Valuing Oneself & Others

How do you measure performance and value your talents?

Have you 'actually' measured your value?

'Perceived value' translates into 'actual value'. That is why the best people are sought after by potential employers and executive search specialists. When these people value your skills, wisdom, experiences and competencies you get compensated more, are recognised and  valued even further. 'Pay for the best' is the truism when it come to employment and employability.

How do you appraise your value? How do you get valued like a precious diamond is assigned a price-tag, or your property/real estate is appraised?

Before your next performance appraisal, do a SWOT Analysis. Born of marketing, and used to assess the value of a brand, SWOT can be used to assess your valuable skills, and Unique Selling Points (USPs). SWOT is an acronym for Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. By identifying, in detail and exactness, your Strengths (abilities and capabilities) - you can project your Opportunities (including future value and potential). Your Weaknesses need to be reduced, and converted into competencies or your Threats increase to become your risks.

Do a SWOT Analysis before your next Performance Appraisal interview, job interview, or when updating your LinkedIn profile. 

Leadership Lessons: How do you value yourself? How do you value others? How do you answer questions relating to value, relevance and importance?

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.

Bespoke-Tailored New Year Plans

I recently commissioned a London-trained, Saville Row, bespoke tailor to make me a few shirts and a coat (jacket). What I learnt from the strenuous but needful process – selecting fabric, style, collar, button, button-holes, cuffs, pocket, inner-lining and monogram – is the true meaning about ‘If it fits, wear it!’ The best clothes take time to sew, and they feel good to the skin, and makes the wearer feel good about themselves. Having watched many episodes of 'Project Runway', I have acquired the lingo in tailoring and designing and am more educated about 'threads'; I am not a connoisseur of fine raiments, well not yet.

I did not use the words ‘resolution’ as I have found it to be errantly ineffective for goal-setting. How many of us end up, starting the New Year, with revisions to previous year’s resolutions? The mounting weight gain shows no respite, despite upgrades and mounting mantras to attain the flimsy constructed goals. Resolution may be described as ‘re-solution’; ‘resolve’ is to ‘re-solve’. That suggests, on an unconscious level, that we are sabotaging our efforts for success by imprinting a ‘panic button’ to fail. How about you sticking to a plan of action and committing to it like a bridegroom fitting into his finely-made suit? The dateline/deadline matters as much as the intention. A goal is a dream with a deadline. A resolution sounds cool like satin, so few are hot about it like a rip in your pants.

Instead, stay steadfast to your original goal by dissecting it into smaller chunks. As in proper nutrition, chew thoroughly before you swallow. Mastication or chewing, increases the surface area for thorough digestion. The larger the food size that you consume, the higher the risk of choking on your food. Your goals can be re-sized for a higher chance of achieving it. Chunk it down into manageable portions. Split it into intermediate goals.

Let’s avoid corporate buzzwords like ‘right-sizing’ and ‘re-engineering’, and call a spade a spade. Go back to accounting basics like the reliable mathematical signs of Plus, Minus, Multiply and Divide. Relook your goals and see how each can be tweaked to meet your specific needs. Add value to your profession; be valuable. Remove annoyances and minimise distractions. Accelerate and amplify your influence. Share recognition and celebrate together. These are like hand-stitched clothes, and the monogram the fine embroidery that completes your personal attire.

With a custom-fitted bicycle, you will ride comfortably and injury-less, and thus better. With a custom-made, hand-crafted bike, you would benefit even more with your body’s unique measurements. With a bespoke tailor, you can specify how you would like your cloth cut. With a nutritionist, you can learn which foods to avoid (allergy-causing) and which superfoods to eat. With a sports coach, you can turn into an awesome time-crunched athlete. In a world of ‘less may be more’, we need to explore options that enhance our time and resources.

Take some time to lay out your better plans.

Can You Be Indispensable?

There is a prevailing belief, propagated and promulgated in large part by the management machinery. Nobody is indispensable! How true is that? Can you become indispensable?

Of course you can! The questions you need to consider are: how, and for how long?

Be a valued staff, and make yourself valuable. What can you offer beyond the achievements of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Key Results Areas (KRAs)? What do you do to add value? How do you multiply your value throughout your organization? How do you share value? Seriously give much thought into these value propositions.

Have you been asked to postpone your annual leave? Have you been told how the workplace was busier without you? If you returned after a hiatus, back to your job, then you are still valuable.

1. Have unique skills (be rare)

2. Be competent (so that you can compete)

3. Update your Job Description/Job Scope (scare the next person coming in!)

4. Do tasks that are not popular (writing minutes of meetings; editing; conversations with staff/management)

5. Lead, and be in leadership positions (include temporary ones)

6. Assume ‘acting’ roles (standing for a manager in their relative absence)

7. Reinvent yourself, and reduce your predictability

8. Shift that sense of dependability on you from a few days to a few weeks in a year (go from there)!