Start Your Year Off Right - Knowing Yourself (Part 3)

Whether your personal strategic plan is focused on helping you grow personally, professionally, or both, it's important to take a good look at yourself before proceeding further. Taking some time to be introspective can help you to determine the what, why, and how of the changes you want to make. 

For instance, one woman I know felt like she was always struggling to balance work and home. Work seemed to always dominate her life. She was convinced there was nothing she could do about this situation. She just had to work and meet her deadlines. When she took some time to examine herself she realized that her assumptions weren't true. Rather, she found that she was driven by accomplishment and recognition. At work, it was easy for her to feel successful. She could complete projects, sign contracts, and acquire new clients. She received bonuses, promotions, and praise frequently. At home, these sort of accolades were harder to come by, and she found that this part of her personality was being swept aside. She rarely felt as if she accomplished anything at home and often didn't feel appreciated or valued. It's no wonder she found herself "stuck" at the office so often. If she wasn't working so hard at the office, no one would appreciate her!

Imagine if we'd just tried to work on strategies to help her balance work and home without that critical insight. Knowing this information gave us the much needed information to develop meaningful strategies that would really work for her. Balancing her time wasn't really the problem at all. Learning how to recreate her home environment made all the difference. We focused not on ways to spend more time at home, but on how to gain a sense of accomplishment and reward in her home life.

But how do you gain that insight? There are many ways to take a look at the inner workings of yourself, but my favorite method is through the use of assessments. There are two that I rely on the most that translate powerfully into personal strategic plans: the Myers Briggs Typology Indicator (MBTI) and the Emotional Quotient Inventory 2.0 (EQ-i 2.0). 

The MBTI is a personality inventory based upon the work of Carl Jung. The tool examines the ways that you utilize perception and judgement to assign you to one of 16 personality types. It's important to know that no type is better than the other - they are all equal. Knowing your personality type helps bring to light your innate preferences and allows you to learn about yourself. Once you understand yourself through this lens, you can grow and develop in ways that help you accomplish your larger goals. 

The second tool, the EQ-i 2.0, measures your emotional intelligence. Essentially, emotional intelligence is a person's ability to recognize and manage her own emotions and the emotions of others through successful interactions. In other words, how well do you understand, empathize, and connect with the people around you? The EQ-i 2.0 evaluates your abilities on five composite scales and fifteen subscales to give you an in-depth look at yourself across a variety of situations. While you may have little control over your level of traditional intelligence, you can work to develop your emotional intelligence. And research has demonstrated that emotional intelligence is a better indicator of success in the workplace than traditional intelligence. All the more reason to work on it!

So which test should you take? It depends. With clients who haven't done a lot of introspection, I like to begin with the MBTI. With the MBTI results the client can focus on how to stretch and balance their personality. EQ is a bit more complex, so I use that with clients who have already spent a good deal of time working on self improvement. For the clients that really want to make growth and change in their lives, I use both. While that may seem like a lot to some individuals, I like as much information to go on as possible. You may try the MBTI now, and the EQ-i 2.0 a little later in the coaching process. Clients rarely find that they didn't gain anything from the assessment process. 

You can take these assessments online, but working with a coach to interpret and apply these results gives you a whole other level of value from those tools. A coach can help you to apply this information to your personal strategic plan to help you live your life with purpose. With introspective work, it's helpful to have someone "outside" to process the results with.

BCG offers these assessments in the context of coaching or just for your own informational purposes. Visit our marketplace to set up your personal assessment today: http://baumanconsultinggroup.com/marketplace.

This post is the third in a series of posts about personal strategic plans.

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Ashley Bauman, M.S., M.B.A., B.C.C. is the president of Bauman Consulting Group in Loveland, Ohio. She provides training, consulting, and coaching to criminal justice and social service professionals.

Personal Branding

Personal branding has become a topic that many individuals in business have come to dread. It’s one additional topic to put someone on the spot and require them to have a flawless answer. It’s the 21stCentury’s “elevator pitch”. But personal branding is nothing to be feared, and spending some time developing and finessing your personal brand can pay dividends in the long run.

For those new to the concept of personal branding, it can be helpful to begin by thinking about corporate brands. What do you think of when you hear Starbucks? What about Nationwide? Target? You might think of colors, of jingles, or of experiences you have had there. Maybe you have an emotional reaction. Whatever it is that comes to mind – your view of the company – is the brand of the company. It’s what you think and feel when that company comes to mind. Company’s work hard to build their brands and to maintain their brand – they want you to feel a certain way and think certain things when their name comes to mind.

