Top 3 Reasons Why Workplace Rock Stars Need a Personal Brand

This past week I had the great fortune to be interviewed by the co-hosts of KSRO’s Ask the Expert: Career Conversations talk show here in Santa Rosa, CA. For those of you who don’t know, Sarah Scudder, Chief Growth Officer at The Sourcing Group, and Nicole Smartt, Co-Owner of Star Staffing and Bestselling author, co-host a weekly talk show where they addresses topics such as taking your career in a new direction, turning a passion or hobby into a business, starting out in the workforce, and becoming more engaged in your current job.

When they sent me the list of questions for the show, I could feel a fire burning inside of me—no not that kind of burning, ha ha! But I got very excited because the questions got me thinking a lot about the past few years, and how much I’ve progressed in achieving some really significant goals.

One of the items on their list we didn’t get to touch on while recording, but that I’m incredibly passionate about, is building your personal brand. Some people wonder why in the world you would spend time building a personal brand when you work for a company, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to give you my pitch.

Now, before I go down this rabbit hole, I must put in a brief disclaimer that if you are looking to build your brand while working at a company, take a moment to examine your professional reputation in your current role and organization. If you aren't pulling your weight, or getting your job done, and view personal branding as a way to potentially attract new employers, then I would recommend evaluating your current situation before pursuing external endeavors. However, if you are crushing it at work every day and would like to find ways to share the good word, then please continue on.

Back to the pitch. So, I could probably come up with a list of 30 reasons why you should have a personal brand, but I'll spare you the extras, cut to the chase, and offer my top 3 reasons why rock stars need a personal brand.

Reason #1: Fun

You can draw nerd glasses on me for this one, but the first thing you will find about building a personal brand is that you get to learn a lot about yourself, what you’re good at, and you get to share that knowledge with other people. Let’s say you’ve been in your career even 5 years—you have tons more knowledge than anyone else entering the profession for the first time. Don’t you think someone straight out of college would love to know what they could do to be successful in the first 5 years of their new job? I would! If you've been in your career even longer, then you will not only have lots of great advice for getting started, but richer wisdom on handling tricky situations you've faced throughout your career.

Reason #2: Opportunity

By building my brand, I’ve created a lot of great content (my blog, my book, LinkedIn posts like the one you’re reading now) that has led to opening doors for other cool, fun things. This past quarter, I taught a class on Training and Performance at Sonoma State University, which is something that would have not come my way if I hadn’t established myself as someone who wants more than a day-job out of life.

Writing and publishing my book has connected me to professionals, students, and even old friends who have reached out to reconnect or even ask for advice.

And of course, I know this is the one you have been waiting for... yes, my personal brand has helped me make more money,

Reason #3: You Never Know…

In 2007 I was working in the mortgage industry: one day I had a job, and the next day I had nothing. At the time I was working and going to school and had been putting some money aside for savings, but had not yet accumulated the recommended 6 months rainy day fund that so many financial experts recommend. I had to move to a cheaper apartment, take jobs catering, and hustle my can off while time seemingly stood still. Like the rest of Americans who lost their jobs in the Great Recession, I then understood what it meant to struggle, and it was my first real lesson on why it’s always good to have something to fall back on.

While my first book has not made me a millionaire, yet, it has taught me to think like an entrepreneur, and the revenue I’ve generated from it could certainly fund promo ads on Facebook that would bring in some additional cash. Additionally, my blog, High Gear Career, easily contains enough content I could convert into podcast topics to promote my book. Also, since writing my book, I know exactly how to go through the publishing process, and could easily repeat it again for a sequel.

So, if you’re sitting at your desk and wondering how to kindle your own fire and passion for your work, start building your own brand. Starting small is totally fine. If you have a gmail account, you can easily pop-up a blog on blogger in minutes, which is how I got started. You don’t have to spend money to get started- you just have to get going and start building content around the topic that gets you going.

If you have any additional questions about how to get started on your own brand-building journey please email me at wendy.burbridge@gmail.com and check out my appearance on Ask The Experts, which goes live Friday, November 4th.

You: CEO

This article is all about being a CEO. That's right: Chief Executive Officer. If you are reading this, you may already be one, or you may want to be one someday soon. In this article, I am going to show you exactly how. Are you excited? I am!

