In this episode we move onto mistake number 3, failing to build influence. 

This is a big mistake and I’ve made it several times in my career.  I think it goes hand in hand with the mistake of 'playing it small' because when we play it small we tend to operate in a small world. We interact with those who'll help us get the job done, and those who we’re friends with.  We tend to ‘keep our head down’ and avoid the limelight.

Here’s what’s waiting for you inside this episode

In this episode we move onto mistake number 3 - Failing to build influence. There is a big wide world out there but you’re backed up into one corner of it, because that’s where you feel safe.

I can describe all of this so well because I practiced it to perfection - I used to call it ‘flying under the radar’ this might sound clever and I guess that was my way of justifying it. For years in my early career I limited my sphere of influence, because that kept me in my comfort zone, but I also wanted the career success that you only see when you move beyond your usual boundaries and get uncomfortable. And therein lies the challenge that many of us face.

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Transcript

What do you want to be known for in your new job?

Hello I’m Elise Finn and welcome to Her Career, Her Life - the podcast that helps professional women create a career and life they love.

In this first season of Her Career, Her Life we’ve been digging into the challenges and opportunities of starting a new corporate job. 

To help you navigate this exciting but risky time, I’m sharing some of the advice I have for spotting when you might be in danger of committing 3 of the common mistakes that we are all in danger of making when we start a new job and helping you see some alternative ways of making a best first impression.

This is episode 6, so we’re more than half way through this first season and we’ve already covered off the first 2 of the 3 big mistakes - Those first 2 mistakes were - Hitting the Ground Running and Playing it Small.

In this episode we move onto mistake number 3 - Failing to build influence. 

This is a big mistake and it’s one I’ve made several times in my career.  I think it goes hand in hand with the mistake of playing it small because when we play it small we tend to operate in a small world - we only interact with those people that we actually have to in order to get your job done - and those we’re already friends with.  We tend to ‘keep our head down’ and avoid the limelight.  


I just said it that when you play it small you operate in a small world - and I think that’s a great segway into this topic of building influence - because it’s not that the world is actually small, it’s just that you’re isolating yourself to the point that your impact is smaller than it could or should be - you’re not reaching and influencing people beyond your immediate boundaries.  There is a big wide world out there but you’re backed up into one corner of it, because that’s where you feel safe.

I can describe all of this so well because I practiced it to perfection - I used to call it ‘flying under the radar’ this might sound clever and I guess that was my way of justifying it.  For years in my early career I limited my sphere of influence, because that kept me in my comfort zone, but I also wanted the career success that you only see when you move beyond your usual boundaries and get uncomfortable.  And therein lies the challenge that many of us face.

If we want to be successful we have to get uncomfortable - very uncomfortable - and we have to get used to that feeling - almost learn to embrace it!

If you feel uncomfortable about proactively building out your network you might be in danger of limiting your success in your new job.

And how comfortable you are with building extensive, supportive networks - or influence may be a function of many different things - here are 3 that I relate to in terms of my own experience:

Our upbringing - those of us who might have been told to ‘keep quiet and be a good girl’ might struggle with the associations we have with the idea of influence - in the same way as we might with power as I discussed in the last episode.

Our personality type - those of us who are introverts find reaching out to people we don’t know more challenging than the extraverts amongst us - if you’re not sure about this - ask yourself - how do you feel when you’re at a networking event - does it fill you with lots of energy or do you want to go and hide?

Our approach to hierarchy - if we’re easily intimidated by seniority it’s going to be more challenging to approach and start to build relationships with senior stakeholders.

Just talking about this brings back how difficult I used to find it to come out from my own particular dark corner and step into the light!  There is one particular situation that stands out in my memory.  

About 15 years ago I was plucked out of middle management ranks in Thomson Reuters and promoted to my first senior role in that company.  As part of this promotion, I was invited to join a new career development program designed to accelerate the careers of a small group of women.  It was a wonderful opportunity, and I think it helped change the trajectory of my career.  And it was also FUN - it involved some fantastic learning experiences, there were management off site retreats, I was flown around the world to visit different offices and I was exposed to the very senior tier of leadership in the business.  

This all sounds wonderful and it was.

But it was also very uncomfortable for me and it made me really examine and ultimately throw away my old cloak of ‘flying under the radar’.

But I really wasn’t very well prepared for some of the opportunities and situations that I found myself in.

I used to work in the London office and every year the executive board would meet there and various people would be asked to present to them to give visibility to various topics.  On this occasion I wasn’t asked to present (which was a relief at the time) but I was asked to join what was described as an ‘informal lunch with the board’ along with a group of women from the career development group.

It wasn’t how I imagined - the informal lunch turned out to be a very formal affair in the board room, seated and with name places.  When I arrived I realised to my horror that I was placed next to David Thomson, Chairman of Thomson Reuters and the most senior person in the room.  

