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Standing Out as a Leader

SUMMARY

We've all seen it on social media, where everyone puts up the best picture of themselves and portrays their actions. If you are in a particular profession, you can see everyone doing the same thing. After some time, what ends up happening is that people just turn off their ears and their eyes because it's the same stuff, just being regurgitated over and over again.

Finding something that is exclusive to you, or gets other people’s attention and interrupts their scroll and day in a way that makes them say: “What’s that about?", captures their intention in an empowering way that will make them go: “Well. I just need more of this person.”

That is what great positioning can do.

This week, I want to help you wrap yourself up and present yourself to the world so that the right people enter that world and want to have an opportunity to work with you.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Do you sometimes feel like you're invisible — like there are so many people out there doing what you are doing that it's challenging to stand out?

Well, stick with me because in this week's episode. I want to help you to get to a spot where the only person they see is YOU.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to continue our conversation around the 9 crucial shifts that every leader needs to make in the professional shifts area by looking at your Positioning.

Last week, we started the conversation in the professional shifts, looking at your performance. We talked about shifting your performance from high performance alone to sustainable performance.

Today, I want to help you wrap yourself up and present yourself to the world so that the right people enter that world and want to have an opportunity to work with you.

We've all seen it on social media, where everyone puts up the best picture of themselves and portrays their actions. If you are in a particular profession, you can see everyone doing the same thing. After some time, what ends up happening is that people just turn off their ears and their eyes because it's the same stuff, just being regurgitated over and over again.

Finding something that is exclusive to you, or gets other people’s attention and interrupts their scroll and day in a way that makes them say: “What’s that about?", captures their intention in an empowering way that will make them go: “Well. I just need more of this person.”

That is what great positioning can do.

You can also look at this not just from the perspective of someone who is looking at getting clients, but you can also use this shift if you are employed in an organisation.

A lot of times, people can be just part of the team — they blend in instead of standing out because there are many other people just like them.

When you make this shift in your positioning, you will stand out and get the attention of the right people, whether you are employed in an organisation or in your own practice.

I remember in my corporate career, I was very good at what I did technically, and I got a lot of attention by doing my job well. However, I wasn't all that good at working with people (which is ironic now that I'm The People Builder). Because of my poor people skills, I got the management’s attention for the wrong reasons, which certainly did not help me.

I really hope you can learn something from my experience in this episode.

As you go through this, I want you to look into this through your lens. If I'm talking about a particular thing that is not really relevant to you, I want you to put it into your own context.

So, how do you position yourself?

The shift we will talk about today is going from being invisible to in demand.

Some of you may say: “Now, hang on a minute, Grant. I don’t know if I want to be in demand. That sounds like more work; more people will want me and take their pound of flesh.”

Well, I think this is a great point to bring up.

I want you to look at this through the lens of self-care — of sustainable performance and everything we have discussed in the previous weeks. For example, you need to look at your identity, limiting beliefs, and desire to please people from the perspective of self-care. Doing so will allow you to position yourself in the right way, where you’ve got boundaries around that so that being “in demand” becomes a positive rather than a negative.

So, how do you make the shift to being in demand?

The first thing you need to do is to JUST BE YOU.

My biggest challenge, coming out of an unhealthy self-worth and a very tired and battered-up identity, is that I was trying to be who other people wanted me to be, or at least who I thought they wanted me to be. That meant being someone who I wasn’t.

Authenticity is a word that gets thrown around a lot, but I still love it. It means being the real deal. When you position yourself and create your own personal brand, you need to be okay with who you are and with the fact that there are things that you do or have that other people don’t.

Nowadays, being authentic is a major thing because people’s BS meters are really tuned in. Most people can smell an imposter miles away. They understand when someone is not being who they really are. The challenge with putting across a persona that is not true is that you need to live up to it and remember who you are pretending to be with that person. Therefore, this can become very uneasy.

With that mindset of authenticity in place, you can now look at amplifying your authority in your area. Doing so will help you go from being just like everybody else, to standing out.

One of the ways to do this is to become a thought leader - someone who is known for knowing something.

So, whatever your area of expertise is, be it article writing, doing videos, presenting or speaking on stages, running a podcast, or just doing lunch and learn talks with your team, it allows people to understand your topic from your perspective. Those nuances of what you know, and the experience that you bring into that, allow you to have (on common topics) your own unique thoughts. Those unique thoughts and your way of looking at the topic will help you to stand out.

To do that, you also need to be okay with the fact that it's not about getting it perfect but about having a go.

For instance, I know that some of you might find “presenting” or “speaking in public” scary or something you’re uncomfortable doing. However, you need to be okay with being there to serve them, so the focus will not be on you. It’s not about getting it right, but it’s about getting out a message.

And that is the key to becoming that standout thought leader.

While everybody else is talking about the same message, you can look at it from a different perspective: Yours. When you do this, you will attract the people that you need to attract - your perfect-fit client, colleague, role, or the right people to work with. Doing this will also make you stand out to them because there is alignment.

Now that you've worked out what you know and how you're going to present that, you're able to Craft a Magnetic Message.

A magnetic message is not one of those “elevator pitches” where people ask you what you do, and you give them this canned speech, or what you put it on your LinkedIn profile.

It's more than that.

A magnetic message is something that comes out of the essence of who you are and what it is that you do in the world.

As for me, I help professional services practice owners reduce their stress and conflict by developing their leadership capacity.

That's a little bit of a message around what I do, and that's just one of the things that I do. So, that message tells you that if you're in professional services and you have a bit of stress and conflict going on, and it's coming from your inability to lead yourself and others, then you might need to tune into what I am saying.

Creating your unique message is not the message of your company, but it is the brand that is "YOU".

Then, the third thing to do is to get your skills built up as an Influential Presenter.

I'm not talking about being a polished performer. I'm talking about being okay to either stand in front of this camera or a room, or just write or speak, or whatever you're doing in an inspirational way.

It's not just giving information; it helps people with their transformation.

So, those are 3 things you can do to position yourself in a way that helps you stand out, so that the right people come across your world, see who you are, and want to work with you.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue the conversation in the professional shifts by rounding it off with the third shift, which is in your productivity.

Productivity is that old chestnut that's been around for years, but I'm going to show you a new way of how you can get more done with less.

I'll see you then!

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