The reason I am excited is because I am going to tell how you becoming a CEO of yourself is going to kick your gear into high. While you may want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or Sundar Pichai, I can tell you that you may be well on your way to leading Facebook or Google, but first you are going to have to be the CEO of the person staring back at you in the mirror.

WAIT! Before you click away because you thought I was going to give you REAL advice about how to become a REAL CEO, let me just ask you one question. Are you showing up as the CEO of your own life today, or are you showing up as the Intern? You see, a lot of people like the idea of greatness, or a title, or being perceived as being important, but when you show up as the CEO in your own life things start to change.

You're probably wondering what I mean about being a life CEO, so let me explain. What I mean is, look at every area of your life as if you owned it, as if the livelihood of tens, or hundreds, or thousands, or millions of people depended on it. Take a second to think about all the areas of your life: health, relationships, finances, your job-- how are you showing up?

In my career I noticed a huge shift when I really started to look at my job like I owned the company. I started coming from a place of contribution and thinking how I could add value. I started to act like my role was my personal company, and I began wondering how I might approach my work differently if Wendy Burbridge was a business and not an employee.

So today, I ask you- what would you change if you owned your own role? How would you show up differently if you focused on your work like it was your product (Guess what? It is!) and your co-workers, supervisor and senior leadership as if they are your customers (Guess what? They are!)?

You may be thinking, Gee, that sounds like a lot of hard work??? Well, maybe it is, but if you want to be a REAL CEO someday, the work is not going to get easier. However, if you start being your own CEO today, I can assure you that the work you do will be a whole lot better.

Being a CEO if my role has allowed me the opportunity to increase my income, do more work that I am passionate about, and create a life that I am excited to live. That same passion is available for you, today, right now. So, if you are tired of being in the same job, doing the same thing, punching the same clock, then take a step back, and think about how things could be different.

If you are stuck, and not sure if you are even in the right job, then connect with me, and I'd be happy to share my own Goal-Setting Manifesto with you from my upcoming book 30 Reasons You Didn't Get Hired to help you get clear on your own direction.

Have a great day everyone- get out there and Crush It!

The Top 3 Things Keeping You From Achieving Your Goals This Year.

Since we are half way through this year, I thought I would ask the question, “How are those New  Years Resolutions coming along?” Remember that list you created on January 1^st, the one you pinned on your corkboard  underneath all of the “important stuff.” Or perhaps its buried so deep in your iphone notes that you’d have to scroll for days to even find it.

Like many people, I created a list of things I wanted to achieve this year: I wanted to publish my book (in progress), I wanted take a trip to France (scheduled for October), and I wanted to work on my “stuff” (ongoing, but I'm doing it).

Ah, stuff! We all have it, we all know it’s there, but for some reason, it always gets swept under the rug because there’s always something else to do. Fortunately, I have found a really cool way to deal with my stuff, and I wanted to introduce it to you in this way, because I think it is actually part of why you may not be achieving your goals, whether they are for New Years, yourself, or any other reason.

So, let’s break this down here. Honestly, if you haven’t achieved your goals then it’s probably because:

1.       You Didn’t Set Any Goals. If you live with the expectation that everything great idea that pops into your head will just manifest into reality without a plan, then I would love to talk to you because you are a total phenomenon!

2.       You Didn’t Create an Action Plan. Perhaps when you made your list you had several things you wanted to accomplish, and you thought that somehow you’d figure it out. Unfortunately, we don’t always have all the answers, and sometimes we may want things to happen and have no idea how to do it. So what happens? Naturally, we give up. Instead of finding someone who has achieved what we want and modeling their behavior, or doing research on how to accomplish your goal, you throw in the towel and call it quits. This concept actually leads right into the third thing keeping you from achieving your goals…

3.       You Can’t Get Our of Your Own Head! In my upcoming book, 30 Reasons You Didn't Get Hired, I go into specific detail on how this one thing keeps people from getting their dream jobs. One of the things I’ve been learning on my own journey is that our brain will strive to answer any question we think.  If you ask, “why can’t I lose weight?” Your brain will probably say “because your lazy!” Why? Probably because you’ve been telling yourself over and over again that you’re lazy. If you change the question , though to, “What can I do today to bring me closer to my goal of having a healthy lifestyle?” Your brain will probably think of 100 things you could do: go to the gym, make great food choices, stop eating when you’re full… see what I mean.

