Personal Branding = (Strength + Value + Visibility) x Engagement

I believe personal branding is a pathway to increased employee engagement. We need to work in our work and on our work. Thinking about our personal brand, talking to others at work about how they see us, and working on our visibility strengthens our work, our brand, and our engagement.

I have written before about the connections between personal branding and employee engagement. Click here to read my first post on personal branding.

I just finished reading Jerry S. Wilson and Ira Blumenthal’s book, Managing Brand You. The book offered some personal branding nuggets and valuable resources. I liked the cover with the fingerprint being the center of you. Click here to read an excellent summary and overview of the book.

Here are 6 key elements that stood out to me from the book:

Brand Promise. Your brand is your promise to a specific group woven with their actual experience with your brand. What is your employee engagement promise? How are you keeping it? I liked their equation: Relationship = Promise + Experience. The key promise question is: What is your brand promise and how do you deliver on it.

Brand Uniqueness. What makes you a unique employee? Do you have a sustainable and discernible uniqueness that makes you stand out and creates value for your organization?

Brand identity and brand image. Your brand identity is how you want to be perceived and your brand image is how you are perceived. It is so important to focus on brand image or we end up with artificial branding — resembling a herd of branded cattle flocking on Twitter. For those of you familiar with Seth Godin, I believe there can even be too many purple cows. I love the idea of a brand not being what you say about yourself or your pithy 20 second elevator speech…your brand is what others say about you. You learn more about your brand by listening by than crafting clever sounding brand slogans or drawing cute logos for yourself.

Brand essence. This is the heart and soul of your brand. What do you love to do and what are you really good at? Ensure you work with your essence and you work from your essence to sustain high levels of employee engagement.

Brand Insistence. Do you create such a strong brand that others insist on working with you? Do you become invaluable because of the loyalty you create based on the service you deliver? Insist on being the best you can be and other will insist on having you work with them or for them.

Branding Glossary. I encourage you to read Managing Brand You and don’t skip the wonderful glossary of branding terms at the back of the book from pages 219 to 224. Learning a strong brand vocabulary can be a pathway to creating a brand new you and contributing to a deeper level of employee engagement.

Are you on the ball?

Myopia. Do you have your eye on the ball? The one ball? Or is one eye on the screen as you try and talk with someone else with your other eye, as you notice out of the corner of your eye something else going on in the periphery of your vision. We can see so much but often see so little.

Seamless. In sports, athletes are taught, trained, and encouraged to keep their eye on the ball. When baseball batters are really focused they talk about seeing the seams of the fastball as it leaves the pitcher’s hand and zooms towards the plate. This is not time to be thinking about what Joe is doing?

Our other I. Full employee engagement means that our “I” is in the ball. We have invested ourselves fully in what we are doing. Nothing else matters but the matter right at hand. We do not force ourselves to focus rather we allow focus to consume us as extraneous thoughts disappear.

Get an eyeful. Here are some invitations to have your I in the ball and your eye on the ball:

1. Let your mind relax into concentration by slowly paying increasing attention to whatever you are doing?
2. Practice some form of mindfulness or meditation that will increase your overall capacity for greater attention.
3. When your mind wanders, and it certainly will, don’t panic just gently bring it back to the matter at hand.
4. If you are having sustained and prolonged periods without your I in the ball and your eye on the ball determine if “this ball” is worthy of your attention and consider shifting focus. Perhaps you are a bowler or golfer not a basketball player or a mechanic not a customer service representative.
5. Don’t forget, it is easy to keep your eye on the ball when your are “having a ball.” Ensure that enjoyment and learning are integrated into your performance and work.

Contribution not debt. Don’t pay attention. It is not a debt. Give attention. It is your contribution.

Can you do….nothing?

Leo Babuata wrote about nothing on Zen Habits:

Sure, we all know how to do nothing. We all know how to lay around and waste time. But many of us are too busy to do it much, and when we do it, our minds are often on other things. We cannot relax and enjoy the nothingness. Doing nothing can be a waste of time, or it can be an art form.

How well do you do nothing? Can you see the value of it? Can complete disengagement be the stimulus of rest and rejuvenation for the response of full and robust employee engagement?

I encourage you to click here to read Leo’s suggestions on nothing.

He concluded the post: Finally, the Art of Doing Nothing cannot be mastered overnight. It will take hours and hours of practice, of hard work (doing nothing isn’t easy!). But you will enjoy every minute of it! Try it today.

Find the all in small.

Click on any of the balls above to see how one small click can expand Kaizen!

Kazien. Kaizen is is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement throughout all aspects of life. Robet Maurer wrote a wonderful book called The Kaizen Way: One Small Step Can Change Your Life. Maurer does a superb job of helping us focus on the small. He encourages and guides us to take small comfortable steps towards improvement.

Small steps. His six suggested small strategies:

1. Ask small question to inspire creativity and dispel fear.
2. Think small thoughts to develop new habits and skills.
3. Take small actions to guarantee success
4. Solve small problems embedded in bigger problems
5. Give and receive small rewards to produce better results
6. Recognize and dwell in the small, often ignored, crucial moments.

Moon shot. As Neil Armstrong stated when he stepped on the moon. “that’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”  Our small steps, actions, and thoughts can take one giant step through fear while also moving us much closer to our desired outcomes.

A small energy boost. We seem to believe that small = insignificant. I believe that small is the new significant. We are so overloaded that we often neglect to see the power in small acts, questions, or interactions. For example, Jane Dutton demonstrated the power of small interactions (HQI: High Quality Interactions) to be the single greatest contributor to organizational energy. One of these interactions can occur in two seconds and many of them woven through the day energize other people, ourselves, and our organizations.

Small Toss. Have you ever thrown a ball to a young child. You often get them to cup their hands, you stand very close, and you make a very small toss of the ball into their waiting hands and watch the glee spread over their face when they catch the ball. Start thinking of the glee you can create for yourself by thinking small thoughts, asking small questions, or taking samll actions. Here are 3 suggestions:

1. Read Maurer’s book, The Kaizen Way – transfrom his small suggestions into small and significant actions.
2. Practice small acts such as taking a few second to really look at a co-worker or to voice something you noticed or appreciated about them.
3. Chop stress into managable chunks by continually thinking about the smallest and most significant actions you can take to handle various strssful situations.

Confront the difficult when it is still easy;

Accomplish he great task by a series of small acts.

~ Tao Te Ching.

This moment. Maurer concludes his book with this small question: What more important task does this life hold than to draw out the possiblity in each moment?