a major, major skills sets and that needs to wait, and then were going to move on here in a second. The wait principle. Why am I talking? Why am I talking? I mean I know why Im talking right now but seriously why am I talking? Are you the person in meetings that never shuts up? Weve all got those people in ou r lives right? I mean think back to high school and college and even at work right now. Theres always that person whenever they raise their hand youve got the whole classroom or the whole conference room go, Oh no, please dont ask the question. Please dont say anything. Youre the person who just talks, and talks, and talks because you think everything you have to say is brilliant. I was actually doing this workshop and had a young man come after me afterwards. Actually it was on the break because when I do a 3 hour workshop, we have two breaks. After break, he came up to me and he goes, Oh my gosh, Lisa. Im that guy. Im that guy who never shuts up in meetings. I just realized it. Its got to be affecting my personal brand. I said, It is killing your personal brand because youre the person who I describe that the minute you start talking everybody is like, Oh, no. He goes, Thats something I really need to work on. I dont want an element of my personal brand like that. Thats terrible. I said, Well, what do you want to do about it? He said, Well, I dont know. I guess I should just not talk as much. I said, Why dont you try this approach. Why dont you tell your team, Hey guys, Im working on my personal branding and Im really looking at strengths and weaknesses and I think Ive identified one of my main weaknesses or faults, so to speak, is that I talk too much. I probably dont add a lot of value a whole lot of time when I am doing that, versus focusing on what should I say that really would be beneficial to the group and have a value add to it, and just let them know. Well, he did that approach, and everybody respected him so much for it, and then they were on board with him. Whenever he starts talking, starts kind of rattling off, they go, Hey, thought you wanted to work on that, and all of the sudden took this serious issue where he was irritating everybody and just dissipated it. All of the sudden, his personal brand was resurrected in a much more positive light with his team.How to Start Developing Your Personal BrandBefore we move on here, youll see at the very bottom its Understanding Your Elevator Pitch. Theres a book that I recommend getting called Small Message, Big Impact. I didnt write it. I dont get anything for it. Im just letting you know it exists. Its about how to get your point very quickly, very succinctly. So not only are you a more effective communicator, but you can also potentially get what you want and get the results you want faster. So if you think you are someone who rambles on, or all the way down to youve got a big presentation on Monday, and allotment is only going to be three minutes or five minutes. You put together your presentation and its 87 slides, right. People tend to do that. How can you get to your point succinctly? This is a great book that you should check out.Personal Branding and IntegritySo what I want to talk about now a little bit is how do you start developing your personal brand? I leave this quo te in here because, first of all, I find it appalling. I dont find it incredibly shocking, but what 50% do you fall into? Are you someone who can be trusted and maintain integrity? Are you known as someone in the office who gossips a lot? I had to work with a female executive one time, she was the head of the department, and she was the biggest gossiper in the whole department. And she was the anfhrer in the department. And it was getting to the point where she was going to get fired. She did not have much integrity. People could not really trust her. Also on personal branding, it is important who are you? Dont be someone you are not. You know, we all went through that like in junior high, trying to fit in, trying to act a certain way. A lot of people deal with that in the workforce as well. Your personal brand has to be something youre comfortable with and that goes to the essence of you. Not being something that you are not and that leads into to these key points right here. You d ont want to make your personal brand company-centric its not what does the company want me to be? You dont want it to be anfhrer-centric. It doesnt matter what your boss wants, its about you. And Im going to tell you right now, when you have a much more clear perspective and you are regularly managing your personal brand, it helps with all kinds of things.It helps you determine what job you should take. Does that map to my personal brand? It helps you determine is that the boss that I would want to work for? Not so much. If part of your branding is that you want to have fun at work but you have a job opportunity with someone who you know is extremely uptight, you dont take it. It wont map to your personal brand, and you cant change your personal brand every time you get a new boss or every time you go to another company. Its you. So it helps you with awareness with the types of jobs you might looks for, the types of teams you might work with, the types of projects you might even acc ept to do. Does it map to your personal brand or not. Part of it, too, with personal branding its not about what you want to be known for, but its also that who you aspire to be, whos somebody that you admire? What are the qualities that they have that are consistent and persistent that you respect, that may be you dont possess? How can you also get those qualities for your own self? What do you need to do? If youre not a very good communicator, it might mean youre extremely shy but you aspire to be a better communicator, so to get to head-up key presentations for higher