 

I’m going to deep dive into this one a little more because we all have automatic thoughts that are popping into our head all the time, and controlling them can seem akin to wrangling a toddler hyped up on sugar smacks. BUT, there is a tool I found that has been exceptionally effective in helping me manage my thoughts, called The Model, created by The Life Coach School founder, Brooke Castillo. I am inserting a photo of it here,

 

 

which is barely legible, I know, and is also messy (I KNOW) because one of my issues is getting over perfection, which is why I am comfortable sharing it with you here, instead of wasting 10 hours creating a beautiful one for just this article. But, I keep this at my desk as a handy resource for when the thoughts start taking up my energy.

 

Brooke has a great youtube video where she teaches the model, so please watch it if you’d like in-depth analysis on it, but here is the basic idea:

When you have a thought, consider the following:

 

C- Circumstance: What is the circumstance you are reacting to?

T-Thought: What is the thought I'm thinking about the circumstance?

F-Feeling: How do I feel when I think this thought?

A-Action: What is the action (or non-action) I take when I feel_____?

R-Result: What is the outcome I created with this (non) action?
 
If you are struggling to achieve your goals because of the thoughts you are telling yourself, then I absolutely encourage you to go through The Model with your thoughts to create a new result for yourself. If you're just starting then begin by getting clear on what you want, set a specific action plan, learn from others who've already achieved what you want, and keep your thoughts focused on the positive action that will propel you forward.

I hope that this content has given you some ideas on how to get back on track to achieving your goals. If so, I'd love to hear from you! Have a wonderful day everyone!

Farm Credit Leaning In to Close the Leadership Ambition Gap

 

 

When I was in college, I majored in English in my undergrad years, and there were very few men in my classes. Most of the women in my class were planning careers as teachers, and at one point I was as well. However, after observing the usual discord that happens within a sixth grade English classroom, I promptly marched myself into my advisors office and switched my concentration away from teaching and instead pursued technical communication. Every day, I wake up grateful for this choice, as I do not believe there is enough coffee that exists in the world for me to effectively manage a classroom of sixth-graders. For those who educate our youth- thank you!

When I switched my focus from education to technical communication, I realized that the student population was more evenly distributed between men and women, but as I look up at what lies ahead, I am surprised that men still dominate senior and executive leadership in companies. Why is this surprising? Perhaps because there are now more than a million more college educated women with than men. However, the number of full-time working men, according to the 2011 Census was 58 million, compared to 43.7 million for women. Women are more educated, but not pursuing positions within their potential. Why?

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author or Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, identifies this as the Leadership Ambition Gap. Sandberg’s Lean In movement has inspired mentorship programs and small development groups on a global scale, but there is still work to be done to help women actualize their own potential.

Recently, I had an opportunity to connect with some other women in Farm Credit, and when I inquired about what we were doing to make an impact; I learned that presently, there is no official program that exists. Immediately, we acknowledged there was work to be done, and now we are in the process of creating such a program.

In July of this year, I will be presenting at FCC Services’Learning Conference in Charleston, South Carolina, and we will begin dialoging with women and men in Farm Credit to discuss how we can encourage women to advance into leadership roles. As we journey together to find solutions of how we can close the Leadership Ambition Gap at Farm Credit, I would like to invite you to participate in the discussion.

While I am hoping to solicit feedback from my cohorts at Farm Credit, I would invite anyone who is passionate about this matter to share their insights, whether it be on presentation topics, types of groups you would be interested in attending, and your personal interest in joining us in leading this initiative. Please feel free to leave comments, below, send me a private message, or email me directly at wburbridge@agloan.com

I look forward to your feedback!

 

How to Crush It Even When Your Team is in Last Place!

