Monthly Archive for September, 2008

The Power of Personal Branding

Published
by
Anthony
on September 19, 2008
in Gen-Y, Personal Branding and Thought Provoking
. 2 Comments

personalbranding The Power of Personal Branding

Personal branding is the red-hot buzzword these days and for good reason.  The term, first discussed by Tom Peters in 1997, is a powerful topic whose significance is growing by the day. No one will disagree that in the digital age, the importance of establishing and maintaining a strong personal brand is vital to your future success.

“It’s what you do that makes you who you are and how you project that to others that makes you memorable.”

- Dan Schwabel, Personal Branding Blog

Incase you’re new to the subject, personal branding is treating your personal image as if it where a consumer brand. It’s a process of articulating your unique values and attributes, consistently, across multiple platforms. Being a marketing guy at heart, this concept has intrigued me ever since I first heard it years ago.

In today’s marketplace, a strong personal brand gives you the ability to stand out in a crowd - a competitive advantage. Tomorrow, on the other hand, will be different. The absence of one (or a negative one) could be devastating. Just this month, careerbuilder.com released some eye-opening statistics related to employers using social networking sites to screen potential employees. Here are a few memorable stats directly from their site:

Of those hiring managers who have screened job candidates via social networking profiles, one-third (34 percent) reported they found content that caused them to dismiss the candidate from consideration. Top areas for concern among these hiring managers included:

  • 41% - candidate posted information about them drinking or using drugs
  • 40% - candidate posted provocative or inappropriate photographs or information
  • 29% - candidate had poor communication skills
  • 27% - candidate lied about qualifications

On the other hand, social networking profiles gave some job seekers an edge over the competition. Twenty-four percent of hiring managers who researched job candidates via social networking sites said they found content that helped to solidify their decision to hire the candidate. Top factors that influenced their hiring decision included:

  • 48% - candidate’s background supported their qualifications for the job
  • 43% - candidate had great communication skills
  • 40% - candidate was a good fit for the company’s culture
  • 36% - candidate’s site conveyed a professional image

To see the complete results of the survey, view the full report.

Though I won’t claim to be an expert on the subject, it’s hard to deny that the power of personal branding is only growing by the day. Below are some of my favorite resources in regard to personal branding. Each provides a slightly different outlook and strategy as to creating and promoting your own personal brand. My only advice is, that you don’t wait, start today…

Additional resources on personal branding:personalbranding2 The Power of Personal Branding

- Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Blog
- Reach Communications’ Personal Branding Blog
- Rob Cuesta’s Personal Branding Blog
- Chris Brogan’s Free E-Book on personal branding
- Brand-Yourself.com

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Secrets of Great Leaders

Published
by
Anthony
on September 14, 2008
in Leadership and Thought Provoking
. 0 Comments
lincolnmemorial Secrets of Great Leaders
As Election Day approaches, it’s all too easy to get caught up in the hype that’s conjured up by the media. Each day mistaken words, abridged interviews, and campaign ads attempt to influence the millions of voters that will be heading to the polls. Attempting to cut through the nonsense, one historian urges Americans to consider the leadership strengths of our most successful Presidents when deciding to cast their ballots this November.

“Focusing on the qualities that have made some of our leaders exceptional provides a better perspective on our current candidates than what’s so often reported…” - Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin, a renowned historian and Pulitzer Prize winner, is featured in Parade, this week with her article entitled, “The Secret’s of America’s Great Presidents.” Using the lessons of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt as her guide, she attempts to identify 10 leadership attributes that distinguish truly great presidents.

Though her full article goes into much greater historical detail and is worth the read, the following is a summary of the 10 key attributes that Goodwin identified.