visibility within your organization, versus being known as a really boring quiet speaker, it might require that you have to get a speaking coach. It might require that you join the local toastmaster in your area. There might even be toastmasters, or there might even be a toastmasters division at your company. Ebay has a toastmasters group. So, finding out those things that you need to work on and mold them into get ting to where you want to be and who you aspire to be, not just who you are right now.Visual Brand AttributesSo, you think of a visual brand attribute think of the guy kicking back with his striped, silly socks. When you think of a visual brand attribute, think of things like Donald Trump and his crazy hair. He knows his hair is ridiculous, but he wouldnt change it for the world because we all talk about it. It makes news. I mean, his hair probably has its own publicist with how much werbung his hair gets, right? So, what are potentially visual brand attributes that you could have? Ive got one girl and this is the socks story pertains to that picture you see there. One young lady whom I spoke with was an engineer at a very large company that most many of you would know. Shes the only engineer in her department and its a pretty uptight department. It was kind of boring, wasnt the liveliest group in the company. Shes like, Ive got a fun personality, I want to express that a little bit . Its a very conservative workforce where she was conservative culture. So she started wearing wacky socks. She had one long nice dress and a nice pair of slacks, and she had put on some crazy socks. Well, people started noticing her socks. Well after a while, people started bringing her socks. Shed come back from a meeting and on her desk thered be like three pairs of socks.Well, she was smart. She started taking pictures of her socks every morning, developed a blog, and all she would do is put up a picture of those socks what she was wearing that day had a picture of her as well. Its good for branding so that people could put a face with the sock as well as a motivational quote for the day. The whole thing every morning took her maybe five minutes to do. One day shes walking down the hall, heading to lunch and this Senior, Senior, Senior, Senior, Senior Vice President comes walking towards her. This is somebody that she under normal circumstances probably would have never met. T his is a Fortune 500 company, a huge corporation. She says, Oh my gosh, its him. She walks by and he passes her and then he stops. He says, Excuse me, arent you the engineer that wears the weird socks?. She says, Yeah, yeah thats me. He said, What socks do you have on today? She showed him. He goes, Those are cool. You know what, Ive got to tell you. My admin looks at your blog everyday to see what socks youre going to wear and she makes me look at it. Now, my 17 year old daughter, at home, shes looking at the whole socks thing and thinks its cool. And, I just wanted to tell you I think thats really cool. By the way, where are you going? Well, Im heading to lunch. Well, are you starving or can you follow me into a meeting right now? And she was like, Ill go to the meeting. She ends up in the meeting with him, which becomes the planning nucleus for one of the biggest new products launches this company was planning. And she ended up on the team.Then it came to the global town hall tha t was projected all over webcast all over the place. The team was brought up and the CEO himself said, And so and so, show us your socks. Within what, five seconds, probably 95% of the company worldwide knew who this young woman was, okay? Ive got all kinds of stories. It could be youre known for cool watches. You know, you stand out. The girl who always wears something red. The guy always wears a funny hat, always wears a baseball hat, whatever. Theres all those kinds of visual attributes that can also make you stand out. So then we get into, like I said, determine what makes you different. The key with all of this is that it has to be consistent and persistent. Now, Im not saying that everyone of you needs to show up to work tomorrow in weird socks or whatever. That would be weird. But, it might even be that you dont even take on a visual brand attribute, as part of your personal leadership branding development. Thats okay. My job is to simply point out things that you should cons ider and possibly take on if you want to or not. The thing is, especially with the physical brand attribute, like the socks or whatever, you have to be consistent with it. You cant just do it like once a month. Otherwise, no ones even going to pay attention to that. And you have to live your brand consistently. Not only the essence of you, how you conduct yourself what you say, what you dont say, what you do, what you dont do. But also again if you bring on a visual brand attribute, it has to be done consistently.Two Step ProcessSo theres a two-step process here. The first one is determining your brand personality. What words describe you? You start by asking what are the words that describe you. Heres some well-known people. And the reason I bring well-known people or use them as examples because everybody on this webinar has heard of some of these people. So think of how the impact of Steve Jobs, how his personal brand impacted the company in terms of his coolness, his hipness. It parleyed into the culture of Apple I know tons of people that work at Apple and they all kind of fit this mold, as well as all the way down to the industrial konzept look and feel of the products. Apple products are cool. They look cool and Steve Jobs himself looks cool imagine if he wouldve been totally against his kind of his personal brand and what it would have been like for him to show up at these global product launch media conferences announcing the new iPad or