 

Brian Tracy says that “you become what you think about all the time.” When I consider this phrase, I am often filled with thoughts of achievement, goals, planning, and the general sense of where I’d like my future to lead. The desire to be great, to win, to lead, is actually something that I spend a significant amount of time thinking about, and over the last several years I’ve found that the more important winning becomes, the greater I value those who positively impact my performance, and encourage my desire for growth.

Granted, this could go the other way as well. For example, have you ever hung out with a Debbie Downer when you’re in a great mood? Despite your personal enthusiasm, negative energy can really take over. If you are a positive person who continuously surrounds yourself with negativity, then at some point, your personal desires may get side-swiped by someone who’d like to live under a rain cloud.

We have a video on our careers page at my company, where the CEO talks about why we select talented people to work at our company, “winners want to work with winners,” he says. While this is an absolute truth that I have fully embraced, this week I am humbled to have experienced the absolute benefit of working with a winning team.

You see, a year ago I went to a seminar for work. My boss and I sat in the crowd of attendants and as soon as the awards session began, we both lit up. We watched, enviously, as the representatives of visionary companies, walked to the front and crossed the stage to accept their awards. We looked at each other, and she said “next year, that’s gonna’ be us.”

“I know,” I replied.

I am delighted to report that the commitment we made that day, albeit informal, was followed through yesterday as our team accepted the Rave Award for Visionary in Performance Management at the Cornerstone OnDemand Convergence Conference. I share this with you today partly because I am a proud person, but mostly because everyone knows it’s awesome to work on a winning team. Getting acknowledged is an incredible honor; the benefits I experience from working on a winning team are honestly realized every day. People on winning teams not only have a desire to be their best, but they motivate others to also achieve, create accountability for all team members, and drive overall organizational performance.

But what if that’s not you?

What if you are the lone ranger on a team full of people who spend the day painting their nails in white-out (OK, I’m dating myself—spend the day posting their life on Insta)? What if you are the only person who wants to win and you can’t get anyone else on board with your plan for greatness? What if you are awesome, and despite your best efforts to stir enthusiasm in your team, you feel like you’re working in a morgue?

Glad you asked, and here’s what you do: be great anyway. Before you click-away and dismiss me as overly-optimistic, stay with me. Also, I'm not saying to throw out the baby with the bathwater. My first recommendation is to always work with your team, seek support from management, and work collaboratively to solve issues. However, if you continue to hit your head against the wall because you find a general lack of accountability and consistent underperformance in your team, then do not let yourself fall into the pit.

While it is easy to point fingers at people who may be underperforming, if you want to win, you have to do it even in the face of resistance. Fortunately, I’m on a winning team now, but it hasn’t always been that way. In my upcoming book, 30 Reasons You Didn’t Get Hired, I provide loads of stories about times when I’ve actually been in those situations. But, I also share a lot of activities that help people find their passion.  

Why is passion so important? It is important because it is what will drive you to be great even when you aren’t part of a winning team. It will drive you to learn, read, grow, attend workshops, network, and spend your free time improving. People who work hard and love what they do will find that new opportunities will become available. How? I wish I could list them all for you, but to keep things concise I have a brief list of things that can happen when you follow your passion and find yourself without a winning team.

·         Gain recognition within your company as an expert

·         Get promoted at your company for being recognized as an expert

·         Get recruited by another company for being recognized as an expert

·         Gain credibility within your community for writing a blog

·         Start a podcast where you bring on experts in your field

·         Create a video blog, educating other professionals in your field

·         Present at industry conferences about things you’ve improved where you work

·         Write a book on your passion

·         Offer great ideas to other professionals in your same field who struggle with a problem you already solved

·         Take a vacation with all the additional revenue you can make by implementing one of the above-listed ideas J

Implement any of these ideas and you will start building a personal brand at an exponential rate, but more importantly you will be able to continue to push yourself to achieve and grow, even when you’re not on a winning team.

 

Want a Fired-Up Workforce? Try This!

 

What if I told you that the company you are at today is the company you would retire from? Would you laugh? Look at me sideways? Raise an eyebrow? Probably. Why? Well, because many people throughout the course of their careers, are looking less for a long-term employer and more for the next best thing. If this was a dating column, we’d call this the “shiny object syndrome.” While slightly different, the same fundamental rules apply. You are offered a relationship, it’s good for a while, both parties are happy, but  after a while things start to get mundane, routine, stale, and the opportunity next door starts to look a little better. New and unexplored territory is now the currency du jour.

