Reinventing You. Dorie Clark

       CHAPTER 2

       Recognize Where You’re Starting

      The first step in reinventing yourself professionally is getting a handle on where you’re starting. Everyone has a personal brand, whether some skeptics want to admit it or not: there’s no such thing as opting out. The concept of personal branding gained currency in the late 1990s, after a famous Tom Peters cover story ran in Fast Company (“The Brand Called You”). But really what we’re talking about is something that’s always existed: your reputation. What do people think of you? What do they say when you leave the room? Understanding that, and identifying any gaps between the current reality and where you want to be in the future, is critical to beginning your reinvention process. (Even if you’re not sure where you want to end up, starting with a “personal brand inventory” is useful because it can shed light on your unique strengths and areas where your colleagues think you could make a contribution.)

      You may think you already know how others view you—as a skilled communicator, or an incisive numbers guy, or a manager who always brings out the best in her team. But then again, you might be surprised. One executive coach told me about a client who was shocked to hear that his colleagues considered him arrogant. Despite being a modest and fairly self-deprecating guy, his habit of interrupting people convinced them he felt superior—almost the exact opposite of the truth. This behavior, which had been hampering his career, was easy to correct once he recognized it.

      The message you’re giving others may be very different than what you intend. So follow the advice of angel investor Judy Robinett: “If three people tell you you’re a horse, buy a saddle.” In other words, listen to what those in the outside world are telling you, because they’re probably right. So how do you get that feedback? There are four major ways you can get a read on how others perceive your personal brand. In this chapter, I’ll teach you to become your own HR executive—or private detective—and learn how to:

      Finally, we’ll integrate the data to get the full picture about your brand.

      Getting Started

      At the back of this book, in appendix A, you’ll find “Your Professional Reinvention Self-Assessment” worksheet, which may be helpful to fill out as you reinvent yourself.

      Your Personal 360 Interview

      The first step when you’re working with almost any corporate coach is to do a “360” (as in, all directions). Basically, that means the coach will interview everyone in your sphere—your boss, peers, subordinates, clients, suppliers—and try to elicit honest feedback about you and your performance. (It’s necessary to talk to everyone to locate the suck-ups who are perfect in their relationships with their bosses and tyrants to everyone below.) It’s obviously easier for people to speak openly to third parties who promise anonymity (coaches usually aggregate the data and won’t reveal who said what). If you work for a company with a reasonable training or professional development budget, ask if it would be willing to hire an executive coach to work with you. Because many employees shy away from coaches, viewing them as “remedial education for executives,” your boss is likely to be impressed with your proactive approach to self-improvement.

      Even if your company won’t pay for a coach, it may have recommendations about coaches you can retain personally. They can be expensive, with fees in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, but if you’re in a position to do it, the information they gather (and their recommendations based on it) can be invaluable. You can also ask for suggestions from colleagues.

      But what if you simply aren’t able to work with an outside coach? Don’t worry: there are steps you can take to elicit “360” information yourself. First, create a list of questions you think would be helpful in enhancing your self-knowledge. Executive coach Michael Melcher suggests “paired questions” such as, “What’s my strength? What’s not my strength? What career can you see me in? What career can you definitely not see me in?” That format, says Melcher, “gives people permission to give the full picture—they don’t want to be too negative.” The best questions will be the ones most relevant to you. But just for starters, some additional examples might be:

      Tapping Your Network

      Next, identify the people you’ll be reaching out to. Whereas a coach who has been hired to interview people about you has license to talk to people in your organization, you need to be more careful if you’re doing your own assessment (plus, you don’t want to tip your hand if you’re considering a move away from your current employer). Focus on friends, colleagues, and family members who know you well and whom you can trust to give you honest feedback (no frenemies need apply). Phyllis Stein, the former director of Radcliffe College Career Services at Harvard University, suggests identifying up to twenty people who exemplify the interests, skills, and values you admire—preferably a geographically diverse assortment of men and women in different fields—to get the broadest perspective possible.

      Now, it’s time to make the approach. Melcher suggests making it clear that you want to set aside time for an interview, not just regular friendly chitchat. “If you tell your friend you’re interviewing them, they take it much more seriously and will give you different answers,” he says. “You have to signal to people why you’re having the conversation: ‘I’m going to spend the next twenty minutes asking you about my brand, because I’d really like to see how I’m perceived.’”

      Face-to-face interviews often yield better answers because you can follow up in real time if something isn’t clear or if you’d like to probe an answer further, but they don’t always work. Sometimes, geography intervenes—you’re in Miami and the interviewee is in Mumbai. Sometimes, your respondent is just too busy, and the best you’re going to get is an e-mail pecked out on a smartphone in between layovers. And sometimes—let’s be honest—you can’t handle the feedback. It’s easy enough to tamp your down emotions if you’re reading an e-mail; you can just snap the screen shut, take a long walk, and calm down if you see something you weren’t expecting. But in real time, it can be harder to hide your emotions. Sometimes the truth can be painful, and if your poker face isn’t up to snuff, you may want to stick to electronic communication.

      The secret, whether you’re meeting in person or sending an e-mail request, is to stress the need for honesty (otherwise, what’s the point?). New York–based coach Alisa Cohn says you almost have to be forceful because friends’ desire to protect you is often so strong: “Say, ‘I’m trying to develop myself, and I know you love me, and I’d appreciate your candid feedback about my limitations.’ And they’ll say, ‘You don’t have any,’ and you say, ‘No, I’m serious.’ You have to get them to take it seriously. You have to cajole them into it.”

      One trick, she says, is to provide them with leads, so they’re not the one bringing up something negative: “You can say, ‘I’ve gotten feedback in the past that