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Regardless of their level, today’s leader’s are continually being asked to do more with less. With so much at stake, many find it difficult to let go and trust others to get the job done. This often occurs because up until now they haven’t taken the time to “equip” others to lead.

As described here, the ground work for becoming more comfortable with the capabilities of others begins with:

• Finding common ground
• Developing mutual respect
• Demonstrating genuine concern for their success

If this hasn’t been your practice, consider how you can change your approach with 2-3 top performers to confidently establish a leadership team vs. being the lone leader.

For some great tips on creating a winning resume, follow the link to see what TheLadders.com says recruiters are looking for these days.

But what can you do if you’ve only been focusing on getting the job done, and not on the bottom line or strategic implications of your performance? One way to gain new perspective on your contributions is to ask former colleagues and managers about the bottom line significance of the work. This includes work you supported and the contributions of your own work.

While these conversations may not provide all of the information you need, they will enable you to develop an understanding of a business perspective. Moving forward, look for opportunities to enhance your expertise and make a bottom line contribution through volunteering and/or working part-time positions to gain current examples of important skills.

Also remember that your thoughtful comments to e-articles, blogs, etc., lets others know that you are business focused.

It appears that while they haven’t been hiring, companies have been thinking about what the next generation of employees will need to be successful. In a summary of a recent AMA survey, Talent Management reports that demonstrating critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation (the four C’s) are where employers are putting their focus.

http://talentmgt.com/industry_news/2010/April/5186/index.php

This raises an interesting question. Have you established a personal brand that reflects these characteristics or is rebranding in order? I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on this.

While we’re on the subject of tolerations (see blog post dated June 18), did you know they can be huge energy drainers? All those little chores and incomplete tasks take up mental space. Just keeping an unconscious inventory is draining even if you’re not letting them nag at you.

Tolerations can alter your perspective. When you come home after a great day and see the toleration, it takes the edge off of your joy. Have a bad day and the toleration makes the weight on your shoulders a little heavier. Start to make plans for a fun filed day and you think “no, I should take care of this”.

When just getting going seems to be the biggest challenge, start building momentum toward tackling a large task about which you’ve been procrastinating by dealing with one that you can complete and will feel good about. The one that will:

• Put a smile on your face
• Make starting the day a little easier
• Or maybe even put a look of shock on someone else’s face

Got the picture? It’s not necessarily about the task; it’s the feeling of accomplishment that can create momentum.

These are your toleration busters:

• Break a large project down to smaller, doable tasks
• Schedule your start and completion times
• Identify the help, materials, etc. that you will need. Don’t let a lack of preparation be a new excuse for not getting started or for not fully completing the task.

When you’re done, stand back, admire your work and tell yourself, “Job well done.” Don’t be surprised by the accompanying burst of energy. You’ve just moved from overwhelm to accomplishment!

I’ve been thinking a lot about “tolerations” lately — those little unfinished tasks that nag at us and never seem to go away. They may seem like minor irritations, and you keep saying you are going to do them, yet somehow they never make it to the top of the to-do list. Well, your best intentions may not be taken as you intended.

Look around you. Are there piles of paper? Listen to yourself. Do you repeatedly talk about the junk in the garage or the unfinished home repair? Gauge your response rate. Do you let small stuff become a big problem for lack of timely attention?

These tolerations often result from repeated decisions to let some things go a bit in order to focus on your higher priorities. While at first this decision may save time, the collection of unfinished tasks can undermine your brand.

This occurs in two ways:

• By creating negative snapshots and sound bites for others and
• By altering your own perspective

Snapshots and sound bites are our brand anchors. They represent the impression others form of us over time. Snapshots and sound bites are moments that others string together to form a “video” image of our brand.

If you address the collection of unfinished tasks shortly after the primary project is done, then this will simply be viewed as part of your plan creating a snapshot of someone who knows how to prioritize and get the job done. However if this is an ongoing situation, the ever- increasing collection of unfinished tasks creates the image of overwhelm. Left to linger too long the image of being “unable to cope” could become strongly associated with your brand.

