In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, and the latest installment of The Power of Your Personal Brand Series, we’re doing a deep dive into 1 of the 3 Personal Brand framework components: Characteristics. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!
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The Power of Your Personal Brand Series: A Deep Dive into Characteristics
We just launched our new book! You can grab The Power of Your Personal Brand: A Playbook for Struggling Middle Managers Who Want to Do Big Things on Amazon or at ForthRight-People.com
In the latest installment of The Power of Your Personal Brand Series, we’re doing a deep dive into another one of the 3 Personal Brand framework components: Characteristics. We define your Characteristics as your features or attributes. They make you YOU. They are neither good nor bad. And, they guide everything you do. In this episode, you’ll learn how to embrace your Characteristics to get on the path to your Big Thing. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:
- Behaviors & Actions are how you show up, Characteristics are hard to change
- Characteristics come from ingrained traits, experiences, hard life lessons
- Don’t take your characteristic-driven talents for granted, they are a big deal
- Direct communication style but learning to modulate for different audiences
- Spreading your personal brand philosophy requires hiring people whose characteristics align
And as always, if you need help in building your Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.
Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:
Show Notes
- The Power of Your Personal Brand Series: A Deep Dive into Characteristics
- [0:29] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
- [00:29] Continuing The Power of Your Personal Brand series, focusing on Characteristics
- [00:56] Your Characteristics are your unique recipe that make you you, neither good nor bad
- [01:24] Building Personal Brand on characteristics is authentic and your competitive advantage
- [01:51] Recap: Personal Brand Framework is Characteristics, Appearance, Behaviors & Actions
- [02:47] Behaviors & Actions are how you show up, Characteristics are hard to change
- [03:17] Characteristics come from ingrained traits, experiences, hard life lessons
- [03:46] Characteristics inherently make you who you are, don’t try to change them fundamentally
- [04:42] Characteristics exist on a spectrum that you can modulate, not just on/off
- [05:36] Characteristics come from traits, beliefs, values and points of view, not just personality tests
- [06:35] Importance of examining beliefs and points of view, not just common traits and values
- [07:31] Examining your full recipe of characteristics reveals your unique value and differentiation
- [08:28] Anne’s example: Tenacity, resilience, growth mindset, and belief in figuring things out made her a successful real estate investor
- [10:48] April’s example: Extroversion, problem-solving, empathy and perceptiveness made her a successful salesperson and coach
- [12:12] Don’t take your Characteristic-driven talents for granted, they are a big deal
- [13:33] Characteristics are neither good nor bad, they move you toward or away from your big thing depending on the context
- [15:09] Your job to modulate characteristics through appearance and behaviors to achieve your aims
- [16:58] Love of humor but learning to read the room on when to dial it up or down
- [18:57] Direct communication style but learning to modulate for different audiences
- [20:35] Importance of being choiceful about environments that align with or violate your core characteristics
- [22:21] Characteristics are powerful motivators behind why you do what you do
- [23:36] John Mackey‘s win-win-win-win philosophy was a defining characteristic that shaped Whole Foods‘ culture and actions
- [25:41] Spreading your Personal Brand philosophy requires hiring people whose characteristics align
- [26:44] Characteristics ground you and provide a foundation to return to, especially in times of struggle
- [28:00] Struggling often comes from changing expectations, not a flaw in your characteristics
- [28:49] Expectations changed when moving into management, had to tap dormant characteristics of empathy and valuing others
- [30:43] The key mindset shift from individual contributor to leader managing a team
- [31:53] Dialing up polish in a professional services firm but learning to balance it with approachability and empathy in a new culture
- [33:54] Characteristics are fundamental to who you are, can be modulated but not erased, and are key to navigating changing expectations while staying grounded
- [34:59] The book The Power of Your Personal Brand is available on Amazon with a companion workbook
- Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
- Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn
What is Strategic Counsel?
Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Prepare for honest, direct, and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business. Referred to by some listeners as an “MBA in podcast form,” this show is dense with personal stories, proven strategies contextualized by practical steps, and tools to put what you learn into action now.
Your hosts Anne Candido and April Martini are Co-Founders of ForthRight People, a leadership performance company focused on developing leaders from the inside out. They are also Authors of the book: The Power of Your Personal Brand: A Playbook for Struggling Middle Managers Who Want to Do Big Things. They thrive on engagement from listeners and welcome any show topics! So, reach out and connect!
Thanks for listening Strategic Counsel. Get in touch here to become more strategic.
Transcript
Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
00:01
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business podcast. If you’re looking for honest, direct and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business, you are in the right place. In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective. This unlocks opportunity for you, your team and your business. Now let’s get to it.
00:29
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel podcast. I’m Anne Candido. And I am April Martini. And today we continue our series, The Power of Your Personal Brand. As a reminder, the series is based on our new book, The Power of Your Personal Brand, a playbook for struggling middle managers who want to do big things. And today we’re going to take a deep dive into another one of the three personal brand framework components, and that is your characteristics. Now we define your characteristics as your features or attributes.
00:56
They make you you and they are neither good nor bad, but they guide everything you do. Yes, your characteristics are the recipe of you if you need a different way to think about this. It’s who you are at your core. So it’s inherently unique. And when you build your personal brand from this foundation, it can only be authentic. And we say authentic with a capital A because it is the total experience of you.
01:24
This is your competitive advantage because nobody else has the same recipe. So it becomes the way you differentiate and then add value when you manifest it through your appearance and your behaviors and actions. And when all of this is done with intention, this is what puts you on the path to your big thing. All right. Wow. I mean, that’s super impressive. That’s basically, I mean, what we built the book around, right? Because it’s super, super powerful stuff. So.
01:51
This is what we’re going to dive deep into today and really just like establish who you are and give you some time to introspect into that. So let’s jump into the Powerbure Personal Brands series, a deep dive into characteristics. All right, first, just as a reminder, we’re going to talk about where characteristics sit in the personal brand framework. So you guys have been around us. You’re probably like, yeah, we already know this. Can we move on? But we’re just going to do this for anybody who may be new.