whatever, if he had been in a $10,000 Armani suit. It worked for him to be in a black mock turtleneck, pair of jeans and tennis shoes. It just mapped for him.All the way down to things like Ellen, Ellen Degeneres. Funny, cheerful, sincere, playful, all those words you see there. It not only parlays into how she is on a regular basis, but it parlays into things that she creates and things that she does on her show. Helping people out that are really struggling. It helps to formulate her personal brand goes beyond wha t she just does for a job as a talk show host. Its how she creates the different types of things that she does as part of her own personal brand. saatkorn type of thing with with Oprah. Same types of things as with Richard Branson. Virgin is cool. Virgin is a cool, certainly not straight and narrow brand at all. All the way down their planes, everything. All that essence comes from the personal brand of Sir Richard Branson. More personal branding can impact and influence the vibe, the culture of your little world. Whether its a team of 3 people, or whether youre responsible for a department of 200 people. Your personal brand will impact and influence that. The more clarity you have on your personal brand, the more apt you have to hire people with like-minded values. Versus just hiring somebody because everything looked great on their resume and you liked their background. Who are they? Right? Thats the reverse of how, you know, I said earlier about you choosing a job.Perception is E verythingSo come up with those words even ask around, ask people, What do you think? What do you think of these words, do these describe me? You know what, some people will go like, Yeah, but youre missing such and such word, and youll be like, Oh my gosh. I never even thought of that You know, youre a great problem solver. Wow I never really thought of myself like that. Now what you do is you take that information, then you start developing your personal brand positioning statement. And this is what a personal brand positioning statement is. Its basically like your little mission statement of who you are.An example of one is what you see right there in front of you. You can even take this and write down I want to be known for, and then fill in the blanks, so that I can deliver fill in the blanks.I know executives and even entry level employees, who once theyve written this out, they get it typeset and matted and have it hanging in their office, or hanging in their cubicle. And they live by it, they look at it to remind themselves. They ask their employees, Hey, if Im not abiding by this on a regular basis, let me know. Thats brilliant. That opens up all kinds of open communication. It makes you more attainable. It makes people want to communicate with you. So what is your personal brand?Again, how do you think youre perceived now? Im telling you right now, we deal with a lot of delusional people in the workforce, right? Not only in just in the workforce but on the planet. I deal with a lot of people, like I said earlier in the webinar, that Im hired to come in as a job saver, or I have to do a management, got to do a leadership management training. And Im dealing with people that think theyre all that and a bag of chips. And once I start asking them questions, or I start asking their co-workers, or their employees, I get a totally different answer, totally different. I have one girl who didnt know, I talked to her employee group of 15 employees that she was t he boss of, not with her around, I talked to them outside. She didnt realize that ten of them have their resumes ready to go and were actively working with recruiters. She really thought everybody just adored her and then she was perfect.Putting in the WorkSo why? Just like I said earlier, a lot of soul searching. Finding out who you are, what youre about, what you need to work on, and then doing the work. So then once youve developed your personal brand, possibly put in an attribute or all these visual attributes if you want, it doesnt do a lot of good if youre not actively promoting it. I love this quote right here, Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. So you can take everything that Ive said here on this very short period of time and do something with it, or not. Its the equivalent of I need to lose 20 pounds because my pants fit too tight, and you dont do anything about it for a year. And a year later, you re still 20 pounds over the weight you want to be, and your pants still fit too tight. So what should you take into consideration and then what are you going to do about it? That I was talking about earlier if you want more recognition at work, or higher visibility or even more visibility in your industry as well, these are the kind of things you have to start thinking about. Because the bottom line is no ones going to do it for you. If I were here with you in a room doing this as a live presentation, my questions would be how many of you are involved in networking groups outside of the office, you know, leadership groups, mail engineers of Des Moines, whatever, theres a networking group for everything.I will tell you that probably 25% of the people in any sized audience I speak in front of, raise their hand yes, I am involved in outside networking groups, but then when I ask are you active with this? Do you go to the mixers and meetings regularly? Only about 2% of the hands of the 25% go up. Youve got to get out of your silos. Youve got to get out there and join even a Meetup group. Whatever. It also can help you with things like finding a mentor outside of your company whos not involved in office politics, and doesnt know all the players to give you good outside advice. I believe everybody should have two mentors when they work in a corporate environment. You should have one thats at work, and one thats