If you do go ahead and address the toleration, congratulations. Don’t be afraid to share your success with others. Communicating your success is one of the many ways to impact your brand positively and counter the perception of overwhelm. However when you give up a fun opportunity and don’t follow through on your plan to get rid of a toleration, you not only reinforce the perception of overwhelm to others, you also create a mental barrier to getting the job done.

So, if you are getting rave reviews for your leadership, expertise and ability to get the job done but you also sense that sometimes you’re not the first choice for the next big assignment, pay attention. Could tolerations be holding you back?

Wow, can I identify with this story.

My grandparents emigrated from Italy in the early 1900s, enduring the grueling transatlantic crossing. Starting in menial jobs, my grandfathers became successful independent businessmen as did my parents, aunts and uncles. They wanted no bosses to tell them what to do. My Dad served under Gen. Patton in WWII and took to heart his motto: “If you want the hill, you take the hill.”

Looking at the soil from which I sprang, it should not surprise anyone that my early corporate performance reviews described the strength of my problem-solving and technical skills. It also is no surprise that I needed to develop a capacity for collaboration. I had a reputation for presenting such a tightly analyzed argument there was no room for any other perspective. I thought I was being a leader, but I backed others into corners. This was not the reputation–the personal brand–I wanted.

Fortunately, my management saw potential in me and assigned me to lead our R&D department’s participation in a national productivity improvement project, which was headed by the Houston-based American Productivity Center. Working one on one with consultants Steve Leth and Vincent Byrne, I learned how to listen and to honor the issues and concerns of others. This allowed me to create an environment that enabled our team to develop comprehensive, sustainable solutions that reduced the project cycle time by three months.

Today I appreciate diverse perspectives, the gift in honest feedback and the opportunities associated with understanding how our strengths and areas of development impact our personal brands.

Do you have a similar experience you’d like to share?

Mic Jagger & The Rolling Stones had it right, “You can’t get no satisfaction” from just driving around, watching TV or superficial connections.

Dr. Gregory Berns reports in Satisfaction – The Science of Finding True FULFILLMENT that our feeling of satisfaction comes from brain activity that occurs when we associate curiosity and novelty with our activities. This may explain why we start a new project when faced with a mundane task or spend hours doing crossword puzzles or surfing the web.

If you want to stay focused after the novelty has passed, reset your perspective, for example, challenge yourself to complete the task in a limited period of time or look for hidden opportunities or unanticipated outcomes. It appears that we are all hard wired to reward curiosity, innovation and problem solving with satisfaction. What are you doing to take advantage of this?

No one is with us or knows what we are thinking 24/7. So others catalog their experiences with us as mental “snapshots and sound bites” of our brief interactions. These snippets eventually become a brief mental video which represents who we are to the viewer.

This collection determines what others expect from us and what is remembered and communicated about us when we’re not there. Ultimately your personal brand significantly influences:

• the opportunities you are offered
• the challenges others think you can handle
• the trust extended to you

Your personal brand is built up over time and is based on the consistency of experiences that individuals have with us.

Not sure about this? Think of your friends. I’m confident you can list 3 to 4 behaviors and interactions that describe the basis for your friendship. As your connection with them grew, you developed a set of core expectations about them as friends. In addition with some of your friends you choose to share more personal specifics. Why? Because you’ve recognized unique qualities that have distinguished them as the go to person for specific situations. So while you may not be aware of it, each of them has a friendship brand, established on these basic elements of branding:

1. Core Expectations – those representing baseline characteristics such as trust, work ethic, values, beliefs, fundamental expectations of our position, title, experience and
2. Unique Qualities – those which set us apart from others; why we are the go to person in a given situation.

Think about it. Your friendship is strengthened each time a friend lives up to their brand. On the other hand disappointment or even a sense of betrayal may occur when they don’t. Why is the downward spiral so steep? Your personal brand includes an unspoken promise, a set of expectations about you. Failure to meet those expectations creates the damage. Incidentally, our brand develops whether or not we consciously work on it.