  1. The courage to stay strong. A leader needs the ability to withstand adversity and motivate oneself in the face of frustration.
  2. Self-confidence. Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.
  3. An ability to learn from errors. To lead successfully, you must be willing to acknowledge and learn from your mistakes.
  4. A willingness to change. Conditions change and Presidents must respond.
  5. Emotional intelligence. A President must encourage his closest advisers to give their best and remain loyal.
  6. Self control. Great leaders manage their emotions and remain calm in the midst of trouble.
  7. A popular touch. The best presidents have an intuitive awareness of public sentiment, a sense of when to wait and when to lead.
  8. A moral compass. Only strong leaders have the courage and integrity to follow their convictions when the risk of losing popular support is great.
  9. A capacity to relax. FDR held a White House cocktail hour every evening. Its cardinal rule: Nothing was to be said of politics or war.
  10. A gift for inspiring others. One of the key qualities of a great President is his ability to communicate national goals to the people and to educate and shape public opinion.

Regardless of the Presidential connotation, her aforementioned attributes are clearly applicable to great leaders in any capacity. Each attribute seamlessly builds on the next, yielding a leader poised for success. How does your leadership approach compare to the list?

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Time Management 101: Add an Extra Hour to Your Day

Published
by
Anthony
on September 10, 2008
in Classroom 101 and Personal Development
. 5 Comments

clock21 Time Management 101: Add an Extra Hour to Your DayThink of some of the most successful people you know. Have you ever wondered – “How do they do it all?” I’m not going to lie, I certainly have. The balance of work and personal life is not an easy one, especially when you are trying to do both at an extremely high level. But as I’ve found over the past few months, it is possible to increase your productivity on multiple fronts by making a few minor adjustments to your normal routine. Below are 8 sure-fire tips to boost your productivity and save time in the process.

  1. Get organized. Highly effective people are organized people – period. Organization is the backbone of productivity and the first step to adding hours to your day. This may seem to be “easier said than done,” but you really can do it, if you commit to it. Personally, I have always been a fan of keeping things simple. A former manager once told me that there were four ways to approach a new item or task: 1) Handle it, 2) File it , 3) Delegate it, or 4) Get rid of it. Though this may be over simplified, but limiting your options does force you to take the action and get things off your plate.
  2. Schedule everything. (…and yes, this includes fantasy football) Salary.com conducted a survey revealing that the average employee wastes 1.7 hours of a typical 8.5 hour work day. Sounds crazy, yet we all do it! Wasting valuable time limits your production and costs both you and your employer money in the process. Keep one detailed calendar and refer to it the day before to get prepared.
  3. Streamline your processes. Figuring out a better way to do something you do daily will make life a lot easier. Often technology can make a job easier if you are willing to look for (or pay for) a particular program or application. If it will help your cause, it’s worth it the cost. For starters, try Google or webware.com to get a listing of the most popular applications. (Webware lists the Top 100 applications as chosen by 1.9 million people) Bottom line, streamline your processes and you will finish faster.
  4. Establish routines and stick to them. Your daily tasks will be easier once you figure out smarter ways to do them, and know when to do them. Once you get these new habits into your routine, you’re well on your way becoming more productive!
  5. Multi-task only when it makes sense. Most people think: “If I can do more at once, I will get done faster.” Not always the case. If you’re doing something that doesn’t require much thought, it’s okay to multi-task. On the flipside, when you’re work requires you to truly concentrate, multi-tasking will promote errors and most likely additional headaches in fixing them.
  6. Plan ahead. Now that you’ve established order in your life, you can think clearer, and won’t continue to get blindsided if things get thrown at you on short notice. The moral of the story - Plan ahead, save time.
  7. Learn how to say no. (Really it’s OK!) One of the hardest lessons for me to learn, was knowing when to say no. Being determined, motivated, and career driven has many advantages, but it often leads you to being over extended. Making a good impression doesn’t have to mean accept every project that comes across your desk. Be selective and put forth your best effort on a few projects, rather than a mediocre effort on multiple projects.
  8. And finally, don’t quit. No one ever said that adding an hour to your day was going to be easy. It will be challenging. There will be bad days, but you’ve put together a great plan now challenge yourself and stay committed! By executing the above, I have been able to add what feels like at least an extra hour to each day and you can too! Think about it - What would you do with an extra hour each day? Pretty soon, you’ll be the one everyone wonders about…

Have something to add to the list? Let me know your thoughts, I’m always looking to improve in this area.