outside of the office. Starting blogs, using Twitter, writing articles, public speaking. Those are all strategies to help you promote yourself outside of work to help you get more industry recognition as well.One note on that, because I know some companies have strict policies about it, before you embark on things like starting a blog since you are employed by somebody, because youre representing their brand, their company brand, you have to make sure through their corporate communication department, HR, whatever. The legal department, I dont care what depar tments find out the answers of what you can and cannot do. Some companies are with it, some companies are not. My advice to you is to find out.One thing about public speaking I will tell you like companies like eBay, they do require that their employees go through like a speaker certification process, before they can accept speaking engagements at conferences and that type of thing. So Im just letting you know to be aware of that because I will tell you right now when I do big engagements and stuff at places like eBay and other companies I go to where theyve got that same type of policy, more than half the people in the room and some of these employees have been there six, seven eight years, they dont know. They dont even know that theres a special process they have to go through, so be aware of that. At work, right here these questions. I have clients that put this on their cell phones and ask themselves these questions once a week. While theyre working out, while theyre walking th e dog, while theyre sitting in commute traffic, because if youre not consistently for the ones that are more yes or no if youre not consistently answering them in a positive way, then theres a really good chance that the job that you have right now is not mapping well to your personal brand and you should consider leaving because youre not doing yourself a favor and youre not doing your employer a favor. But these questions are targeted at helping you with the management of your personal brand.Talking about managing at work, same type of thing. Do you have a diversity department that has all kinds of different groups? A womens networking group internally? Participating in those things, so that people get to know you more at work outside of just your cubicle, outside of just your department. Go ahead and promote your news. Im not going to go through every one of these, we dont have time. Some of them are self-explanatory. If you have a company internal e-newsletter, an employee e-n ewsletter, get your news out there. Hey, ran a 10K over the weekend. You ran your first half marathon. You are on a softball team outside of work and you guys won the championship for your division, because the people that read it might be people be like, Ive been wanting to train for a half marathon. I need to find that person. I may be contact them, I have questions. And that person might be a senior vice-president and whats connecting you to them is the fact that you both are interested in running. And then, of course, through getting to know each other, the communication happens about work and that kind of stuff, but thats ways that you can attract people to you as well.Write for your e-newsletters. Does your company have a blog? Ask if you can write. And the bottom line to all of it is, its okay being uncomfortable. Step outside your comfort zone, because again, youve got to be your own publicist no one is going to do it for you. It just doesnt typically happen that way, althou gh one of the ways it does is when I say, Go out of your way to help others or like number five, pat others on the back. If you do that on a somewhat regular basis and youre sincere, those people will start turning around and doing it for you and be talking about you when youre not around in a positive way. Oh my gosh, she was great in that meeting. You need to talk to so and so shes one of the best presenters our department has. You need to talk to so and so, for this reason. And all of a sudden, you get all these advocates out there for you.Im going to say one thing, okay. I know some of this to you might seem like common sense I get that, but Im going to tell you right now, its not common practice and theres a difference. Just because it may seem like common sense does not mean its common practice.Branding TakeawaysOkay, so with the takeaways, because were hitting about 15, 14 minutes left or so and we want to have time for any QA. The takeaways here is the leadership mindset sta rts now, regardless of what level youre at. You never stop learning or honing your leadership skills. We talked about WIIFM, remember? Whats In It For Me? Wait, why am I talking? Being known as an exceptional listener is an attribute that will reflect highly on your personal brand because so few people are good at it. And it goes back to that saying, of you were given two ears, one mouth, use the ratio accordingly. But a lot of people dont use that ratio accordingly, and it affects their personal brand. And then towards the bottom, theres make the effort to be your own publicist, to increase the visibility of your brand. And lastly, youve got to be clear on who you are, what you want, and who you aspire to be, all right?Jim had mentioned early on that Im the author of four books. Those are the four books. Millennials Incorporated. That one I wrote all about Gen Y how to recruit, manage and retain Gen Y. I do a lot of seminars and workshops on that. The second book, Millennials Into Leadership I wrote for the millennials themselves on how to be effective, respected young leaders in the workforce. I do a lot of work for Wells Fargo. I come in and they give me a whole group of millennials. I do workshops with them. Boomers into Business thats where I help boomers figure out ways to make additional money as