Raise Your Visibility & Value: What Influences a Reputation?

Your reputation is built on a never ending series of choices that you make, every minute of every day. And in today’s transparent and frenetic organizations, your choices are seen by more of your colleagues, and faster, than ever before.

Today’s ever-changing organizations demand that you be in charge of your reputation. Every Facebook post you choose to generate, sound bite you choose to create, and decision you choose to make will potentially be seen or heard by thousands of colleagues in your organization and industry. Your choices are your reputation. In my work with my clients and during my career, I have observed that reputations are influenced by four areas – articulation, attitude, behavior, and production.

More about each influence coming soon.

Raise Your Visibility & Value: Can I Choose My Reputation or Is It Chosen for Me?

There are certainly things you cannot choose. You can’t choose not to get multiple sclerosis. You can’t choose to win a million dollars in a lottery. You can’t choose someone to love you. However, if you were to list all of the experiences in your life and weigh each of them equally, you would find over 98% of your experiences result from a choice you made.

At first, you probably don’t feel that 98% of your activities were the result of a choice. This is because you do not realize how many choices you make every day, but by the time you have left your home each morning, you are a choice-making machine.

You make so many choices, you may not even realize that some things that you did today were a choice. Or you may believe that a decision you made today was not up to you. Many of my clients find themselves in a state commonly called “victim mode.” They believe that the outcome to a situation in which they had a voice was not up to them. When you are in “victim mode,” you abdicate your ability to make a choice. Whatever the reason, you believe that you did not have a choice when, in fact, you did.

So what, then, influences a reputation?

Raise Your Visibility & Value: The Nexus of Sharing and Opinion

The nexus of the growth in the ways that you can share information about yourself and the number of opinions that can be developed about you is exploding. While you are working your life away in Dubuque, Iowa, a colleague from another city is reading a blog you wrote. While you are snoring away in Jakarta, India, someone in another time zone is taking a peek at your Facebook page. While you’re stuck in another late night meeting in Paris, France, wondering, “What am I doing here?” a recruiter is starting his day by reading your LinkedIn profile.

Unless you are Superman or Superwoman, you cannot be everywhere at once. In your absence, at some point during the day, someone is thinking and speaking about you. Perhaps you finished a presentation and a few of your colleagues stayed behind to chat about next steps. In the midst of that conversation, comments about you surfaced. Perhaps a group of senior executives is discussing candidates to fill a key vacancy in the organization and you are one of those candidates. Perhaps you are on your way to get a cup of coffee and you hear colleagues speaking about you in a conference room. This “echo” of you that exists in the thoughts and words of your colleagues is your reputation.

You may be wondering, “Can I choose my reputation or is my reputation chosen for me by others?” More on that soon.

Raise Your Visibility & Value: The Impact of Change on Reputation

Imagine a situation where you are attempting to be a “work-in-progress” in an environment that is always changing. It’s like learning to play golf in the midst of a hurricane. Learning to play golf is hard, even on a beautiful day. Surviving a hurricane is hard, even with tremendous preparation. Mesh golf lessons (always being in “beta”) and a hurricane (your fast-changing environment) together and chaos will reign.

At the same time, the proliferation of professional transparency is creating new ways for individuals to develop an opinion about you. You can now share information about yourself in endless ways (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogging), most of which do not even require you to be physically present. Individuals that you have never met, and may never meet, can find information about you faster than the time it took you to read this sentence.

Additionally, the nexus of the growth in the ways that you can share information about yourself and the number of opinions that can be developed about you is exploding. More about that to come!

Raise Your Visibility & Value: What is New About Managing Your Reputation?

While the importance of a good reputation is not new, the environment in which you are working to build a good reputation is. Twenty years ago, your reputation as a business professional was confined to the experiences of individuals with whom you interacted within your organization or shared experiences with at industry meetings. The relationships with your colleagues were as stable as your work environment – these were the same folks you had been working with or had known for years. Perhaps your reputation expanded outside of your cloistered circle of colleagues when you spoke at national industry events or published an article or research paper. Beyond that, few individuals knew who you were, let alone had an opinion about your reputation.