02:17
Right? we know characteristics are the foundation. These are your futures or attributes, just like we talked about. Then there’s your appearance and your appearance is your visual and verbal presence. And that collectively makes up your image. And this is what people think about you. So now we have another episode on appearance if you want to deep dive into that. So you’ll get all of that there. And then there’s your behaviors and actions. And this is how you show up and engage with the world around you. And this is really how you conduct yourself and reputation that you create.
02:47
And we group behaviors and actions together because there’s nuance in how they’re separated. So don’t worry about trying to separate those. It’s not really that important. It’s just about collecting them together, but just kind of ingrain in your mind that your behaviors and actions is the way that you show up. Your behaviors and actions in your appearance are the things you can really control. Your characteristics are very, very hard to change because they have been in either ingrained for very, very long time, or they’ve been learned through
03:17
sometimes very hard life lessons or experiences that have taught you something that are very meaningful that helps shape what your personal brand becomes. Yeah. And so I think the important thing to note here, just to kind of sum up everything that Ann said, is sometimes we hear people say that they believe their characteristics can change, right? And the reason that we feel like it’s really important that you understand that that exercise
03:46
can be an exercise in futility sometimes. And so we often reference it as the reason we also don’t like the Strength Finders book, right? Because in the Strength Finders book, you get highlighted all the things that you’re really, really good at and over index in, but then it’s supposed to go work on the things I’m not so good at. It’s like, well, why wouldn’t I just enhance the things that are inherently part of me to show up better in the world? And so when we think about the characteristics, it’s really a matter of don’t fight.
04:13
who you inherently are, understand and look at that from a very objective place. Because as we said in the beginning, that is what uniquely makes you. Nobody else has that this combination of characteristics and experiences and all the things. So if you lean into them versus trying to say like, well, I’m an extrovert, but really I want to be an introvert or vice versa, right? Like it’s just, it’s just not the way that it works. And so when people can embrace that and look at
04:42
who they are and that unique mix, that’s really where we feel like the magic starts to happen. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think it’s also important to add here to characteristics are on a spectrum. So a lot of times we’ll look at them, right, like as black and white. And we’re going to get into this a little bit later. So I won’t go into this too much right now, but it’s also just important to realize that they’re not like turned on and turned off. They exist on a spectrum. So you can modulate them.
05:09
to help them to either work more in your favor or you can down regulate them when they’re not working in your favor. Yeah, as the visual person that I am, I always picture like a series of levers in my head and like what level am I turning them up and turning them down across that spectrum with intention to show up in a way that people can receive me the way I want to show up. Well, if I was going to be very technical and pull out my mechanical engineering,
05:36
Oh, jeez. Levers are generally on or off. They don’t really have like intermediate. You probably want to dial. Okay, fine. A dial. It’s not going to change in my head, but that’s fine. Well, then your head, your levers, I don’t know how, how do you have your lever like in between like on and off? The levers go on and off. I mean, I don’t know. I just- Like a light switch goes on and off. Oh, I’ve always viewed them as like little handles that you can like, like when you’re turning on the water in your shower, right? Like you can have the different
06:06
intensity levels. Yeah, that’s like a rotary valve. Okay, I’m not going to use the word rotary valve. Well, it’s a valve or something. I mean, lever I mean, I’m just saying you might need to change your metaphor a little bit. Okay. All right. Okay. On we go. On we go. Okay. You can argue with the mechanical engineer all you want. I know where my characteristics do not lie. It’s not in engineering. So let’s just move along.
06:35
All right. So the next point I want to make is that characteristics are rooted in traits, beliefs, values, and points of view. Now, many will isolate characteristics to values and traits. Like we’ll talk about values being like integrity, for example, or traits being intelligent. And this is where, as April said, the strengths finders, Myers-Briggs, Enneagram is used to define these. you know, April said, I mean, we…
07:03
We don’t like strength finders because people use it in isolation and it’s really only a place to start. It kind of gives you a little bit of insight, but it does start to trigger your brain into, all right, this is what I am and this is what I’m not. And as we said, characteristics are neither good nor bad, right? So just when you internalize them, internalize them as part of your story, because the other part are the beliefs and points of view. And rarely do people talk about these. So my belief is like that
07:31
there should be stronger women at the top, right? Just because, through my experience and what I’ve seen, we just need more women to top. So a lot of what I filter along my personal brand through was really to strengthen women and be able to really support women in their pursuits to be badass executives, right? Then there’s also points of view. Like, I mean, it’s obviously here, April and I both have a point of view that personal brand is the foundation for success, right?
07:59
So all of these are developed through your experiences with the world and the world around you. So they do become very important to finders of your personal brand because they help shape your, way that you go about into the world and the way that you build your thought leadership. If you haven’t listened to that episode, that’s a really fantastic one for how your characteristics help shape your thought leadership. So when you put them all together, you create that unique recipe that both April and I talked about in this, in the intro, and this is where your value resides.
08:28
Because as April said, this is where you differentiate. This is where your competitive advantage lies. And so it’s really important to become very aware of what these are and how they manifest themselves into appearance and behaviors and actions. So one thing that I just want to point out, and I feel like I’m oddly turning myself into like a contrarian today, which I don’t mean to do, but. Well, it is Tuesday morning, so it’s okay. Yeah, it is Tuesday morning and we don’t usually record in morning. So maybe my honoree self comes out. I don’t really know.
08:57
I hope not because I spend a lot of time recently with clients in the morning, so that would be terrible. ah But anyway, this is just another place where there is some hard work that needs to be done. So when Anne got into beliefs and points of view, I think what happens with people is their values and traits are easier to identify. One, because lots of people talk about those things, but two, because they are a little bit more…
09:23
like common language or common terminology or things that people are just more comfortable in because they’re easier to put your finger on, right? And I think when you get into the beliefs and points of view, not that this all holistically isn’t important, but if you can really dig into those parts especially, that’s where you get a really well-rounded view of your fundamental characteristics. And you can start to think about what makes you you and
09:51
fully shapes you based on all of your experiences in life, not just some things that you may have fundamentally been born with. So I don’t want to get into the nature nurture piece, but I do think there are components of both and that this is something that’s different about our approach to personal brand. And also what I think if you put the hard work in really allows you to fully show up with that capital A authenticity that we talked about in the beginning. All right. So we’re going to
10:18
tell our stories about how our recipe of our characteristics generates a competitive advantage because I think this tends to be something that people have a hard time internalizing. okay. My personal brand framework here for this is, some of my traits is tenacity and resilience. Again, I don’t know how I got these and I think a lot of people try to like diagnose how they got them, where they got them from. It doesn’t matter you guys.