they hit retirement age. And then my fourth book which this webinar is based on and the other workshops that I do as well Your Employee Branded In Your Hand. That book is not out yet, however, it is going to be available on Amazon in June in print as well as E-book version, as well with other retailers. So with that, I want to say thank you very much. I really appreciate your time being here and we do now have time for QA. So Jim I am handing it back over to you and youll let me know if we have any questions coming in.Super Lisa, well thank you very much for sharing your insight knowledge with everyone today. This time we will do some questions. Well turn t he webinar over to our meeting manager wholl support the QA session this afternoon.Jim, real quick. Can I say one thing? Its important, I wanted to mention one thing.Absolutely.Is that okay?Sure.I wanted to do a little quick promotion here, but its important is that for anybody who has registered for this webinar, if you are interested in contacting me for information about any of the presentations that I do, you will be given a 10% discount off any of those fees and I just wanted to mention that, okay? So there you go.Thatd be great. Thank you very much, Lisa. If I could check in with our meeting manager to see if you have any questions on your end at the moment.Questions and AnswersThank you. Ladies and gentleman, if you would like to register a question, please press the one followed by the four on your telephone. Youll hear three tone prompt to acknowledge your request. Your line will then be accessed from the conference to obtain information. If your question has been answered and you would like to withdraw your registration, please press the one, followed by the three. If youre using a speakerphone, please lift your handset before entering your request. Again to ask a question on the phone, please press the one, followed by the four. One moment please, for the first question.All right. While were waiting for the questions to queue up on Lynns side, we have a few here coming here on we have a streaming web. First one, Lisa, is you mentioned a book earlier on, if you could repeat the title of that book.Lets see here. Yes, Small Message, Big Impact.Great. Okay thank you. Ill keep chugging along, weve got a few more here for you on my side. Next one is how do you deal with someone especially managers who knowingly, or unknowingly, sabotage your employee brand?Well, the first thing that you want to do is have an open dialogue about it. You know, rather than be upset over it or be complaining to other people about it, the first thing you want to do is open t he doors of communication. If that does not work, the person is not receptive to what you are going to say, or they are going to denial and want to defend themselves and your gripe is legitimate, then this is going to sound kind of harsh. Youre not working for the right person. You need to go. Because you cant expect everybody to always change for you. Although we would like that to start by having open dialogue and get to the root of it.Great. Okay, Good advice. I am going to keep going. Next question is how do you start building a leadership brand if youve just left school or college in this case and are now just entering the world of work?Thats a great question. I do a lot of presentations with people who are right out of school. I even do a lot of speaking at colleges as well, talking about leaderships and personal branding. And you know who you are now, you know what youre about. You know some of the strengths and weaknesses that you may have right now. You might be a very sh y person. You might be the person who talks a lot like I mentioned during the webinar. And youre also researching out people in leadership roles that are famous or not famous even bosses that you worked for, even if it was a summer job when you were 16 at a fast-food restaurant what qualities did they possess that you really admired that you want to make sure is part of who you are. Moving forward and conducting yourself in those ways accordingly, right. Thats what I mentioned earlier, getting yourself into a leadership mindset now regardless of what your position is, regardless of what your age is. Because the sooner when you start thinking in those terms, and thinking like a respective leader, the sooner you start acting like a respectively leader.Excellent. Okay, thanks for that. Lynn, Ill check in with you once again to see, have we get some questions queuing up on your side just yet?Thank you. We do have a question in queue from the line of Shelly Radford, please proceed.How do you go about teaching these skills to your staff? So if youre branding your employee brand, and thats obviously going to be personal and exclusive for you, how do you go about bringing this in day-to-day to really develop your staff and manage the job?Right. Thats a great question. I appreciate youre asking that. The best way to do it and Id mentioned this earlier in the webinar is to actually do it as a group exercise where everybody is required to do the exercises together and share their answers together. Typically when I do the workshop, Ive got three different exercises that I hand out. We do them, we all talk about them. I had to do step one and step two during the webinar here. Those are typically actual handouts and I included them in my book thats coming out but you want to get everybody on the same page. You as the boss, it doesnt typically do you a whole bunch of good to just do it on your own. Well, let me take that back. Yes, of course, it does because regardless of where youre working or where youre going to go, if youre happy at your job where you are right now, its a great team building exercise to have everybody doing it together and then sharing the information. This is what I put together