How do you respond when you meet someone new and they ask, “What do you do?” Does your answer create a true picture of who you are and what you contribute? In today’s business climate of unrelenting internal change and leadership turnover, the way you introduce yourself can have a huge impact on your career. So in her May 16 “Your Best Next Move” video, Bobbie LaPorte shares some simple tips that you can practice to go beyond your job title—and make people curious to learn more.
Transcript of Your Best Next Move: Rethink How You Introduce Yourself in This Reorg Environment
Hi everyone, Bobbie LaPorte here again with my weekly leadership tip for your Best Next Move, where I help you see continuing curveballs as an opportunity. This year, I will help you actively use your personal agency to accelerate what you want to accomplish in 2022.
I think it is a fair assumption that if you are listening to this tip, you have probably experienced some kind of internal change or reorg during the last 6 months.
In the current market environment with the constant pace of change, people leaving and changing jobs in droves, and the need for companies to recalibrate their orgs to stay competitive, this is the way it is going to be.
In our last survey of more than 200 tech execs, they said that internal change was the biggest curveball they experienced. So, no surprise to any of us.
What might not be so obvious is the resulting velocity of change in your internal networks of advocates and supporters – so critical to your career advancement and success. Many companies have had more than a 50% turnover in employees and leadership over the last year. Just think about that.
You have probably heard me say before that my definition of “self-promotion” is sharing your successes with people who matter.
The lesson here is to actively curate and nurture your internal networks – from a strategic standpoint – identifying people with positional authority as well as strategic influencers who can possibly make or break your career.
In addition, many of you are now attending conferences, internal company meetings, and customer summits. So, the opportunities to be intentional about how you “introduce” yourself are growing. And that’s a good thing.
Gone are the days when you can simply refer to your title and area of responsibility. You need to be more creative, and thought-provoking. You need to create a picture in the other person’s mind of who you are and what you do; to capture their imagination (yes, their imagination) to want to know more…and most importantly, to remember you.
So, here’s my tip:
Without going into detail here about how to curate and build your leadership brand and share your value proposition, here are a couple of examples for you to consider as you rethink how you introduce yourself in this changing landscape of reorganization curveballs.
Here’s my first example:
Let’s say you lead a North American Sales org for a tech company.
Option A is: “I lead North American sales for company “x.”
Factual but very uninteresting and undifferentiated. There are hundreds of sales execs who have this job.
Option B: “I am building a national team of top account execs who are going to transform the way we sell to the enterprise.”
If you were on the receiving end of this statement…. wouldn’t you want to know more?
Here’s a second example:
Let’s say your run a product org for a tech company.
Option A: “I am the CPO for company “x”.
Again, factual but pretty ho-hum. Sounds like lots of your peers.
Option B: “I am leading a team of super-talented professionals to build the next generation of products that will drive our growth in the next 2-3 years.”
The actual numbers are less relevant than the fact you are:
(1) talking about you and the team
(2) using words like building and leading
(3) referencing transformation, growth, scale
I know you can do this…it only takes a few minutes to try it out and see the response. I think you will be pleasantly surprised…and the ultimate payoff could be huge.
That’s my tip for this week. For more help on using your personal agency to make uncertainty a part of your success strategy for 2022 – check out my new book – “When the Curveballs Keep Coming: A Leadership Playbook for an Uncertain World”, and my new online course – “Leading Through Uncertainty”.
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