10:48
But I recognize in myself that I have a ton of tenacity and I have a ton of resilience. Right. So those are sort of two traits that I recognize in myself. I also value a growth mindset. It’s been something that’s been important to me. I thrive on learning new things. I love new challenges. I just love to see what I’m capable of. It started when I was definitely much younger, when I became a runner. I couldn’t even run once around the track.
11:17
And then, you know, again, that’s the tenacity and resilience, but along with the growth mindset of like wanting to become then a runner and being able to become good at it. All of that combined with my belief in my ability to figure things out. Like I just have this, and this is something I recognize a little bit later in my life is that I just believe that I can figure things out. Like you put me in a tough situation. I’m going to be able to figure it out or put me in a new situation. I’m going to be able to figure out. You put all of those things together, that recipe together.
11:45
It has made me a very successful real estate investor. And the reason why is because real estate has a, it can be very unpredictable. It could be very chaotic. It could be a lot of no. So you need the tenacity and resilience to continue to, really push yourself down that path. You need that growth mindset because you have to understand how do you, how do you know what a good deal is? How do you know when to back out when it’s not a good deal?
12:12
How do you learn how, in my case, to work with tenants and how to build those relationships in a way that it’s gonna afford basically revenue and ease of being a landlord in that case. But then that unpredictability of like, well, what if it all goes bad? What if something happens? It’s like, well, I believe that I’ll be able to figure it out.
12:36
A lot of people fail in real estate because they don’t have that recipe. They don’t know how to read when it’s a good deal. When something gets, um, when something gets really tough, they crumble and then they don’t know how to, to come back from that. And they don’t know how to look at it from a different perspective and figure out different solutions. So that’s my story. It just kind of shows you how, when I put that recipe together, that it has made me very successful in differentiating me. And I had again,
13:05
being able to make a good living from real estate. When a lot of other people won’t even want, don’t even want to touch it. They’re like, Oh, I don’t understand how you even do that. I don’t understand how you, you know, put quote unquote things at risk. It’s like, well, I have this recipe that supports me. can, I can leverage my personal brand and I know that I’m going to be okay. You know, even no matter what happens in that growth mindset says, even if it falls apart, it’s like, had a lot of fun doing it. I learned something new, you know? So it’s just.
13:33
It works in the way that helps to really drive your big things in the way that becomes important to you. April, what’s your story? That’s a good one. And I was one of the people that was like, I do not know how you do real estate, not from the risk perspective, but just the managing tenant piece and watching from the sidelines of that. I’m like, whoo. It wasn’t always easy. It definitely takes some resilience. I can write a whole book on some of the things that happened, my tenants. That’s true. OK.
14:00
So mine, as I thought about this and trying to really break down my characteristics and then how I uniquely put them back together, the ones that kind of bubbled to the surface for me are number one, I am an extrovert. So I really do enjoy people. I like meeting new people. I get my energy from being with other people. I’ve had to learn to sit with myself on the other side of that, but that’s a discussion for another day. So that extroversion for sure.
14:29
paired with the fact that I am definitely a problem solver. I remember, like Anne said, know, some of these things come up later in life or as you do the work to identify your characteristics. I never would have probably said that about myself, but I remember we did this exercise at one of the companies I was at and we were supposed to go ask the people in our lives, not just the people we worked with, what was like the one thing they admired most. And I remember Bryce
14:57
immediately, like didn’t even hesitate and was like, I have never met someone who somebody puts a challenge in front of and there’s not even a moment of hesitation. It’s like, okay, what are we going to do to mobilize the troops to get this figured out? And so there’s that piece. And then the other piece is I’m a three on the Enneagram. So there you see me using my tools as part of this exercise, which means that I am a highly empathetic
15:24
person, paired with the fact that it makes me really perceptive. And so when I am with people, I’m not jumping in at what they say, but I’m paying attention to their body language, how they’re saying things, how they’re looking, are they engaged, are they deflated, all of those types of things.
15:49
What this made me over time was a really good salesperson for the agencies that I worked in. And I put myself in that position in the beginning, and I’ll be really honest, just because I wanted to travel the world, Well, that’s a big thing. Yeah, it was a big thing. I mean, it was on my list. I joined this company because there were offices all over the world, right? At that point in my career. And so.
16:13
But what it turned into was this unique ability to sit at the table and watch all of what I just said go on and jump in when our proposal wasn’t quite right or when we were talking about ourselves too much and we needed to stop and listen to them or ask the tough questions. The other one I didn’t say is my directness, right? But also evaluating the room and making sure my directness was gonna be received appropriately.
16:42
And so it became, when I think about the beliefs and the point of views that I started to build, the difference that I saw in myself was I would sometimes leave those meetings and have a very different perspective than others of my coworkers in the room about how well it went or didn’t go. And then also the ability to, over time, as I became more senior, jump in and kind of save the day and redirect.
17:07
conversations in order to get us to the place that we actually needed to go to have the conversation in the room that was relevant versus what we as the agency wanted to tell them about ourselves. And then fast forward, you know, going on my own, the entire first year of business for me was about going and selling myself as the sole contact for various clients. And then the belief in me that I could bring the right partners to the table. so.
17:33
And that continues now at forthright people, right? The ability to be able to step into those rooms and leverage all the things I just said about me and my inherent characteristics to make them work hard for me and for our business. And I hope, I mean, that’s a really good example. And I hope everybody listening is thinking through is like, oh, I can think of times when I’ve shown up in situations and I’ve been able to move the needle. I’ve been able to accomplish things and realize that maybe you’ve took that from granted that. exactly.
18:02
Yeah, that you did have a, or were pulling that characteristic recipe and making it work. And it feels like you’re in flow. It feels easy. And we tend to think, well, that wasn’t a big deal. mean, but it is a big deal. And this is what I say when it comes back to talents. And I’m going to probably say this on every single episode for the next like, Oh, here we go on the tide box. I knew it was coming. Because this is why it, yes, of course.