This process works the same way professionally as it does with family and close personal relationships. So how well do you understand your current personal brand? Think about recent feedback and comments. Do they reflect your best efforts; what you want to be said about you? If so, congratulations and keep up the good work. But if some of your efforts have had negative or unintended consequences, then take the time to clear the air and own what needs to be done to get your brand back on track. Remember, your personal brand is among your most valuable assets. You want to contribute consciously to the “snapshots and sound bites” on which it is built.

Want to Know More about Personal Branding?

Join us Thursday February 4 @ 7:00pm EST for a complimentary tele-session. Register now.

Can’t make the call? Sign up anyway to receive a recording of the session.

In the session you will take the first step to a strong personal brand. Learn how to create a personal branding statement, which is the foundation for your brand. Discover how your personal branding statement assists you in making day-to day decisions while helping you create a positive and lasting impression.

For nearly a month now, my life has been revolving around what I have come to refer to as “the foot.” Who knew that a tiny fracture from a slip on an acorn would cause me to resurrect the skills that I learned as a young manager during my pharmaceutical career?

I am a very independent person, but the foot has gotten me to revisit the idea of interdependence; that is, the idea of teamwork. Once again, I am required to assess the strengths, talents and motivations of those around me in my personal support team, just as I once enlisted vendors, coworkers and my team members to achieve objectives at work.

Being unable to put any pressure on the foot means I need others to do basic tasks like grocery shopping, emptying the trash, watering plants and retrieving my mail. What I’ve relearned in all of this is that everything can be achieved if I let people do the things they excel at and are comfortable with.

For instance, my good friend and neighbor, Nick, walks his dog past my house twice a day and faithfully brings my newspaper to the door in the morning and my mail in the evening. My other friends include the new housebound me in social events, arranging for transportation and VIP seating for the foot. One woman, who I know casually through my monthly game of Bunko, called out of the blue to offer me a ride to my next doctor’s appointment.

Since I’m no whiner, it was interesting to see how word of my plight spread and the spontaneous offers of help that resulted. I believe that most people have the impulse to jump in and help get the job done, and as leaders and managers, it is our job to outline the direction, set the goals and then allow them to apply their talents in their own way to achieve those goals. Like me, I expect you will be both surprised and delighted with the result.

My foot saga continues (the story so far). You can imagine my disappointment when the doctor said that, rather than being well on the road to recovery, I’ll need surgery to mend my small but spiraling fracture. This means I can’t put any weight on my foot until at least January 22. Ugh, what a way to start the year and what about my January speaking engagement for Healthcare Business Women’s Association’s Atlanta chapter?

At first I thought “I can do this.” I know how to soldier on – it just takes a bit of organization. Then reality set in. Walking on crutches is exhausting. I had to admit I wouldn’t be bringing my best to the audience and if I had to cancel at the last minute, I’d be leaving the organizers in a difficult spot. I know the true test for anyone in my profession is not how well I articulate my philosophy but rather how well I live it. With this in mind I started to think about what is important here, what are my desired outcomes?

My most urgent need was to find an alternate speaker (in a previous career, I directed medical programs and knew that I needed to put considerable effort towards finding another speaker). My next needs are to continue serving my clients over the course of my recovery, keep my own life moving forward and my overarching most important long-term goal, get back on my feet as quickly as possible. Also, throughout it all, I want to keep my sense of humor and enjoy life. I found that I could easily identify the outcomes but was only able to take limited action; I could lead the charge but not personally resource my efforts. So my strategy is to assemble a team, utilizing each member’s strengths, while ensuring no one is overburdened with helping me.

To start, one of my colleagues, Tricia Malloy, graciously agreed to take my speaking slot and HBA has rebooked me for the March program. Now I’m free to focus on other outcomes and building the rest of my team. I’ll be sharing my journey with you over the next several weeks. You’re welcome to comment about how well I measure up. I also invite you to share lessons you’ve learned when life’s unexpected twists and turns have gotten in the way of your plans.