While many employers fight tirelessly to keep employees committed for the long-haul, others have understood that the desire to change careers is not going to be quenched by throwing extra benefits at employees, and for some companies, the best resolutions is to actually not fight this phenomenon, but to embrace it.

I am going to conclude my series on the LinkedIn Talent Connect seminar this post because it will be inclusive of my final take away, which is condensed into elements specifically contained in The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age.

Before I dig into this philosophy, I honesty have to commend Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh for their work on this book. It is not only insightful, but I think a brave, potentially controversial, and necessary phenomenon that has been underexplored until now. While I believe companies have taken bit-part concepts to make steps toward this effort, I had yet to see this information presented in a way that is easily applicable to a variety of organizations.

When I finished my Master’s of Science in Human Resources in December 2012, my final research was on Gen Y employees. As a Gen X-er and Digital Immigrant, I knew that in order to make change in my lifetime, I would have to spend a great deal of time understanding ideas that were not native to me, but made perfect sense to up and coming talent. I would not only have to engage with talent of my own generation, but I would have to be adaptable to the trends of talent who at some point will be 20, 30, or 40 years junior to me. In my extensive research, finding real solutions posed to be a bit of a challenge. Everything reported appeared to be based on emerging trends, but no one was talking so much about how to solve the problem. The question of how to retain employees spending fewer years at a company was often left unanswered, and the problem remained because it seemed like no one was offering solutions, they were only offering band-aids.

The Alliance is not a band-aid; however, I genuinely believe that this is a solution for the talent conundrum. Instead of fighting the battle against longevity, it proposes accepting it to maximize the time an employee is with your company by giving them meaningful projects for a designated period of time. At LinkedIn these periods are defined as “tours of duty” and can last for varying lengths of time depending on the role and the individual.

While it may be a novel concept to consider a “tour of duty” as a method superior to the benefits of a long-term employee, let’s unpack what this really means in terms of benefits.

1.       Relationship

A tour of duty is not just employment; it is a relationship, and more importantly, a partnership that a company can establish with someone for a lifetime. When employment in a traditional company ends, there is often resentment from one or both parties. Perhaps Jane A is disgruntled that she didn’t get the promotion offered, so she leaves your company unhappy. In a “tour of duty” Jane would have agreed to a specific timeframe for her current role, accomplished those goals, and once those goals were met, she could then decide to enlist for another tour, or with the support of her company, find a tour with another organization. Upon leaving the company Jane is not disgruntled, but rather she is a success story of your reputation as both an employer, and an ambassador (read: marketer) of your service or product. 

2.       Engagement

A tour of duty is ultimately an experience where employees will be highly engaged for a period of time because at the outset of the alliance, they sit down with their manager to discuss not only the company’s goals, plans and vision, but what the employee’s goals, plans and vision are as well. The company’s goals are achieved while the employee simultaneously develops professionally; a win-win situation for both parties.

3.       Production

As a company, employing nothing but engaged employees, excited to come to work and create the best possible product will send your production through the roof. If you work in a traditional environment, stop and look around right now. How many people are around you who are really excited about what they are doing? How many people are dead weight, doing their jobs to get to Friday? Imagine if you could replace each of those individuals with a vibrant employee, daily committed to achieving their absolute best in that role? What if every one of your employees took ownership of their role, and had the freedom to improve processes? Do you things might start to look differently? I think they would.

While what I’m sharing might cause some skepticism if your company is not particularly adaptable to new and cutting edge ideas, let me encourage you to continue to explore ways you can start networking with others in your industry that have made the change. When I started working in my present organization, I reached out to an individual who was a bit more experience using the same ATS we used. He worked for another company and had no financial gain in helping my team, but he was open, shared with us, and as a result, we created a great professional relationship. What I have found is that within the Talent Acquisition community, people want to help others. We’ve all been in a company with fewer resources, and we’ve all just been starting out, praying someone would just throw us a bone.