18:29
Because this is where like your talents really start to manifest, right? I mean, that is a talent. What April describes as talent, what I described as a talent. And when you’re able to take those and you’re able then to really manifest them into a repeatable and consistent way that you operate, it starts becoming attributed to you. It starts to becoming the differentiating factor. It’s like, of course we’re going to bring April into this meeting because she’s able to see things the way that other people aren’t able to see them. She’s able then to kind of hear the…
18:56
the client in a way that we can’t quite hear him and she’s being able to negotiate on a better terms or be able to deliver the work in a better way. mean, same thing with me, even though I used the fact that it was a successful real estate venture for me, those characteristics when they put them together in a recipe have also made me very good at being a strategic action planner. Right. So I bringing that in, like, I mean, there’s nothing like getting into a room with a bunch of people who are very set in how it all used to work or how it
19:25
or how it should be tried that before. Yeah, I tried that before or very resistant to change. we tell me you don’t need to nasty resilience, growth mindset and belief in my ability to figure anything out, especially in the moment in order to be successful there too. So these recipes are reapplicable. And I mean, I guarantee you guys, anybody who’s been successful in delivering their big thing has learned how to hone in on this, recognize what they are, own them, and then be able to reapply them in different situations in order to be able to achieve their big thing. So
19:56
I want everybody to really like start to own because it’s really hard to own these moments when you’re like, damn, I did that or I was really good in there or I achieved what I wanted to achieve and really start to figure out why, what was the recipe, that characteristic recipe that allowed you to do that? Yeah, I mean, I think the only other thing I would say there is to what I like what Anne said about like looking back and realizing and not
20:24
putting your blinders on thinking that everybody can do the things you do. I mean, when I was doing this early in my career when, you know, it fun for me to travel the world and go on boondoggles and all of those fun things, I would have moments where I was just completely incredulous because we would leave rooms and these people would be a lot more senior than me and they’d be like, oh yeah, that went great, whatever. And I’m like, no, it did not. And then, you know, I would give my point of view and they’d be like, really? I’m like,
20:52
Yes, did you see that person was on their phone? Those two people were exchanging glances. Like that did not go well. And to be able to stand in that and believe in myself, knowing that I had way less experience and exposure to these types of situations, but also being like, this is just people, people. you know, the one thing I can do is read the room and understanding that that really was, like Anne said, one of my very unique talents from a very early age.
21:21
but also not letting that be dimmed by louder voices or more experienced people. Yeah, I think that’s super important because we tend to think that we’re the odd one in the way that we’re not seeing it right. And so having that confidence to be like, hmm, let me trust my personal brand here and think about how I want to address this with the broader group, I think is a really important lesson to learn. And the younger you learn it, the better.
21:51
Yep. There we go. Yep. All right. The next point is characteristics are neither good nor bad. They either move us towards our big thing or away. And we talked about this a little bit in the beginning and a little bit throughout, but I want to hit this really, really hard because we inherently find or think some characteristics are good and some are bad. And this is again, going back to strengths, finders, and some of the Myers-Briggs, I’m like, we tend to just kind of associate some being good or bad. So for example,
22:21
Egotistical is one, I mean, it comes up a lot, right? Most of the time people I think egotistical is bad. But if you’re in a room with a bunch of other egotistical people and it’s really hard to speak up, it’s really hard to get a word in edgewise, it’s really hard to, and you’re wanting to go in and you want to champion for your team, being egotistical could work really well in that context because you’re rising to the occasion, right? So,
22:49
that in that context, egotistical works well in a context where you’re with a bunch of people and you’re trying to build relationships and you’re trying to build camaraderie, egotistical may not work so well. He might have to dial that down or as April says, I don’t know, dial the lever. don’t know. Just go with dial it down. We don’t need to beat a dead horse. You got that metaphor, right? I did.
23:16
But like I said, they’re neither good nor bad. It’s just we define the success of how our characteristic is presenting itself based on the audience and the environment because our whole goal really is that we’re going into situations, engagements, whatever events, whatever your context is with.
23:36
an aim in mind. We want to achieve something. We have an agenda or we have a mission or we have our big thing that’s sitting out there. mean, all of these things kind of give us the, the, the guiding light for how we want to show up in these situations. And that’s how April says all about like reading the room. So when we go into these situations, we want to think about what characteristics we need to exercise in order to successfully deliver whatever our mission is.
24:06
And when we do that, then we can start to build that practice of being intentional with the way that our characteristics are being manifested through our parents and our behaviors and actions. Because at the end of the day, the person who’s responsible for their message being received is us, right? We’re the one who wants this big thing. We’re the one who wants the same. We’re the one that wants this agenda item met from our own personal point of view.
24:35
It is our job to make sure that whatever we’re trying to communicate, whatever aim we’re trying to meet in this meeting is heard, understood, internalized. It’s not the other person’s job to bend in order to meet yours. So I think if we can understand then it’s, it’s your recipe then can be leveraged in order to dial up or dial down what’s important in these situations. You’re going to figure out that
25:02
When something doesn’t go right, it’s generally one of your characteristics over indexing or misfiring in the situations that aren’t appropriate for it. When things are going well, you’re going to find that characteristic really worked well in this situation, this combination of characteristics. So again, this is another place where we’ve seen people get a little indignant or maybe push back on us when we say that it’s your responsibility for how others receive you, because it is kind of an odd
25:32
way to think about it. Again, another thing that’s uniquely part of the framework we’ve developed because you cannot control other people’s actions, reactions, emotions, all of those things. And so the only thing you can control is yourself. And so I think when you think about it that way and you think about, I’m trying to achieve whatever fill in the blank big thing.
26:00
I’m going into this meeting with people in the past, it hasn’t always gone so well. Let’s go back to the ego thing, right? I flex my ego a little bit too much and it rubbed people the wrong way. I need to have that in check, right? Or so and so is someone that I historically always have trouble with. I think if I can go in and enlist them right from the beginning, things will go better. So this is where you want to almost like have a game plan.
