If You Like It, Sneeze It!

The power of the Tribe to influence can be enormous. Consider 'word of mouth', that form of communication 'behind your back' that may make or break you.

Reputation is part of your brand. Who you are, is reflected in your character, persona, style and presence. How we communicate ourselves to others, describes our set of beliefs, values, attitudes, perceptions, and judgements. Certainly, our behaviors are a mirror to who we are for they reflect our inner 'self' to an outward audience. For instance, wearing your sponsors is an attempt to promote the 'duality' of relevance for both advocate/ambassador and brand/sponsor. The relationship is one of collaborative partnership and alliance. 

Promoting ultra-triathlons (IUTA) and my sponsor Jabra on a Channel News Asia featurette.

When I went to Kona for the Ironman World Championships, I wore my Jabra colors with pride. I extended my support for the brand and its Bluetooth-enabled devices by wearing their race-attire in several more Ironman races, and my first Boston Marathon (2014). Channel News Asia interviewed me for that landmark event there, and my sponsors picked up on that in my Singapore interview on 'Ironmen and Ultra-Triathlons). I roped in my friends, Triple-Deca Iron-Triathete (that is 226km triathlons X 30 days) Wayne Kurtz from USA, and Singaporean Deca-Iron Triathlete (10 X Ironman over 10 days), Kua Harn Wei, PhD to be part of this experience and interview. I was informed by my friends, neighbours and family of the first telecast and subsequent re-runs. The 'reach' was highly positive, and I earned a sponsorship for this year.

How thoroughly do you think when you post on Social Media? Have you considered the implications and ramifications of your rants and raves? When you 'tick' on a 'LIKE', or make a 'Comment', what are, in effect, wanting to say. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, when another disagrees with us.

How do you influence for your Tribe? How do you show support for each Friend, Follower, Member, and the like (no pun intended). When a Follower 'Retweets' or 'Favourite' your post, how do you 'return the favour'? Do you read one of their shared 'links'? Do you provide a response or recognition? Giving encouragement to a 'newbie' can be empowering. Sharing a personal tip, nugget of your wisdom, a quotation can translate into future mileage of extended influence. Being charitable, or not as asking for something in return can be a deeply satisfying feeling. 

Leadership Lessons: How do you build you reputation? How does your Tribe spread your influence? How do you live up to your reputation? What are you doing to add value to your Tribe of followers and supporters? How do you apply the Law of Reciprocity?

Sneezing for an author's new e-book

How Will You Add Value To This Job?

‘How do you think you can you add value to this company?’ is a valid question that experienced interviewers may ask. It may be over-asked until it is a cliché, yet it has it relevance. In marketing, we call this a differentiator. How are you positioned differently from others?

Corporate headhunters will not call upon you unless you have made a mark in the ocean of professionals. What is your specialty, and have you attained expert-status and mastery? How do you stand out? How do you demonstrate that you are out-standing, while retaining your humility and humbleness?

Do a SWOT analysis. Identify at least three factors each for your Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. When applied from product branding to personal branding, the SWOT analysis reveals useful information about your value. Define ‘experience’ beyond the fact that you are aging, or spent more years in the company than the junior staff. What have you done to convert your years of loyalty to the company into the reputation as expertise, subject-matter expert, creative problem solver, and leadership?

In competitive sport, your results indicate your place in the universe of competitors. Your competency in one area of talent and development, leads to your competitiveness. By moving up ten ranks, and improving on your relative and absolute rankings, you will move up from amateur to elite status as an athlete. The podium-winners become a preferred choice for selection for interested and eager sponsors.

If you are not a leader in your field, then you are a follower, and, there are many of them out there. Mediocrity is in abundance. Mastery is rare. Re-position yourself a resourceful professional and prove your worth. Back up your talk and promises with results and resolve. Prove to them that you are worth it.

Leadership Lessons: How educated are you about marketing? How seriously do you apply Personal Branding 2.0? How do you brand yourself as a leader in your field? Distinguish what your worth is, how you can be valuable, how you add value and value-add, show your worthiness, and make it worth their while.

Branding & Your Personal Positioning

I just returned from an overseas trip. I conducted two sessions of branding workshops, focused on demonstrating brand values and delivering on the brand promise.

What is your brand promise? That is your mission statement to yourself, your customers and business partners. By boldly stating my cause, I have positioned my interests and intentions to others.