That lunch was excruciating for me I just couldn’t calm my nerves enough to say anything, but I don’t actually think that was the biggest problem - the biggest problem was that I didn’t have anything to say!

Don’t get me wrong - I had prepared some canned conversation topics for what I thought would be a casual networking lunch - but David threw me completely when he asked me ‘to tell me something about yourself’ 

I stumbled through an incoherent professional timeline of every job I’d done that had got me to this point.  I hated that entire conversation and I still skirm when I recall it all these years later. It was painful, I was profoundly uninspiring and David soon turned to the person on the other side of him and became engrossed in what I can only imagine was a much more entertaining conversation.

Of course as soon as the lunch was over I was full to the brim of great conversation ideas, of how I could have engaged David with the important work we were doing or how I could have at least told him something interesting about me, my values, my experiences, my life that might have held his attention for more than 5 minutes.

But hindsight is a wonderful thing isn’t it!
I was so mortified at my complete failure to grasp this amazing opportunity to make an impact, that I beat myself up for months and was convinced I would be exposed for the fraud I clearly was - I was feeling like an impostor (if you’ve missed the episode I did on Impostor Syndrome have a listen to episode 4). 

What this epic failure on my part showed me was that I just wasn’t prepared for this type of conversation - and it wasn’t just because it was David Thomson - although that level of seniority was definitely daunting and part of my problem - But it was more than that - I simply didn’t know how to talk about myself in a way that wasn’t boring, self-depreciating or somehow contrived.  

Fundamentally I didn’t know what impression I wanted to make and what I wanted to be known for and that’s why I struggled so much in those situations.

But I did learn a big lesson through this experience, I never wanted to be in that situation ever again where I had nothing to say for myself and couldn’t even describe who I was and what I cared about - so I started to do some work to remedy that!  

A few months later I was lucky enough to be working with a business coach and we were talking about how I could expand my influence and work through some of the issues I had with ‘putting myself out there’ with people I didn’t already know, like and trust.

I told her about my epic failure at that board lunch and she asked me ‘What do you want to be known for? If you don’t have that clear, you’ll struggle to build influence and you’ll struggle to your story well’

That really hit home.  I had never made the connection before between my reticence to expand and deepen my network and my lack of self confidence in my own story.

I couldn’t answer Maxine’s question about what I wanted to be known for but a memory came back loud and clear for what I didn’t want to be known for.  

That memory took me back to when I was at Lloyds TSB during the late 80s and 90s.  The company was acquiring a lot of smaller businesses and expanding at a fast pace.  I had risen through the ranks very quickly and ended up running quite a big operational group when I was still in my 20’s.  I was young and immature but good at my job.  It was a crazy busy time, I had a lot of responsibility, I was running at a million miles an hour and I didn’t stop to think about the impact I was having on the people around me. 

I must have created a reputation for being cold, aloof and unapproachable because when I left to go on maternity leave, I learnt that I had acquired a nickname - everyone apparently knew me as ‘the ice maiden’.

I was shocked.  That wasn’t how I viewed myself and it certainly wasn’t how I wanted to be thought of.  So years later, when Maxine, my business coach at Thomson Reuters asked me what I wanted to be known for, this experience is what came into my mind.  I didn’t want to be known as the Ice Maiden and although that had been in a different organisation I knew those tendencies had stayed with me and if I was going to create a different impression I would have to be intentional about it.  So if I didn’t want to be known as something like an ice maiden what did I want to be known for?

My point in telling you these stories is to illustrate the importance of having some answers yourself to this question - what do you want to be known for?  It doesn’t have to be completely fleshed out and beautifully finished, but if you want to have some intention for the way you shape your career, you also need to shape how you show up at work each day as this creates the reality of what you become known for.

Of course what I’m really getting to here is your personal brand - because your personal brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room - so we all already have one whether we think we do or not.  If you’d asked me when I was at Lloyds TSB what my personal brand was, I wouldn’t have had a clue - but lots of people who worked with me would have named it - the ice maiden.  

But this is not what I might have been aiming for if I’d been intentional about it at the time!

By working on your personal brand you can start to craft a way that you want to be perceived - but and this is a big but - to be effective this has to be authentic.  It has to be a genuine, credible reflection of you - you at your best, yes - but it has to be you.  If you start crafting a personal brand that is incredible and inauthentic, people will be able to spot this a million miles away and it will feel horrible and incongurant for you too.  It will do damage to your reputation as it will undermine trust - which is the basis of all relationships.

When you’re starting a new job you’re going to be meeting a lot of new people who will be keen to get to know you and understand who you are.  They will make decisions on what they think of you - so it’s really important that you think about your personal brand and get intentional about helping them to form the ‘right’ impression of you, as this first impression is hard to ‘undo’.

So if I’ve convinced you that it would be a good thing to think about your personal brand - as the first step in building a solid approach to influence, then where do you start?  