26:27
when you’re going into interactions with people, understanding that you are the responsible party for how they receive you and doing work, yes, in the room, but beforehand and then after to continue to say, okay, I’m prepping for this, I went in, how did it go? Well, not so well, better than last time, et cetera, et cetera. And then you modulate again in those situations each time to get closer to your aim.
26:53
that will eventually help you get to the big thing. Because what we can say with absolute certainty is if you do this the right way, you will achieve your big things. Yeah, a thousand percent. And I’ll go back to the reading the room. A lot of times when we have we use a characteristic, I have a characteristics of a hammer. Everything else is a nail. And so we show up in the same way we show up in every situation, right? Which is can be detrimental because I’m
27:20
Each situation requires a different way for us to show up. And that’s all based on the people in the room, the environment, the context. And if you do not spend some time understanding where other people are coming from, what the situation requires, you are not going to be effective. You’re not going to be able to achieve your big thing. Yep. And that requires you to modulate your characteristics in the appropriate way. It doesn’t mean you turn them off. Like, you know, April and I say all the time, mean,
27:48
we’re direct, we don’t go in and not be direct, but we’re direct and we pull in other characteristics in order to make sure that people can hear us. So we might be direct with a little bit more of a softer tone. may be um more, we might be direct, but we use a little bit different language that allows us to provide it in a way that somebody else can hear it. So we don’t necessarily just go all at it and you know,
28:14
regardless of who’s in the room, we just go say it how it is and that’s all that matters. You have to learn how to adapt to the environment around you if you want to be successful in those situations. So I’ll give you an example of where this has happened for me recently. And honestly, I’m still kind of working through this one. So my belief is that we need quiet introspection in order to really process transformation. when we’re doing something really deep,
28:42
we really need some quiet introspection. So I have done personal brand workshops with executives through my Vistage group, and I do this all the time with them. And they really appreciate this quiet introspection, this time to think, this time to really kind of go deep. I just did a workshop with much younger execs and I got prevailing feedback that they wish it was more interactive.
29:09
and a little bit more engaging and they were out of their seats and one more and I’m like, this is deep work. I mean, how can you like, I mean, sit for a second and actually really think about it. And so you can see like my indignation coming out as April said, you could see my defensiveness coming out. And, know, that was kind of a little hard to, to, to really kind of like internalize because I was like, but you need quiet, you need to think. And so now I’m like, I’m kind of processing through it was like, okay, how do I achieve?
29:38
that aim of that introspection with a little bit more of an interactive environment. And how do I am I able to get all that message, all those messages across in a way that I think that they would appreciate while still honoring how they need to hear it, what is important for them in order for them to stay engaged. So that’s my story. And like I said, I’m still processing through how to make all that work, but April, your story. My story. ah Yeah. And I think with that one, right.
30:07
I will just say, I think.
30:11
We certainly can build in a little more interactivity, but I think what you said about honoring the process is also where I sit. So not changing, not acquiescing to that feedback, but maybe without indignation explaining why that is actually the way to do this work. Because I think that quiet time is actually what people need. And what I take away is I think when…
30:39
It starts in a group. People are held accountable to doing it or at least getting started on it in the moment. And then when they go away, it feels like less pressure because they’ve already been walked through and they’ve already started versus starting from scratch all alone. And that’s the extrovert talking, but there you go. Okay. So mine, mentioned directness.
31:01
um We say we’re forthright people because we’re direct yet respectful. So that’s that modulation that Anne talked about or softer touch or all of that sort of thing. But when I think about my coaching book of clients, and I’m not going to use the lever reference here, don’t worry, but I often think about them on a continuum.
31:23
I believe that having lots of different types of coaching clients and clients in general actually is what makes Anne and me really good at what we do because we both connect dots in unique ways and we pull patterns from all of our experiences that may not be obvious to other people. So when I put all of my clients on this scale in my head,
31:48
There are, and it’s usually like, how direct can I be? What level of experience do they have? What’s the environment that they work in every day? And how do I get them to best hear my message? I think about that continuum every time I go in to interact with any of them. And what I have found is there are some that I don’t have to filter my directness at all.
32:12
I can step right to the line, tell them exactly what I think they need to hear and what they need to go and do, it lights them up and they’re ready to go and do whatever I say. On the other end of that, there are folks where I have to do the softer touch in order for them to really hear me and hear the message that I need them to understand. And with every client, there is a process of modulating this
32:41
in the moment, in the first several meetings, to hit it at the right spot. And so what I will do is I will tell them from the beginning that I am direct. However, it doesn’t matter what I say if they can’t hear my message. And then back to my point about my unique recipe, I will actively be watching as I’m speaking for their reaction, even if they’re not comfortable enough to tell me yet that I’m being too direct.
33:10
And so in those moments where some of them look away or they look down or some of them get kind of an angry look on their face, right? Like different reactions happen. And in those moments, sometimes I will stop and say, okay, clearly I’m being too direct. I’m going to pull it back or clearly I’m being too direct. Do we need to take a minute? Do we need to shift gears on the conversation? Or sometimes I just do it without them even realizing I’m doing it. And then I watch to see if I get a better reaction the next time.
33:39
right? And so this is one that I think about often because when I was early in my career and I tell this story in the book about being a hard charger, my directness was put to the test with that hard charging and I didn’t care what people thought about what I said. I thought I was right and I knew the best way and I was going to get it done and you know, reactions be damned. Now I sit in this seat where I’m like, if I were coaching someone and I let
34:09
the way I wanted to show up, drive things, I would be a completely unsuccessful coach. And I, this is where it is my responsibility to make sure that my clients are able to take my message, go do what they need to do and get on the path to whatever their big thing is. Because my success is completely based on their success. And if you had said that to me when I was a 20 whatever, I would have been like, you are so full of crap.
34:38
right? But over time, this is where I sit. And I know that my directness is a good and effective thing about me. But to Anne’s point and to the comments we made about the recipe, I have to put it together with these other things we’ve talked about in order for it to be useful. Yeah, I want to highlight several points you made, April, just to make sure that they hit home. One is your need in the need to really be aware of appearance cues.
35:08
Yes. In order to figure out if you are showing up in a way that is effective or not. So you talked about, you know, how people could react from a visual standpoint, from even from a verbal standpoint. I used to talk about the fact that when I started going all Italian on people, I people used to kind of like sit back in their chairs and their eyes used to get really wide, like, much.