Today, chaos and change rule the day. The frequency and pace of change defines the “new normal” in corporations around the globe. Your ability to build strong relationships over time is becoming harder. The individuals with whom you worked yesterday are gone today. Lines of responsibility are blurring. The number of new people with whom you come in contact both physically and virtually is growing weekly.

At the same time, you are changing faster than ever. In their book, The Start-Up of You, authors Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha suggest that you need to always be in “beta” mode in order to survive and succeed in today’s fast-paced and frenetic corporate environments. They encourage you to “think of yourself as a work-in-progress” and “invest in yourself every single day.” These never-ending and fast-paced changes define the professional environments you find yourself in today. However, always being in “beta” creates its own set of challenges. Recurring ways in which you change in the midst of fast-changing environments can create risk to your reputation.

Raise Your Visibility & Value: Some Tips for Your Introduction

There are millions of ways to introduce yourself and millions of times you will do so. We introduce ourselves so often that we undervalue how important an energetic and uplifting introduction can be. Let’s face it, we have become bored introducing ourselves.

Introducing yourself is the first visibility accelerator as it is the degree to which you introduce yourself to new colleagues and make a great first impression. You will never get a second chance to make a great first impression, and a great first impression starts with an energetic and uplifting introduction!

Here are three tips I have heard recently that you can integrate into your introduction to ensure it is energetic and uplifting:

  1. Linda Rossetti, author of Women & Transition: Reinventing Work and Life, shared at a networking event the idea of labeling. When you are introducing yourself, you want your introduction to be simple and memorable. One way to do this is to think of a word that best describes you in the marketplace. Words like “builder,” or “change manager,” or “architect,” or “developer.” Whatever your word might be, this is a great way for folks to get a fuller sense of who you are and what you can do for their organization.
  1. Larry Stybel, author of Navigating the Waterfall: Your Guide to Job Search and Career Management, shared at a networking event the idea of not being typical. When you are introducing yourself, you want to stand out from your colleagues. One way to do this is to say, “I am not your typical ______ leader and here’s why.” You can insert your functional area (i.e., Human Resources, Marketing, Bio-pharmacy, Legal) and give 1 – 2 examples of how you are different based on your past work history. Whatever your examples are, this is a great way for folks to get a deeper sense of who you are and how you are different.
  1. A final suggestion that I have developed working with colleagues is to describe yourself through the eyes of others. When you are introducing yourself, you want to talk about your strengths, and it is stronger to do so through the eyes of others. One way to do this is to say, “If you ask others how to describe me, you would hear words like ______, and ______, and ______.” This is also a great way to communicate the reputation you want to have in the marketplace. Whatever your strengths are, this is a great way for you to “toot your horn” and do so from the viewpoint of others.

Raise Your Visibility & Value: Blending Organization and Industry Visibility

Your professional success rests with the degree to which you raise your visibility in your organization and industry. You could spend all of your time being visible within your organization at the expense of industry visibility. However, when you are only visible in your industry, you miss opportunities for professional development and opportunities to build richer relationships with industry colleagues. Over time, you feel less connected, less active, and less relevant. Or, you could spend all of your time being visible within your industry at the expense of organization visibility. However, when you are invisible in your organization, you miss opportunities for advancement, and your voice is not sought out to help shape decisions and strategies. Over time, you feel less recognized, less engaged, and less relevant.

Maximum visibility resides in a combination of organization and industry visibility.

The blend of organization and industry visibility differs from person to person. Whether the time you spend raising your visibility in your organization and industry is divided 50%/50% or 90%/10%, the percentage of time you spend cultivating your organization and industry visibility is significantly less important than cultivating both.

If you are like most of my clients, you spend little time raising your visibility in your organization and industry, and your invisibility comes back to haunt you. One day, you arrive at work to find out that a colleague was promoted to a position you coveted. Another day, you come back from lunch, and your boss unexpectedly stops by, closes your door, and tells you that your position has been eliminated. Many of my clients were invisible in their organization and industry, and never attempted to raise their visibility until their lost their job. If you are waiting until you need to engage with your industry versus engaging now, it is already too late.

