Here are good things to do yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily in support of the success of your professional brand journey.
You professional brand is like a medical patient in a key way. Just like patients benefit from healthcare at specific intervals, your professional brand also will benefit from regular examination and care.
Think about it. Certain vaccinations and scans are recommended for people once a year, depending on their age. Patients’ health benefits from a vacation a couple of times a year. They benefit from doing something relaxing every week, too—and from exercising or taking vitamins every day.
Your professional brand will similarly benefit from regular attention. Let’s look at some key intervals and what you can do at each.
A Yearly Checkup for Your Professional Brand
Revealing Genius recommends doing at least these three things for your brand every year:
1. Launch or reassess your professional brand advisory board. Feedback is essential to success with your executive brand. If you haven’t already set one up, it’s a great time to think about who would give you great feedback on what makes you unique and how to best express that to the world. Invite them to join your advisory board! If you have an advisory board already, it’s a great idea to take time once a year to assess how it’s functioning and make adjustments as needed.
2. Do a science-based assessment of how you present yourself to the world. One of my favorites is the two-minute survey at onpurpose.me, which will provide back to you your two-word “purpose statement.” This amazing tool helps people reflect on why they do what they do. 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.
3. Create or update your vision board. A vision board is a visual representation of your goals. People create them in a variety of ways, including creating drawings, clipping images out of magazines and printing things from the web that point to your “vision.” Then they put these together on a board and look at everything together. Creating a vision board for the first time can help you center yourself and move forward in creating or living out your professional brand. I know people for whom this exercise has been life-changing. Revising your board every year can help you do valuable fine-tuning.
Quarterly and Monthly Checkups for Your Professional Brand
Attending to your professional brand once a year is helpful, but not enough. On a quarterly or monthly basis, we recommend also connecting with your advisory board and reviewing your keystone goals. Monthly or quarterly is also great timing for doing a “more of this/less of this” exercise.
What this review entails is thinking about the activities in your recent work that have given you a lot of energy—and which ones drained you. Then, consider how you can shift the balance to do more of the things that give you energy and less of the ones that drain your energy. It’s a powerful understanding that, done well, can boost your productivity and effectiveness.
Weekly and Daily Checkups for Your Professional Brand
At Revealing Genius, we often talk about how developing and continuously refining your professional brand is a practice—something to do often and regularly, much like people practice martial arts or yoga every day or every week.
Here are some things to do to keep your professional brand fresh and effective:
Consider your calendar. This is akin to the “more of this/less of this” exercise described earlier in this post, only more focused on the here and now. Look back at last week’s calendar and see what meetings, activities or projects gave you energy and which drained your energy. Then look at your calendar for next week. What can you do to shift the balance in favor of doing more things that give you energy in the days ahead?
Choose a day or two each week that you’ll consistently spend time on your professional brand. Think of “Amazon Day.” The shopping giant allows customers to choose one or two days of the week for all their Amazon packages to arrive. Choose a day or two that you can spend time with your professional brand each week.
Use tools that will help you reflect on your professional brand regularly. For example, RG365 membership includes a daily email that will prompt you to take a positive step on your professional brand journey every single day. You can also read the Revealing Genius blog, sign up for our newsletter and use the email follow-up prompts you’ll get from the science-based assessments you’ve done to help you.
Your professional brand will benefit from regular checkups such as those described above. When it’s time for you to gather new ideas for your professional brand or give it special, focused attention, please check out our 45-minute complimentary webinar or our 7-Day Summit. We look forward to supporting you in your efforts!
