Your Personal Brand

Change confronts our identity and personal branding. It is particularly in times of change and adversity that we begin to realize that our personal brand is actually tied to our values! Recently I read William Bridges’ Managing Transitions. His book speaks to three phases of change: 1) letting go, 2) transition and realignment, and 3) new beginning and renewed energy. Even though we know that change can be good and a necessary part of living, it doesn’t mean we have to like it. We can become too comfortable in our current mode. Therefore, letting go and being in transition are challenging because these phases force us to think about who we are, what we are, who we intend to be.

I suffered an identity crisis when I down-shifted my career from a fast-paced career trajectory to a part-time internal position in a global firm. This turned out to be political suicide. The nebulous leadership position I had assumed as a part-time employee quickly became insignificant in the scheme of things as the position wasn’t valued. “The position was eliminated,” were the words I heard two years later. I was not completely surprised because when I went to a part-time status, I was written off and became of no value to executive management. So, what was really eliminated? Me. I was eliminated. I went from being a highly respected, knowledgeable and sought-after professional in my field to being cast aside. Even understanding the consequences of my decision to take the part time position, I was left with deep questions about who I was and a need to rebuild my personal brand.

Have you ever been laid off? Unless you are in the top echelon of leadership in an organization who manages to walk away with a sweet package and PR that makes you sound like you’ve ascended to saint-hood, losing a job is, (and you’ll be able to relate to this), well, very uncomfortable. It is demoralizing, even if it might later look like the best thing to have happened! And the longer you have been with a particular job, corporation or industry, the more your personal brand is tied to that very existence. This kind of transition means looking at your personal brand.
What do you do when you have to abruptly let go? Allow yourself the luxury of being in the moment and experience those wounds. Feelings are ok and a sense of being sad along with experiencing grief for your loss is normal. However, also be emotionally intelligent. Drive towards an attitude that will help you to realize your full potential in the new situation that you will design for yourself and probably love even more than the old one! Daniel Goleman defines emotional intelligence as having self-awareness, altruism, personal motivation, empathy, self-management, and having the ability to love and be loved. It has nothing to do with our job or our title or our particular professional skills or any label. Those are superficial identities. Change is constant, but our values are constant too, and will show up and define us in every challenge. At the core of your personal brand will be much more than your job litany, but your full capacity as a person.

Now, you might be asking about how you get through the healing part and into the space of acceptance, transition and realignment? How do you harness emotional intelligence? Let’s talk about recovery. The sign of a good actor is actually not in the perfection of a performance but actually in the ability to recover from a mistake or a slip-up without the audience knowing. For anyone who watches Dancing with the Stars this past season, Karina and Ralph were applauded by the judges for recovering from a terrible fall – getting back in sync and continuing the dance with poise and grace. In sports, athletes are told to compose themselves and hide fear, error or weakness from the opponents. Goals are scored against goalies, hits are made on pitchers, interceptions happen from a quarterback’s throw, teleprompters don’t work, people forget their line, dancers trip, or positions become scarce. In all, self-awareness and motivation, as components of emotional intelligence, are critical in recovery. In all examples above, people have been trained to “bounce back” and not crumble. It takes maturity and wisdom. It might take some help from a teammate, a colleague, a friend, family, a class, or even a therapist. Reclaiming our values and affirming our total identity deepens our roots. And, it is exactly with this values-based identity that we begin with a new sense of purpose and energy and enhance our personal brand.

LinkedIn Supports E-Learning

LinkedIn.com is an online database of members to connect professionally with one another and through each other. Similar to facebook in a sense that it is a repository for individual information and a portal to stay in touch with people whom you select and invite and with whom you mutually agree to be "linked in", its basic premise is to connect with on a professional and expertise level. As of September 2010, there are 80 million members of LinkedIn from all over the world (LinkedIn, Frequently Asked Questions, 2008). It is a site that is designed to capture your credentials, job experiences and qualifications, of value for people to learn more about you and important for job searches in today's market. Not only can prospective employers find you, but you can conduct research on interesting positions, by viewing people's profiles who are in the same field or subject matter experts, or find out more details about companies that interest you from the Company Pages. Through connections, you can go one step further by asking to be introduced to someone of interest and having an informational discussion with that contact. It is completely acceptable to reach out to a stranger through a common friend for the purpose of career progression! As a business getting off the ground, linkedin can be a platform for marketing, locating business partners, identifying service providers, and post employment opportunities. Finally, it is a place where people can "gain new insights from discussions with likeminded professionals in private group settings" (LinkedIn.com, About Us, 2008).

