WHO WILL BENEFIT MOST FROM MY PERSONAL BRANDING COACHING
As a professional career coach and a personal brand expert (been trained and certified in both areas), I seem to be wearing two hats but in practice, I am functioning as one practitioner – that of an executive career brand strategist. In working with my clients, I coach them to build their branding in specific areas which are important to them.
Coaching is the means to do it and branding is the end in mind.
Coaching is a powerful, empowering and transformational process of behavioural change and branding is a valuable, rewarding and fulfilling vision of life change. Both these professional tools of personal development have been proven successful in creating tangible value, resulting in measurable returns for organisations (through corporate branding) and its key executives (through executive coaching).
It is true that anyone and everyone can benefit greatly from personal branding coaching.
However, given my expertise, experiences and extraordinary value, I am only able to focus my coaching on these specific groups of clients. These are usually successful individuals (you have already accomplished something in your career) who are seeking for a new direction in their lives.
They have already achieved successes in their professional lives and their job functions are found in middle or senior management levels of the company.
They are usually aged 35 to 45 years old and have attained some form of financial stability for their futures. (Read what's coaching)
Consider these three dominant groups of executives that most of you would likely share similar characteristics.
1. Those Who Are In Career Transitions
These individuals, according to Dr Frederic Hudson, founder of Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara (www.hudsoninstitue.com) are experiencing a change in their life cycles and he describes a life cycle as consisting of life chapters and life transitions, namely Phase 1 (go for it), Phase 2 (the doldrums), Phase 3 (cocooning) and Phase 4 (getting ready).
Personally, I experienced phase 2 of my life cycle during my last days in my foreign exchange trading career in 1997 as I was being challenged in my values as a person who is fair and just. Having left my job, I embarked on Phase 3 in cocooning myself to rediscover my own identity in terms of my values, passions and purpose. Just like a pupa which is cocooned before it becomes a beautiful butterfly, the individual’s stage of cocooning has to be orchestrated well before he or she is ready to move into Phase 4 (getting ready) to be re-launched into Phase 1 again but this time as that of a renewed life. A badly executed cocooning stage can lead to a wounded butterfly which is not able to fly like it should. And with my current Phase 4 of my renewed life cycle, I am getting ready to launch myself again as a career branding coach, full of self confidence and conviction.
How about you? Are you one of these individuals?
• Individual whose services are no longer required by the company
Unfortunately due to restructuring and downsizing (a reality in this volatile global economy), your services are no longer required by the organisation and you are clueless as what to do next. The options available are to search for another similar job in another organisation; change career or becoming an entrepreneur. So what do you do?
• Executive who is not sure if the future organisation is a good fit for him or her?
A different company’s culture with its different values is an important consideration for individuals of these groups. With more than 10 years of professional and life experiences, some of your values have been influenced and shaped by your previous organisation. An executive who values open communication and dialogue may find working in a top down hierarchical environment a challenge especially if the open communication value is the most important on his “values” list. You are willing to “downsize” but your identity of core values are challenged every day in your new environment.
How do you manage the conflict of values and yet be assured that you are able to perform at your very best?
• Executive who is on a job search
You need help to develop an attractive authentic personal branding profile based on your values, motivated abilities and attributes and also to identify possible employers whose values are aligned to yours. Have you come across senior executives who having joined an organisation, were not motivated to continue working in the new environment as there was a clash of values.
These are the critical “deliberation points” of service that executive recruitment agencies are not able to provide you with. Don’t take a chance on your future career without professional advice for a wrong move could adversely affect your brand value.
2. Those Who Plan For Career Advancement
These are individuals who have performed very well in their present organisations and are looking for new challenges and better opportunities. Unfortunately, they are not able to find them within their own organisations. And with the heavy demands of work, you hardly have time to craft a career plan but you know it is important as it would create a pathway for you to forge a powerful future for your career.
Every day of procrastination means every day of loss opportunities. With personal branding, you can work towards developing a career vision that will create positive and attractive personal value of who you are in the eyes of your current or potential employers.
Are you one of these individuals?
◊ Your job applications have not been successful
You need to develop a powerful and forward looking resume which speaks about your brand, comprising your values, motivated skills and attributes.
Employers buy into your future YOU, Inc and not your past or current potentials. Too often, the resumes provide information which does not excite HR directors and little is written about the authentic person.
◊ Your interviews have not been successful
You have gone for countless interviews and you thought you did well as the interviews were generally quite long but the outcome was not successful.
Have you considered what were the interviewers seeking for since much of what you have accomplished was already available in the resumes?
Have you considered that they were attempting to uncover the real YOU, Inc, that “uniquely you” who would bring immense value to their organisation?
Too often, good candidates miss the golden opportunity to articulate the X factor, your identity – your values and instead repeat time and again what the interviewers already knew!
◊ Your networking is hardly working
Are you an EXCO member of a professional organisation in your industry? Are you contributing effectively to promote, upgrade or expand your professional industry within the country or even across countries? Are you a member of the key organisations in your related fields?
◊ Your company does not think you have what it takes
You are ambitious and you know you have what it takes to get to the top of your organisation. But you do not seem to get the endorsement from the people that matter.
What happened?
It is affecting your motivation and confidence. Rising to the top of the corporate ladder requires more than hope or friendships. It takes both personal and professional skills to elicit positive reviews from your bosses. What ground breaking projects have you done for your department? What kind of leader are you? How do your bosses perceive you as? How are you known as in the company?
Many of these executives have realised that having additional and prestigious qualifications like MBAs have not helped them much in achieving their desired career visions and are looking for more effective and directed approaches!
3. How Does My Personal Branding Coaching Work?
As a certified Reach Personal Branding Strategist from Reach Communications Consulting, The Global Leader In Personal Branding http://www.reachcc.com and a certified coach from Coach U and a Graduate School of Coaching member since 2002 http://www.coachville.com , I have specially crafted a customised personal branding coaching module for you.
Using REACH Personal Branding System, the programme focuses on developing your unique Personal Brand and designing strategies to communicate your uniqueness to the markets that are important to you.
The objective is to discover the authentic and valuable ‘YOU, Inc’ and create a forward looking approach to monetize your value.
Through creating a powerful, possible and personalised vision based on your values, goals and action steps are set towards achieving the vision. The purpose of the programme is to have you achieve your vision, career or business through a process which is aligned to who you are and what you want. Ultimately, you want to achieve success which fulfils you both personally and professionally. And as your coach, it is also my mission that you live a life of success that is meaningful, purposeful and fulfilling.
Nothing is more rewarding and fulfilling than living a life well lived ……frankie mao
