I’d like to be known as…

One of the most rewarding aspects of my role is that I’m in a position where I can directly impact the individual growth of my team members. Admittedly, being “impactful” is kind of a generic statement so lets talk briefly about that. Let’s set one of the foundations of being impactful as having a clear understanding (and alignment) of the career goals desired by the individuals on your team. Awesome, career goals, everyone knows exactly what they want to be when they grow up… right? Not exactly, but that’s one reason I like the idea of a “personal brand”.

“I’d like to be known as…”

A personal brand might sound something like “I’d like to be known as someone who is an advocate for their team” or “I’d like to be known as an expert in web application security”. Starting off a personal brand statement with “I’d like to be known as…” is a good way to get the conversation started.

You can apply this concept at a micro level (helping with the now) or at a macro level (helping with the future). I like using this idea of a personal brand as a way to help support my teams immediate or long term goals. That individual who wanted to be seen as an expert in web application security, maybe they run point on securing the codebase, educating other Engineers on common attacks and mitigation strategies, or speaking at a meetup. Your job is to support them fully; use the resources available to you in your role to help that person grow in theirs. People grow and their focus areas are dynamic. For this reason, I try to revisit the conversation several times a year.

Defining your personal brand means you are raising self-awareness about how you want to be perceived. Keep in mind though, you don’t decide how people will actually perceive you.

The personal brand conversation is one of the first conversations I have during onboarding to my team. What I’m looking for in that initial conversation is a better understanding of what motivates them. This gives me an avenue I can use to pair opportunity with the individual. Individuals with strong personal brands are often those you reference as role models.

In some cases, I’ve also used this topic when having performance related conversations. This conversation might look something like “You self identified that you’d like to be known as a doer, however I’m receiving feedback that you are focusing on the reasons why you can’t do X, rather than how you can do X. This is causing the opposite perception and I want to make sure your concerns are heard, what ideas do you have to help reframe how you are delivering your concerns? What if you bring some solutions (rather than just concerns) and focus on those?”

Accountability (which can be a positive term) should not only come from management, peers should also be holding each other accountable to their goals. As a leader you should encourage team members to know and hold each other accountable to their goals. If the team is not comfortable with the idea of holding each other accountable, that is usually a sign that trust (or ownership) is lacking on your team (I’ll address strategies I use to improve trust in another post).

What are you thoughts? Do you have a similar approach? I’d like to hear it.