Before getting into today’s coaching tip, a quick shout out to the women from NAVAIR (Naval Air Systems Command) who I met earlier this week in Jacksonville, Florida.  You were all terrific – as were the brave guys who joined us at the Women Moving Forward Conference.

The other day I was shopping with a friend when someone handed us a flyer announcing a nearby store was going out of business.  The 50% off part got our attention.  As it turned out the store was just a few feet from where we were so we wandered in, searching for some bargain we couldn’t live without.  Separately, we perused the store then arrived at the front door at the same time with no bargains in hand.  “Kind of an odd assortment of items,” I remarked.  To which my friend replied, “Now that’s a store in search of an identity.”  It was the perfect way to describe the eclectic mix of prom and evening dresses, children’s clothing, costume jewelry, shoes, giftware, and other items.  Personally, I liked and even tried on the feather wings that looked like something out of the movie Michael, with John Travolta, but I couldn’t figure out where I’d where them.  Definitely not at my keynote addresses. 

But her comment did make me think about the importance of creating a congruent identity or personal brand if you want people to know what you stand for.  You may be good at many things, but what do you want people to remember about you?  Certainly not that you are a Jill of all Trades but Master of None.  If you had to describe in 25 words or less what makes you unique and when people should think about you and your services, could you do it?  For years I said I wanted to be known for providing “compassionate, competent, courageous, and creative coaching and consultation.” 

I recall once when I was on a radio show and a woman who operated a daycare center called and asked how she might bring in more business.  I asked her what made her different than all of the other daycare centers in her community — and she couldn’t answer.  As I told her, once you have the answer to that question, you can create your unique brand and market the heck out of it.

Whether you work for yourself or someone else, you need a personal brand.  So your assignment is to create that 25 words or less statement that lets the world know who you are and what you stand for.  I dare you to post it here.  I’ll even send a complimentary copy of the just released paperback version of Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office to the first 5 people who do.

TAGS: personal branding

Come listen in on my conversation with Pete Kistler, the founder of Brand-Yourself.com, who was named one of Entrepreneur magazine’s Top 5 College Entrepreneur of 2009. He joins me to talk about personal branding as it relates to college students and young professionals.

In this podcast, we define personal branding, talk about Pete’s own personal branding process and explain why students and young professionals need to think about your personal brand — especially the image you’re projecting online.

For more on this topic, here are two great new resources that can help you create and enhance all aspects of your personal brand:

PricewaterhouseCoopers Personal Brand Week – a terrific collection of downloadable worksheets to help you create an elevator pitch, express your passion, build a network, promote yourself online and more. PwC has also collected free personal branding advice on Twitter with the hashtag #pwcpbw.

Student Branding Blog – a new resource expressly designed to help college students with personal branding. This site was created by Dan Schawbel, who also launched the Personal Branding Blog.

Click here to listen to this week’s podcast.

How have you approached personal branding in your career? As always, I welcome your comments below!

TAGS: career advice, Generation Y, personal branding

   In the past, we’ve talked about the importance of personal branding — creating an image and reputation of which you are proud and for which you are known.  As we’ve witnessed in the past few weeks, the Toyoya brand has taken a hit due to mechanical problems.  And now Congress is launching an investigation — one that I personally think is a waste of time and money.  Our legislators can’t get their own acts together to pass a health care bill (or much of anything else for that matter), but they’re eager to go after and, most likely, punish a well-respected brand. 

But I diverge.  I don’t know if you’ve seen Toyota’s latest commercial — the one in which they say they realize they’ve let consumers down and are taking action to correct to their mistakes.  Kudos to Toyota — the commercial hits just the right tone, admits its failures, and without groveling apologizes for not meeting their typically high standards.  The straight-talk elicited a certain degree of sympathy from me.  It’s a good lesson for all of our brands. 

