42839 (English in business), страница 6

14 Read the survival guide section, get ready to participate in the round-table discussion “Creating a personal brand helps to face the challenges of the modern life”.

SURVIVAL GUIDE. PERSONAL BRANDING

Creating your personal brand.This section provides some suggestions for phrases and vocabulary that can be used to communicate your personal brand at work. Remember, however, that you should only use the language and approach that you feel comfortable with in your specific context.

1. Communicating your brand vision and values

Building a personal brand is not achieved by telling everyone how wonderful you are. You need to communicate your vision and values regularly in business encounters such as presentations, meetings and social conversation. Here are some key aspects you should consider:

a) Leadership vision

Communicate your vision of good leadership, so that your staff can deliver the performance you want.

For me, good leadership means...

This organization's strategy is to...

What inspires me is...

My greatest motivation is...

The future for me is...

b) Teamwork

Communicate your vision of good teamwork practice.

My approach to teamwork is...

The critical success factor is..

What I always want to see in teams is...

Teams need to have...

For me, a team is not a team unless it has

c) Skills

Communicate your own skills as well as those you admire in others.

Your skills:

• One thing I do know is how to..

• My core competence is...

• Some people say that my particular attribute is to...

Others' skills:

• One quality I admire in people is...

• The key attribute for firms is...

• A core skill for us all today is...

d) Results

Communicate an attitude to goals that is personally focused, but also highlights the importance of wider goals.

I guarantee that I will deliver...

• My goal is to...

• My view of (customer service) is…

• The secret to getting great results is...

• The team has to reach...

• The organization's objective is to...

2. Differentiating your brand

Positioning is a critical element of brand identity. Differentiating clearly between what you see as right and what you see as wrong is a simple way of distinguishing your personal brand from the competition. The following extracts from presentations are examples of the type of approaches and sentences you could use.

Empowerment, not dictatorship: a message about leadership

"I am not going to stand here and tell you what to do every time something goes wrong. My leadership philosophy is one of empowerment, and not dictatorship. I work with trust, and I work with you, not instead of you."

Responsibility, not blame: a message about teamwork

"I don't like the current atmosphere in the team. There is too much focus on finding the person to blame, rather than taking responsibility for putting things right. Responsibility for me is a value that I expect everyone to live by."

Analysis before action: a message about results

"I don't think we should take a decision without having the data. In my view, you can't get effective performance without sufficient analysis."

Clarity, not confusion: a message about communication

"The messages we are sending to our staff confuse not just them, they also confuse me. I am a great believer in clear and direct communication. So we need to look again at our communication to create greater transparency and thus increase motivation."

Solutions, not problems: a message about customer focus

"My approach to this issue is to focus on solutions, not problems. We don't have the time or resources to discover every problem. And anyway, our customers need solutions... yesterday!"

3. Finding your strengths and talents

The Gallup Organization's Strengths-Finder is a talent assessment instrument developed for the internet. A talent is defined as a "naturally recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behaviour that can be productively applied.

Knowledge and skills, on the other hand, can be taught and learned.

The Strengths Finder instrument lists 34 different "themes" that describe talents. These can provide an excellent starting point for the creation of your personal brand statement. Among the themes are those below. Remember that people can be strong in a number of themes.

Achiever: People who work hard and enjoy being busy.

• Communication: People who find it easy to put their thoughts into words.

Developer: People who recognize and cultivate the potential and abilities of others.

• Futuristic: People who inspire others with their visions of the future. Harmony: People who don't enjoy conflict and try to achieve consensus instead.

• Maximizer: People who focus on strengths as a way to stimulate personal and group excellence.

• Responsibility: People who are committed to honesty and loyalty.

• Woo: People who love the challenge of meeting new people and making a connection.

• For a full list of the 34 themes and their descriptions, see the article "The Gallup Organization's Strengths Finder Instrument" by Tonya Fredstrom, Jim Harter and Kenneth Tucker. The article can be found on the Career Trainer website (www. careertrainer. com).

Personality adjectives

When creating your personal brand statement (see below), it can be helpful to use adjectives that describe your personality.