Here are three steps to executive branding success
Time, when you’re sharing your personal brand message, is of the essence.
You might get two minutes to share your brand story when someone visits your LinkedIn profile.
You might get seven seconds to make a good first impression when you meet someone in person.
And yet, if you’re like most people, you get tongue-tied—or experience writer’s block—when you have an opportunity to share who you are, what you do and why you do it. You might not feel confident telling someone what you are best at in the world.
But this can be overcome.
My clients who have followed the time-proven ETA™ process know their brands, believe in them deeply, and can confidently and effectively share their personal brand message.
Let’s talk about how each step in the process helps them to do this so well.
Excavate Your Brand
My clients get multiple opportunities in the “excavate” step of the ETA process to reflect on what they do and how it is unique. Getting clarity about your unique reason to serve makes it so much easier to tell other people about it.
Many people start on their executive personal branding journeys with Revealing Genius by reflecting on 10 key questions that help them to sort out what makes them unique. Don’t underestimate the power of two of these ten questions:
- Who is your favorite superhero and why? Your answer can be a character you admire from fiction, someone in your life or a famous person. Don’t forget to answer the why part of this question. Why you have chosen your superhero will speak volumes about your brand.
- What is your favorite quote or mantra that you live by and why? Again, make sure to consider why you chose it.
If you’d like to get a taste of clarifying your brand and really do this exercise. Get out a piece of paper or wake up your laptop or tablet. Capture your answers to these two questions. Then think about them. What light do they shine on your authentic personal brand?
You can get all 10 brand excavation reflection questions when you attend our 45-minute complimentary webinar—and several other opportunities to get more clarity about your brand through excavation when you join our 7-Day Summit.
Practice Your Personal Brand Message
In the “tell” step of the ETA process for executive personal branding, my clients get lots of practice talking and writing about what they’ve learned from the “excavate” step.
Two adages seem to consistently apply during this phase of the process. They are: “practice makes perfect” and “writing is rewriting.”
Why these two refrains?
After you do some brand excavation, you will find you have so much clarity about your unique reason to serve the world that talking and writing about it will come more easily. But even so, your efforts to tell the world about your brand will benefit from practice.
Rehearsing your elevator pitch, your presentation for a board seat interview or your Ted talk will be essential to delivering it well. In the same way, writing and then rewriting your resume, CV, board application, LinkedIn profile or marketing brochure will help you hone your message.
Fortunately, you don’t have to do this alone! In fact, we’d recommend against doing all your practicing and rewriting in isolation.
One of the most popular parts of our 7-Day Summit is “hot seat” day. That’s when participants volunteer to have the cohort of participants review a piece of their brand collateral (for just two minutes!) and give feedback on what they understand about that person’s brand after doing so. I’ve seen so many participants have “aha” moments about their brands as they have heard what their classmates have to say.
While we’d love to have you join us for an upcoming summit and experience hot seat day for yourself, you can also get feedback from people in your current network about how effectively you’re telling your brand.
Ask them to spend two minutes—and only two minutes—reviewing your LinkedIn profile, CV, brochure, presentation or elevator pitch and then give you feedback. I assure you that you’ll get a lot of ideas for how to apply “practice makes perfect” and “writing is rewriting.”
Affirm Your Executive Brand
The “excavate” and “tell” steps of the ETA process help you know what you stand for and how to share that with the world. The third and last step, “affirm,” is what gives you the confidence to do with conviction.
If you Google “affirmations,” you’ll see there are affirmations for the morning, for success, for happiness, for overcoming anxiety, for kids, for self-esteem. You name it. The most effective affirmations are bespoke—unique—for their particular purpose.
Whether you work with me one-on-one, read the blog, sign up for the newsletter, attend the webinar, join RG365 or participate in the 7-Day Summit, you’ll find the positive energy and support of affirmations for who you are and what you do at every turn.
As an example, participants in the 7-Day Summit pair up in a breakout session to practice their elevator pitches. When the larger group comes back together, participants introduce their partners by saying, “It is my honor and privilege to introduce _____” and then explaining their understanding of their partner’s executive personal branding.
The phrasing of the introduction using “honor and privilege” is key to partners affirming one another’s executive brand; the support emanating through the virtual classroom during this part of the program is almost palpable.
Powerful voices come from people who have excavated how they alone can transform the world, know how to tell others about it and have affirmed their belief that this is what they were meant to do. I look forward to hearing yours.