None of us is perfect and we’re bound to make mistakes.  Particularly in a corporate climate where most of us are doing more with less.  The next time this happens to you, think about Toyota and follow these simple principles for getting your brand back on track:

• Own up to what went wrong.  We even saw President Obama do this recently with regard to the attempted Christmas airline bombing.  He said, “In the end, the buck stops with me.”  Human nature often causes people to want to point the finger everywhere except where it belongs.  When you’ve made a mistake, overlooked an important detail, or in some other way erred, say so. 
• Avoid explanations.  The Toyota ad doesn’t attempt to explain what happened, it focuses on the future — and that’s what you should do to.  Rather than explain away mistakes, talk about what you plan to do to correct them and ensure they don’t happen twice. 
• Analyze faulty systems.  To ensure you don’t repeat the mistake, do a thorough analysis of why it happened in the first place.  You can bet the folks at Toyota are doing just that right now. 
• Reiterate your brand values.  If you’re typically known for prompt response time and something fell through the cracks causing it to be late, make it clear that you continue to value quick turn around and that this is what you’ll be striving for in the future.  By saying it out loud you create the scenario for others to actually see the behavior you want them to see and remember.

TAGS: Congress, corporate faux pas, personal branding, Toyota, Toyota commercial

Many thanks to William Arruda, founder of Reach Personal Branding and author of Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand, for interviewing me recently. Our topic was “Getting from College to Career in Tough Times” and here is an overview of the topics we covered:

- Why careers for Gen Y are fundamentally different than previous generations’ careers
- How college students and recent grads can avoid the biggest mistake in job hunting
- What parents can do to help
- What universities can do to help
- Why social media is changing job hunting/career development forever

Download and listen to our conversation.

TAGS: personal branding

As the job market becomes more and more competitive, job seekers need to do everything they can to stand out from their peers. One great way to do this is by building your professional reputation, also known as your “personal brand.”

For advice on creating your personal brand – and using it to help you land a great job – I turned to Dan Schawbel, the leading personal branding expert for Generation Y. Dan is the author of the brand new book, Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success (Kaplan, April 09), as well as the publisher of the Personal Branding Blog and Personal Branding Magazine.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Dan. Here are excerpts of the interview:

Lindsey: How do you define personal branding?

Dan: Personal branding is the process by which we market ourselves to other people.  The process that I’ve developed in my new book, Me 2.0, is “discover, create, communicate and maintain (DCCM).”

The first step in this process is to discover what you’re passionate about and your area of expertise, while establishing goals and forming both a development plan and a personal marketing plan.

The second step is to create marketing materials, which could include a business card, portfolio, website, blog, social network profiles, a podcast, a video resume, as well as traditional documents like a resume and cover letter.

The third step is to become your own personal PR person and communicate your brand to others through speaking engagements, commenting on blogs, writing for magazines, pitching journalists and more.

The final step is to maintain your brand, which consists of online reputation management and keeping your profiles up-to-date and accurate with changes in your career.

Lindsey: You are in your 20s. How have you established yourself as a personal branding expert at such a young age?

Personal branding came naturally to me because I marketed myself extensively through college, including eight internships, seven leadership positions and straight A’s.  Instead of networking with other professionals, I applied and interviewed through job boards and corporate websites, which really forced me to differentiate myself.

I had never termed this to be personal branding until I read Tom Peter’s article in Fast Company magazine.  The second I read his article, I realized that personal branding was my passion and since I was blessed with entrepreneurship genes, and skills that I collected from middle school (graphic design and website development), I was able to execute on my dream and build a brand faster than most.

When I first branded myself, I considered myself a “personal branding spokesman,” because my theories weren’t proven and I was a prolific writer on this topic.  As I started to see results from my brand building, including being recruited for a new social media position at EMC Corporation, and press mentions in BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal, I transitioned my brand to “personal branding expert.”  Instead of being this general with my title, I decided that my audience would be Gen Y, because that niche was wide open and because I felt that the millennial generation required extensive help to prepare them for the real world.  As a millennial myself, it was easy to connect to this generation and thus my personal brand statement (who you are and who you serve) became “the leading personal branding expert for Gen Y.”