My brand promise to my sponsors and donors of my charity, Cystic Fibrosis for Kids (of New Zealand) is threefold:

1)    Commit to training for Ironman New Zealand

2)    Complete the 226K-triathlon race on 3 March

3)    Meet the family with cystic fibrosis kids, and the association that supports physical interventions for these kids.

IMNZ 2010: With 11:30 Ironman finisher, David Chambers at the CF4Kids fund-raisers celebratory-tent.

It has been a challenging journey so far. I have had my fair share of accidents, fatigue and tough days. However, I have benefitted from my commitment to a purposeful cause, and emerged stronger. I am more disciplined, determined and directed. Many lessons on leadership can be gleaned from sticking to a strategic plan. By thinking and acting long-term, I have learnt how to be more decisive, diligent and discerning. I am optimistic I can direct these lessons to larger goals and creating value for the strategic partnerships and alliances I will build.

Dealing with Double Exposure

In photography, a multiple exposure is the superimposition of two or more individual exposures to create a single photograph. It is a technique in which a piece of film is exposed twice, to two different images. The resulting photographic image shows the second image superimposed over the first. The technique can be used to create ghostly images or to add people and objects to a scene that were not originally there. It is frequently used in photographic hoaxes. It is sometimes used as an artistic visual effect, especially when filming singers or musicians for cinema posters or music albums.

Can this analogy be transferred to our relationships?

Have you faced over-exposure in your business/profession? Speakers, trainers, celebrities and entertainers can suffer from over-familiarity. Their perceived value drops when they are advertised and engaged extensively. Holding back from additional work, working on new material, taking a sabbatical, re-branding, and focusing on the business can be worthwhile options to inject a sense of freshness and relevance. That is why delayed self-gratification is taught as an early age, so children appreciate the relevance and usefulness of holding back (and reasoning through it) before they act on an impulse.

Being under-exposed is just as disadvantageous. If you fail to promote yourself, you may be over-looked. This can be overwhelming to your confidence when your competencies are under-appreciated and marginalized. Playing up to expectations and positioning yourself as an expert and one with expertise, can augur well for your career and sustainability. Certainly, shameless and self-promotion can be detrimental and exacerbate an already unpopular reputation. Express the change you want to see. Behave appropriately that aligns with others' expectations and values.

Leadership Lessons: What can you do to stay in focus, while you are focused on the job? Weigh your position: are you over-exposed or under-exposed? What can you do to shift your position? How would expose yourself to the employment market? What would be your exposure factor be like on LinkedIn?

*****

I took a total of four days off from training last week, partly due to my weekend vacation. I had to redeem my frequent-flyer points or risk losing them all. Thus, I preceded the trip with a few swims, rides and runs. Since my return, I have done four consecutive sessions, some of which were superimposed onto each other:

Monday: Run 10K (tempo); 45-minute of swim drills [brick day]

Tuesday: Road riding (2 hours)

Wednesday: Morning swim drills (1 hour); run 10K (tempo) & core stability workout

Thursday: Road riding (3 hours)

Today: Rest and active recovery; flexibility and core stability work

Saturday: Open-water swim in lagoon (4-6 laps of 350-400m each); short run (optional)

Sunday: 16.8K road race/time trial; active recovery (pool)

Identifying With Your Group Branding

Our Monday evening’s swim squad has an official shirt to accompany our strong identity. This marks a weekly commitment by the core group for the sponsored, two-lane, swim at Buona Vista Swimming Pool. Any member of the branded Triathlon Family or friends of members can join us in these once-weekly session led by coach Dion, or any of our seasoned swimmers like Julius. On alternate Saturdays, we have our open-water swims at Sentosa Island (lead by our fearless leader, Matthew); which is, sometimes, followed by a short 4.5K run, when a biathlon is near.

This evening, after teaching class I proceeded home for an hour of swim drills comprising catch-up drills, fist swimming, bilateral breathing and kicking. Then, I was off for a management committee meeting; after that, I set off for the Changi International Airport, Terminal 1 to send Matthew Wong and Clifford Lee off. Both were travelling this evening to Germany for Ironman Regensberg. Both were decked in the t-shirt that Richard Leong designed, so they looked casually official. More friends like Conrad, Angeline, Chris and Mano will be flying off tomorrow. I arrived just in time to get a couple of snapshots with my two training buddies. This will be Matthew’s second Ironman triathlon, and Clifford’s twelfth; as of now, we both stand equal at 11 completions each. We will both be part of the Singapore contingent at Ironman New Zealand 2012.