35:31
So really becoming really aware of visual cues and verbal cues and people’s appearance is going to help you figure out if you’re being effective or not. So that is a practice and it’s a really important one in order to figure out if you’re modulating appropriately or not. And I think the other thing, well, there’s two other points I was going to make. The other point is about relationships is that a lot of times when the engagements are too hard with people, tend to opt out, but we need those relationships in order to achieve our big thing.
36:00
We don’t need all relationships in order to achieve our big thing. But if there’s certain relationships that we know we need, because these are stakeholders who hold the keys to our big thing, we have to learn how to build relationships even if we don’t really want to with certain people. And April and I have several stories in the book about how we’ve had to do this in order to be able to achieve our big thing. It becomes a necessity because relationships are critical because you need other humans in order to achieve your big thing.
36:29
We might not like it, but that is the reality of the situation. The other thing that I wanted to mention on this is the whole concept of choice, right? So we don’t always, like I said, have a choice of who we need to build relationships with or what rooms that we can be in. Sometimes we just have to go into rooms we’re uncomfortable in or we don’t like the people and that is just something we have to deal with. But there’s other places where we do have a choice and where we can recognize my personal brand is just not going to be good in that situation.
36:58
I can modulate a bunch of different ways, but the authenticity of who I am is going to really struggle in that situation. And you decide what those are for you, but I’m sure that there’s been situations you’re like, this is just not a good fit for me, or this environment is not a good fit for me, or this culture is not a good fit for me. And is it something real that you guys really need to pay attention to? Because we can only shift so much, right? If there’s something that is critically violating
37:26
Our characteristics, whether it’s a value trait belief or a point of view, that needs to be really looked at to make sure that it’s something that you can live with or something that you can overcome. Because sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it is something that you can’t. You’re just there’s too much conflict there and there’s just not enough flexibility. Because our characteristics don’t have an infinite stretch. They have limits, right? And, you know, I have a hard time being in places where there’s no integrity.
37:56
I don’t operate very well in those places. April talked about coaching. I have some coaching clients. I have a very limited book of coaching clients because I don’t do very well when I can’t just be outwardly direct and have to like modulate it. I have a very narrow modulation for my directness. And so I only pick people who can actually hear me in that context because that’s the way that I coach the best, right?
38:19
So you have to kind of recognize these things about yourself so you can be intentional and choiceful in the situations you put yourself in to make sure that they’re the right fits for you or recognize when it’s gonna be extremely difficult and you’re gonna have to be very almost like sometimes in some situations, white knuckle it in order to get through it, but just be aware, be curious. Yeah, and I mean, my builds there are one, I actually have learned to modulate my directness.
38:48
really well. And I think when we learned I was a three and that Ann is definitely an eight, you can see that. That is a thing, right? I can chameleon myself so people can hear me. So I had to learn that my directness had to be able to do that, right? But I will say that that doesn’t mean to Ann’s point that it flexes infinitely. And if I cannot be direct, period, with a client, they cannot be a client. Right.
39:16
I just can’t, you know, so that’s something where that is a characteristic that never ever turns off within me. So even though I do have the ability to leverage it and dial it up and down, if someone, you know, shrinks every time I say even a soft touch directed statement, that’s not someone for me. And that’s a situation where again, we are responsible. And so I have to say, listen,
39:42
I have done what I can here. I don’t think we’re a good fit. I’m definitely not going to take your money. I think you need to find someone whose tone is a bit different because I don’t think mine works for us or this relationship is going to thrive because I have to be direct in order to move people forward. Yes, all of that. Next point that we want to talk about is how characteristics are motivators.
40:09
And this is a really interesting point, but I think it’s going to become really clear because of the way that we’ve been talking about it. And you can kind of already sense how characteristics really start to answer the question of why did I do that? So at the root of our appearance, our behaviors and actions is a characteristic or that recipe that’s firing or that’s presenting itself. And you’ve heard us talking about it.
40:37
throughout about how we’ve kind of put together that recipe and how that has elicited certain appearances and certain behaviors and actions. But if you look about it from the other way, you can start to kind of diagnose too about, well, that just happened or that just triggered me or that just went really well, or I just showed up like that. Why did I do that? Like, what was that motivator behind it? And you’re going to find it’s a belief, a trait, a point of view um that is
41:06
manifested itself and sometimes we’re aware of them and sometimes we’re not that then starts to put together that recipe and that that that competitive advantage and those differentiating factors of like what is working in order to uh define my reputation to find my image in the way that I want to show up and is it working in order to deliver my big thing? So I thought the best way to really
41:34
pull this all together is to tell a story. And we didn’t, don’t tell this one or we don’t tell this one in the book, but I’ve told it when I have gone in, um, done workshops on this. And this is the story of, uh, uh John Mackie. So John is the, it was the CEO of whole foods. Um, he was the CEO and I think it was the founder as well when the whole foods was bought by Amazon and a story he tells, um, is the line of
42:02
one of his stores, his Whole Foods store. And what happened was all of their systems went down. So one day, just all their systems went down. They couldn’t check anybody out and they had a full store. So in most circumstances, when something goes down, mean, this happened just the earlier this week at Kenwood Mall, half the mall was shut down because electricity went out. Oh my gosh, I didn’t know that. It was just so weird.
42:29
But most of the time what would happen is that you would do what they did. You just shut down the store, right? You tell everybody to leave, can’t check you out. But the store manager’s like, no, we’re not gonna do that. You’re gonna just, you’re going to back up everybody’s groceries and you’re going to let them walk out and they’re not gonna pay. And that’s what everybody did. And for most people, that would have been a career limiting move, but John applauded this move.
42:57
And the reason why John applauded this move was because of his philosophy of win, win, win, win. You win with the company, you win with the employee, you win with the customer and you win with the vendor. That’s what this store manager realized. This is John’s philosophy that he instilled throughout Whole Foods. And so he’s thinking about what’s the best thing to do here. It’s like, oh, shutting down the store, that’s not going to be win for anybody.