Personal branding is no different. Jeff Bezos gave a great definition of personal branding that really put it into perspective. He said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.” The reality is that we all have a brand. Everyone that you interact with has an opinion about you. You may as well take the opportunity to control that brand so that it works for (rather than against) you. 

There are many misconceptions about controlling your brand. It’s not about being narcissistic. It is not all about being on social media. And it’s not something that’s just for millennials or Gen Z. Personal branding can be the key to your career success.

Take a moment to think about your coworkers or a boss you’ve had in your career. What adjectives you would use to describe them? Smart? Lazy? Ambitious? Competent? Imagine you were in the position of selecting a new boss for your office out of your co-workers. Who would you pick and why? Typically, we select people because of their brand (how we feel about them) rather than their paper credentials. When you identified the co-worker that you would select as the new boss, you likely weren’t thinking, “Well, Bill has the highest education level among us, so he’s the perfect fit.” You likely thought something more along the lines of, “Ruby is really fair. She’s a hard worker and gets along with everyone here in the office. We can count on her to be reliable and not play favorites. She’s the best option.” And this is why your personal brand is so important. These are the views that shape your promotions, your opportunities, and your experience in your career. How you are viewed matters.

Now that you’ve agreed that personal branding is important, let’s talk about how to develop your own personal brand. Our five-step process to creating your personal brand will set you on the path to the career that you want. 

1. Define:The first step to crafting your personal brand is to define what it is you want your brand to be. What do you want others to say about you when you are not in the room? Be specific. Start with a list. You likely have manythings that you would like people to say, but it’s unlikely that all of that will come to mind. Narrow the list down to the key items. What are the 4-5 things you’d like to be the priorities? I.0f you are struggling to meet your core list, you can always try assessment tools like the MBTI or the EQ-i 2 to get the ball rolling on seeing what traits you possess. 

2. Gap Analysis:You know what you’d like people to say, but are you really demonstrating these traits? You’d like to be viewed as hard working, but are you really a hard worker all the time? Maybe you’d like to be seen as a great public speaker, but how often do you actually find yourself engaging in public speaking opportunities? Evaluate the key items you’ve listed and determine how you currently measure up. Then think about whether or not people would actually say these items about you. You may find it helpful to ask a friend or trusted colleague to list five things they think of when they think of you. See how closely their list matches with yours.

3.  Vision:Now you have a good sense of where you currently are and where you’d like your brand to go in the future. It’s time to craft a vision. How will you create this personal brand? If you want to be seen as outgoing, what opportunities do you have to demonstrate that to others? You’d like to be seen as an expert, how do you put yourself in that position? People will only describe you in ways that they see you acting. So if you want to be viewed as hard working, people need to seeyou working hard! If you’d like to be viewed as a leader, you’d better be leading where people can see it! This isn’t about being a bragger or boasting about yourself. It’s about ensuring that the traits you want identified can actually be seen. If you are only funny when relaxing with your close friends, no one else but your close friends will know that you are funny! If you don’t speak up in meetings, no one but you knows that you have great ideas! Develop your plan so that you know how you will show others the great traits you have to demonstrate.

4.  Create:It is time to put your plan in action. View your work and personal life through the lens of your brand. Is your plan making a difference? Are people beginning to describe you in the ways that you could like them to? Maybe you need to adjust your plan. Or maybe the plan you created is working perfectly. The key is to make sure you are monitoring the results and adjusting as needed. This is where you may find that your social media presence, your daily work tasks, and your interactions with others begin to pay dividends. Figure out what works in your situation, and go with it!

5.  Evolve:Our brands change over time. This depends on the stage of life that you are in as well as the stage of career you are in. The brand you needed to develop as a 22-year old trying to get your first job out of college is different from the brand you need as a 55-year old hoping to become the boss of the company. You need to be seen in different lights for different jobs, different roles, and at different stages in your career. Trying to define yourself as an expert when you are a rookie in the field is not likely to work well for you. But that may be more attainable for you after you’ve worked in the field for a decade or two. You’ll want to check in with your brand every 3-5 years and decide if it’s time for your brand to evolve to a new stage or if you’re still on track with your current brand. Don’t be afraid to take the next step. That’s how you move up!

A career coach often helps clients to figure out what they’d like their brand to be to best serve their career goals. Together a coach can work with you to formulate a plan to put that brand in place, and ensure that the strategies you develop work for you. Partner with a career coach at Bauman Consulting Group and begin your personal branding journey today!

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Ashley Bauman, M.S., M.B.A., B.C.C. is the president of Bauman Consulting Group in Loveland, Ohio. She provides training, consulting, and coaching to criminal justice and social service professionals.