My genuine enthusiasm and knowledge in this field has allowed me to break through the clutter and establish myself as a top marketing blogger, magazine publisher, video producer, consultant, speaker and book author.  If I lost everything today, I’d still pursue my passion for personal branding.

Lindsey: Can you share 3 personal branding tips from your book that are most important for Gen Ys graduating from college this spring?

1.  Have a targeted approach to applying for jobs. Most college graduates will furiously apply to hundreds of jobs online, praying that they might get a few interviews and hopefully a job.  Regardless of what the economic situation is, a focused job search will always prevail.  Instead of getting a job that will pay your bills, try your hardest to create your own job at a company that you’d love to work for.  Write down the top five companies that you want to work for and the job description you would like to have.

2.  Conduct a people search, not just a job search. Job boards are fading away and aren’t as useful as they were a decade ago.  Now, everyone is on social networks and can be contacted, without having to go through chains of command.  The best way to navigate the recruitment process is to contact employers directly, instead of applying for a job that might not be available anyway.  Use search engines, including Twitter, Facebook, Technorati and Google to locate employees who work at companies you’re interested in and reach out to them.  By doing this, you’ll appear genuine and have a better chance of getting the job you actually want.

3.  Protect and promote your brand as much as possible. Protecting your personal brand is extremely important because there are other people in the world with your name and if you fail to register your name on social networks and your domain name, someone else will.  Also, you’ll want to command your Google results because employers will be searching for you.  Promoting your brand is required to gain the necessary visibility to be recruited based on your expertise.  By using social media tools to get your name out there, you have a better chance at obtaining a great opportunity.

A version of this post appeared on the Lindsey Pollak Career Blog.

TAGS: Job Search, personal branding

Recently, I heard a tale of a woman whose usual modus operandi was to get things done through fear and intimidation — but every once in a while (perhaps out of guilt?), she’d try to get close to those who reported to her by sharing gruesome details of her personal life. Of course her staff listened with rapt attention to her individual version of “Sex and the City” but still gave her a failing grade when completing her 360 degree feedback evaluation.

What was she thinking?

Clearly, fear and intimidation are not motivational techniques. Bosses who confuse compliance with commitment do so at their own peril. As she learned the hard way, the people who work for her aren’t grass. They have their own interests top of mind and expect leadership from their boss — not wildly alternating behavior.

Admittedly, she’s an extreme case. Most women who share personal information at work aren’t bragging about their conquests. Yet, we are often tempted to discuss personal matters at work. My advice:

Don’t do it!

It is not worth the risk to share intimate details of one’s life with colleagues. Don’t confuse your colleagues with your friends.

Things to avoid:

• Providing play by play updates about how badly your divorce is going, indeed mentioning relationship glitches of any sort
• Discussing your meds, either prescribed or not
• Complaining about the usurious interest rates you pay on the boatload of credit card debt you carry
• Recounting stories about worrisome behavior on the part of your children or pets

Trust me – none of the topics above are useful personal brand building strategies.

The workplace is competitive; some people have no qualms about using what they’ve learned either in the office or after hours in a social setting to advance their career at your expense. Don’t give them the chance — keep your private life private.

TAGS: information, personal brand building, personal branding, politics at work, privacy

A reader asks:

“One of my New Year’s resolutions was to get better at “self-promoting” at work but it is a bit awkward.  Am I the only one that feels this way?”

Many women find it difficult to call attention to their contributions. Why? There are lots of reasons, among them the fact that we are socialized to believe that “bragging” is not appropriate behavior. And it’s tricky – for both men and women, but especially for women. It’s a thin pink line line thing; we’re more accepting of men who make a point to take credit for their contributions than we are of women who do.

Your resolution is timely though – now more than ever before, it’s important to let people know about the value you bring to the company. With the unemployment rate at 7.2% and the unhappy news that the total number of jobs lost in the U.S. last year climbed to over 2.5 million, it’s clearly that a difficult time. The reality is, however, that those who keep their heads down, deliver excellent work and hope that others notice fall behind even in good times.

So you do have to get comfortable with communicating about your contributions.

