Paul Copcutt - Just My Toonies Worth

Step out of your personal brand comfort zone

While waiting for his owner to return from some local shopping, Bernard here knows where his boundaries are and he is not going to stray at all. If he were to jump out of the back of the truck he would certainly be placing himself in danger. 

Unfortunately, at work, this is something we are all a little guilty of. Perhaps on occasion, assuming it's not going to be life threatening, we need to take a risk or two and leap out of our comfort zone - or maybe just a gentle step will do. 

Three things to step out of your personal brand comfort zone at work;

1. Bring a little more of your personality to work. Choose something from home that you are passionate about or that means a lot to you and add it to your desk, cubicle or office space.  Perhaps a favourite picture, photo or desk ornament. 

2. Consider adding a piece of jewellery or favourite coloured accessory and making it a regular part of your wardrobe. It does not all have to be navy and black. 

3. Identify a skill or strength that you are well known for, that you have a reputation for delivering on consistently and mention it in your outgoing voicemail message. If you pride yourself on returning calls promptly, say so in your voicemail. BUT if you are not good at getting back to people do not date your voicemail either! 

Just my toonies worth - make today a brand you day. 

 

100 Toonies Worth

With consistency and progression comes change. As you spend more time consistently delivering on what you say your brand is and find your career progressing in the right direction, you are going to reach a point where new challenges and opportunities arise. New skills are developed and new ways to communicate your uniqueness present themselves. 

This week see's the 100th edition of the Tuesday Toonie weekly e-tip, which I feel is quite a milestone. Thank you for reading, commenting and recommending to others for the last 2 years. 

It is also a great time to announce some small changes to the format and delivery of this weekly resource. When we started the Tuesday Toonie the rise of Facebook and Twitter was really starting to gain traction and people subscribing to news and blog feeds was rising. Now this weekly Tuesday Toonie is only being read 10-20% of the time by people via the e-zine delivery method - the rest of the time you are reading it or getting to it via social media or directly at the blog. 

This does not make the content any less valuable but with our inundated in boxes and busy lives it does beg the question about sending it out in full format in an e-zine rather than a quick mailing, linking to the blog for the full content. So going forward the Tuesday Toonie is going to be a 21 second or less read. Enough for you to maybe stop and think for a moment about your career and if you want to understand more then go to the blog to get more on that weeks topic.  

We will be continuing with the monthly Inukshuk e-zine that delves deeper in to the subject of career management and personal leadership branding and provide in there links to all the previous months weekly Tuesday Toonies for anyone you might have missed. We also continue to blog and post other very latest links and resources via social media - especially our Facebook page and my LinkedIn updates, or you may just prefer to be made aware of the Tuesday Toonie via one of these methods - so if you have not done so please connect with us at;

www.facebook.com/personalbrand and http://ca.linkedin.com/in/paulcopcutt 

Thank you again for reading and we look forward to continuing to serve you. 

Personal Brand Book Review - Standout

StandOut – The groundbreaking new strengths assessment.

© 2011 by One Thing Productions Inc, 227 pages, Paperback

5R Score: 25/35

The Three Strengths Principles

1. Your Genius is Precise
2. You Can’t Respect What You Don’t Remember
3. You Must Reach Beyond Your Roles

On a scale of 1-7   

Relevance - is it right for personal branding? - 7

Resonance does it make sense to the reader? - 6

Relation is there a connection for everyone? - 5   

Remarkability - does it stand out, will it get noticed? - 5

Real - does the personal brand come through? - 2

Would you pick it up?

Since getting involved in the whole personal branding area, one of the core pieces of work that I use and refer to on a regular basis has been “Now Discover Your Strengths” by Buckingham and Clifton and other updated versions of the work.  That is until now.

I have always enjoyed the work of Marcus Buckingam and he has been personally branded as the “Leader of the Strengths Revolution”. He is a joy to watch and listen to as a speaker (I would kill for a fraction of his speaker fees!). But what I really like is his continued efforts to make understanding your unique strengths, simple. With this book he has taken it all a stage further.

Now you just need to know your top two strengths, (mine were Equalizer and Influencer) and there are only 9 strengths in total, so it’s also easier to understand others as well.

Relevance

One of the core foundation pieces of personal branding is to understand your strengths. If you cannot immediately identify what those are then you need to invest in a book like ‘StandOut’. Each book comes with a unique code to take an online assessment and Buckingham has obviously spent a lot of time and resources in getting this working optimally set to give best results.

Resonance

Strengths are just one part of your personal branding puzzle, but a key one, so not underestimate the need to do this. The book is mostly made up of chapter explanations of each of the 9 strengths, so on first read you might skip a lot. But if you go further with this, start to know others strengths it’s the type of book that should almost be on your desk versus a bookshelf.

What is really excellent about this book is that it helps you understand how you can maximise your strength in various situations;

-      You are at your most powerful

-      How to describe yourself (in interviews and performance reviews)

-      How to make an immediate impact

-      How to take your performance to the next level

-      What to watch out for.

-      How to win as a leader.

-      How to win as a manager.

-      How to win in sales.

-      How to win in client services.

There is also a team strengths version which is very neat.

Relation

I firmly believe that if you are going to live any type of life you love then understanding and playing to your strengths is key, so this book and its approach and principles applies to anyone at any level.  In fact it is a good leveler – it does not matter where you are, strengths are strengths.

Remarkability

In much of my work with personal brands I would say the most underplayed element of most peoples personal brands are their strengths. It is what you do naturally and so well that it’s almost a sub-conscious action. Many people might look at this work and think it rudimentary, but I will bet most of them are not leveraging their strengths anywhere at the level they could be, so there are many lessons from this.

