I Need to Be Respected

Women need to be respected at work.  The most direct path to generating such respect,  while rarely discussed, is all about creating a compelling personal brand.

What’s the connection?

Both put a premium on trust and consistency.

Aside from your ability to communicate effectively, deliberately creating a brand that emanates from your core values will yield the sharpest tool in your toolbox.

Become a truly effective communicator, and people may listen.  You will be heard.  But, to inspire people to follow, perform for and invest in you, you’ll need their respect.

A professional’s brand is her word.

So, what IS your professional brand? Have you given this any thought? If not, here’s a great place to start:

• Understand that a great brand stems from core values.
• Make a list of your most fundamental values and beliefs. These should be values that without which, you wouldn’t be who you are. They need to be rock solid, with all else stemming from there.
• Next, list your competencies, those for which you want to be known.
• Finally, create your own visual, your own schematic of what your brand looks like.  As an example, I think of mine as a golf ball that encases…  a hard super ball center but then has all those rubber band things wrapping around and around it.  But that’s mine. What’s yours?

Grab an accountability partner and do this exercise. It will change the way you show up at work.

• why the current efforts thrown at increasing the number of women leaders aren’t working
• the three problems women professionals encounter when moving up the ladder 
• how women can better make themselves heard,  and