So here we go - here are my 3 suggestions for where you can start if you’ve keen to think about your personal brand - and as you listen to these suggestions remember that the angle we’re coming from here is to help you build the foundation of influence - if you want to build that foundation you need to start with building a clear picture of who you are and what you stand for:

1.  Ask yourself these 3 questions

Your brand is ‘personal’ so it makes sense to start with some solid foundational work to establish who you are and what you want to be known for.  This is almost a self inventory and may seem awkward as it work on it at first, but keep going.  Self reflection is a very important part of building an authentic personal brand.

Making it personal to you makes it easy for your to live into your brand everyday and in everyway - because you won’t be wearing a mask or faking anything - this is genuine and that makes it powerful and credible.

Start by asking yourself the following three questions and recording the answers in a free form fashion.  Try not to filter or overthink the answers that come to you at first because you can refine your thinking later.

Who am I?  Really explore this question by asking yourself:
What’s important to you?
What do you stand for, what are you prepared to fight for?
What are your strengths, what are you good at?
What lights you up?

What are my values? (if you need a prompt I’ve included a list of values in the cheatsheet that goes along with this episode, but don’t limit yourself to those I’ve included - just use them as a springboard)

What do I want to be known for? What do you want people describe you as being great at?  What are you expert in or what skills are you working hard to develop? 

2.  Ask 3 people who know you well in a work context to describe you using 3 adjectives

When you ask them to do this, make it clear that you want their genuine point of view and that you’re not looking for flattery.  Tell them to be honest about how they would describe you if they had to pick just 3 descriptive words.  This is a great exercise as it’s a good indicator of where your personal brand is currently positoning you in their eyes.

3.  Get to know yourself a bit better - explore your personality type from ‘the inside out and the outside in’

Firstly - from the Inside out - by this I mean how do you project your natural personality into the world.  How does who you are internally mean you show up each day at work?  Myers briggs is probably the leading personality test in this category and is often used in a corporate setting so you may already know your Myers Briggs type - the latest development of this model is fantastic as it really brings the 16 MB personality types to life as characters which is much more understanable and engaging than the dry 4 letter acronym of the original MB profile.  

Secondly you can explore your personality type from the Outside in - this is looking at the impact your personality has on others and how they perceive your strengths.  Sally Hogshead has developed a fantastic approach called Fascination and you can take her test to get some really interesting insights to help you build your self awareness and give you ideas for how you want to shape your personal brand.

Both of these tests have free initial parts to them and I’m sure they will try and upsell you a full report, but the free version should be enough to get you going in terms of additional insight on how your personality impacts your behaviour and how other people perceive you.  I’ll put the links to both of these tests in the cheatsheet that goes along with this episode of the podcast.  

These 3 steps (Asking yourself some foundational questions, asking your trusted colleagues how they would describe you and exploring more of your personality) will give you a lot of raw data that you can start to hone and work with to get to a clearer definition of your personal brand.  

It’s always easier to work through this with someone else - someone who you trust to give you wise feedback - a mentor, friend or coach to help distil your inputs and form a picture of what you want to be known for.  

When I work on personal branding with my clients we work towards getting to a number of tangible ways to describe your personal brand:

What you want to be known for - a simple statement of your purpose - or if you’re a fan of Simon Sineak - Your WHY - for the time and place you are in your career now.  For example I want to be known for : Inspiring professional women to build careers and lives they love.

How you do it - the 3 adjectives that describe how you show up every day - for me those adjectives are kind, consistent, challenging

Power stories - stories that illustrate how you live into your why and how every day.  If you haven’t listened to episode 5 go back there for more on power stories.

If you want to build influence I would say that the place to start is with your personal brand - be clear on what you want to be known for and then start to map out, who you want to know that about you - more on this in the next 2 episodes.

For a recap on what you’ve heard me talk about here and for more details on how to build your own Personal Brand download my cheat sheet for this episode from my website 

www.elisefinn.com/podcast/episode6 

I’d love to know how you get on and if you have any questions you can email me or message me on LinkedIn.  Swipe the artwork on your podcast player to find the notes

Finally, if you’re into this content, go and leave a review on itunes, subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend.  If you have already left a written review on iTunes Thank You - this really does mean so much to me. Those positive reviews mean that more people get a chance to benefit from this free content and most satisfying for me they get to hear about the lessons I’ve learnt in my career so they don’t need to make the same mistakes I have!

As a thank you, I’m going to be giving away a free 30 minute coaching session to someone who leaves a written review in iTunes each week of this first season.  I’ve already spoken to 3 of those winners and it’s a delight to offer my help more directly one on one in this way. 

In the next episode we move deeper into the topic of building influence so I hope you’ll join me next week, in the meantime thank you for listening, I don’t take your support for granted!  Now get out there and create a career and life that you’re going to love.