How to make an impact at work to get promoted

This is one of a series of articles discussing the 9 key elements you need to get complete career confidence.

I told you yesterday.

Working long hours is not enough.

No matter how many hours you work, it’s never enough.

Sure you need to work hard to get results to get promoted but …

The mistake I see many women make (myself included until few years ago) – we work hard and get great results. And expect the promotion to follow.

That works at school and at university. We beaver away, studying, revising, preparing, practising … and that work leads to successful exam results.

That’s not the way it works in the workplace.

Make an impact to get noticed at work

To get the career success you want, you need to make an impact.

No impact, no success.

Hard work and results on their own are not enough because everybody else is too busy focusing on their own work and results to notice yours.

So you need to make an impact to get noticed … and get promoted.

In order to make that impact you need to understand two things.

• Your personal brand
• How you communicate

And if you’re thinking, well I just have no idea where to start, I have good news for you. There’s a whole module exploring Impact in my Complete Career Confidence programme. Find out more here.

In today’s post, I’m going to share something of what we discuss and work on in the career accelerator.

How to make an impact at work to get promoted

We’re going to look at the personal brand aspect of your impact.

SO many women tell me “I’m not fussed about developing a personal brand. I’m not a celebrity. I’ll skip this module.”

NO.

JUST NO.

Think about it – the celebrities and politicians with strong personal brands are the ones that get the most coverage and are most easily remembered e.g. Donald Trump, Lady Gaga, Madonna.

I’m not suggesting you start acting and communicating like a big celebrity.

You might be thinking that the very idea of a personal brand is just so not you. Ditch that thought.

The truth is, you ALREADY have a personal brand whether you like it or not. That’s so important, I’m going to repeat it.

You already have a personal brand.

When you know WHAT your personal brand says about you, you can take proactive control over your brand to manage your career.

Personal brand is your reputation; it’s who you are and what you stand for.

What do people know you for? What do they say about you when you’re not in the room? How do people recommend you to others?

Do people say “Go and see Claire. She’s brilliant. Patient, organised, and her advice is always on the money.”

Or maybe “Talk to Kate, she’s a bit disorganised and misses deadlines but the quality of her work is top notch”.

Or even “Well if there’s nobody else available, talk to Suzie. She’s very reliable in meeting deadlines. Just that you need to make sure you get everything peer reviewed. Her coding’s a bit flaky at times.“

How to identify your personal brand

If you don’t know what your personal brand says about you, let me share a snippet from my Complete Career Confidence module on Impact.

Here are three things you can do to start to identify your personal brand so you better understand the impact you make at work:

• Ask five co-workers, people you trust, to give you some personal feedback. Ask them to write down five things they would say about you to another manager.
• Read through past performance reviews and look for patterns. What feedback comes up again and again.
• And because I know that you won’t get promoted unless you’re making an impact (for the right reasons), do yourself a favour and check out my Complete Career Confidence accelerator programme because the next cohort starts Monday 18 May.

Pop a note in the comments. I’d love to hear how you get on.

In the next article we’ll explore Presentation.

p.s. if this has got you thinking about your personal brand, great. If you want help to identify it and manage it, check out Complete Career Confidence.

I’ve distilled everything I’ve learned from 100s of hours of one-to-one coaching, my three online conferences, multiple workshops and online classes.

The next Complete Career Confidence cohort starts Monday 18 May. Sign up before 14 May to get 50% discount making it £300 instead of £600 as well as £346 of Early Bird bonuses.