Raise Your Visibility & Value: Check Out These Videos!

Raising your visibility and value is about being bold and taking steps that you may not normally take within your organization and industry.

To that end, I recently signed up to have myself video-taped during a presentation in Concord, New Hampshire, where I chatted about a number of leadership experiences and lessons I have learned from my clients.

In my practice of leadership coaching, I strive to be two things. I work to be experiential – learning from my own behaviors and the behaviors of my clients to help everyone with whom I work. Secondly, I work to be action-based. I believe progress comes from taking action and I work hard with my clients to move closer and closer to their goals.

I’d love to invite you to view the three videos that you can find on YouTube by clicking here. The topics you will find are:

Take a moment to subscribe to my YouTube channel so you will be notified when more videos arrive. Start raising your visibility and value today!

Raise Your Visibility & Value: Engage with Industry Associations

In addition to raising your visibility within your organization, it is more important than ever to raise your visibility outside of your organization as well.

Your desire to attend an industry association meeting probably feels like a dream. Your ability to attend industry meetings during your workday, after your workday ends, or on the weekend is compromised in the following ways:

  • Lack of energy. You are so exhausted by the demands of your job that the thought of getting excited and energized for an industry activity, especially after your workday ends, is beyond your capacity. By the time the clock strikes 6:00 pm, you are physically tired and mentally tapped-out.
  • Lack of time. You have too much to do! So many of your colleagues are depending on you to do your job that the idea of taking time away from work seems impossible. How can you find time when your calendar is double- or triple-booked? Your fear of the volume of work waiting for you when you return from being away for the office is a major disincentive.
  • Lack of information. You are so deep into the activities, tasks, and requirements of your job that you are not even aware of industry activities that are going on around you. You are more focused on joining a conference call or getting to a conference room than you are on attending an industry conference. Even if you wanted to attend an industry event, you would not know where to start.
  • Lack of support. Even if you register for an industry meeting or event, your attendance is at risk due to last minute “issues” at your organization. An urgent phone call from your boss politely asking you to alter your plans is more likely than you attending the industry event. Or, your boss believes that engaging with your industry is something you do after the workday ends or on the weekend. If you do attend an industry event, you are distracted due to an onslaught of emails and phone calls from work. While it is nice to be needed by your colleagues, you wonder why your colleagues can’t seem to get along without you, even for just one day.

You are not alone. In today’s fast-paced and fast-changing organizations, it is hard to find the time, energy, and support to attend industry events. However, your professional success rests with the degree to which you raise your visibility in your organization and industry.

 

Leaders Own the Next Step

Many of the leaders with whom I work desire to lead more and do less. I don’t mean to create easier work; I mean to let their team make their own decisions and solve their own problems. By doing so, the leader builds the skill set of their team and find that they can lead more and manage less.

Yet, many leaders find this a hard thing to do. They have often risen through the ranks and one of their key skills has been to problem solve hands-on. “Solving problems takes up too much of my time. How do I let go of something that helped me be successful?” Here are a few key steps you can take to help you move from problem solver to leader.

  • When a team member comes to express concerns regarding another colleague, ask the team member if he has first spoken with the colleague to share the concern.
  • If the team member says yes, the leader should inquire how she can help. The team member may not feel that progress was made and is seeking additional help.
  • If the team member says no, the leader should instruct the team member to share his concern with his colleague first.
  • If the team member is worried about sharing his concern with his colleague, the leader should ask about the concern(s) and do what she can to ensure her team member that having a direct conversation with his colleague is a great place to start.
  • If the team member feels this is a great idea, this is where the leader still owns the next step. The leader needs to let her team member know that she is excited that the team member is going to speak to his colleague and to let her know once the conversation has occurred.
  • By closing this loop, the leader can ensure that the conversation has happened and the conversation has not “died on the vine.”
  • If the team member does not get back to her within 1 – 2 weeks, the leader should follow-up with her team member to assess the status of the conversation and craft next steps, if necessary.

By making sure an important conversation between team members has happened, the leader has helped to solve a problem by building the skill set of her team, while not attempting to solve it herself. That’s great leadership!