Real

Marcus Buckingham has one of the most amazing strengths based stories about his personal brand, but apart from a few anecdotal personal pieces you are going to have to go somewhere else to find that one out. As most of the book is specific to understanding the strengths you would hope there were more examples, but it lacks that level and is the most disappointing part of the book.

Having said that this is a must for all my future personal branding work.   

 

 

Is your career facing a Kodak moment?

No doubt the business school case studies in years to come about the sad demise of Kodak and it's brand will raise many questions about the effectiveness of it's leaders. 

The filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy by Kodak this week has many lessons for all businesses, but what can you learn from this and be sure that you are not facing the same in your career?

1. Don't underestimate the impact your ideas have. 

It was the mid-70's when Kodak actually developed for the first digital camera. Can you imagine how far ahead they may have been in the market place and for how long had they moved on this revolutionary idea. 

Personal Brand Lesson - just because your industry or vocation has done it the same way for a long time and everyone is comfortable with that way does not mean an idea out of left field is not a better one. Be willing to challenge the status quo. 

2. Don't be complacent or greedy. 

Kodak leaders decided to shelve the digital camera because they felt it was going to do too much damage to their highly lucrative and profitable film business. 

Personal Brand Lesson - it makes sense to maximise your value with the core strengths you have. But know that you need to continually develop yourself and add new skills. Demands and markets change, so your brand has to evolve over time. Anticipate demands and start adding to your skill set now. 

3. Be Prepared to Re-brand

The plan for Kodak is to sell it's $2 billion worth of patents and emerge as a more agile company in the printer business. They see revenue and profit in ink (HP generates $9 billion a year in ink cartridges). But does the tagline of the "Kodak Moment" still apply? Likely not, as they become less and less synonymous with photos a re-brand of the company would almost seem inevitable. 

Personal Brand Lesson - the experts tell us that the workforce of the future might well be in many different vocation, not just jobs, in their lifetime. The foundation and core of your brand might remain the same, but sometimes the message and your target audience will change and a re-branding is necessary. 

How do you see business the lessons from the likes of RIM and Kodak apply to your career and personal brand? 

 

 

Does Size Really Matter? It's not just about the coffee

For those of you that have heard me speak you know that coffee is one of my popular brand examples. After all why drive past five Tim Horton's to get to a Starbucks black coffee - especially now that you can get 4 oz of extra liquid for at least 60 cents less in Tim's new Extra Large cup versus a Venti?

The answer is it's not just about the coffee.

If it was you can just get a regular cup of Joe from the corner convenience store for less, or better still use the same amount of time it takes to sit in the drive through to brew a cup at home for just pennies.

It really is about the emotions you connect to one brand of coffee or one store versus another. It's about the stories you tell yourself and the experiences you have had or heard about (good or bad) that drive your buying decisions.

The same applies to your personal brand. People are not going to promote you or second you on to their great project just because you are good at what you do. They are going to look for emotional connections and listen for stories that apply to you and no-one else.

People are going to want to hire you, work with you and for you based on how they perceive and have experienced your brand, your operating uniqueness. 

 

 

Personal Branding Is Snow Joke

This past weekend saw the kids first ski lesson of the season. We were all prepared, everything was laid out ready. Boots, gloves, helmets, ski's, poles, jackets, pants......only one thing was not - SNOW!

In fact the weather has been so unpredictable that even the picture above is last years! Global warming suggests that we might have to be looking further afield in the future for guaranteed winter! 

But we still set off for the local ski hill and with big smiles the kids spent several hours learning how to traverse on skis with zero base and white stuff that more resembled my holiday martini than something to move through quickly!

This change in conditions could be exactly what you are going to be facing at your organization over the next few months as we face a year that at least is going to be a little slushy!!

So what can you be doing with your personal brand in the first few weeks to stay upright and heading in the right direction?

1. Stay positive - be sure that you remain very true to your core personal brand foundation - values and passions in particular are the things that will steer you morally and keep you engaged.

2.  Be ready - conditions will not always be as you expect, no matter how prepared you are. As long as you have all the right tools AND attitude you are still going to perform well enough to get you through to better conditions. 

3. Embrace change - this is going to be the new normal for sometime. You have to anticipate how this is going to effect your particular voacation, industry and company. What new skills and approaches are you going to need to survive and start working on them now. 

 

Your personal brand needs YOU!

How do you feel at this time of year when people start to talk about new year’s resolutions?

-          Fearful, because you know that this year’s one fell by the wayside mid-January.

-          Excited , because it gives you a chance to kick off the year with a flourish.

-          Resentful, because you are going to feel pushed in to committing to something.

Regardless of the emotions that come up, one thing is certain, setting, reviewing and keeping accountable to goals, resolutions or commitments significantly increases the chances of being successful with them. 

Take a moment, or a few, this week to ask yourself these questions about the upcoming year.

So what do you really want to see happen with this year? Perhaps things that have come up before but you never quite made it, or new challenges and opportunities that both excite and scare you. Be generous to yourself, but also do not let yourself off too lightly ;

What would you like your biggest triumph to be this year?

What advice would you love to give yourself?

What is the biggest thing you are planning to improve?

What would you best most pleased about completing?

What big indulgence are you wanting to experience?

What would you like to change about yourself?

What would you like to learn this year?

What do you think will be your biggest risk?

What are most committed to changing and/or improving?

What talent do you have that is underdeveloped and you would like to work on?

How can you bring what gives you most joy more in to your year?

Who or what are you most committed to loving and serving (apart from yourself!)?

What is your one word theme for this year?

Wishing you the best year YOU have ever had