Surveys and positive thinking can help you discern—and talk about—what makes you stand out.
If you’re a health care leader, your professional brand in action likely has you analyzing reports about patient outcomes and inspiring staff members to give great care. These practices anchor you in being the best at what you do.
Similarly, the time-proven ETA™ process from Revealing Genius is designed to help you and other health care leaders use science-based assessments and custom affirmations as anchors for discerning your uniqueness and learning to communicate your professional brands in a variety of situations that could help you achieve your next milestone. A cool thing about anchors is that they ground us when we need grounding. When it’s time to change, we can pull them up and re-examine them before putting them back in the water. In this blog, we’ll talk more about the executive brand anchors of assessments and affirmations.
Assessments and Your Professional Brand
On Day 5 of the Revealing Genius 7-Day Summit, participants learn about several evidence-based assessments that can help them understand key elements of their executive presence and personal branding.
One of my favorite tools comes from the onpurpose.me website. It’s a two-minute survey that delivers a two-word “purpose statement.” For example, I’ve known leaders whose two-word purpose statements were “cultivating hope,” “inspiring joy” and “embracing grace.” Onpurpose.me goes on to help people reflect on their two-word statement with a series of follow-up exercises and reflections.
I also like the Enneagram, which describes personality in terms of nine types, each driven by its own set of core emotions, fears and beliefs; the Core Value Index, which reveals your unchanging motivational drivers and how you are wired to contribute to the world around you; and the DISC tool, which helps you understand both your personality and your communication style.
During the Summit, I describe more assessments executives like you can use to help you anchor your professional brand. But you don’t have to wait until you attend the Summit to explore this. Pick one of the tools described here. Complete it this month and use the results to help you with affirmations, which we’ll discuss in the next section.
Affirmations and Your Professional Brand
During the 7-Day Summit, participants not only take the Onpurpose.me assessment, but also a first step into affirming who they are and what they are best at in the world. “Affirm” is the important third step of the ETA™ process for professional branding that we talked about in the introduction to this blog. During the affirmation step, you say out loud words that will help you become more fully who you are and more fully do what you are best at in the world.
Right here, right now, you can do the very same exercise the Summit participants do. Simply fill in the blank in the following sentence. Don’t think too hard about it. Keep breathing while you do this.
I affirm that one of my core competencies is _________________________________.
Write down the competency that comes to mind; type it into your computer; or text it to yourself. Then take some time to say it out loud over the next couple of days. How do you feel about that competency after a few days of affirming it in this way? Do you believe in it more strongly?
The power of positive affirmations is well-known. Scientists have even found that the use of affirmations can spur activity “in key regions of the brain’s self-processing … and valuation … systems when reflecting on future-oriented core values ….”
While the research is telling, I also know from personal experience about the power of custom affirmations. My brother is a world-class rower who used affirmations to win a key race that you might have expected to be owned by a younger person. I also watch what happens with my program participants and clients. When their unique genius is positively reinforced, they become more confident in who they are and in expressing that to the world.
Thoughts on Your Professional Brand Journey
Your work as a health care leader is anchored in science and best practices in leading people. As science makes more discoveries and coaches find ever-better strategies for strengthening teams and individual contributors, you pull up your anchors, assess and refine them, then drop them back down.
So too with your professional brand. You start with key anchors like assessments and affirmations to help you discern and learn to talk about what you are very best at in the world. But then, at key intervals, you re-examine your positioning.
For example, I recommend doing an assessment at least once a year. And you might change your affirmations at key points in your career—when you are promoted, develop an important new skill set, acquire a board seat or change the composition of your team. As part of your ongoing professional branding efforts, the anchors of assessments and affirmations will help you more quickly see—and achieve—the next milestone in your career.
Ready for some help in anchoring your professional brand with assessments and affirmations? Please sign up for our 45-minute complimentary webinar, our 7-Day Summit, RG365 membership daily emails or 1:1 sessions. We look forward to working with you.