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Best Places to Launch a Career

Published
by
Anthony
on September 7, 2008
in Advancement and Gen-Y
. 0 Comments

This month, Business Week published its annual list of the best company’s to launch your career. As expected the “Big 4″ all ranked in the top five, however many companies have made big moves forward by catering to the desires of Gen-Y. Signing bonuses, exceptional training, extended vacation, and quick advancement, have all become common place tactics to lure top notch candidates straight from school. Visit the full article for a complete listing of the top 50 and details on how each company made the cut.

  1. Ernst & Youngbuswk9 08tble33 Best Places to Launch a Career
  2. Deloitte
  3. PricewaterhouseCoopers
  4. Goldman Sachs
  5. KPMG
  6. Marriott International
  7. Google
  8. Lockheed Martin
  9. IBM
  10. J.P. Morgan
  11. Teach For America
  12. U.S. State Dept.
  13. Microsoft
  14. Target
  15. Abbott Labs
  16. NASA
  17. Boston Consulting
  18. General Electric
  19. Anheuser Busch
  20. Norfolk Southern
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How to Build a Successful Team

Published
by
Anthony
on September 4, 2008
in Leadership, Managing and Teamwork
. 1 Comment

people in hand How to Build a Successful Team

As a future leader, you will (if not already) be responsible for creating and sustaining a winning team. In sales, many leaders will live or die by the individuals they hire and the team that the build - Reinforcing that it’s critical to get off on the right foot.

We’ve all been a part of teams that have failed, either because of individuals not pulling their weight or personality clashes that inhibit productivity. The question is: How do you avoid this when you are the architect? Several schools of thought exist, most notably the importance of diversity. Diversity of thought, age, sex, experience and so on… all excellent starting points. One catch is that hiring managers often overlook the intricate working dynamics of their group, instead selecting the person that appears to be the obvious choice on the surface.

Nikos Mourkogiannis, author of Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies, and senior executive adviser to Booz Allen Hamilton, believes that:

“The personal style of team members has the greatest influence on a group’s success. More important than any technical skill a team member brings is the ability to work closely together, free of backbiting and political maneuvering.”

To take this a step further, Mourkogiannis also believes that there are four archetypes of people in companies: magicians, lovers, sovereigns, and warriors. The key being, having the right mix on your team.

  • Magicians - They are the rational yet imaginative souls in your organization. They think a new idea or insight is the only thing that can move the world. In truth, they’re obsessed by ideas. Their answer to feeding the troops is to pull a rabbit out of a hat. These types of people think a mere argument over an idea equals action.
  • Lovers - For them, everything comes down to human relations. They’re pragmatic but emotional. They focus on building the winning coalition. They are obsessed not by ideas but by feelings. They consider agreement an action.
  • Sovereigns - They are the emotional and imaginative types. They focus on the big picture and judge everything on whether it leads to where they want to go. They redefine what people consider is possible. They are obsessed by beliefs. And they consider direction a form of action.
  • Warriors - They are rational and pragmatic. They’re focused on the next battle and can only see clearly what’s directly in front of them. They hold people accountable to systems and the fairness of those systems. They’re obsessed by facts. For them, action is finding the critical factor to get something immediately accomplished.

When building your team, it’s also natural to gravitate towards people whom have similar personality and experiences as yourself.  Fight that urge.  The most effective teams maintain a balance by having a variety of the above types in key roles. Each type is good at doing different things; a mix of magicians, lovers, sovereigns, and warriors will give you the best chance for success. On your next hire, challenge yourself to think differently and analyze your team in this fashion. The results may surprise you…

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