Personal Branding within your Organization

I was recently asked two really great questions about "personal branding within the organization" and I thought I would share them and my responses. Please respond to this post with your thoughts and answers to these questions. Looking forward to hearing from you!

1. What are the top three strategies/tactics you've used to make yourself stand out from everyone else in the organization?

a. Skill and Capability – I mold and craft my skills daily by ferociously reading, actively problem solving, talking with my network, and writing articles. I keep up to date by joining professional associations, reading trade newsletters, blogs, and magazines, trying new things, experiencing new philosophies, and working with people who have different points of view in order to keep my skills/capabilities fresh and relevant.

b. Job Training - Whenever I accept a new job, I study, research, and talk with my network in order to quickly become an expert in the roles and responsibilities I have. I actually read the employee handbook and company intranet (if they have one) and will take that project on sometime in my tenure if they don’t. I become knowledgeable about each department, their roles/responsibilities, and if they are an input/output of my team. I learn the philosophy of the organization and work to meld my talents and personality to support it. Basically, I get to know where I work, how I need to work, and why am here to work.

c. Know thy Self - My career philosophy has been to Take the Road Less Taken derived from my favorite poem - Robert Frost's The Road Less Taken**. My career has been formed by taking on the difficult task and successfully completing it. There is always something that a company has been dreading doing because no one internally wants to take it on for one reason or another - typically because it is a very political issue and most likely a career ender at that company. People who know me know I will take it on, understand the situation quickly, form the team, do the work, solve the problem, and move on to the next big challenge.

The point is that people need to know where their sweet spot is in order to best serve their company.

• If you are a change agent, be that.
• If you are a 9 to 5 worker, do that.
• If you are a turn-around manager, live that.

If you aren't doing what you are meant to do via talent, skill, experience, andpassion, you are not being the best you can be for your company or self.

2) What have you seen someone do in an organization that caught your attention... and which elevated the doer in your esteem?

a. Help - A person going out of their way to help you accomplish your task. It is the greatest thing when you are in the midst of a tough issue and someone comes in and says, “how can I help?” WOW.

b. Morale Builder - A person who works hard on building up morale - keeping people charged up with their spirits high especially when times are tough.

c. Loyalty – a person or a team who will work with you side-by-side to solve the problem, not get mired in the past, and looks forward with you.

**The Road Less Taken – Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I

—I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.