43:21
customers are going to be mad, the vendors aren’t going to make any money, the stores reputation is going to be at risk, the customers are going to be furious. So none of it is going to be like in a good situation. And so the best way to have that win, win, win, win, it was to let people walk out. Customers are happy, employees aren’t being yelled at in that situation. The vendors are continuing to make money because of
43:46
they still have to pay for the products that are going off the shelf. They’ve already paid for them. Probably. We’ve already paid for them. And you know, the customers get to go on on their way. And ironically, one of the customers had reported what happened to a news station and news station came and covered it and they got a ton of publicity from it. Right. So that is a philosophy that motivated behavior in action. So that characteristic motivated that behavior in action, but it doesn’t happen all on its own.
44:15
because also John, in order to be able to really bring manifest this characteristic, because he only hires nice people, right? So this philosophy, in order for this philosophy to be able to, like I said, be manifested, you have to have the right people who are gonna go do it. If he had a store manager who is not a nice person or not a kind person who doesn’t believe in this kind of philosophy, that wouldn’t have happened. That person would have just shut the store down.
44:43
He has to hire people with the right characteristics, with the right personal brand in order to be able to continue to forward his philosophy. But here you see the motivation. He built a whole business around this characteristic and it led to the big thing of obviously Whole Foods becoming a very nice business for him that he was then able to sell to Amazon for a nice chunk of change. So.
45:11
hopefully that story to kind of manifest that the fact that these characteristics are built in an ecosystem and you have to make other choices in order to make these, these characteristics really realize themselves in the way that you want them to realize both a micro level within yourself, but then also on a macro level within either your team or your business or whatever your environment is. Yeah. And I love this example because I think that
45:41
what happened here is, or what I hope happened, right, is that this philosophy had been told and retold throughout the organization to the point where that employee is standing there thinking, okay, what would John do in this situation, right? Or what’s the culture of our organization? What’s the right thing to do? Because, you know, we say that people have to hear things seven to 10 more times now, we think, because we are so over-simulated with information.
46:11
But the fact that this is John’s inherent personal brand that then he translated to this massive company and then that employee on the front lines was able to take action without any quote unquote approval to live through that brand. I mean, that’s exactly what we’re talking about here. And this is why we say you need other people to achieve your big things, right? Because if this was John’s personal brand, but it wasn’t making it
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through the organization and especially down to those front lines, then it wouldn’t matter. And this is why we need other people to achieve the big things because clearly he can’t run and work every position at every Whole Foods store in the country, right? I mean, obviously, but you get my right. I mean, that’s exactly right. So you establish culture, you can establish um an environment that is aligned with your personal brand, especially as leaders.
47:05
And but you have to manifest that and make sure that you’re the people surrounding you are going to be able to deliver that because their personal brands also align with those philosophies. Yes. So it’s a really important point. April talks about that all the time, which she’s doing an organizational development that organizational development needs to be manifested in the hiring and the firing of folks. If you want to be able to have a highly effective team. So I am the retention, how they be the retention. Yep, exactly right. So
47:33
She can give you really good perspective on that if you’re interested. Look at that plug for me. love it. you go. There you go. All right. The final point we want to make here in the importance of characteristics is that they ground you. All right. So when you root in them, it creates a foundation. We talked about authenticity for sure. The big A about it being the experience of you, but also when times get tough, especially when you go through the struggle or multiple struggles.
48:00
And you will, everybody goes through them, especially high performers who are very ambitious, who want to achieve big things. You’re going to go through struggles. This is the place that you can come back to and get regrounded in your value and your competitive advantage. Because what tends to happen when get in our struggles, we abandon our personal brand for a persona because somebody has suggested that that’s what we need to do in order to overcome any negative feelings we might be feeling as a result of the struggle or how they suggest that we fix it.
48:29
as a result of our struggle, right? So this is something that’s really, really important to not abandon because it is going to be the place that is going to create that foundation for overcoming some of those feelings that we might be feeling when that struggle happens, like imposter syndrome or feelings of insecurity, or maybe I’m not as good as I think I was, why is that person, or why are they doing better or seemingly being more successful than I am?
49:00
And we tend then to adopt that personas and that always goes awry because it’s really, really hard to maintain a persona that’s not authentically tied back to our personal brand. So instead of doing that, consider instead have expectations change. This is always the big trigger is that a lot of times expectations have changed and we don’t realize it or we didn’t sense it or nobody told us. so consider and diagnose did it has expectations change.
49:27
And then as we’ve been talking about throughout this whole episode, do I need to pull upon other characteristics in order to be successful here? The story I’m going to tell here is there’s there’s always a time and I kind of just alluded to it when what got you here is no longer getting you there. And that changed for me and many, many others. And we do talk about this in the book is when I started managing other people. I mean, I was a high producer. I produced really good results. It was hard for anybody to argue with the what I was the impact I was generating.
49:56
But I wasn’t getting high accolades of my management skills because I was expecting the people who reported into me to act exactly the same way that I was. So if I was like, the hard charger is April, it self identifies with two and I was like, you know, super productive and I was working 60 hours a week and I was getting all this done. I expected everybody in my team to do the same.
50:21
backfired in a major, major way because not only did they not and not only did they revolt, but I was getting super frustrated because I didn’t think the results on my team were matching the results that reflected well on me. And that happens a lot because then we start seeing them as a reflection upon our own personal brand. And then we start to act in ways that are not conducive to being a leader in a manager. So
50:49
I had to pull on some dormant characteristics. And this took a little while and it took some definitely some good coaching from people who understood personal brand development, not just coaches who were just telling me to act like somebody else. And those characteristics were empathy and the belief that I think everyone needs to feel valued. When I pulled those to the table, then I could start to see what the air of my ways I could understand how I was making.
51:16
the people on my team not feel very valued. And that was a contrary to my own personal belief and how I wanted to feel too. I wanted to feel valued. And then just understanding that they were in a different place. Their personal brands are different. They operate differently. I April and I talk about all the time how like she’s a processor and I’m kind of like decision in the moment, decision in the moment and move it, move it, move it. And that was like a big conflict that I had with my team is that I wanted to make decision in the moment and they wanted time to think about it. And I’m like, oh my God, we don’t have time for this.