Connectivity and networking are important elements today in e-learning as team-based projects rival individual efforts (Robbins & Judge, 2011). We see this in the advent of other e-tools that facilitate partnership and group learning, such as wikis, skype, and (the dreaded) googledocs. But the networking components are merely conduits. Let's examine how LinkedIn facilitates additional learning online. Through the polling feature, members can obtain valuable data. One member used the poll to gather ideas for a webinar and then marketed the webinar on LinkedIn to connect with the members who worked in her industry or were interested in the topics (LinkedIn, Success Stories, 2008). Post a question in the Answers section of the website and your connections and people within the entire community respond. Theoretical, practical, subjective, objective queries are free-game. Find experts who are hosting a webinar or keynoting a conference of interest and contact them to gain their insights or subscribe to their training or tools. With the discussion forums, people can help worthy causes. After visiting India, one woman wanted to help the children there. She started a discussion on LinkedIn which resulted in the creation of a "wish list" on Amazon.com, from which LinkedIn members purchased books for the children in India (LinkedIn, Success Stories, 2008).

I am personally testing the Answers section of LinkedIn for a school paper on tenure. In addition to compiling research, I have posed the following question to some of my connections. "Why was tenure originally established at the elementary and secondary school levels? I can appreciate that tenure at higher levels of education give professors intellectual freedom to explore/research topics that may not always be popular, but when and why did tenure become firmly entrenched in Americas early years of education?" I will blog further about the result. I am also working with a non-profit organization, womenthrive.org, and I noticed that they do not have a "group discussion" going on LinkedIn, unlike many of their counterparts. So, I suggested that they increase their band-width on this website, particularly now as they are working on Capitol Hill to have IVAWA (International Violence Against Women Act) passed and they need to get their message distributed and people writing to their Senators. They use Facebook and Twitter, but they are not as active on LinkedIn. Being a professional community, support coming from a business perspective through the LinkedIn network will surely help the cause.

To learn more about LinkedIn, watch the quick video: http://press.linkedin.com/about.


PS. Within 4 days of my question on LinkedIn, I had 4 answers, 2 of them with valuable information and 1 of them with a link to a useful article.

Womenomics

Does it make good business sense to have women in the executive rank and file of business? Do we need more women in politics? You bet! Read in this link about why, from the authors of the book, Womenomics.

Not to mention that I found it very interesting to learn that the kids in our 4th and 5th grades are running for student office and the majority of the candidates AND their campaign managers are... guess, what... girls! Where are all the boys? Fearful of giving the 1-minute mandatory speech, I hear. What does that say to all of us? Certainly, women are and will be a good part of the high-potential talent.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Story?id=7721081&page=1#

New York Times writes about women returning to work

See the following newsflash from mommytrackd.com - the link provides a synopsis of and link to the New York Times recent article about the recession's impact on women who "opted out". http://www.mommytrackd.com/newsdesk_women_in_workforce_during_recession

My two cents: yes, more women are brushing off their resumes and engaging with the workforce, but I would like to see the statistics if any more of these women are getting jobs than the women who tried to re-enter the workforce a few years ago, after taking time off amounting to over 3 years. Silvia Ann Hewlett (economist, author and founder of the Center for Work-Life Policy) has extensive research that over 90% of highly qualified women want to come back to work (let alone the ones these days that need to), but only 74% actually land a position and only 40% feel satisfied with that match. Often, the ones who are offered positions take marked pay cuts or less challenging jobs in order to jump on the “opportunity” and merely re-establish a foothold. Rather than being viewed as a source of expertise, knowledge, skills and accomplishment, they often face having to rebuild their career from a different starting point than where it was when they left to have a family.

It would be beneficial to hire back many of these women, for the economy and for diversity of skillsets. It makes good business sense too. Putting aside the fact that there are better returns on investment when there are senior women represented in a firm, in the United States alone, women between the ages of 45-64 make up the largest demographic: close to 40 million people. These women – while still rearing children and probably responsible for the majority of elderly care – are an independent frame of reference, secure and confident, and seem poised to assert themselves, stand up for their needs and advocate for the person they want to become. Women in their 40s and 50s have the opportunity again to fulfill their professional aspirations and they can devote a great deal of energy to their employer. They can be fiercely loyal, especially in the face of recessionary lessons, and they are now wise from a new perspective of having left the workforce for a period and running a household - from projects to education, finances, procurement. We can multi-task better and we can be highly organized and uber-efficient.

I'd like to see more women returning to the workforce and getting the positions that complement their skillsets. I am still skeptical that this is really happening but hopeful that it will. It should!