for my positioning statement, will someone take a look at it? How do you feel about it? Hey, what are some things I could be working on? What are some things that you think are strengths of mine? And it opens up great dialogue among your department and then all of sudden, you come out of it with everybody having much more understanding and awareness of each other, which then fosters more, like I said, team building and more open communication.Ive taken departments though this that were really dysfunctional quite honestly and over a short period of time of going through this with them and facilitating it with them, where it completely turns it around. And it also has some people in the department realizing this isnt the department for them. One of the reasons they were struggling and cranky all the time or having issues and stuff was because they just werent happy there. It wasnt working for them, it wasnt mapping to their personal brand and their desires. So they left. Thats okay, its okay that people leave. So did that help? Does that answer your question?Yeah, I was thinking about doing something where I was going to send out a very confidential survey, and have my staff tell me back the things they like about my leadership style and areas that they want me to improve on. Completely anonymous, confidential. I wouldnt know where it came from in any way, shape or form. Do you think thats affected in showing them Im willing to change?Yeah, absolutely. It has to start with you and Im glad you said that. Because that is something that I do actually mention in the longer workshops that I give. Yeah, a lot of highly effective managers are like, Im working on myself. Im working on some stuff. Im working on empowering myself and bolst ering my personal brand not out of ego but to be a better boss, to be a better co-worker, and I would like some honest feedback. Normally they will do it anonymously, thats the safest route to go because that way people can be really honest with you. Ive had it where the boss has said in a department meeting like a Monday morning all staff meeting and said, Go ahead and slip your answers under my door versus email because I dont need know where it came from. So going that route and Ill tell you what, employees respect the heck out of it. Theyre like, Wow, that is really cool that my boss is willing to do that. Theres no downside. Thats the thing. Thats one of the reasons why the companies hire me to come in because once they look at it, they realize Im not there to talk about how to develop your own personal brand for becoming a self-employed individual. Its about how to be an effective employee, because the more self awareness you have the more effective youre going to to be. There s no downside, employers love it. Theyre like, Yeah, we want you to come in, talk to as many of our employees as you can. I mean, theres no downside to having people with more self awareness, right?Yeah. Thank you.Sure. Thank you.Thank you ladies and gentlemen.It seems like we Im sorry, it seems like we may have time for one more question, if you have one handy there.Okay, ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, to ask a question on the phone lines, please press the one followed by the four.And now we do have some additional question here. So Ill jump right in real quick. Lisa, one on our side. Is it possible to continue to develop your personal brand moving from one company culture to another, say a conservative organization to a start-up, for instance?Yeah, but remember early on, or not early on, but even towards the end of the webinar, Id said you cant constantly change your personal brand to suit the employer brand or the employer boss brand. It has to be who you are. You go with y ou no matter where you go. You can run but you cant hide. Youre always there. Who are you? What do you want? It helps give you clarity on when you think about your personal brand, it makes you think more about yourself, it makes you think more about your desires, it makes you think more about your personal goals, your career goals, the type of boss that you want, the type of work environment that you want. If you tend to me a little bit more of a casual person, not necessarily in your work environment but youre more of a casual person. Youre not into a kind of uptight work corporate culture then working at a place like Google would probably be more suitable for you than working at a place like IBM. Or it might be that its more suitable, you like a little bit more of a conservative-structured environment that works well with your personal brand. So therefore going to a start-up might not even work if they are going to pay you more. I know people who are so highly tuned into their per sonal brand that they have turned down significant job offers paying 25% to 30% more than theyre making now with a title increase like a director to a VP and theyve turned it down because the corporate culture and/or the department and/or the person that they would then be working for didnt work for them and they eventually they would have to leave. They knew eventually that they would end up leaving.Excellent. Well, thanks for that, Lisa. Very helpful.Yeah, no problem.Well, I think what we would do at this point where were getting close to running out of time and to respect everyones time on the call today that Id like to conclude the webinar now and Lisa, thank you for sharing your expertise today. So this will officially conclude the webinar for this afternoon. A recording of this event as well as the presentation materials will be available shortly on our hiring site hiring.monster.com. Simply look under the Resource Center tab. And thanks again for joining us and please join u s again on June 12th for Experience Engineering Designing The Employee Experience. Thank you and have a great day.