51:43
Right. But when I can understand where they’re coming from and I can understand, okay, this is actually what’s best for the team. And I want them to feel valued. I could take a step back and I could understand then and give them the time and space and manage it appropriately. So we still met all of our goals. Now the important thing that, that is the transition moment here in the transformation and mindset that needed to happen was that in that moment, I’m no longer an N of one. I am an N of my team.
52:13
So that is really like an important transition point. And so I know a lot of you guys are probably gone through that or going through that because it happens at multiple different levels. But that’s my story. April, what’s yours? Yeah, well, I just want to reinforce one thing about that, because I do think that that is the crux of the challenge with that transition, because you do have to go from I am in control of my reality and then how I’m perceived here to
52:43
my team is a reflection of me and what they do impacts how I show up and how effective I am and how I’m evaluated, right? And I mean, as you were talking, I was going through my whole career where, like you said, you’re a manager for the first time, then you go somewhere else, you’re a manager of a different team, and then you level up and there’s a different level of expectations of leadership and all of those different milestones. But I do just want to reemphasize the point that
53:10
That transition is super tricky, but the quicker you can get on board with the fact that you better learn to work with these people well and get their trust and build actual camaraderie and get them to respect you, the better off you’ll be versus maybe doing what I did speaking from experience of, know, I’m just going to do it my way. And like you said, I didn’t expect you to get on board. So, right. It’s only one way to do it. And that’s my only one way my way. Okay. So mine, I told
53:39
a story in another episode recently about when I transitioned offices within a company to go and teach them brand and therefore I was going to learn analytics and how to add that tool to my toolkit in order to effectively build brands. So what happened as a result of that role is that particular office expected a level of, I guess I would call it professionalism or
54:09
polish that I could definitely tap into. I haven’t talked in this whole episode about how one of my characteristics is polish, right? Like I don’t let people coming into my house when it’s not 1000 % clean. I wear makeup even when I run most days, right? There are things about me that are driven by the need to look and feel polished. And so as part of that role,
54:36
I dialed pretty deeply into showing up in a really polished way. And then I got the phone call from a recruiter that I had worked with many years before. And transparently I was traveling all over God’s green earth. was driving to Dayton when I was here. I was tired. We competed on number of hours per week, which was disastrous, right? I was ready for a change. And I got a call from a recruiter who said, hey, I’ve been following your career. Congratulations. You’ve done great things.
55:06
I’m actually calling because I think he’d be a great personality fit for this organization, which stopped me in my tracks. I’m like, what recruiter is like a personality fit? Okay. So I went to my first meeting and I met Angie and we hit it off immediately. And then I met ownership and I loved everything about those conversations. Fast forward a couple of months, I transitioned to working in this company and
55:31
When I came in, there was a bit of a tenuous situation. They were in a period of maturation where the organization needed to level up on their ability to answer business questions through brand. And they didn’t have that expertise because they were more downstream in advertising. And so that I could do all day long, right? Was brought in to save a client. Totally understood what that looked like. But what happened was that polish presented as unapproachable.
56:00
the people in this organization. And so, I didn’t know this at the time and I think they were giving me time to settle, which was kind. And they’re like, okay, the person that showed up in those interviews will eventually show herself here, we think, right? But what I had to do was take away some of that facade and show who I am as a person in order to flex more of that empathetic, be more approachable.
56:30
see and reach people where they were, bring them along, and also present the culture of the organization to these clients in a way that they were used to while elevating and changing the work we were doing. And so now fast forward all these years, Angie and I are still tight, but she always says like, there was a several month period where the jury was out and we were like, is the robot gonna turn off and she’s actually gonna become like a human person or are we gonna have to do something about this, right?
56:59
And they did like kindly direct me and luckily we got there. But I realized also that some of, even though polish is one of my things and we’ve talked about modulating here today, I did become a little bit robotic because that level of polish is not actually who I am. It is part of my personal brand and one of my characteristics. But at that level, I was showing up.
57:26
robotics the best way I know how to describe it without all of my personality and other characteristics to a point that was not going to serve me in this new organization. So there you go. Yeah, I really good story. And you can see it knows hopefully you guys are kind of hearing some, some lens of some of the stories you guys might be going through to, or some experiences you may be going through through our stories and really understanding that there are times where the world kind of shifts and we’re kind of like,
57:54
what is going on here, right? And that’s where generally expectations have changed. But instead of again, feeling like there’s something wrong with me, go back into your core, into your characteristics and really start to drive some awareness of like, okay, what’s moving me towards my goals, what characteristics are firing and moving me towards my goals and which are misfiring and not moving me towards my goals anymore and make that adjustment. And we make it sound so simple. It’s not, it’s a arduous process of like,
58:23
Really becoming aware, sitting with the feelings of like whatever those feelings are going to be for you. For me, it was anxiety. It was like, Oh, I mean, they’re all real. So you’re going to have to sit with them a little bit, but realize that the answer is not to adopt a persona in the, it’s definitely the fact that there’s not anything wrong with you. It’s just that some characteristics are firing well and some are not. So. Yep. Absolutely. That is the moral of the story. Right? Yes.
58:53
Okay, I’m going to review a little bit and then we’re going to close out. just recall, know, characteristics are part of that personal brand framework, characteristics, appearance and behaviors and actions. They are rooted in your traits, beliefs, values and points of view that gives you that whole recipe, that story. And they’re neither good nor bad. They either move us towards our big things or away. Like we just talked about that you’re either firing in a way that’s helping us or they’re misfiring where they’re not.
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They are powerful motivators and we can really build really strong presence around those and culture. And when we root in them, it grounds us, especially in times when expectations change and things change around us and we’re not quite sure what to do.
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So if you want more on all that, go get the book. It’s available on Amazon. Again, it’s the Power of Your Personal Brand, playbook for struggling mental managers who want to do big things. There’s also a link on our website, forthright-people.com, that’ll get you to the book. And our workbook’s on there too. So it’ll help you introspectively process through. Yes. And with that, we encourage you to take at least one PowerPoint insight you heard and put into practice. Remember, strategic counsel is only effective if you put it into action.
01:00:03
Did we spark something with this episode that you want to talk about further? Reach out to us through our website, ForthRight-People.com. We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business and make sure to follow or subscribe to Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast platform!