Friday 4 March 2011

This blog was inspired by a follow-up note I sent to delegates who attended a recent Personal Branding Workshop that Jorgen Sundberg and I co-presented. The follow-up note is intended to act as both a reminder of the day, and a pointer to aspects of the event that I felt touched upon universal themes.

The Personal Branding workshop was as inspiring for Jorgen and me as it was for the attendees who uniformly provided us with top-notch feedback. In addition to Jorgen, who spoke about Personal Branding as it relates to social media and I, who spoke about one’s Inner and Outer Brand, there were three experts, each of whom proved to be congruent with our overall message about Personal Branding.

For our next event on April 6, we've invited two speakers. Susan Heaton Wright is an accomplished voice-coach, whose approach aligns with the acclaimed voice coach and author of “Presence”, Patsy Rondenberg. In addition, Bob Jacobs, an alternative health practitioner who was voted by Tatler magazine as ‘One of Britain’s Top 250 Private Doctors’, will talk to us about how we can increase our energy levels by making better health choices.

Below are aspects of the last workshop that I hope you’ll find both interesting and helpful. At the beginning of the event, each of the attendees voiced their desired outcome for the day. They included:

- Life direction clarity

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A nudge in the right direction

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Understanding their own brand

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Understanding reputation

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Congruence


Each of these required outcomes are up to us to manifest in our lives. And as I mentioned on the day, being a positive role model, conveying an attitude that focuses on solutions, using humility and optimism, will, almost by osmosis, help one to achieve the outcomes above.

Also, appropriately placed and ‘well delivered’ humour, combined with excellent listening skills and empathy are key to gaining a stellar reputation. And when we combine these characteristics with knowing how to ask a ‘good’ question (a good question is one that shows interest in others) we are perceived as a positive role model - someone worth following.

I talked a little about intuition, or, as I refer to it, in-tuition. Over the years I’ve met, interviewed and coached many highly successful leaders, and they’ve all told me that they use their in-tuition when making decisions that for some, need more research, explanation or evidence. I’m not suggesting that one bases all decisions on gut feelings - I am saying acknowledge those feelings, and when they are strong, feel grounded and have a quiet certainty about them, take note.

Lastly, I’d like to touch upon letting go. In essence, letting go is a helpful strategy to advance career prospects, often in unexpected ways. That’s because when we are too attached to a specific outcome we prevent the possibility of a different outcome, one that is often better all round. In short, train yourself to be flexible and nimble. This is something that I firmly believe is worth considering.

Here's the information about our next workshop: http://ow.ly/48qHU




2 comments:

John Purkiss said...

Hello Malcolm - this is very interesting. Is it possible to subscribe to your blog? Many thanks, John Purkiss.

Malcolm Levene said...

Hello John,

Thanks for getting in touch.

Given my blogs are now written for The Huffington Post, this blogging facility is less used by me.

If you go to The Huffington Post site USA and type my name in, you can subscribe and view my archive.

Once again, thank you for contacting me.

Regards,

Malcolm