Elon Musks 3-step first principles thinking How to solve difficult problems like a genius

Elon Musks 3-step first principles thinking How to solve difficult harte nusss like a geniusElon Musks 3-step first principles thinking How to solve difficult problems like a geniusBy the age of 46 years old, Elon Musk has innovated and built three revolutionary multibillion-dollar companies in completely different fields- Paypal(Financial Services), Tesla Motors (Automotive) and SpaceX (Aerospace).This list doesnt even include Solar City (Energy), which he helped build and acquired for $2.6 Billion recently.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moraAt first glance, its easy to link his rapid success, ability to solve unsolvable problems and genius level creativity to his incredible work ethic.Musk himself stated that he worked approximately 100 hours a week for over 15 years and recently scaled down to 85 hours. Rumour also has it that he doesnt even take lunch breaks, multitaskingbetwe en eating, meetings and responding to emails all at the saatkorn time.No doubt work ethic plays an important role in unlocking your inner creative genius and becoming the best at what you do- but theres more to this- there are extremely hard-working people who still make little progress in life and die before sharing their best work with the world.What then is this missing link for innovative creativity and accelerated success?Just like Musk, some of the fruchtwein brilliant minds of all-time- Aristotle, Euclid, Thomas Edison, Feynman and Nikola Tesla- use this missing link for accelerated learning, solving difficult problems and creating great work in their lifetime.This missing link has little to do with how hard they work. It has everything to do with how theythink.Lets talk about how you can quickly use this genius problem-solving method.First Principles ThinkingDuring a one on one interview with TED Curator, Chris Anderson, Musk reveals this missing link which he attributes to his genius level creativity and success. Its called reasoning from First Principles.MuskWell, I do think theres a good framework for thinking. It is physics. You know, the sort of first principles reasoning. Generally, I think there are - what I mean by that is, boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy.Through most of our life, we get through life by reasoning by analogy, which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations.In laymans terms, first principles thinking is basically the practice of actively questioning every assumption you think youknowabout a given problem or scenario- and then creating new knowledge and solutions from scratch. Almost like a newborn baby.On the flip side, reasoning by analogy is building knowledge and solving problems based on prior assumptions, beliefs and widely held best practices approved by the majority of people.Essentially, first principles thinking will he lp you develop a unique worldview to innovate and solve difficult problems in a way that nobody else can even fathom.Heres how you can quickly use this in 3 simple steps recommended by Elon Musk himself.STEP 1 Identify and define your current assumptionsIf I had an hour to solve a problem, Id spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. Albert EinsteinHere are some examples from everyday life in business, health and craft.Growing my business will cost a lot of money.I have to struggle and starve to become a successful akrobat.I just cant find enough time to workout and reach my weight loss goals.When next youre faced with a familiar problem or challenge, simply write down your current assumptions about them. (Note You can stop here and write these down now)STEP 2 Breakdown the problem into its fundamental principles.It is important to view knowledge as sort of semantic tree. Make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is bedrngnishing for them to hang on to. 2 Elon MuskThese fundamental principles are basically the most basic truths or elements of anything.The best way to uncover these truths is to ask powerful questions that uncover these ingenious gems.Heres a quick example from Elon Musk during an interview with Kevin Rose on how this works.Somebody could say, Battery packs are really expensive and thats just the way they will always be Historically, it has cost $600 per kilowatt hour. Its not going to be much better than that in the future.With first principles, you say, What are the material constituents of the batteries? What is the stock market value of the material constituents?Its got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, some polymers for separation and a seal can. Break that down on a material basis and say, If we bought that on the London Metal Exchange what would each of those things cost?Its like $80 per kilowatt hour. So cle arly you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell and you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than anyone realizes.This is classic first principles thinking in action.Instead of following the socially accepted beliefs that battery packs were expensive, Musk challenges these beliefs by asking powerful questions that uncover the basic truths or elements i.e. carbon, nickel, aluminium.Then, he creates ingenious innovative solutions literally from scratch.STEP 3 Create new solutions from scratchThe person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.- Mortimer AdlerOnce youve identified and broken down your problems or assumptions into their most basic truths, you can begin to create new insightful solutions from scratch. 