#95: Building Your Personal Brand on Work
How to Stand Out Without Selling Out
Hello, and welcome to this week’s Edition of the Work in Progress Newsletter. If you’re new here, drop me a line and tell me who you are, what you do, and how work is going for you right now!
Here is what’s on tap for this week’s newsletter
How to Build Your Personal Brand In Today’s World of Work
What I’m Watching
The Workplace
#1:Personal Branding in Today’s World of Work
Last week, I gave two keynotes around the topic of Influence Without Authority and how to stand out in your organization.
During the keynote, I ran a couple poll questions to get a better understanding of the goals of my audience attendees and the idea of building your personal brand stuck out.
One of the questions I asked was, why do you want to improve your influence without authority?
I tallied up the responses to the poll question (N=122) but you can see the response in the chart. The net of it is that many of those in the audience came because they want to improve their own personal brand and gain more visibility within their organization.
This is not necessarily shocking or surprising, as from my own experience this is a question that I get a lot, whether it’s working with young professionals looking to cement themselves in the organization, mid-career professionals who are looking to get to the next level, executives who want to get their voice heard externally, or entrepreneurs who are trying to find their niche and speak to their desired audience.
Personal branding is not a new topic. Ever since Tom Peters coined it in his seminal Fast Company article in 1997, books, movements and podcasts have been built around it. Furthermore, with the proliferation of social media, it’s evolved and taken on a life of it’s own. But the world of work has changed since the topic first came out, and but since it’s so hot, I’m going to do my best to share with you my own framework and tips for how you can build your personal brand, whether you’re trying to gain more visibility for your work, cement yourself as an expert, or get others to pay attention to you so you can get things done. Click here to read more …
2.👀What I’m Following👀
Raconteur: What do Gen Y and Z really want from work?
In preparation for a panel I am moderating in December on “How to attract and retain the next generation of Accounting Talent,” I’m starting to do some research on what the next generation of talent wants out of their job and career. According to the London School of Economics and Freshworks, hybrid or flexible working has overtaken salary as the number one factor when it comes to members of Gen Y and Z choosing where to work.
I’m always keen to sort through “what’s actually different” as some of these things appear to be stuff we all might want out of a career especially this early on, but interesting to see what’s top of mind out of college students.
Kellogg School of Management Joins Consortium, Targets Laid Off Tech Workers
Hat tip and kudos to the Media and Comms team at the Kellogg School of Management with two big announcements this week. The first was their WSJ article about providing testing and waiver fees to anyone applying to their MBA program who got laid off by a big tech company.
The second was their announcement of joining the Consortium, a non-profit organization that invests in identifying and mentoring the next generation of minority business talent through scholarships to business school.
The first is just a masterclass PR play, the second is an interesting strategic play as they are now the second Top 5 MBA program (Stanford being the first) to announce a partnership with the Consortium, which primarily had targeted non Top 10 MBA programs. Taken together, it demonstrates their willingness to go on the offensive to find a bigger and more diverse pool of talent.
LinkedIn: Labor Markets Remain Resilient Despite Negative Headlines
Each month, Linkedin releases a labor trends report. Given the news lately about layoffs, I felt compelled to read through what they are looking at and finding. The TLDR: markets remain strong, but softness ahead.
What’s Happening With Tech Layoffs
If you are curious about what’s happening in the Tech world in terms of jobs, layoffs, etc please do yourself a favor and follow Niya, the Founder of Candor on LinkedIn or subscribe to her newsletter. Here is a post from this week breaking down how investors are driving tech layoffs, and here is a link to subscribe to her weekly newsletter. I had the chance to interview her on one of my podcasts earlier this year, and when it comes to jobs and compensation & equity she knows her stuff.
3.🏢The Workplace🏢
Podcast: Cal Newport on Knowledge Work: Slow Productivity
In the 2nd episode of a two part series, Cal goes deep with Professor Joesph Fuller on this idea of slow productivity. Cal’s main thesis is that we’re still in the early days of actually figuring out how to make knowledge work, well work, and that many of the issues we see today are due to allowing creativity and personalization of the ends and means of knowledge work. He points to how software developers who use a pull system (ex: you don’t work on something else until you finish the thing in front of you) as a method of “slow productivity,” and how that can be more effective and less taxing than trying to multi-task and work on projects all at once while getting constantly pinged.
Podcast: May I Speak With The Manager? With Melissa Nightingale
What happens when two of your favorite newsletter writers jump on a podcast to talk about a topic you care about deeply? That’s what I found out when I listened to Ann Helen Peterson’s new podcast episode on middle managers. Ann’s newsletter is a great read on culture, and Melissa’s newsletter and work with training managers is some of the best out there. If you’re a manager, or training managers, this is a must listen
Article: This is Your Brain on Zoom (Techcrunch)
Ever since I left the corporate world I’ve had more agency and control of my daily schedule. This means I get to structure my days in a way that align better with my productivity and creation habits. Seeing the images in that article and reading the study made me realize how important this is. The net of it is that video calls put incredible strain and stress on your brain, and while they probably are necessary for some of us, we should be more intentional about giving ourselves opportunities to rest from them so we still have time to actually get work done.
Note: If you have any qualitative feedback or suggestions for how I can make this newsletter better, I’d love to hear from you. Shoot me an email or DM, or mention it in the comments
Have a Great Week,
Al