Meanwhile, I have a few key races lined up before the Singapore Marathon: mainly varied distances from 5-21K, and an inaugural long-distance triathlon on 11 September. I look forward to Sunday’s 5K, trail-run time trial with the Macritchie Runners (MR25). I hope to run sub-22 minutes, and qualify for a higher individual ranking, which is based on a faster-running animal. My short-term case of plantar fasciitis has almost cleared after I laid off the long runs, and resuming running with Vibrams and doing my core stability work.

Photo-credits: Desmond Chow & Clifford Lee, 2012

Leadership Branding (Redux)

We have spent the past two years of this blog focused on your unique brand of leadership – be it, direct or indirect approaches. To lead others around you is to express and assert your influence.

What about leadership branding? How do you brand your leadership? Applying Philip Kotler’s principles of marketing, what are your Promotions, Product, Place and Price? How about brand equity, brand value, brand positioning, managing brands, and rebranding? Leadership is about solving, serving, and supporting. Each dimension of your leadership style and philosophy has sub-sets to them, to which I propose: Positioning, Purpose, Prediction, and Providence (if all else doesn’t work – pray!).

Reeves Lim Leong of INGENS – a consultancy for branding and marketing research – offers us his professional perspectives:

1) Soft power. The ability to exert power and authority yet maintain the respect of brand followers. This is a principle from philosopher Lao Tzu.

2) Empowerment. Brand leadership empowers people to take their destiny into their own hands.

3) Influence. Listens to people's needs and the brand reflects these in action and communications.

4) Reproduction. Ability to reproduce and energise brand ideas and make it larger than the originators. Social networking empowers this form of idea virus or reproduction.

5) Love Leadership. I am sure you are quite familiar with this. A leadership brand takes people's love for life and exudes it. It allows for leadership that steers through the very same conduit.

Leadership Lessons: How will you express your leadership brand? What do you do to re-brand your style of leadership? How do position yourself around others? How will you lead with purpose?

Quest to Be Best

I remember that ‘Quest to be Best’ was one of my previous company’s core values. I have given this approach/philosophy deep thought over the years. The Quest was a film starring the Muscles from Brussels, Jean-Claude van Demme. An anecdote shared by a hotel executive (I know) who served him years ago during the filming in Thailand, was that JC was fussy about the way his glass noodles was prepared. The supporting martial artists on the set of the film, ate up to one kilogramme of pasta per meal as they were continual rehearsing and training between take.

My friend, Knowledge Management expert Keith De Larue tweeted today ‘A glass of muddy water eventually becomes clear’. Given time, clarity will replace confusion. It is so easy to allow people around us to cloud our judgement, blur our vision and intrude our thoughts. Keeping our personal vision in sharp focus and contrast is a challenging job, yet we need to be mindful and alert most times. So when somebody urges to ‘settle down’, they are reminding us to give it time for us to find our centre, our focus. Sometimes, we have to settle our differences through productive conversations and appreciative inquiry.

Our congratulation goes to Lim Leong for being awarded Community Leader for Southeast CDC by the Mayor last week! He earns the privilege to propose projects for the district. Lim has been leading the innovation in branding movement for a few years – he walks his talk. Read his insightful proposals on his blog.

My friend, Martin Parnell keeps running, five times a week, until he reaches his target of 250 marathons in one year. Yes, he runs a marathon a day on weekdays; he rests only on weekends. He does this purposefully for raising funds for charity. Go on – help him.

Today is Remembrance Day for events leading up from 11 September. Do you recall what you were doing on that eventful and sad day? Perhaps it is opportune to give thanks and appreciation for those around us. Tell somebody close that you love him/her. Recognise them for their performance and efforts.

Tomorrow, at 5.15am I run a 21K with thousands of runners. It is a marquee event that is not to be missed! Two days of rest from the flu I picked up, is frustrating but I believe that the sleep and self-massage and stretching has done me good. Like my client used to say ‘It is what it is!’ I’ll just go forth and run. The results are only part of the outcome. I’m sure I will enjoy the new route and swell company after the sweaty, tough event.

Singtel Mio versus Starhub: Is There Brand Loyalty?