4Here are three simple everyday examples of how this works (Step 1 to Step 3).Assumption Growing my business will cost too much moneyFirst prin ciples thinkingWhat do you need to grow a profitable business? I need to sell products or services to more customers.Does it have to cost a lot of money to sell to new customers? Not necessarily, but ill probably need access to these new customers inexpensively.Who has this access and how you can create a win-win deal? I guess I could partner with other businesses that serve the same customer and split the profits 5050. Interesting.Assumption I just cant find enough time to workout and reach my weight loss goals.First principles thinkingWhat do you really need to reach your weight loss goal? I need to exercise more, preferably 5 days a week for an hour each time. Could you still lose weight exercising less frequently, if so how? Possibly, I could try 15 minute workouts, 3 days a week. These could be quick high-intensity full body workouts that will speed up my fat loss in less time.Assumption I have to struggle and starve to become a successful artistFirst principles thinkingWhat do you really need to create great work and make a good living as an artist? I would need a reasonably sized audience that will appreciate and buy my artwork.What do you need to reach a larger audience? I probably need to do some marketing, but I dont like self-promoting so Id rather not do this.Ok, is there any way for you to promote your work without being sleazy? Yes, if the focus of selling my artwork is meaningful with a purpose of serving the audience- then I could make more money to make more art, so I can serve more people. InterestingThink DifferentUsually, when were faced with complex problems, we default to thinking like everybody else. First principles thinking is a powerful way to help you break out of this herd mentality, think outside the box and innovate completely brand new solutions to familiar problems.By identifying your current assumptions, breaking these down into their basic truths and creating solutions from scratch- you can uncover these ingenious solutions to complex problems and make unique contributions in any field.This article first appeared on Mayo Oshin.Mayo Oshin writes at MayoOshin.Com, where he shares the best practical ideas based on proven science and the habits of highly successful people for stress-free productivity and improved mental performance. To get these strategies to stop procrastinating, get more things by doing less and improve your focus, join his free weekly newsletter.FOOTNOTESIn thisinterview, Musk talks about this 100 hour work week. This is hisinterviewon TED about first principles thinking.Musk gave this answer to a question from a reader asking him how he learns so fast.(source)Musksinterviewwith Kevin Rose on first principles thinking and battery analogy.This is not always easy. In fact, sometimes it can be a tough mental workout to use first principles thinking simply because its much easier to default back to what you already know. Because of our prior assumptions and limiting beliefs, we have a tendenc y to only think of a very limited range of creative uses or solutions to any given problem. This is more formally known as functional fixedness.Dr.Tony McCaffery, Cognitive Psychologist and Innovation expert, has developed a simple method that can help us overcome this tendency and uncover creative solutions. You can read about his general parts techniquehere.Thanks to peter atrenaissance man journalfor some inspiring insights on first principles thinking.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds10 lessons from Benjamin Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people

5 Smart Ways to Make Recruiters Like You amp; Your Resume (Infographic)

5 Smart Ways to Make Recruiters Like You amp Your Resume (Infographic) 5 Smart Ways to Make Recruiters Like You amp Your Resume (Infographic) The latest advice is on resumes and comes from AvidCareerist.com and FreeResumeBuilder.org. The two sites have teamed up to create the infographic 5 Smart Ways to Make Recruiters Like You Your Resume, which gives job seekers tips to do just that.So, how do you get recruiters to not only like you, but your resume too?1. Include Job-Relevant Experience in Your ResumeDid you know that although ATSs scan resumes they often skip over cover letters? And that 50 percent of people who look at your application ignore your cover letter?For these reasons, the infographic advises job seekers to include experience-related keywords so theyre not ignored.2. Tell the TruthMake sure your resume contains accurate information because 98 percent of employers conduct reference and/or hintergrund checks to verify resume accuracy.Employers verify former employees, employment dates, job titles/responsibilities and degrees, certifications and licenses, to name a few.3. Show vs. TellThe infographic suggests job seekers show readers what they can do with accomplishment statements by stating the facts, rather than using adjectives to tell them about the job seeker, which are opinions.When creating statements, job seekers should describe signature accomplishments and focus on in-demand skills.4. Follow InstructionsAlways send your resume in the format a recruiter specifies, whether .doc or .pdf. If nothing is specified, use .doc.Recruiters prefer MS Word over PDF attachments.5. Address Resume and Cover Letter to the Right PersonAlways double check cover letter addressee and the email address before pressing send.Be sure to update addressees name if you re-use cover letters.