How?

• I believe that the best way is to think differently about the issue. Rather than thinking about it as bragging, think about it as relating a story with your role woven into the narrative. For example, your objective is tell others the story about how your team pulled together to deliver the project on time for the client despite challenges that included (include specific details and actions you took to manage them). Note that the focus is on the business story – the client got what it needed on time. Yet, your role as Best Supporting Leader is an integral part of the story. By re-framing the chore of self promotion into a business communication, you will find it easier to do.

• Write out your stories, even if you plan to tell them verbally. The discipline will help you to balance your contribution with the rest of the story.

• Plan strategically to be sure that the right people learn about contributions you’ve made.

• Always have a Reader’s Digest version of your most important or latest story ready in case you meet someone senior at the elevator who asks you what has been keeping you busy.

Walt Whitman said, “If you done it, it ain’t bragging.”  True, but Walt didn’t have to walk the thin pink line.

TAGS: bragging, Communication Skills, personal branding, self-promotion

I don’t want to be considered good — I want to be exceptional.  There are a lot of good people out there but far fewer exceptional ones.  Exceptional stands out.  Exceptional is rewarded.  And exceptional is personally fulfilling.  To successfully traverse The Thin Pink Line you should be thinking about how to shift from good to exceptional too.  Do these three things consistently and I guarantee you can make exceptional part of your professional brand.

• Continually engage in professional and personal growth opportunities.  These can range from simply reading a professional journal each and every month to getting your MBA.  When you stop learning and growing you move backward to “good.”  I challenge you to consciously seek these opportunities not annually, not once a quarter but every week (if not every day). 
• Separate the forest from the trees.  Good performers focus on the task at hand and do their jobs well.  Exceptional performers connect the dots between the assigned task and ways to deliver results that go beyond expectations.  They’re constantly asking questions such as how can we do this more efficiently?  What would better serve our  clients?  How can we be more cost effective?  What are the trends in our business that we need to stay ahead of?  Be creative.  Take risks.  Don’t be complacent.
• Work on your LQ (likeability quotient).  Once you’re the acknowledged expert in your field it’s time to be that person others seek out, the one they want to work with and maybe even hang out with.  For some people it means going outside of your comfort zone and engaging in more affiliative behaviors.  For others its about letting go of your need to talk and shift to doing more listening (and really hearing what others are saying).  Might that be a stretch?  Sure.  But we’re talking about exceptional here, not just good. 

TAGS: becoming exceptional, Likeability, personal branding, personal growth

A former client, now a friend and colleague, told me a story the other day that made my day. The mother of three small boys, she gives generously of her time to volunteer at the boys’ schools as a matter of course. She runs a program to orient parents whose children are entering kindergarten and was recently asked (okay, begged) by one of her sons to be the den mother for his Cub Scout den. Despite her already full schedule, she wanted to say “yes” because her older son has had a great experience with scouting and she wanted her younger son to have that same experience. . She decided she could take that on too but only her own terms.

What did she do? (more…)

TAGS: coping skills, personal branding, transferring skills, women volunteering, women's challenges

A friend was talking to me yesterday about reviewing resumes for a vacancy in her company.  She said the best resume to come across her desk was from someone by the name of “Precious.”  Apparently, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t bring herself to hire someone called “Precious.”  The name certainly doesn’t instill confidence.  She said she couldn’t imagine calling the woman’s name, “Precious, would you come in here please.”

When it comes to names, there is something to be said for erring on the side of conservative.  Names are our own personal brands.  Here are some coaching tips to consider:

• When you name your child, think ahead 20 years and ask yourself if you could picture him or her being called by this name in a Board meeting or when running for public office. 
• Don’t get too creative in spelling.  If the child is going to have to explain it every time he or she is called on, the name probably too fussy.
• Consider whether the name will cause the child to be ridiculed throughout his or her lifetime.
• If you already have a name that doesn’t reprepsent your brand well, consider changing it, going by your first two initials, or going by your middle name. 

TAGS: Children's names, names, personal branding