This branding piece was contributed by the generous, Dr.Lau Kong Cheen. As an expert in branding, one expresses one's leadership through knowledge, opinions, and provocative thoughts. Here, he provides contrastive and comparative analyses about two distinct brands (in Singapore) and their leading marketing strategies:

In the beginning, there was one, now there are two! I’m referring to pay-for-view TV services. One of the biggest, talk of the town is the successful bid by Singtel in winning the exclusive rights for reselling EPL matches through Sintel Mio. Starhub not only lost the bid, but is anticipating losing part of its customer base. It is projected that quite a substantial number of Starhub customers may, either, be crossing over to Singtel or subscribe to both providers. Thus, is there any brand loyalty from among Starhub’s customers? Doesn’t the Starhub brand mean anything to them after all these years? Let’s take a closer look at this and examine the situation.

Firstly, let’s look at what the Starhub brand mean to customers from the perspective of relationship. What is the basis of this relationship? To many football enthusiasts, the relationship was based on Starhub’s ability to offer them EPL soccer. It is this mutual interest in EPL that kept the relationship going. The brand loyalty towards Starhub was manifested with customers staying on despite the rise in prices for EPL TV packages over the years. In other words, EPL was the basis of the relationship for this large pool of football fans. What happens now is that Starhub cannot offer EPL football to this group of customers starting next year. Thus, the common interest that anchors the relationship is broken. It is akin to your good friend whom you used to play football with everyday, telling you that he is no longer interested in the game. As such, you will not be spending time together anymore (given that friendship time is spent over a game of football). Now, here comes along an acquaintance (Singtel Mio) who develops an interest in football and offers to play together with you daily. A new relationship develops. This is exactly the case for Singtel Mio. They know what Starhub’s football customers want and they are able to exclusively offer it at a lower price!

Secondly, it may not be two brands that we are looking at here, but THREE. It’s the EPL brand. It could likely be that for most football fans, their brand loyalty is to the EPL brand. Not Singtel Mio, not Starhub! So, there was never a loss in brand loyalty. To these football fans, Starhub and Singtel Mio are only channels for them to stay and cultivate their relationship with the EPL brand. To some, they may see these two brands as entities that stand between them and the EPL brand. That is, possibly, the reason why they are often upset when the prices for football channel subscription increase. This is because they perceive these brands as introducing more obstacles (i.e. cost) between their “love” relationship with the EPL brand.

In conclusion, if Starhub or Singtel Mio wants to develop brand loyalty, it needs to revisit the basis of its relationship with its customers. If they are just perceived as providing a functional means to a greater emotional experience linked to EPL, then they have failed in building their brand. They have to elevate themselves from just being mere providers of content to being a provider of an entertainment experience that appeals to its different segment of customers.

Dr Lau Kong Cheen is a Branding Consultant at Temporal Brand Consulting (http://temporalbrand.com).

Laughter: Reset Your Emotional Bank

By the time you are in your 40’s, your face may become a roadmap of pain. That is why those, deep crevasses on your face are known as laughter lines, crows feet, wrinkles and other cosmetic unmentionables. Face the facts: we age. But, can we age gracefully? [Read this blog: Age Before Beauty]

If only we can turn back time…[We cannot]. If only there was a reset button, like the one you find when your PC or mobile phone ‘hangs’. The reset button restores things back to order. Reeves Leong also talks about the ‘reset button’ for the economy and branding.

I can relate to a reset button, having spent the past year considering and configuring my personal branding. In the business of presentation, you will need to define, and refine yourself. What are your differentiators? What makes you more relevant than others? You need to mark yourself out differently. What is your signature? Reset yourself, and reconfigure your value for tomorrow. What are you doing to reinvent yourself so as to stay relevant.

For some of us, it is that reset button called the ‘panic button’ or ‘belly button’. For others, it is laughter. Yes, good, plain old, ‘ha ha’ laughter. Laughter may be the best medicine, as Dr Norman Cousins wrote when he healed himself back into good health. A laugh a day keeps the doctor away. Laughter is a whole body, physiological experience where major muscles like your abdomen, lungs and heart get a physical workout.

Want a good laugh – it is a point and click away. Go to YouTube.com. Watch comedians like Richard Pryor, Russell Peters, Katt Williams, Chris Rock, and many others.

Upset? Reset your button. Have a good laugh.