If anything I’ve written thus far is connecting with you, then please visit www.thealliancenetwork.com,  get the book, or at least visit youtube.com where you can see a load of videos from the LinkedIn Talent Connect 2014 San Francisco.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this information, as always please feel free to reach out and keep exploring!

#1 Reason People Keep Coming to Work

If someone asked you what the number one most important indicator is for recruiting and retaining top talent, what would you say? Good pay? Great benefits? Time off? Flexible schedules? While these are all contributors to a great overall package, the number one necessary element is actually meaningful work.

At the LinkedIn Talent Connect conference I attended in San Francisco, this was a theme that continued to appear through the course of the three-day event, and I found this concept to be really interesting to explore, so I chose if for my #5 big take away from Talent Connect. You can see my previous Top 3 take always on my blog at www.highgearcareer.blogspot.com

I wanted to write specifically about this topic because I think that meaningful work can happen in a few different ways, and sometimes I think that people can find it challenging to connect their day job (manager’s included) to something that would be meaningful or inspiring. So, below I have listed a couple different ways to be able to create meaningful work regardless of what your day job is.

1.       Create meaningful work by setting specific learning objectives with your job.

Co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, recently authored a talent management strategy he calls The Alliance. In this method he addresses how to keep your employees engaged for periods of time or “tours of duty” by openly discussing their long-term goals, which may not be inclusive of a long-term career with the company. However, in order to keep them engaged in achieving the goals of the company, the manager and employee discuss what professional development goals can be achieved during the designated tour. This is a great tactic because the company wins the loyalty and productive efforts of an employee for a designated period of time, and the employee gets to create new opportunities for themselves by exploring new skill areas: win-win for everyone.

 

2.       Create meaningful work by leveraging your company’s resources to achieve your personal goals.

Matthew Kelly explained how a waste management company effectively used company resources to help employees achieve personal goals in his 2007 book, Dream Manager. After realizing the significant challenges and expenses accrued with the high turn-over rate in his company, the team in his company conducted some research around why people were leaving. When they discovered that the reason people left could easily be remedied with a minimal investment by the company things started changing.

 

It all started with a simple survey and a bus. By alleviating the cost associated with the drive to the plant by providing a bus to shuttle employees in, the leadership learned they could retain workers who were otherwise put out by that expense. First the company providing a bussing service, then financial counseling. Before too long, employees were achieving personal goals like homeownership. How was this possible? The management in this story noticed that through the investment in a full-time employee (the Dream Manager)to help employees achieve their personal goals that retention improved, turnover reduced, and productivity sky-rocketed.

 

While not every company may have a dream manager on their staff, this story has become widespread in talent management circles, and employers are becoming increasingly aware that offering this type of benefit provides massive returns on the investment.

 

What if your company does not offer a dream manager? Well, then it leaves more responsibility on the individual to seek out resources. If your company is not in the habit of offering these types of programs, see if there is an opportunity to mentor underneath a manager who could unofficially provide you with the right guidance to help in a similar way.

 

In my career I have been fortunate enough to connect with some incredible talented professionals, but it has never been as a result of my working for a company with a Dream Manager type of program, but rather it has been as the result of my persistence to learn more and be the best at what I do. People want to help hungry people. It doesn’t matter if you’re hungry for a sandwich or starving for information, people want to help others, and if you reach out, I promise you will find people interested in sharing.

 

3.       Create meaningful work by connecting to your company’s mission.

This is kind of a no-brainer, which is why I saved it for the last point. While, in theory, it’s ideal to only accept jobs in organizations where you share a mission or common vision, let’s be real. Sometimes in life you accept jobs for other reasons: maybe it’s for the money, maybe you are geographically tied to an area.

When I lived in San Diego, I spent some time working for a health clinic, and there were a number of people who worked there who conveyed the importance of the work we did as an attractor for employment. Many long-term employees had been recipients of care at the clinics as children, and several times when people left, they would immediately want to return.

Sharing a mission has the direct benefit of essentially finding joy in your work because you understand that while your role may not be directly deploying the mission of the company, it contributes to that greater work being accomplished.

I hope you’ve been able to find a way to create meaningful work for yourself or your employees. If you found any recommendations useful, please feel free to let me know.

Check back tomorrow for Take Away #6